So what about that avatar nerf?

If I understand the situation correctly, the avatar has been hit with a nerf bat around the FAQ1.3 release, because it was dominating the tournament scene (I'm not sure about that) and because of it being a massive NPE for a lot of people (I can get behind that, it's mainly the I'm -6 mimetism and ARM12 in cover and you can't hurt me thing).

I think it was entirely justified because at 118 and 2.5SWC avatar was just silly good and I mostly stopped playing other types of CA lists myself. On a positive side we finally got the taighas right and they are now internally balanced with the pretas, and don't get me wrong, I really liked these changes, even slapping 2 more points on Imetrons was a good change if you compare them to N3, but there's one thing that keeps bothering me after these changes.

There's just one teeny-tiny little detail missing from the avatar now, and it's the Remote Presence. Maybe that's just me, but it seems like that's a pretty darn important rule for a 126 points TAG, and I would gladly pay 130 or even the old N3 137 points for it if CB blessed us with getting Remote Presence back on the avatar, thank you very much. Maybe that's just skill issue on my part,and no one actually wasted their orders on repairing the avatar, but it seems important to me that now you aren't able to even remotely reliably repair such a massive point investment in your army without resorting to cramming three engineers in your list and then trying to repair the avatar with a coordinated order on 3 dice with all of them, and that's just throwing good money after bad.

Honestly I would like to see the Remote Presence back on the avatar, because the whole point of it is to be a massive beast and the most expensive model in the game, and it should be a high-quality choice that you pay through the nose for, but I'd settle for it being cheaper and without the Remote Presence I guess, which seemd to be CB's intention at the start of N4 if putting RP on it was indeed a mistake that survived for 2 years.

I'm still going to play the avatar a lot because the model is hella cool and it's one of the few things CA has that can directly deal with the best ARO's in the game without it being a coin-flip if you succeed or not, but the one-two punch of removing Remote Presence after the (again, entirely justified) nerfs did leave a sour taste in my mouth and I just had to get this out of system, and who knows, maybe we'll get the Remote Presence back at some point, it wouldn't be the first time that CB reverses a change they made to the game.

On a historical context side of things, I'm aware that the Avatar did not have Remote Presence before N4, but in ye olden days of at least N3 there were two different wordings for command token rerolls, one in the command token rules and the other in engineer rules, I don't remember now which one was which, but in short one specifically required the Remote Presence skill, while the other one worked with any Ghost skill, and at that time both Mnemonica and Remote Presence were a version of Ghost, but who knows, maybe that was a mistake too and there never was an option to re-roll an engineer roll for fixing the avatar.

 

Well, that doesn't change the fact that one of the main selling points of playing vanilla CA got a non-insignificant price increase based on its performance and/or general complains about being OP over the 2 years of N4 while for almost everyone who played the avatar it had remote presence, and I don't think that I'm saying anything groundbreaking in that any TAG without remote presence is worse than (almost) any TAG with it.

So maybe, just maybe, removing the remote presence after it's been there for two years, even if it shouldn't have been there, wasn't a right thing to do while not reconsidering the points increases, because without remote presence at 118 and 2,5 SWC from the get go it still wouldn't feel right to not be able to reliably repair the most expensive TAG in the game, but it might have been just about right in terms of balance if it was this way from the start of N4.

Again, avatar is by no means unplayable now, but it's probably out of being a competitive choice now that you can't afford to put it on ARO duty or get unlucky more than once in your active turn, because every point of its STR is a precious resource, and you can't just eat 2 wounds from a good AP gun, guts into total cover and get fixed up back to full in a couple of orders, assuming you didn't spend 80+ points on three engineers of course.

I think that no matter what you do to the avatar short of slapping a 200+ points cost on it would stop it from being an NPE for the newer players, and I'm pretty sure that CB take the NPE factor into account when making balance changes, but almost everything that is good in this game can generate an NPE for an unprepared player, and if you know what you're doing you still can delete the big bugger (no, not cascuda, I'm still complaining about the avatar nerf) with a lot of things that are a lot cheaper than it is, like morlocks, bearpodes, teuton haris, etc.

In short (yes, I'm bad at short), this thread is a (probably futile) effort to get CB to reconsider the avatar profile, however unlikely that is, I can at least voice an opinion here and maybe it'll get somewhere, who knows? In the meantime I'll try some other tools we have in vanilla CA, maybe I'll finally crack the code on how to make a good list with an MSV3 plasma rifle charontid, or even a skiavoro (if only it could be a hacker LT, if only ).

 

Nope, it had Ghost:Mnemonica and had access to CT engineer rerolls throughout all 5(give or take) years of N3, granted there was two different rules for that and only one of those worked with mnemonica so maybe the intent was there all along.

But N3 aside, since the start of N4 for all intents and purposes, avatar had remote presence, because it was written in the army builder, and everyone played it that way. And (hopefully, I don't know how CB makes decisions on balance, but it's reasonable to assume that thy look both at ITS data and player feedback online) based on 2 years of that avatar got a points increase, which felt like a very justified nerf in a context of it having remote presence, because with remote presence all the games against the avatar you had to either delete it from the table in a single turn, or get rid of the engineer first, otherwise attacking the avatar was nigh pointless, so making the points tighter made sense because with that there's less cheap throwaway units to protect the engineer and avatar.

Now, about removing remote presence being a nerf or not, in practice it is, because without it the avatar is strictly worse, and for anyone that isn't in direct contact with CB the remote presence was on the avatar's profile up until it wasn't, so by definition it was a nerf, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't intended as a nerf, and if it wasn't for the points increases a few months (maybe weeks?) before that update it would still be an okay way to tone down the avatar, personally I wouldn't like that, but it still would be a reasonable thing to do, because as it was avatar needed a nerf, it just did not need two nerfs at once, and I'm pretty sure having an opinion on unit balance with a few arguments to support it isn't the same as crying they took my toys away, the sky is falling

 

Yep, two unconscious states was only an N4 thing for the avatar, but rerolls for engineers using command tokens worked, in the engineer rules it specifically required a G:Remote Presence skill on the target:

"Repairing G: Remote Presence troopers
If the target of the repair is a trooper with the G: Remote
Presence Special Skill, then the Engineer may expend one
Command Token to reroll his failed WIP Roll. This Roll may
be rerolled indefinitely as long as a Command Token is spent
each time.
These rerolls take place during the same Order in which
the Engineer Special Skill was declared, and generate no
further AROs."

However, in the command tokens section of N3 rules it required any Ghost skill, which included the G:mnemonica which the avatar had:

"COMMAND TOKENS: TACTICAL USE
Players can apply the Tactical Use of the Command Tokens
during the game. This reflects the tactical usage of intel
resources by Mission Control.
By expending one Command Token, you may do one of the
following:
(Skipped non-relevant uses)
»»Reroll a failed WIP Roll when trying to use the Special Skill
Engineer on a troop with the Ghost Special Skill. This reroll
does not provide a new ARO to the enemy."

Given that N3 was full of edge-case holes such as 2W models with NWI not being able to use NWI against shock if you read the "IMPORTANT!" text box, but the table of effect for shock ammo clearly stateted that it only works on 1W models and this question being FAQ'd the first way then re-FAQ'd the second way after some time, I wouldn't be surprised if since the start of N3 having CT re-rolls for repairing the avatar was never intended, but up until the most recent change to the avatar's profile in the army builder this worked rules as written, hence the reason I (and probably most of the CA players) are unhappy about this change and the way it was implemented, even though the intent of Avatar never having remote presence was clearly stated when it was removed.

To reiterate on this not being a "my toys are taken away ", all the points increases for CA before the whole thing about remote presence were good for the game, because imetrons and netrods got the veteran skill in N4 and are guaranteed to not die or scatter in an inconvenient place and became way more reliable, and finally the taighas and pretas are on equal footing and both have reasons to be used, and not one being a 10/10 autoinclude, as well as the avatar itself getting a cost bump to tone down the amount of support pieces you can include in the list with it, personnally I played the avatar regularly since the start of N3 even before the tactical awareness and +1 DAM buffs for tags, but at 137 and 3,5SWC it was hella expensive and basically the fun option if you want to play big stompy monster, by the end of N3 it became the only way to directly engage all the wildcard silliness of kamau and 4 fusiliers and the likes, I even managed to go out with a bang from N3 to N4 getting my first and only 1st place at a tournament with a silly Avatar+raicho and Avatar+HMG charontid lists, but even that was with a great deal of luck and getting paired up against a newer CA player in the third round whose list I knew like the back of my hand, but I think I got carried away here for a second, so back to N4, I tried out the avatar basically day 1 against a double jotum list and it was super fun kaiju-esque standoff at the end of which I just barely killed one of the jotums and ended the game with a small VP difference wictory, that probably was annihilation or maybe frontline. Later on though I just stopped playing anything but the avatar lists because it was just so cheap and the most reliable way to deal with the meanest ARO snipers in the game like bolts or grenzers, and against players who didn't bring any good AP the games ended up being pretty one-sided, though there was a really fun game against O-12 where I totally forgot about Cuervo Goldstein who combat jumped right behind the avatar and cut it in half with a monofilament CCW. All in all, I think avatar definetly needed a nerf, but taking away it's reliability at being repaired was too much, and I don't think I would be running it for the next big tournament in my area, ideally I'd like the avatar and our other centerpieces to be balanced against each other like the taighas and pretas are now, with no clear winner for all situations, but all being viable depending on what you want out of it.

As a bit of an idea, maybe giving a kurgat Gizmokit +1B would be a good change while keeping remote presence and re-rolls of the avatar, shooting 2 dice on 15's at good range and then repairing a STR on an avatar on 13's is probably still less reliable than engineering with re-rolls, but that would give kurgats a new lease on life both in vanilla and MAF, maybe even make them even more expensive for that, but I'd still take them with a non-remote presence TAG over a caliban which is almost an auto-include good, but not gamebreakingly so, and we'd end up with different engineers for different tasks, although just maybe having a B3 gizmokit from kurgat haris in MAF is a bit over the top, but that with a raicho or a bultrak would be a lot of points and morats are already a very expensive army, and hey, if nomads and everyone who plays a TAG with a linkable engineer in a sectorial can do that, why cant we, we got an absolutely overtuned rindak after all? (imagine the irony if in the next update CB gives Kurgat a gizmokit (+1) but only in MAF, I'd be so mad )

Edit:
@Vaulsc, yes, I've read that thread, and as I'm tirelessly saying every time I bring this up avatar was OP and needed a nerf, but personally I've won more games off the back of tanking a few hits with the avatar in reactive and then repairing back to full before committing to fight a strong ARO peice, but maybe that's just me.
And last tournament I got the avatar deleted turn one because of my dumb decisions and a bit of luck on my opponent's part, but if i didn't forget to cover all the places where yuan-yuans could drop behind to finish off the avatar I would be able to repair the avatar back to 3 STR after taking a couple of wounds in reactive IF it still had the remote presence, but without it i wouldn't risk touching it with an engineer unless it dropped unconscious in my turn before I could deal with the opposing ARO's, and for a TAG that costs this much I think I'm gonna have to pick a different way to play now, because it's nigh impossible to fit all you need for the mission and enough defenses to live through a strong turn one alpha of which there are plenty now, not to tell about fitting in 3 engineers to be able to repair it with a coordinated order.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, from my point of view, unless you play annihilation or another scenario with little to none specialist requirements playing the avatar against an opponent who knows how to deal with a TAG comes down to the WIP roll, you either take the first turn and do as much damage as possible, or hide behind two ikadrons, liberto and Aida minelayer, and pray to god that nobody can reach your avatar and do more than maybe a single point of damage to it, because there's just not enough points now to fit enough back-up in case avatar goes down turn one, the avatar itself can't stand on ARO tun one unless you are absoluttely confident your opponent hasn't got any AP or K1, and with all the berserks with high movement running around lately hiding in a corner behind a network of minelayers just doesn't feel safe enough. But then again, I got my avatar deleted by a good gunfighter with AP way more often than I let anyone get in CC with it on turn one, so maybe I'm overreacting and I just might be able to come up with a list that I'm happy with after a while.

P.S. I'm sorry if this is too wordy of a reply, I do have a hard time expressing my thought shortly

 

Also if anyone is interested here's my latest iteration of an avatar list with a bold goal of being able to play countermeasures with a double deck extra and have a chance, maybe someone could throw an idea or two about changes for it my way.

Avatar Cards
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 8 3 1
AVATAR (Lieutenant [+1 Order, +1 Command Token]) MULTI Heavy Machine Gun, Sepsitor Plus / DA CC Weapon. (3 | 126)
STALDRON Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 0)
SPECULO KILLER Boarding Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (1 | 32)
MENTOR (Hacker, Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 28)
CALIBAN (Engineer, Deactivator) Submachine Gun, Pulzar, D-Charges ( | GizmoKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 28)
RINDAK FTO (Paramedic) Submachine Gun, Flash Pulse(+1B) / Heavy Pistol, PARA CC Weapon. (0 | 27)
AÏDA SWANSON FTO (Minelayer) Submachine Gun, Viral Mines / Viral Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 20)
IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 9)
IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 9)
LIBERTO (Minelayer) Light Shotgun, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 8)
TAIGHA Chain-colt / DA CC Weapon. (0 | 7)

GROUP 2 1 1
TAIGHA Chain-colt / AP + Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 6)

5.5 SWC | 300 Points

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