I've been thinking about TAGs after the Torchlight Brigade reveal. The TB TAG is only a little more expensive than a Silverlight Prime, which is both nuts and even then I'm probably still be hesitant bringing a TAG as they're, for most factions, a large point investment whose return is utterly ruined by models that can cost close to as little as 1/10 their cost. Back when N4 was released TAGs got a whole bunch of rules, amongst them BA: +1 damage. This was huge at the time as it made them powerful and special, and now when it's a common rule for S5+ models it no longer feels that special nor impressive, if anything on an S7 model it feels decidedly underwhelming in comparison. TAGs, especially the larger ones are often an investment of 1/3 of the points in a 300-point game. This means that they have to work hard to justify their point cost. One issue I see with TAGs of the larger variety is that they're too easy to shut down with a hacker who'd vastly cheaper than them. While they have a good defense against hacking via good WIP and high BTS almost none of them have any protection in the form of Firewalls, HI can easily get a Firewall to protect them. This makes no sense. TAGs are supposed to represent the pinnacle of opposition, the replacement for tanks, and they can easily be negated by a model lying a million miles away with a repeater covering the TAG. It makes it difficult to use it and it'll have issues earning its keep. Yet, the latter goes into battle largely unprotected despite being a massive investment both game-wise and lore-wise. Two things I would like to see added to TAGs in N5 so they become the mastodons of warfare they're described as is that all S6 TAGs have a -3 Firewall and all S7 TAGs have a -6 Firewall, The point cost of the cheaper TAGs would be adjusted as appropriate since some of them. like the TB one, are priced after how easy it is to shut it down. Another thing I would like to see added is a boost in how dangerous they are. They got the +1 damage mainly because their guns were many times larger than infantry firearms and it made no sense they did the same damage. Their guns are still relatively bigger than the guns of S5 models which also have BS: +1 damage. I would make that rule systemic so that all S5 models have BS +1 damage, all S6 models have BS: +2 damage and all S7 models (and the Maghariba) have BS: +3 damage. This would make it so that there was a meaningful difference between an S6 and an S7 other than one just being vastly more expensive than the other with the only difference being some ARM and BTS, and that the S6 model is a lot easier to protect than the S7 model. It would also give S5 models a place in the game as a hammer. Most of them have the +1 damage anyway except for some who should. One example of this is the Charontid which has a visibly larger plasma rifle than the Unidrons yet does the damage as them despite costing many times their price.
No. Good TAGs are already pretty nuts. Shitty old TAGs that haven't kept up with the power creep are just shitty old TAGs that haven't kept up with the power creep.
How are TAGs good? The good ones have an artificially deflated price since if you paid the full price for what they could do offensively currently they'd be vastly over costed for how much of a threat they are. If they already are "pretty nuts" then how come you can relatively easily shut them down? Do you have to use combined arms to get them out of a sticky situation? If so, which models are supposed to do this combined arms approach as a lot of them, especially the ones before the Squalo MkII, are too expensive to allow for a wide range of troop diversity? Once you have a TAG most factions are one CG only and a 1 CG army is easy to shut down, especially if they have models that are hidden and/or Airborne. Then you ideally also need a model with Counterintelligence, which is even more of the points that you have to spend before you can take anything else. Tactical Awareness of that price tag is rarely, if ever, enough to make up for the loss in the first round in the context that the model exists in. Of course, if you go first, if you go second you're most likely going to take some casualties which will put you largely in the same position as if you went first. That was a lot better back when you were unable to take Orders from 1 CG army. CB should have made that standard, instead of, introducing Counterintelligence.
Of the 'good' TAGs, very few actually have overly deflated price points. At least, any more than what the entire class got moving over to N4. TAGs in Infinity bring high durability and strong gunfighting with good order efficiency. I think you've got a pretty poor conception of how listbuilding works in modern Infinity and modern TAG lists. Limited insertion is just not a thing for most armies, even when a TAG is on board. The Avatar costs 126 points, and even then, lists built around it aim to hit the body cap. Counterintelligence is a bad skill (in the context of existing as something to take on its own). If it's not on something that you would already have been taking without the inclusion of in the first place, you're better off getting more value for your points on supportive or secondary pieces. It's a skill that saves you one order on one turn of the game, and only when you're going first. It's never worth prioritizing. TAGs absolutely should not be invincible. It's very easy for one of them to just roll up an entire table if given an opportunity. If an opponent isn't able to shut one down, they can be extremely difficult to mitigate. They have a massive target painted on their heads because they can be that much of a threat, and your job as the person playing the TAG is to ensure that they can be properly defended.
Well, no thanks. S7 TAGs having +3 DMG and Tinbot -6? Enjoy your game against a non-hackable Avatar and it's DMG 18 MULTI HMG...You cannot shoot it, you cannot hack it, you cannot get in CC with it. What's you plan? :) As Weathercock was saying, TAGs are perfectly fine, and the ones that are crap (by design or by being old) can just be fixed by... fixing them.
I remember the times when Acontecimento's best option for defence against TAGs was - aside from Dragao - getting a linked sniper and using AP ammo, or hoping for a lucky Monomine. Kinda exhausting experience. Alternative was to maximise burst in hope for criticals. N4 crits made high ARM units much more survivable, and together with cost decrease most TAGs are perfectly fine. I'm with @Child9 on this, some of them need an update, but not the whole unit type.
I wish TAGs were a more common choice because they are a considerable part of the Infinity setting in my mind. Way back when I first got in to Infinity and was trying to pick a faction one of the requirements I gave myself was it had to have a TAG. I'd love to see the TAG specific missions return to the ITS pack because just having one mission in an event really makes some tough choices with two list format.
I see TAGs in most of my games and feel like they are pretty much mandatory for some factions, especially PanO and JSA.
The issue with TAG-specific missions is that then every sectorial would need one, and I'm of the opinion that some could very well do without them. Keeps armies more distinct. What is really needed is mostly the plan how to use one. I remember one game as MAF, where I deployed a HRMC Bultrak on one flank, vis-a-vis Sekban Core, and with buildings and rest of my army making it hard sell to engage it with something else. My opponent had to deal with it, because otherwise in my turn it'd go through his army like cabbage through an old, short crone, and it took him his whole first turn to do it, only succeeding with his last order. Whole turn to take out one, albeit important, unit. He had no orders to properly spread the team out, and in my turn I dropped a Taryot on them and then followed up with the rest of my army. Anecdotal, sure, but it shows that with good plan and deployment TAG can make your game, even if you don't spend a single order on it.
I never felt I need to take a TAG, but playing with one is great, it is not the firepower or the survivability but the mobility.
Of the 43 factions present in the game, only 4 don't have access to a TAG at this point. Of which, only 3 are still in production and only 1 is not Ariadnan. So that restriction isn't as much of an issue as it used to be. That said, I'd hardly consider it necessary to get TAGs on the table. Ultimately, there are a lot of bad TAGs in the game. And they'll justifiably never see much table time for it until CB fixes them. But for the rest, they can easily become a dominant presence when played right. Can you take two TAG lists to a tournament and expect to do well? Probably not in most cases. But you can't really do that with most archetypes (for most reasonable factions).
Being survivable is unable to cut it when you can be shut down by a model that costs 1/10th of you. A way to play around threats is to make sure they're non-threats, which hackers do well because the presence of a hacker and a few repeaters will make the TAG in question burn through orders like nothing else. It's too expensive to do that even if you make the usual rock+cheerleaders. Also, what's your point? This was the exact thing I was saying. The S7 TAGs are largely point inefficient. The difference between a Squalo (HMG/GL) and Squalo MkII (HMG/GL) is 1 Ph, 2 ARM, and ECM: Hacking -3. There's no way that those three are worth ten points combined when you can actually hide the MkII while the Squalo is visible over a lot of terrain due to the Silhouette. Large TAGs need more to be point efficient, even with rock+cheerleader as you're simply giving yourself a handicap by taking one that's more expensive than the role of super heavy infantry. The Squalo MkII is close to that. The Torchlight Brigade TAG, if it keeps the cost, can fulfill that role.
"S7 TAGs are largely point inefficient"? Well, a bunch of them strongly disagree... Ever heard about Avatar? Gator? Cutters? Marut? Should I continue? Please, explain to me how playing these miniatures is "a handicap" :) How much are you playing Infinity? In which context? Because, sorry about what I'll say, but it's not the first time you are making suggestions that sound super off or disconnected from the reality of Infinity... I mean, how can you think that making some TAGs non hackable (or so) is a good idea for the game? I really don't get it...
CJC - 2 Geckos and a Wildcat Engineer - very good Haris that can get a lot done and brings five of its own orders (though to be fair I usually swap one Gecko out for a Vostok to diversify) Starco (aka "the Other CJC")-Triphammer, Anaconda, Mobile Brigada w/ tinbot -6 -- loved this Haris and it did REALLY well in a tournament back in December. Booty on the Triphammer is soooo much fun and there are no bad options, "Man... I rolled Grenades... oh wait... I'm Phys 17!!! YEET! YEET! YEET!!!"
N4 TAGs are generally good. But the nature of TAGS is, with the exception of super cheap ones, the list needs to built around them. And they either win the game for you or lose the game for you. 3 Structure 6+ Armor Built in TA and BS (+1DAMAGE) And crits change has made TAGs the best for as long as I remember (start of N3). And like it has been said, most factions now have a TAG available. And while some TAGs are weak, I don't think universal changes would fix that: it would just make the great ones even more of a nightmare. Just make the bad ones individually better.
A TAG is not shut down by a model 1/10th of its cost, when one considers the total cost of the infrastructure for a hacker to do their job, and how much effort is spend in points and more importantly in troop slots, the investment is not insignificant.
The 126-point Avatar can be completely and utterly ruined by a single 6-point warband trooper, to the point where it can cripple an entire CA army beyond even the loss of the Avatar itself. And yet it was a model whom the entire game revolved around for a long period of N4's existence in spite of constant nerfs and point-cost adjustments. Everything in Infinity can be easy to kill. But no other trooper type can consolidate the offensive momentum that TAGs can, and very few other troopers in the entire game can bring to bear the offensive reliability that they bring to the table. Armour costs scale heavily once you get to higher valuations, and rightfully so. A Squalo Mk1 in cover is twice as resilient to small-arms fire than a Mk1. If you're really having trouble keeping your TAG hidden, you need to either play on better tables or be a better player. The Squalo Mk1 is fine. The NCO is a bit overcosted, especially compared to the Gator paying as little as it does for it, but there's nothing inherently bad about it. Is the Mk2 better? I'd argue so. But only because there's so much amazing competition already in the Mk1's price range (and up). If you were to break down a list of the 'best' TAGs in the game, you still have a strong majority being S7, and they're all major, faction defining threats to consider in their respective factions' matchups. Moreover, the bulk of these also happen to be the more expensive options in their respective classes. Cutters - S7 Tikbalang/Tikbalang of Montessa - S6 Avatar - S7 Sphinx - S6 Marut - S7 Zeta - S7 Really, it sounds like you have a poor understanding of how the game is played or the tactical nuance and opportunities of the troopers you're maligning. What TAGs do require is strong defensive management and preparation for contingency. Failing to accomodate either facet will absolutely lead to these powerful troopers underperforming woefully. I strongly recommend you get out and get some more games in that you can have a better understanding of what it is you're attempting to draw concern to, because the answer to most of your reservations lies almost entirely in elevating your play.
