Adil is definetly the better pick if you want Spitfire Crane. Two pts difference make me wonder about the pts-system. Theoreticaly I would pick the Crane over Adil if I want it to be the Lt. (saves 1,5 SWC and 8 pts), if I need the DA. That he is a Warhorse makes him so much better - maybe they forgot WH on the regular Cranes ;-)
I like the price! Not as fast as Garuda but fast enough. Albedo is meh. I'm still going up against troops that may have a single MSV in the army so Albedo is almost worthless. I was hoping for an actual repeater but Deployable Repeater is not bad. The Heavy Riotstopper is fantastic! And a good cheap specialist! I'm glad the combat jump is on 13. 11 PH would suck for that. Due to it's speed and Super Jump, there might be times I don't even use combat jump or parachutist. But I think my favorite is the BSG for only 17pts. It will be great for just causing trouble in a back line.
I think I Just had a brilliant idea! The Bayara is a bit disappointing for rules but very cool looks. But I just had a idea that maybe a MBH proxy! Maybe leave off the human and just have the dragon. Then have a Tiger/Dragon Duo with the Su Jian!!!
Good thinking but that's Japanese. Hu Long would be Tiger Dragon. Actually I could do like I did with my existing MBH by putting the guy on his own base and then I have magnets to keep him on the base.
I need some positive vibes guys. More and more I'm feeling the rest of ISS is going to be very meh. Lately all new YJ has been meh to me. Silvers Snakes are not good for me, Gudan are good but not amazing. The Bayara is close to useless, Jinyao is pretty much a replacement of Gardua. It's also just ok. Nothing fantastic. Kanren, I think got downgraded. Adil got a boost but I wouldn't say he's OP. Wu Ming are good but not amazing. And the same with the Long Wang. It's just...ok. It's a lot more expensive than I was hoping for. It's no Wreaker or Stigmata. I've yet to hear of anyone even trying the Feiquan flyer. On paper, it just looks bad. TBH I think most of the flyers are not good. But I have yet to try them and go against them. No one in my meta is even trying them with proxies. The Feiquan has very short ranged weapons for something the size of a TAG So far we've lost Sophotech, gained a Doctor on Pheasant. Bayara has no specialists, Jinyao has only a paramedic. So I'm hoping the next stuff show in is good. Sadly, we know about the Koga so far is that it's got Decoy, which means no camo, which sucks. He's got a TacBow, which sucks. But we still have a new LI to come (Vanguard), HI (Jinewei), and a possible warband (Shenji).
Even though I’m only just branching into ISS for the first time in my infinity career, I get what you’re saying. There’s not a lot just knocking the socks off people. Not like when we first saw Torchlight or the Bakunin revamp. I’ll say a few notes of positivity though. Firstly, even other existing units may get more attention. Because they were kinda waiting on this rewrite, there might be other units that get better that they waited on until everything got released. There’s also the potential even after release for midseason tweeks. That being said, me and my buddy both played against his son who plays ISS and after N5 launched he made a list that had both the Longwang and the Feiquan. He used the Feiquan EM carbine expertly to shutdown heavy threats like my tag. Using its speed to fly up a side no one could see and shoot stuff in the back. The Longwang was really difficult to kill. It survived several face to face rolls against my Overdron hrmc. Between its BS-3 and higher than average arm for an S6. It’s actually better than you might think. Although the lack of AP makes it want to punch down. Both units have the potential to work well in the right hands. I do think we need to see the whole faction. I also think based on how WB and IA have made vast improvements in recent times, it’ll be interesting to see if ISS can make that kind of jump in power.
Yu Jing were never the faction that people refer as "amazing". Its solid. In N5 it worked good for me. But I have a limted meta. Had only one local turnament and my main opponents are: Nomads, Haqqislam and Pan O (O-12 and JSA also, CA, Aleph and Ariandna rarley). My first (we get only one so far) Silver Snake is on the way to me and also both Gudan buddys. I tried the later out and I have to say for their points they are pretty good and can be annoying. You can let them untouched providing an order or use them like I did in Acquistion were one cleared out the repeater und placed a mine in support of my HIs. So what do you want? A camo killer with infiltration? We have: Daofei. A good AP-HMG with TA and Tinbot? We have Shang. A S5 HI with PS4-HMG, MSV1, TA and BS Att.-3? Sry wrong faction. We are realistic here ;-) For my understanding there is no useless unit in Infinity. This description is use so lighthearted. It has its uses. Its not an underpriced sneaky killer but its a good DZ guard. Sure you can use two Kuang Shi and has it chaeper, but then? The rest of the list? Jinyao seems a good replacement for the Garuda - sure the loss of mimetism is not nice, but now we got a very cheap but to be an annoyance. Nomads style repeaters are a very good option. Kanren - in theory they look better to me. Adil is on the painting table and soon to be unleashed. He can a lot but he is also 49 pts. That in competition with AP-Spit Crane - but not with AP-HMG (rangeband). Crane in genral get what we wanted in N4. Better move, cheaper, better guns (AP). I still don´t think HMG is necessary, but we will get it anyway. Wu Ming got overall cheaper but not necessarly better. They still have a good set of weapons and for the fireteam you buy the AP-HMG here. Long Wang looks good to me. BS-3 will help.Good side weapons. I would prefere a big riot vs the two small but okay. Vs. Wrecker he has 1 ARM and 1 BS more. Is it worth 15 pts? I don´t know... Wrecker gets also AP on all weapons. In a FtF between both, Wang should win over the long term. IDK - never faced one. On the Furor in Germany they were 3 time the Nomads flyer. But I don´t know if they had great impact. Top 3: OSS, MAF, JSA So far we not see our standard doc and engineer. Decoy seems to be good tool. I think they still don´t want to give ISS much camo. And yeah there are plenty of new troops ahead and I am curios if and what will happen with Bao (they were never realy good and I wonder we still have them).
Sadly most of those are not in ISS and probably not going to be in vanilla either. I don't understand why the the Mk12 on the Long Wang costs as much as an HMG and costs 1.5 SWC! Most of the time a Mk12 is 0. I've played Kanren three times now. It could just be bad luck but they did not do well. Twice eaten by Sheskin. If they had their holoprojectors there could have been a chance of her going for the wrong one. Once the decoy is gone it's gone. The SMGs also sucked. I was constantly in -3 range. I hate how the madtraps are only on the non-specialist! I need specialists! Every one of them should have madtraps. They might have done better if they had their good CC and martial arts again. Well then again it was Sheskin so maybe not. To me Bayara looks great but rules wise it's not. there's cheaper things that can be used to guard stuff. Jinyao is a side-grade. So not bad but not good either. I've been playing O12 for a few months and against them. The Wreaker is fantastic.
Could you expand on that thought for me? I am really struggling to see how Decoy is useful at all really on a Kanren and certainly cant see how to use them in the current game for much effect.
Why didn't they give ISS and specifically Kanren Fast Pandas? ISS really could do with some extra hacking support and thematically it fits the role of the Kanren (also I can kinda see a mini buddy cop story with a Kanren and his Panda buddy going round busting terrorists as such)
I think ISS will feel underwhelming compared to IA, WB and vanilla, since those got the heavies buffed by the rules change to N5, while at the same time they are mostly WIP 13 BTS3 (so the faction with the "hat" of HI doesn't have much protection against E/M weapons, which I think were a warcrime because they could break the cubes in-universe XD). The vehicle is very bad, however, nothing like the Nomads one... Personally I am unsure about this, there is little, if any, deviation in the existing profiles for ISS from what we can see atm in the Army and what's being revealed. Those are mirror improvements, a derived buff from a change to the ruleset and cheapening of all HI. However, only the big pieces have a BTS over 3 and/or WIP over 13, meaning you need engineers in droves to face enemies with EM weapons. And of the seven max you can deploy in IA (3 haidao, 2 mech-engineer which also share the doctor availability, krit kokram and Chief Chung-hee), four are HI, while in WB you change the HI options for Ye Mao and Jujak. And an engineer in ISO+IMM can't self-repair. Infinity is a game where the list can't make you win, but people forget the list certainly can make you lose. The Bayara is one such example, as a troop designed with ZoC reach and a pile of overspecialized gear & skills. The problem in this unit is not any individual part, but the sum of all of its problems (S4 moves 4-4 and starts in DZ, weapons reach degrades inmensely outside of its ZoC, there are several other options for discover with troops that have longer reach... and are cheaper, etc...). Its only good points are that it's a melee specialist with Guard, and the Disco Baller. If it had at least Repeater and Tactical Sense, then I think it could find a spot, but as it is... Was it needed, however? To me it just looks like they had no idea on how to sell another model, so they replaced the shared one that was easier to get (you can still get a Garuda in blister format... However, there are only 2 Devas in the catalog as of now, one in a 10 model box, and another in a 4 model box... and both options have 3 Dakinis, so it would have make more sense to limit Devas to 1, add a deva-side unit and keep the Garuda). The X-Visor makes the HMG AP better, I think, than the Spitfire AP. HMG comes in the new box, Spitfire was in the 6 models ISS starter box... (incidentally, that box is still available in CB's store). Decoy with Camo marker is good. Decoy while exposed... not so much. I find it quite amusing that the "Internal Security Sect" has no Impersonators, very little in the way of Camo (actually, Lunah, Ninja and Kunai...), no warhorse, and very little Holomask options (Taowu and Sforza... and the remote, I suppose), so in the end, the "police" has no veterans, no undercover agents... At least the MSVs and PARA weapons are easy to find here. It should be a mistake regarding the SWC cost. The points I'm not sure, but I'd wager it is, too, since the +1B to all BS rolls muddles the calculations.
I forgot to mention what I wanted in the Koga. I thought it was going to be replacement to the regular Ninja. I'm glad now that it's in addition. Mim-3 and Decoy is big downgrade from a regular Ninja so it had better come with either a cheaper cost or other skills better than a regular Ninja. Mim-3 and decoy would make him worse than a beasthunter.
I think the Bayara model is absolutely hideous, but the kit looks solid. Keep him as a backline corner guard to deal with alll the threats that can now pop up right next to or in your DZ for free. So long as he doesn't get caught outside his happy range, he checks all those threats really well. Even Dukash and Duroc need to respect the Guard PARA CCW. Crane and Wu Ming updates are pretty lame, but the hacker Crane is still good and the Wu Ming get to stay cheap. Adil is an incredibly good profile, even if his kit isn't as focused as a lot of the more egregious 'bricks' in the game, it comes packed with lots of legitimately great utility that you will be able to make use of on a regular basis. I'd take a Garuda over the Jinyao, but the Jinyao itself looks fine. The mine and repeater versions can run some pretty nifty backline support, and are like a less degenerate, yet more reliable version of pitcher spam that other armies get. Feiquan is amazing. Sure, it's not a Go-Pod, but that is so obscenely broken that it actually needs to be removed from the game (how the hell did that thing make it past playtesting?). The Feiquan is cheap and can do some really trolly stuff with either of its kits. It's a hyper mobile EM HMG with a bargain-bin price tag, basically. I think the profile is boring and the aesthetic is uninspired, but the Longwang is a very strong trooper with any of its loadouts. Even if ISS doesn't end up on the absolutely batshit insane levels of power creep that the current top dogs of the game have, the update will probably leave them being at least okay. I don't like the aesthetic direction that ISS is moving towards at all, but them being weak is not a real concern.
I am not crazy about the looks on alot of the models. They are a side grade to me, so much so that I am 50/50 on getting the box, but I have loved ISS forever. This box set and rules make me just want to keep what I have and double down on WB and IA. How do you know the Koga is mim -3? I havent seen anything on him yet?
