I think it's a needed fix... Not that I'm an expert... But I have been lurking for years and listened to every single podcast ever made for infinity... I'm not kidding I binge on maycast when that was over I tackled the rest... That being Said Symbiomates seem to be the #1 gripe... Not Tohaa... Not Tohaa unit-X with mates... Just Symbiomates in General... If this fixed it... And makes things "right" or "balanced" then good. Obviously Corvus can see the imbalance and is trying to make strides to fix it. I don't like vanilla Tohaa from an esthetic point... The old models are (just my opinion don't freak) not up to the CB standard and never really were... That being said I'd run Spiral Corps. Because they are Really Dope... Someone ran Tohaa for the first time and won maybe the Rumble or LV open... Not sure but if you can grab them run them for the first time and win a major tourney that says a lot about balance... That just my 2 cents no need for a War...
Thank you guys for taking this and making a very interesting discussion out of it. While our understanding of the rules may change in just a few days with the full rules drop, reading your thoughts and speculations is tiding me over for what will definitely be a monumentous (and fun) list of tactical changes and challenges for us all.
@RobertShepherd vis a vis counter-play: I appreciate what you’re trying to get at, but all lists have the tools I mentioned for dealing with the Old Style Mates. This wasn’t/isn’t just a list-building question. People had the tools, they just didn’t feel effective enough. vis a vis risk assessment: I’m not opposed to examples, per se, I just think it’s endless. We can each anecdote from now until N4 with different ways that would show one advantage or another. So, again, I argue the general case. I think it’s clear that Old Style Mates were best (in terms of wounds saved) defending your units in ARO. I took this into account when assigning them. If I was running four mates (like a monster), then I would put one on a Rasail or Gao-Rael Spitfire to run downfield (because that piece is going to get shot at a lot in Active), the other three were on things like Gao-Rael Snipers or Sukeul MLs set up to shoot back in ARO. We’ll deal with the reactive turn units first. We need to assume your opponent is playing smart and they know Symbiomates are nasty. So if they want to crack a Sukeul ML or a Gao-Rael Sniper with gunfire, they’re shooting it with a linked HMG or something else high burst if they have it. Even one hit from that HMG and it is probably correct to spend the Mate, but usually the Mate is saving more than one hit’s worth because of that burst in ARO. As for active turn, I’d say the choice to use it or not is more relevant precisely because if you can park that Gao-Rael in their backfield with a Mate and get it into their turn to ARO it’s going to soak a lot more than that rifle shot. The _best_ active turn uses are those crazy clear-a-mine-and-eat-two-templates-while-shooting that everyone dreams of (again, a lot better than using it to soak a rifle shot), but that rarely happens. As for the mental load, sure, we make bad decisions sometimes. But if I’m trying to improve my play, I’m going to want to look at the actual math to help with that. Saying that it’s hard to do well doesn’t make it wrong, it just means I should practice to get better at estimating the right decision (thanks again to the Infinity Dice Calculator, which is for precisely this purpose). That math just changed, which is what got me started in this thread (even though I spend a lot of time talking about The Way Things Used To Be). @Hecaton It’s really hard to figure out what’s too powerful and why. So many confounds in data like those. Things like: 1. Tohaa players are rare, therefore people play against the army less. 2. Tohaa players tend to be vets. It’s not a common first army, where the widely played armies have lots of newbies. 3. Tohaa lists are just inherently flexible to deal with table problems. 4. Tohaa largely avoid things that they are weak at, like hacking. 5. Tohaa has insane order efficiency. 6. Tohaa units usually roll an extra die in gunfights. And so on and so forth. Do Mates matter? Of course! They were (and remain) a powerful tool. But I have no idea if we should draw the conclusion you and others do that Tohaa wins because of Mates. Will Tohaa win less with the nerfed Mates? Perhaps, but how would we tell? Now they’ll have a whole host of new bits and bobs, and new players playing, and some old players (like me) shifting over to Spiral, and… yeah, we will have no clue. What I feel very sure about (and we have examples of it throughout this and other similar threads discussing Mates) is that our community's ability to assess the power of Mates is negatively impacted by the fact that it _feels_ terrible to lose an order to one. They seem like they do more than they do, on average (I’ve gone through the numbers a bit already, so I’ll refrain doing it again). So, a powerful tool, sure, but I don’t think it was the only or even the majority driver of the data you cite. The new Mates won’t have that problem. They’ll soak a number of wounds (about half as many as they used to), and they’ll feel more fair because there are more ways to deal with them. But the key is that they won’t make your opponent feel terrible, which is a great thing for the game. @DustGod Welcome to the boards - you'll find we complain about lots of things. Especially that which is powerful. Ariadna camo spam. Order spam. Jammers. NBW. X-visor spec grenades. Sensor SML. Achilles. Exile. Kamau Sniper has been popular to complain about lately, for whatever reason. I don't think we should conclude that complaints are equivalent to impact. No wars around here as far as I can tell, we're a pretty reasonable group.
Mates were by far the strongest Tohaa thing, because they were by far the strongest thing in the game. Now they're merely pretty awesome and arguably maybe one of the strongest things in the game, so that's a big change. The real reason why Tohaa probably did amazingly is a combination of Sukael and Gao-Rael with mates linking with Makauls and with 25pt Clipsos FOs. All of which are incredible, and now slightly less so, but with other awesome options.
Quick note, I don't believe symbiomates can be used to cancel mines. They can only cancel attacks, and although a mine is a template weapon (and so can be dodged), it never declares or counts as an attack, so the symbiomate doesn't interact with it. In fact, if symbiomates can be used to protect against mines post-Daedelus that'll be a pretty nifty upgrade. ಠ_ಠ
Having been mulling over it for the last couple days, I reckon given what we know now, Tohaa has a good chance of coming out of Daedelus stronger than we went into it, symbiomate change or not.
Anecdotal evidence incoming: Ran a narrative event yesterday, testing out the new symbiomate rules. The Tohaa player, after 3 games, was okay with the change. He came in the middle of the pack for standings. His opponents on the other hand said this is the first time they have played against Tohaa and not had a negative play experience.
I still think people complaining because they could. "You didnt beat me, the mates did, its definatly not you are a better player, its that one thing that saved you for one round of shooting". Meanwhile there are mutts and kung shi, and like at least one OP unit in every other army. At least now our opponent can stop being piss poor sportsmen and acknowledge that we out played them and not use the mate cop out.
Do you know the joke? New Aleph player wrote into the forum. "Most of the units aren't as good as Achilles or Posthumans. Doing I something wrong or is there an error?" Don't thing it's so easy to say cause atm you can see only the percentage of each unit, but I try to figure out the values of each profile. Edit: ITS10: 85% MK2 and MK5, 70% MK1
Only two little annotations Most of them don't want to learn how to win against them and therefore don't play against them. If there usual playstyle doesn't work, it's called overpowered (see Muttawi'ah). It was my first real army, but I started collecting Nomads first but hadn't played them.
No, there was *no* counterplay to Mates. There's no strategy. And the fact that Tohaa were top of the ITS charts is pretty strong evidence that it's not a matter of learning to play against them - they're just more powerful. They're the kings of noninteractivity - multiple-wound models that can't be hacked, eclipse smoke, symbiomates, and phero-ware. It's no wonder they're strong; interaction means that the opponent has a chance to do something. I've also met players who can play Tohaa but can't play other factions - without the crutch of symbiomates they don't quite know how to play the game. @Ben Kenobi My point is that Posthumans are more faction-defining than Achilles is.
My point is what is more annoying? In a Nomad list you have in 66% Zeros. But they don't define Nomads. And they are not annoying.
@DustGod tohaa was my first army, and i only managed to win 1 game out of dozens played. I don't think ITS stats show a higher ratio of tournament win compared to the proportion of tohaa players.
Yep. I mentioned this in the thread devoted to them, but Draal especially have some serious synergy with other vanilla tohaa profiles, both offensively and defensively*. I've had three games with them already (two in vanilla and one in a cobbled-together attempt at a spiral corps list using the limited amount of info we have and no special fireteams or hypothetical wildcards) and they were deeply impressive all three times. The 'every tohaa list might have counter-intel' is also a significant benefit, which you can take advantage of without necessarily even altering your lists. And we haven't even seen Greif** Operators or Chaksa Longarms yet, or really put Kiuutans through their paces much yet. *assuming CB didn't forget to mention that Stratuscloud is reflective on like three separate occasions. **possibly (but probably not) 'Grief'.
