I think they sometimes bite more than they can chew. And that's probably kinda our fault too. Some factions have too many sectorials, and that's not even counting NA2. They simply can't keep all of them updated at the same time. Winterfor is an example in my opinion. When it was released Pano already had 4 sectorials, and then they release Winterfor, which doesn't even have a great design in playstyle. They could've released new models for NCA or Acontecimento and do a full revamp, and I think most people would've been happier with that. Instead, now Pano has 5 sectorials and only one of them feels truly updated.
And Karhu, Varg, and Nokk. Anyway, I think what they made mistakes is the MO update. MO got update at 3rd offensive in Fall 2018, small N4 update in Fall 2020, Action Pack rework in Spring 2021, and fireteam update in Spring 2022. I guess they worked step-by-step to reform it into the structure after the Action Pack, but it feels like they were too spread and piecewise. Also, alongside the MO update, we got VIRD and SWF which are late N3-early N4 profiles. They were cool when they added but nowadays, but they lackluster to those new toys for other factions. I think PanO got too many things at a relatively short period of time, especially during the time of changes. And that makes me feel PanO is falling behind compared to others.
I agree with this, at least from a Haqqislam perspective. PanO, for a couple of years got a metric ton of new models, rules, and profiles in a row. It feels like MO is in its best place since it's inception and has a bunch of playstyles available. Sure, it took two bites of the apple, but you guys got those two chances. MO has a lot of interesting profiles. SWF added some great options like the Karhu and Winterfor Orcs. But you guys go so much, so quickly, it feels like you forgot how it compared to groups like Haqqislam and Yujing over the same time period. I do agree that PanO does need to lean more into unique tools like more Auxbots. I think a drone box with a new set of Peacemakers with different options would be great. I also think more EVO options would be good and could be unique for them. Maybe some additional Eclipse grenades options would also be great. I think Vanilla Pano is in a very good place with mounted bounty hunters, Varuna is currently having people find new ways to play it, and NCA just needs some tweaks and model releases to find its footing.
Winterfor doesn't look that bad to be honest, need to play them to get a real feel on what they do and how they function, but white banner got precedence.
WinterFor, if played for what it is rather than derided for what it isn’t, is a lot of fun. It has the standard oppressive PanO firepower, but the mobility skills and flexibility in Fireteam composition is stellar. Karhu, Vargar, Bøyg, Shona, Climbing Plus ORCs; all give you different ways to get at the opponent. And then there’s Ol’ Reliable, the Fusi and Nisse Fireteams.
Winterfor has some really cool FT flexibility, and I agree with A Mao Esquerda WinterFor is the quintescence of PanO philosophy : shoot first and ask questions later. And that's what makes them cool. It's all about Firepower and ultra agressive active units all over the place! I reall y have to test them. They also have quite some interesting ARO units (BOYG ML in Harris, Feuerback Orc in Pure FT, Nisse MSR in Pure FT, but even Kahrus / Nokken MSV can prevent smoke tricks shenanigans) But their midfield if rough: - Nokken expensive and won't stand a template shot - Liang Kai is probably a better pick - Locust is... the Locust - The Beasthunter is very neat though And their hacking is close to inexistent. I really would like to play them and see how they perform, even if I can project that they are quite harder to play than: - Varuna that has better board control capabilities - cheaper units overall, Hellots to trade / protect front line, better mobility (Knight of Montesa), and simply more options with Hidden deployment CrocMen and Camo ZuluCobras - Military Orders that are way tankier, allowing them to hold the place in reactive turn, and have a frankly extremely superior middle field power with the Trinitarians
Solid take, and I can agree with the spirit of it. As a faction player who still follows a couple other factions too, another side of the issue is that many of the former power units have aged like milk compared to their competitors. A good deal of the power creep in recent years has been in the form of better shooting among Specialists (many Characters, EVAders etc.) and top-end gunners (most Fireteam AROs, O12, Atalanta) while Hacking and objective play has actually been flattened somewhat to account for the smaller armies. This has led to the faction's strengths being obviously negligable compared to their weaknesses in recent times, while for example armies like Bakunin were able to survive years of stagnancy while remaining fun and having powerful options to exploit. There's still a little room to play around even in NCA (lots of Hidden Deployment, and Auxilia are fun), but I find one of my tournament lists pretty much has to be my tailored anti-Hacking one, for example.
Please, let me knows your thoughts after you play with then :) As others said, Winter had some really cool stuff, fireteams flexibility, you can put a lot of people in the same fireteam or rotating to suits the fireteam to the situation... But for me what they has best is mobility. You have some units really cool to play with the terrain and the 3D. The thing is that you don´t have surprises, what you needs to shoot in active is the same you needs in reactive to stop the rival, so, if you are second... you have an issue, if you went first, you can cross your fingers everything went well. If you relay in fugazzi and flash pulse as ARO, you will have problems if you face total im. If not, you will be using nisse snipper, karhu, or others guys like Justice or fusiliers... Smoke will avoid ones, burst will kill the others. Or any cheap midfield skirmish will go with the template. You don´t have plan B. This is in general the issue with Pano, more with Winter. Of course, tables are a thing that makes some profiles more or less useful. To me Pano is in a really bad place. I´m not the best player, but I played a lot of things and usually I enjoy to take what people thinks isn´t useful and make it. I played a lot the Old Andromeda when people said it was a poor profile... Even I find some use for Ayar. Lately I´m in top positions of tournaments... if I am playing anything but Pano. The two last leagues I played I won, the first with Winterforce, the second with Ramah. With winter I had 2 matches that were crazy in dice rolls. When I said crazy I mean, trying to do things and failing when I had the advantage, but when I tried the "split the burst" being hit because I had less burst than enemies, and save... That wasn´t strategy, was pure luck. I really didn´t had options more than rolls dices and cross the fingers. With Ramah things were pretty different. I had units that had to do the work, if those failed, I had a plan B or C, even D, just because I had profiles to do that, or to play to pieces trade, being in the side to not to have to roll the dice, only for Armour. This what for me a big difference too big right now. I find myself lately, struggling with bad dices with Pano just because I have to roll dices, while with others armies I´m on the side of not rolling.
To be absolutely honest, I find it quite disturbing the statement of winning with no rolls to hit... as it implies winning by direct template weapon spam. In my humble opinion direct template weapons have their place in the game, but if there are armies that can field no other thing than direct template weapons (including mines) and win consistently is troublesome for game balance.
Yes, I think that right now we have an issue with template weapons on some profiles, but I don't mean to play to direct template. Maybe I should say better "being able to avoid face to face rolls" or "to have others options beyond to shoot or shoot", or to minimize the number of face to face rolls. I mean, playing Hassasin, for example, I have access to smoke, so I can take care of the profile with visor, maybe I lost one or two pieces by doing it, but later I could launch smoke and go to push the button, then go further, drop some mine, recamoflauge, then to wait for the rival, who will spend at least one order to deal with the mine, other to dean with my midtable button pusher, and then, finally, if nothing more, try to push the button. If I think on Vainilla (same for hassasin) even I could use Yasbir (a profile really not too useful right now, or at least a little "overpriced"), put him and the holos on the top of a roof, if the rival feel lucky, maybe he choose to shot, if not, probably he will wait, then I can put the holos blocking his LoF, so I can move then my specialist to that console and push it. We could go to SSO, no smoke, no cheap skirmishers, no fiday, but still, accesso to cheap killing machines, literally, with few impact in the list (dakinis, proxy)... and access to white noise, so, again, you can focus to kill one thing and ignore the other. Even not, Nagas can ignore one chain or light shotgun template, if they have a wound, they still have another chance to push the button. JSA... Things like karakuri can, literally ignore at least a couple of times one ARO, then touch the button. Those are examples from things I play, forgetting in the case of haquiss and hassasin about the cheap profiles like daylamis, ghazis, etc. When I play Pano... (OM right now I think is in a good place, if you go for a few lists and don't try to be too creative, however, you will be in the same spot, plan A, to shoot, plan B, to shoot, Plan C... ) I shoot the ARO visor... then the non visor, or viceversa, if this goes well and have orders, then I will move to try to push the button, I tried to kill the camo marker left there to defend the console, if I fail, I will try to push, I will "templated", If I die I will not have other chance to push the button, and probably I lost 10% of my list and one of the few specialist I have. Maybe my face to face against the ARO pieces failed, then I will sacrifice the specialist trying to push the button. If I play Acontecimento, still I have access to Nagas, or even "eclipse", but going to 10 in a platform than cost close to 1/6 of your list... is not the most reliable strategy. And this is only thinking on active turn. I hope this bring some clarification and helps to dissipate some disturbance :) but to understand what I mean about options to do things, to take another path when the previous one fail for some reason. I didn't try to imply that you can win only using direct template weapons.
Passive aggressive sassiness through memes is clearly the superior position. No explanation. No thought. Just do what I tell you to.
You joke, but... and if you find an army not to your liking, then play something else, simple as. Rather than kvetch about what you think it should be, use what it is. And considering how few folks in Infinity play something because it's OP or what have you, but rather what they enjoy, and find success with it, carrying on about being disappointed in an army is a fool's errand. How so? It has the tools it needs to accomplish the objectives of the game. Now, whether or not it has the tools any given player prefers is another question.
To be honest, make it work, is not a bad attitude, when I started playing seriously Invincible and white banner last year and this, nothing worked and nothing clicked, especially coming from a PanO perspective, I persisted, had many games fail and eventually things clicked and things worked.
Its demeaning. Devs throw a nerf out nobody asked for and nobody sees as needed and to come around and just say "make it work," is snotty. It's thought terminating, it's not helpful and does nothing to further discussion. It's an attitude of "I'm better than you and you should just shut up." If your personal motto is that, then so be it. To toss that out in a discussion doesn't help anything
I've certainly got to come down on this side of the discussion. I've played NCA exclusively for a few years now due to declining chances for games, and got used to "making it work" thanks to really getting to try out every option in the faction. I know what NCA is good at and what it's not good at. However, I've also played enough to know that what NCA is good at isn't useful in ITS scenarios! With the increased power of active shooting in most factions combined with the increasing availability and effectiveness of tools like Hacking, Direct Templates and even Pheroware, I find myself making only three or so face to face BS attacks in most turns unless I break into the opponent's DZ. On the other hand, I frequently spend almost every Order I have on moving my slow, DZ-deployed, Hackable Specialists throughout the increasingly hazardous midfield in an attempt to sneak in a button press- which often fails due to the faction's poor WIP! By far my most successful strategy with the faction involves using Auxilia and several ARO pieces (some MSV, some not!) in Fireteams to clog up long firelanes and trade with fast attack pieces, slowing the enemy down, scoring the occasional kill and most importantly forcing the enemy to engage particular targets in order to safely play the mission, then counter-attacking with Hidden Deployment Specialists that can use their forward movement and Marker States to get into position to score in the late game. While I've found good results with this strategy, it's far from ideal, relying on direct attacks where the enemy often has access to superior, efficient indirect options and its counters to these tools rely entirely on clever use of limited Hidden Deployment troopers to punish predictable opponents. I don't think it really has the legs to compete against top-table choices which can use all the same tactics, but with higher speed and WIP.
My first faction of the game and the one I actively main and I am good for is Starmada. More specifically, N4 release Starmada. Let that sink it for a bit for you. Back when they only got one epsilon and he didn’t got climbing plus, back before all the Lawkeeper changes, back before the fireteam changes and updates that provided some minelayer options. When the general consensus of the community was that it was one of the most lacking and weak Sectorials of the game. But I just wanted to play space cops because I loved the bluecoat model and the kappa paramedic was the living portrait of my father when he was young and he joined the police academy. So I had to play the faction. And I made it work. How I did it make work? Playing it like it was Pano, but with worse BS, no hidden deployment, no superior -6 Mimetism pieces, no marker state, no ability for null deployment, no midfield, and deployment zone bound… but applying firepower pressure to protect my DZ and if possible one of the objectives with a combination of MSV and non-MSV ARO pieces, a repeater network that spans ONLY my DZ so my hackers could apply pressure to HI and TAGs who wanted to “Rambo” my DZ, or otherwise provide me a nifty +3 to BS once the ARO roll would happen, and some heavy punchers shooters in active turn that could open the way for my specialists to cross the field and press the button… Exactly what you described, but with worse tools… and still I loved playing the faction as that playstyle was, and it is, fun for me. With extra points of fun of course every time I could go for a tournament, have my opponent feel cocky and confident as they realised they face Starmada and they expected having an easy win… and get tabled instead. All the improvements that have come for Starmada later were welcomed, of course, as it were treats and small openings to try some tweaks in the general plan of the playstyle of the faction. Or, as the very last big change, open possible different play styles for it. But what I mean is that faction variety is healthy for the game and that there is no “strictly needed” access for tools to win ITS scenarios, as long as you play accordingly to your faction strength and you can adjust to the table scenery, the mission objectives, and the enemy you’re facing.
