And I’d have more money for all the toys I want… The new rules are very interesting. I’m quite curious to see all the profiles this week!
They talk about Maximus and Cascuda have alternate profiles for their reinforcment role. I would guess they do the same for the already existing guys. Just alternate profiles and in the case of characters shared AVA.
Even if they do, it's hard to see them being much cheaper. And I think that might be an issue. Looking at Jujiak for instance, who we know are part of our reinforcements, an haris of them is about 90 pts (let's say spitfire, tinbot and engie), so pretty much all your reinforcement capacity. However, if there's only 3 of them, that means they only have 3 orders to play with the turn they arrive, since reinforcements have their own combat groups and can't be swapped around before the next tactical phase. Hell, even if all you want is a spitfire jujiak or sora kwon, then the rest of your troopers have to average less than 20pts to have a measly 5 orders for some very short run and gun action, and units that cheap rarely have the "elite reinforcement" feel that CB seems to want to go for. And the more reinforcements you get (like with the eventual comlink bonus), the less expensive your individual units have to be since your point allocation doesn't go up. It's pretty hard to gauge the potential of that rule withtout the full profiles breakdown. I think it'd be pretty boring if it ended up as "let's drop some big elite dood and 4 random mooks to feed him some orders". edit: the video for those who missed it:
Any TAG that can be brought as a Reinforcement will be incredibly powerful. Even with just 1 cheerleader, 3 orders on an infiltrating TAG in the late game can do a lot of damage. It'll be interesting to see how the Commlink skill (and upgrades) are distributed. I'm sure for some factions it'll be on attractive units you'd include already, and for others it might be a tax to fit them in.
Years ago, I read a great sci-fi book, Star Corpsman: Bloodstar by Ian Douglas, that had the soldiers training for the world they were going to fight on in VR before the actual fight. So having “gamers” fighting in remote makes total sense to me. I was able to read a little bit of the page that was shown and the Dokkaebi are said to be using tech from the Karakuri and Su Jian. The Sulsa sound very cool. Good CC, infiltration, stealth, hopefully camo. High tech so I expect hackers or engineers. They are “masters of stealth, intel gathering, assassination, kidnaping, and survival techniques.” I hope for something good but I don’t expect much. Many many times troops don’t match their background.
My first thought is that this reinforcement shenanigans might be a good way to alleviate the Invincible Army mediocre midfield game. Not many infiltrators we have, but with Bixie potentially popping up the middle of the game table... this might be quite interesting, especially if we get some Tactical Awareness on the reinforcements :)
With what orders? This rule is going to suck for those that can’t get a lot of troops into that second group. One troop has one order to do anything. NCO and Tac Aware won’t help much. We know for instance that Jujak have the rule. But you would only be able to take a max of three. So three orders even with a fireteam is not much. Especially if you are forced to deploy them far from a target.
We don't know what units will be available for reinforcements, so there might very well be a couple of cheapish choices there to fuel a stronger piece. Some people also mentioned that reinforcement profiles might be cheaper overall, so that could help as well. Gotta wait and see how this turns out, maybe it's our turn tomorrow.
Another thing this does, it narrows down what group the Lt. is in because it can't be a part of the reinforcements. The Lt. needs to be on the table at deployment. Edit: NCO needs to be in the same combat group as the Lt. so no NCO is a waste if they have it.
Interesting that the Jujaks were previously a mechanised deployment unit during testing but lost that rule because it wasn't slated to survive the edition change. That certainly helps explain how we wound up with another Zuyong but a different colour.
Ok yes. I had it that it was Lt. Combat group. Not the NCO combat group. So it will help a bit should you have an NCO in a smaller group.
A big question I have right now is how combat groups and reinforcements function, whether I have to allocate them to a combat group during list creation and whether they can be split up into different combat groups or do all the reinforcements have to be in the same combat group. Like can I have So-Ra waiting in the wings in my main combat group to jump into the middle of the table and take up a spot in a core fireteam to replace a wounded Jujak, or will she just show up in the wrong combat group and be unable to join said fireteam and be relatively useless for a whole turn?
Reinforcements come in a separate combat group and only after the executive token use phase, so they can't change CG in the same turn they hit the ground.
If that's the case they are significantly less useful and there will be alot of profiles that will be dead on arrival as reinforcements. Like what the fuck are you expected to do with a unit that turns up with 1 order? "Here's my Caskuda TAG. It has basically no orders to use, LOL, not really sure why I paid points for this." They'll literally turn up in the middle of the table and then probably fuckin' die only to be replaced by the next idiot reinforcement the following turn like a revolving door of suicide. Hopefully something is being overlooked here or @Bostria has mispoken. Otherwise this mechanic is literally useless.
In my experience a midfield deployment saves about 3-5 Orders of movement. A lot of profiles are probably going to suck, and I think going all-in on reinforcements is probably a trap, but deploying only what you need for a specific task like an objective steal or counterattack will most likely be quite powerful. Something like a 10-2-3 split in the combat groups would allow a few expendable ARO pieces without depleting the main pool, and leave the Reinforcements just enough to complete a specific task.
As I understand the mechanic you don't have a choice. You have X points for the regular force and Y points for the reinforcements. There's no deciding to allocate points between the two it's just a set number agreed upon.
Points are split but Trooper Cap is not. No need to waste 5 slots on maximising Orders for no reason when you can keep those slots for more ARO or turn one Orders. It does rely on viable high-cost units being available, though.
But how do you do less than all the way? You have a set 100 points for that group from what we've seen so far. Why use less?
