The cards will be in the essential box IRC. So I wouldn´t give it so much value for the real price of the Orc troop. Also die Shikami lacks some skills on his card. Wait until some real leaks for point values will show up. As N5 is also alredy delayed ... maybe to end of October it looks like they are still busy with it. MI on the other hand will still be an issue. In N4 its to expensive. Sometimes good toolboxes with moderate arm-values but one wrong move and you lost 30 pts while the cheap 18 pts. impetious HI happily runs away ;-)
MI always were in a strange position. The only time they were interesting was the ITS when all MI get Forward Dep that season
Robert Shepherd made a video about the seminar. Infinity N5 - Wild Speculation #2 (much less wild and also less speculative)
The changes are very exciting. I would love the MA chart to become more unique. Speedball hopefully keeps the game engaging and resilient to Alpha strikes. Edit: It would be really cool for PaNo to have a Drone Swarm Puppetmaster-like unit.
Personally I believe we could do without MArts chart any longer. Depending on N4 level, you could write CC as "CC +3, CC -3, CC DAM +1/+2, CC Burst +1", de-nesting it from "CC LX" and forcing the players to refer to the table. Bah, the only reason to keep it as "Martial Arts" skill is because of its interaction with Natural Born Warrior, which negates specifically Martial Arts, but no other CC bonuses / penalties. Stealth got de-nested out of MArts with the start of N4, if memory serves me... Once NBW starts meaning "ignore negative modifiers to CC skill" in N5 (as it seems to be the way they are going to take) reagardless of their origin (whether MArts, or flat CC -X, like old i-Kohl did), the Martial Arts tab on its own ceases to have meaning. The same - "CC +X" ceases to have any sense in that case. Just give that model that many more points in CC stat, since no-one is going to take some of them away by negating its MArt skill via NBW. Reduce MArts to various bits of "CC -X", "CC DAM +X", "CC Burst +X" and "CC (ReRoll)" (well, or "CC roll 2 pick 1" as it sounds to be from the more recent leaks). Mix and match.
Personally, I love CC + X as it allows things like one of this Swiss Guard Reinforcement profile: Cool Design Decision ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1 SWISS GUARD REF. (Martial Arts L1, CC Attack [+6]) Submachine Gun, Pulzar ( | TinBot: Firewall [-3]) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 46) 0 SWC | 46 Points Open in Infinity Army Small sub-profiles like this can change a whole units role. I hope to see more specialized profiles like these as at allows some cool design decisions, especially with Sectorials.
Having been in the seminar, one of the additional fun things for MA will be more B bonuses. And Speedball will have table of what you can ask for, and a bonus surprise.
If they are going to write every modifier in the profiles, PLEASE be consistent. PLEASE. I dont want to search in a sea of letters where CC Attack +3 is writen. Follow the same order for all the troops in the game. If CC mods go always at the end of the list, i dont want to see profiles where is written as the first skills of the troop
Picky picky picky.... jokes aside alphabetical listing of skills would be nice, we will see... To those that asked about 15, while not an official answer, its a number that as you said feels artificial because in my opinion it is designed to stop forming two groups that are unaffected by casualties, the usual format of N3 had settled to 18 bodies because this number effectively created two combat groups who could realistically absorb a logical amount of first turn casualties without suffering in the order pool, this lead to a game of a few extremely good units and a lot of order generating chaff, 15 gives a much better gameplay experience.
Personally, I never understood why CC stat's entered above 20. I have not encountered a BS roll above 20 (not saying there isn't such a chance). It would be easier to keep it below 20, with CC expert troopers having the stat 15 and above to 20. MA levels can then be tailored similarly along partial cover MOD. For example, MA lvl1 has CC-3. The first level would indicate fighting a trained warrior would be harder for the untrained, hence would suffer the minus -3 MOD to his roll. MA lvl2 would be CC -3 & +3. Indicate the higher level of martial arts confers an attack advantage. MA lvl3 grants the above with +1B in CC. Leave it at that. With NBW negating the negative MOD to CC.
There are of course BS attacks over 20, mostly in PanO with pure fireteams and in the shotgun short range, but they exist. Stats over 20 exist mostly in CC to give the extra boost needed for single dice rolls to be impactful, bigger B in CC increases both reliability and the amount of damage it can do that in turn would make it more and more desirable.
You give more credits to Pano than they actually can ^^" It exists in only 2 very specific fireteams setup, and unlike CC you need to fully align stars to be able to get to that result.
A few more than 2 but yes, its a really specialized fireteam than either needs to go close to the enemy or have the enemy get close to them.
Anything pure with BS 14 and in weapons range will shoot at 20s. BS 11 if you carry a shotgun. Good ol' times shooting Hospitaller HMG in a pure fireteam...
So I heard Generic (vanilla) armies will get curated and possibly get access to limited fireteam.... Tohaa?
You can crack 20 with any unit with a +3 rangeband and BS15 (or even BS12 in a Core!) as well using Targetted for something other than missiles. Reactive Spotlight is actually kinda great even if you don't use Guided.
I can’t remember where I saw it, but it looks like instead of Martial Arts, the troops that had it are just getting a higher CC? And then probably a CC (-3) skill? I think CC will be a bit more devastating since they are keeping CC above 20 and then adding more B. I hope they tone it down with a few troops though. I’m really not looking forward to the Chimera killing half of my army in one turn…. Again.
In a shooting-focused game CC (generally a B1 attack) should be more reliable to be used, thus a CC focused troop is granted a higher than 5% crit chance to overwhelm low CC (or a high BS ARO in face of initial charge) with a single crit success.