Tbh this threat is a bright blinking caruesel with a couple of people sitting on it going round and round and round, singing the same song all day: "Oh hear my song, nomads are no fun. So bad is hacking and GML for my Leutnant always fell (to it) The points are way to high for all the units my corvus belli is the worst my units need more burst!" Its not a good tune, but it seems quite catchy, for every couple of days someone else comes by and gives it a metaphorical spin in form of an argument till he is bored spinning or gets a sore arm (metaphorically speaking). Nothing against that, i love watching pretty carousels. And I am pretty fine bashing Nomads for them beeing without question one of the more optimized factions out there. But: If someone is motivated to dont like the game so much on so many levels with so much time spent pointing out exactly WHY that is so... well... maybe thats not your game anymore. If everything but nomads suck so much, maybe play nomads then? When a new player reads this thread, he will buy nomads /w hacker, a 5 man link with jazz, tinbots-6, some pitchers and morans, a GML drone and just walks to spain to win interplanetario.
You know, after seeing the changes to Hassassin Bahram and Steel Phallanx, I think the answer to the question is 'No it's not' I mean, you could argue the Gator having NCO is kinda off-brand for nomads, but that's a completely different discussions. My original fears that CB would continue to give nomads way more attention and care than other factions seem more and more unfounded with each release and I'm ok with that. The way it is, it looks good to me. Pretty much every new release seems to have the same level of care and consideration. And while there are some odd choices, overall I feel like CB is actually putting in the man-hours into every faction at roughly the same level. So yeah, I'm off this board. Things look good for now. No need to panic for the moment.
I would like to chime in with my two cents Most of the time, Nomads need to cheat to win, that's kind of there theme to me. What they do really well is scalpeling threats, they are also highly scalpelable. There's usually a good shooter or a few in any given list but there's likely a bunch of furries and tech nerds around that fall like chaff to dedicated shooters on the active turn. I think the frail, fast striking faction in any wargame tends to get hate for the way it wins (take out the opponents most fun toys before they get played) they also tend to crash and burn the turn after they fail to do so. I will add in, I think other factions repeater game could be improved a bit to catch up with nomads though they might have more play there than might be immediately evident. Crock man FO, Guilang, and hunzakut having deployable repeaters, The AC regular hacker's fast panda, peacemakers.
I don't think faction identity's strong enough to characterise Nomads that way anymore. Even PanO can mass Akals for a fast glass cannon. Nomads used to play in a fairly assymmetrical fashion, stacking Order-expensive movement tools and Hacking buffs to create a few safe plays while being weaker in a straight-up fight, but power creep in their gunfighters and Characters has brought them to almost Yu Jing's level with better Specialists and Hacking. On the topic of the "kill the enemy's fun stuff" tactic... that's Infinity right now. Nearly every faction that can launch a hard-hitting attack at the top of Turn 1 will, and those that can't aren't played much. Half my NCA play lately is built around blunting an enemy alpha strike by baiting them into a Bolt link, then taking down their attacking piece with a Hidden Deployment unit predicting that attack. If I can pull that off before they wipe the Bolts I almost certainly win because so few modern lists even have HMGs anymore due to direct combat being just about the least efficient way to play.
I want to shake your hand! I've been playing forco. that way. I'll say the faction identity in infinity is pretty soft in general and has been, though I still run into mostly shooty Pan-0. I'd love to play a KoJ hacker bulleteer duo.
