My local community ran our first two day tournament this weekend past and with an attendance of 26 players (including 6 interstaters) it was also our largest tournament to date. I’ve travelled interstate for tournaments myself but if you know anything about Australian geography you’ll understand why people coming over to Perth is a big deal. The event was 5 rounds, 300pts ITS with the Tactical Window Modifier. The missions were Countermeasures, Capture and Protect, Firefight, Safe Area and Unmasking. I broke them down into Capture and Protect with Firefight for one list and the other three for the other list, and stuck with those list pairings for the event. List One: Countermeasure, Safe Area and Unmasking Group 1: HaiDao MSV2 Sniper 3x Zhanshi FO Zhanshi Daoying Hacker Lt Ru Shi TR Bot Toolbox Bot WarCor Group 2: Tai Sheng Mk12 Zuyong Haris HaiDao KHD Mech Engineer w Helper Bot This list designed to provide a variety of threats that can move around as needed. In group 1 there is the HaiDao in the link, the ru shi, the TR bot and even the Toolbox bot. With supportware up on the last three they can really do a lot of damage if needed. In the second group in the haris which can be quite deceptive as they have access to 7 orders if needed, which makes them quite potent. List Two: Firefight and Capture HaiDao MSV2 Sniper Zhanshi Grenade Launcher 3x Zhanshi Daoying Hacker Lt Zencha SMG Hac Tao HMG Mowang Red Fury Lui Xing Boarding Shotgun This list is much more straight forward. An anchor of a fireteam that can cover the DZ while the other models move around and actually achieve the mission. I thoroughly dislike having to move a core fireteam so have strong solo pieces that can go toe to toe with most anything is a must. Game 1: Countermeasures vs Tohaa I came up against a local that is a bit of a beast with Tohaa for countermeasures. I was feeling relatively confident as Tohaa don’t have the greatest access to some of the specialists so the matching was favourable. We were on a table that could best be described as an abandoned country town. There were a few smaller buildings scattered around with lots of larger pieces of scatter like a truck and several cars. My opponent won the roll and gave me first turn, him choosing the side with three decent buildings to my one. I deployed with my haris to my left flank, my daoying Lt and sensor bot on the right flank with my core, TR bot and ru shi holding down the centre. He deployed a sukiel HMG triad on his right, a nikoul sapper sniper on the backline of the DZ, a gao rael sniper triad on the left, a third triad of two makauls and a sukiel K1 FO, with a smattering of solo pieces like chaksa, delegates and kauri in the backline. My First Turn: I quickly realised that I had a problem when I saw that my haris was locked down by both a sukiel HMG and the nikoul sniper at super long range, and Tai Sheng was my DT. There was a HVT right there to be HVT: Designated, I just couldn’t get to it. So I put supportware up on my Ru Shi and pushed into the midfield to take on a diplomatic delegate that was watching the midfield and promptly got crit with a flash pulse for my trouble. Since I couldn’t move the Haris just yet I decided it was the Core’s time to shine so the Hai Dao with diligent zhanshi in tow moved up, dropped the delegate, the gao rael sniper then peeked out to get HVT: Identity Check for my first point. Then my HaiDao got crit flash pulsed as well, which put a damper on the mood so spent the last few orders of group one to reposition. My haris then decided to take a chance and engage the Nikoul at super long range and hope for a crit, causing Tai Sheng to lose a wound to a viral sniper rifle, so I just burnt the last two orders for that group and decided against going into such a firefight with my DT. His First Turn: With my core link and Ru Shi both chilling out in the middle of the field, covered by a TR bot, my opponent decided to go for the flanks. The Sukiel HMG triad moved up in front of my warcor and I learned how annoying the new symbiomate rule is. He didn’t even bother wasting orders killing the warcor, he just let me impotently flash pulse the makauls that were trailing along for the ride. Getting up close he engaged the TR bot at a harsh angle but thankfully my bot won the day which caused him to have to pull back symbioarmour spent and a wound down, orders spent not doing much. A clipsos then appeared right next to my LT which I had fortunately put back in to camo, and tried to engage my fireteam from the flank which went my way and the clipsos was repelled but not killed by a lowly zhanshi. The kumotail bioengineer moved his helper chaska to revive the unconscious gao rael, but he didn’t have the orders to stand it back up again to engage my core. He then moved a few pieces around to try to stabilise for next turn and passed back to me. My Second Turn: The haris now had a target close enough to fight without also copping every single ARO under the sun so the Hai Dao KHD moved to the corner to get a nice clean shot on the hiding sukiel and managed to drop him with his boarding shotgun. The ru shi then moved up to try for a second fight against the Kaeltar and promptly got flashed pulsed again for his trouble. The core then had to finish the job, before moving up and dropping the two makauls that had been left in the breeze on my left flank and finally the nikoul sniper that was still pinning down my haris. This let Tai Sheng and co move up to secure both HVT: Espionage and HVT: Designation for a total of three classified and one with my DT for the extra point. My LT then moved round to pop the clipsos in the back with a surprise boarding shotgun but unfortunately I had miscalculated and didn’t have the orders to recamo. His Second Turn: Things were looking a bit grim but not unbeatable for my opponent. He moved a triad of two makauls and a sukiel K1 FO round to my right flank, losing the two makauls in the process to lots of link team fire, but the sukiel got through, synced the HVT I had hiding over there, and moved up to casevac the dead clipsos that was still there. Fortunately for me he moved the sukiel in front of my Lt to engage it so I managed to clip the template on the downed clipsos so even though I lose my Lt in the ensuing fight I denied him the chance for that classified. The sukiel then moved into my Ru Shi’s rear arc to drop it, my poor bot having accomplished absolutely nothing. He tried to get CasEvac on the down Kaeltar but didn’t have enough orders to pick it up AND get it out of his DZ so it was not to be. My Turn Three: With the start of turn three I was in Loss of Lt but looking at the three classifieds I actually had a decent chance of getting them all. Using his DT order Tai Sheng walked over to the downed Sukiel HMG and stepped on his neck for Extreme Prejudice, my toolbox bot used his order to come around the corner and take a shot at the K1 Sukiel still in my DZ and managed to only do one wound, which forced my TR bot to use it’s order to come round to try again and promptly got shot for it’s trouble. Taking a chance I converted an order to the toolbox bot who moved up next to my down Lt and luckily managed to drop the Sukiel. With my last command token I converted another order for the toolbox bot to pick up my LT and booked it out of the DZ for rescue. My Engineer spent her own order to try to revive the TR bot but the helper bot was half an inch out so I couldn’t get the sweep of all three classifieds in the final round. His Turn Three: I now had 5 classifieds to his two, and I knew that he couldn’t get two of the three so I was assured of victory at this point. He rushed a kauri at me to get me to drop it so he could get test run but I didn’t play along and that was game. 10-2 Victory to me Thoughts: Besides the Ru Shi that did sweet FA the list worked exactly as planned. Having my Haris locked down for so long wasn’t an ideal outcome but there really wasn’t anywhere else good to put them, and since I deployed first I had no way of knowing how hard he could pin them down anyway. In my practice games I tended to lose my Lt at some point in the game and this was no exception. I was very fortunate that the classifieds that I pulled final round I could do with those restrictions though so I really can’t complain. Game 2: Capture and Protect vs ISS Second round I was coming up against the glorious might of the Imperial Special Service lead by a great guy from Melbourne who I’ve had the pleasure to chat tactics with on a few occasions. I knew he liked to run unconventional lists and I wasn’t disappointed this time. He won the roll and chose to take first turn, so I picked the better side and let him deploy first. Since he had Sun Tze he held back two models for reserve and across from me was a core of a wu ming combi/e-mitter, wu ming GL/MR and a zhanying agent with ML, backed up by sun tze marksmanship, an EVO hacker, toolbox bot and Xi Zhuang with his madtraps. It was confusing to say the least. I put my core on a building the middle left with the HaiDao on overwatch duty with the zhanshi only covering shorter lanes of fire, the Mowang and hidden Hac Tao on the right flank, the DaoYing Lt and Zhencha both close to each other on top of the beacon. My opponent asked if they were within 8 of each other and I said they sure are and let him draw his own conclusions. For his two reserves he put down a Lu Duan and a Kanren KHD. His First Turn: I knew I was going to be surprised by his list and I sure was. First order was a coordinated order between Sun Tze and the core fireteam, breaking it in the process. All four peaked around to look at my HaiDao. Because I didn’t read his courtesy list properly I ARO’d against Sun Tze thinking that it would be the easiest Lt kill of all time and was very disappointed to learn that the marksman version ALSO has total immunity. I did one wound to Sun Tze and the ML turned my HaiDao to paste in return. The Kanren then moved up the now undefended left flank. My zencha dropped a mine in response which was triggered on a holoecho for no effect. A Garuda HMG dropped in to engage my now exposed Zencha, doing a wound in the process. The Zencha fell back into full cover and the Garuda moved up to engage the Mowang. It did a single wound on the Mowang but when the Hac Tao revealed he went down in a scrap of borrowed aleph metal. The Kanren then slunk around to fight the remains of the core, dropping a sniffer in the process then engaging the two zhanshi on the ground. One went down but the other was courageous and killed the Kanren. My First Turn: Looking across the board there was a tight clump of troops on his right flank so I figured I try to crack it with Mr Explodey Boi himself. My Lt revealed to put supportware up to make extra sure he landed. I declared drop, his EVO declared hack transport, I rolled a 12 to land, he crit…. (I was told later that if I hadn’t put supportware up I would have crit too and landed just fine). I scattered off the board so Mr Explodey Boi walked on looking a bit sheepish. I moved up that right flank to engage the MR Wu Ming. I needed two nineteens to win the fight but Explodey Boi was still a bit rattled and managed to roll a 2 and 3, which was promptly beaten by the Wu Mings 7. That’s fine, I’m ARM 6 in cover. Just needs 8s to survive the DA shot. Unfortunately, his armour was also damaged in the drop so he died an inglorious death. The Hac Tao and Mowang decided that if anything was going to get done it would have to be by them. The Hac Tao moved up and engaged the Imperial Agent at long range and finally dropped it, and then tried for a kill on the Wu Ming E/Mitter but failed to do the second wound so pulled back to be safe. The Mowang moved up behind to cover flanks, for my turn. His Second Turn: I then learned what the sniffer, EVO and toolbox bot were there to do. The two Zhanshi on top of the building were Sat Locked from across the board and bombed by the Wu Ming GL. They dodged valiantly and one (my DT thankfully) survived, but the other perished. The Wu Ming then moved up, dropped the remaining zhanshi on the ground and my zencha before taking cover himself. The Lu Duan then moved up to drop a HFT template on my Hac Tao, dying in the process to Mowang Fire, but did end of scorching the TO off my Hac Tao for the turn. My Second Turn: At this point I only had 4 models on the board so things weren’t looking great. His Wu Ming was poised to move up and take my box next turn and I didn’t have his yet either. I pumped some orders into the Hac Tao and Mowang to try to push up further towards the goal but their shooting was frustratingly unhelpful and I didn’t achieve anything except get that little bit closer. His Third Turn: First things first he moved his Wu Ming up to grab the box. My Lt was sitting there waiting and holding for deal life until the Wu Ming was close enough then unleashed with his boarding shotgun for one wound. My opponent had forgotten all about the fact that the Lt was a camo, BS12 boarding shotgun. The luck finished there though and my LT went down in the next order and my box was taken. On the other side of the board Xi Zhuang moved up and tried to drop a LFT on the Hac Tao and Mowang but the Hac Tao dodged away and the Mowang tanked the hit, although he didn’t end up dropping Xi Zhuang in the return fire so we all just stood there glaring at each other. Sun Tze then popped out as well to cover the box in anticipation for what was to come. My Turn Three: Same as last game I started turn 3 in loss of lieutenant and just like last game it turns out that was all I needed. The Hac Tao activated and put two shots into Sun Tze and Xi Zhuang, dropping the pesky celestial guard but didn’t dislodge Sun Tze. The Mowang shrugged and strode into the line of fire to pick up the box, copping a hit from the wu mings combi and Sun Tze’s sniper rifle unopposed. He tanked two of the three shots and stood there victoriously with box in hand with two heavy infantry staring straight back. At this point it was a 3/3 draw. But I still had one order left on the Zhanshi that had managed to dodge three spec fired grenades earlier in the game. She stood up and with righteous fury pumped three shots into the back of the Wu Ming that held the box and managing a crit to drop the carrier. 6-0 Victory to me Thoughts: “If you know yourself and your enemy you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”. I knew myself but had no idea what my opponents list was supposed to do, and I paid the price for it. If I had taken the shot against the ML in that first order I likely could have survived the one hit from Sun Tze’s sniper rifle, which would have significantly changed the first turn. From that point I felt like I was on the back foot and was punished for it. I had some poor luck with my drop trooper and it took far too many orders for a Hac Tao to drop the Imperial agent but realistically I feel that I got out played. It was sheer luck with that last turn, there were so many bits that could have gone the other way and I’m well aware of it. My opponent was an absolute gentleman and it was a fantastic game come dice down. Its certainly made me think about some of the tools I may want to use in vanilla and ISS for sure. Game 3: Firefight vs NCA This round I came up against a local player that has clearly been putting in reps since we last played. He won the roll and chose to take first because it’s a thing in my local meta that you never let me go first in any mission. The board was a pretty standard industrial buildings table so I chose the best side I could and hoped for the best. He deployed a fusilier core link on his right flank with two missile launchers standing while a paramedic fusi covered them, with a csu and normal fusi a bit lower on top of the building. There were two fugazi covering the back edge of the board, a few axuila, two peacemakers with shotguns and another paramedic fusi waiting in the wings. Clearly not enough for a 300pt list and with no hacker on the board I assumed there was a hexa KHD somewhere to back up the inevitable swiss HMG. I deployed with my core link opposing his to get to max range for the MLs, then put my daoying and zencha up on top of buildings in the midfield where they could easily access the panoplies. The mowing went on the opposing flank to the core link, with the hac tao hidden deployed next to it for security. His First Turn: His first few orders were moving up both (BOTH!) swiss guard into the midfield to try to contend with my core link to no real effect. HaiDao MSV2 in a core vs Swiss HMG ended with a lot of bullets pinging off heavy armour. The Hacker Swiss then revealed to scan my HVT, then he recamod them both for safety. He then moved up one of the peacemakers to fight the mowang. I held the Hac Tao in hidden right up until the last order, the Mowang doing a merry dodging dance to avoid all the shotgun pellets and heavy flamethrowers. With his last order he moved the auxbot right up to the Mowang such that it could no longer clip the Hac Tao so I revealed and shot the peacemaker dead, while the Mowang continued it’s merry dance. My First Turn: Having gotten through the first turn unscathed I was feeling pretty good. I used my LT order to turn on assisted drop, picked up +3 ARM from the panoply, HVT Esponiaged his nearby HVT for a successful LT run. The Lui Xing then dropped right into both MLs and the paramedic. I was expecting at least one of them to die but two dodged successfully and the other tanked the armour save. I moved such that I could catch two in the boarding shotgun template and fired, dropping the paramedic but both fusilier MLs won their face to faces and I lost a wound. Moving again I managed to drop both templates on the two MLs but even needing 19s to hit I lost the FtF and my poor Lui Xing died. With the link down to 4 members I figured that the HaiDao had a good chance one v one fighting the ML. It was not a good chance and my poor HaiDao was turned to paste (again). Not to be deterred my Hac Tao moved up and dropped one of the MLs, then cut a wide lateral shot across the board to drop the other peacemaker, an auxila and the spare fusilier paramedic. My Mowang then moved up to support the Hac Tao, curb stomping the dead peacemaker on the way through for my second classified. His Second Turn: I had killed a lot of models but he still had 9 orders and two swiss guard left. Deciding not to use them though he sent his remaining auxila to fight my hac tao, who once again did a merry dodging dance (although he did lose a wound in the process) until the supporting Mowang could finally put a wound on the auxila himself, losing a wound to the HFT to land the shot. That took up most of his orders, so he repositioned both swiss to be better defended and passed it there. My Second Turn: At this point I had more classifieds, more specialists and felt relatively okay with army points as well. I just needed LTs and the only option was the plain fusilier high up on the tower still held by the missile launcher. My Hac Tao was down a wound and lost his TO so didn’t want to risk him just yet, the Mowang with his huge base couldn’t fit up the stairs to the building, so that just left the Zencha to do work. Pulling away from the left flank (and the two very alive swiss still there) he left a trail of mines to deter any swiss followers. I repositioned my Hac Tao and Mowang to cover that flank, then set myself up for the final turn. His Third Turn: His Swiss Guard HMG moved up to pursue my zencha straight into the path of two mines. He failed the dodge, then somehow failed both ARM saves and killed himself in his own turn! The Hacker Swiss then gave chase, dropping a wound from the zencha, but by then he had no orders left and passed back to me. My Third Turn: In my foolishness I had dodged my zencha right into LoF of the ML fusilier and now couldn’t recamo for shenanigans, so I had to rely on the Hac Tao. Pulling all the way around the building to access the stairs the Hac Tao came up to get a bead on the Lt, which also gave the ML a shot. The ML fired with a pistol and hit, with the Hac Tao rolling a 1 for ARM, but thankfully the 3 shots into the backside of the Lt Fusilier dropped him to seal the game for me. 10-1 win to me Thoughts: Once again the Hac Tao backing up the Mowang paid dividends. As strong as the Mowang is a dedicated assault will deal damage to it, so the surprise backup helps immensely. Invincible Army tends to lack board presence so this really helps. I also had a lot of trouble on this table manoeuvring the Mowang due to his girthy base so its certainly something to remember. Once again the HaiDao didn’t do a whole heap which lends credence to my thoughts that the threat is far worse than the actual effect these MSV2 sniper are having on the table. Game 4: Safe Area vs Shasvasti This round was against another of our interstate visitors of Loss of Lieutenant fame. He was running Shas and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I managed to get the Lt roll and chose to take first because I didn’t want to let an unknown get an alpha strike against me, especially since I knew he had a list with a sphinx in it. We were playing on a table made of the new Wildfire Terrain which was nice. I deployed the haris on the left flank, with the core link on a building that half straddled the DZ line on the right. My Lt used his FD1 to get on top of building in a zone where he wouldn’t have to move for the rest of the game. The TR bot went in the middle to cover both sides and the other models were scattered around. He then deployed with a relatively refused flank. Most of his army with on his right to oppose my haris, with a few ikadrons, three camo markers and a taigha on the left. The core link was a ML bot, three nox and sheskin, with Victor Messor as backup. I then deployed my Ru Shi in front of my haris for a one two punch alpha strike on his link, which was foiled when the minelayer speculo went down right next to my Lt, with the mine covering the Ru Shi, the whole haris and the mech engineer nearby. My First Turn: Thankfully I had a plan. My warcor, the ever dependable warcor, strode in front of the mine, discovered the first layer of the speculos impersonator and then died in a hail fire of missile fire and a mine detonating in his face. I then took a risky move by having my Lt declare discover shoot against the speculo. Discovering on 17s and shooting on 18s was good odds, so my opponent dropped smoke which got off, which didn’t overly bother me as it meant my Lt could just walk away and touch the console for that zone entirely within the smoke without fear. I then used the haris to climb up and leave some nice AROs for the speculo if it ever chose to activate once the smoke cleared. That threat dealt with I put up supportware on the Ru Shi and went to work. It moved up to engage the T-Drone and won the fight which opened up a lot of space for manoeuvring. It then cut across the board to drop one taigha, but then strayed too close to another and died to the template. It was especially hard to manoeuvre as I was having to dodge all the repeaters that were on the board lest Victor Messer went to town. I realised later that I could have moved within 8” of Messer, gotten immobilised, which would have let my KHD redrum him at -12 but I didn’t think of that at the time. His First Turn: One of the Taighas ran forward but stayed away from LoS. Then he moved an Ikadron up the field to plonk down white noise in front of the link to protect it against the Hai Dao. Messer then joined the link and moved up. Sheskin dropped my TR bot handily and did some shenanigans with a nox to provoke an ARO through the white noise, which let sheskin shoot my HaiDao unopposed, which dropped her dead (a theme if you’re noticing). The Speculo then activated to try to fight its way clear, dropping my mech engineer in the process, but it went down to the haris. Sheskin then moved up to fight the haris herself but the HaiDao KHD dodged its way to safety. Sheskin then moved up into a commanding position and went into suppressive fire. My Second Turn: With three empty slots in group 1 the whole haris jumped across to have full orders and moved up to do work. It took 7 orders of shooting but the Haris finally dropped Sheskin and moved up into the far zone. The HaiDao KHD redrummed messer to death, and Tai Sheng moved up to the corpse of Sheskin to forward observe for my classified. In hindsight this was a terrible move for a single OP, as it left all of the haris in range of two nox with zappers, and a camo marker that eventually became a Caliban. His Second Turn: Unsurprisingly a Caliban Lt appeared and immediately ate Tai Sheng which pumped it up to 3 wounds. I tried to nanopulse it on the way in to clip sheskins corpse as well but it wasn’t to be, as both models managed to save. Eating Tai Sheng took too many orders though, and my Zuyong haris was left unscathed, although the HaiDao KHD was zapped into isolated immobility. It was a brutal turn around. My Third Turn: From across the board my toolbox bot with marksmanship from the Lt dropped the nox that was pinning down the zuyong. Seizing the moment the zuyong managed to drop a wound off the Caliban but it wasn’t to be as it managed a dodge engage. Stuck there I moved the toolbox bot up and tried to triangulated fire into the combat but only managed a single hit which was saved. I then activated the core that hadn’t moved all game and pushed them all into a zone, which included my Liason. At this point I technically had three zones, but I needed the zuyong that was locked in combat to survive, as well as the toolbox bot. His Third Turn: The Caliban then proceeded to murder the zuyong and the toolbox bot without any trouble at all. He didn’t have enough orders to do much more than that though, and moved the sole camo marker on the other side of the board to secure my HVT to round out the game. 6-3 win to me Thoughts: Invincible Army does not like close range. There are all of 3 templates in the entire faction and only one model that is in any way halfway good at close combat. I really felt the pain going up against that Caliban and there really wasn’t much that I could have done to stop it. I was probably a bit too aggressive with the Ru Shi but I was really trying to thin the order pool for the inevitable Sheskin rampage. Overall the army played well though, and I shouldn’t complain since I still managed to steal a win in the end. Game 5: Unmasking vs Varuna The final round and top table. I’ve played my opponent a few times before and he plays a mean Varuna game with lots of Zulu Cobras which are always fun to come up against. I won the Lt roll and chose to go first (obviously) and he gave me what in hindsight was the better side. There were a few tall building closer to his side, but I had measured it up and none were actually in the DZ so there wasn’t a single good spot for the inevitable Kamau sniper. The other side wasn’t too much better but it certainly helped not having to deal with the kamau straight away. I deployed my link on top of the one sniper point, my haris to the left flank, with the TR bot, Lt and Ru Shi on the right flank. On his side the Kamau took position on a crate that covered the middle console, three camo markers went across the 16” line in front of each of the consoles and his left flank was covered by two fugazi. Patsy eventually went down in the middle of the board. I declared Tai Sheng as my DT and he declared Pasty as his. My First Turn: With the huge buildings in the way I could rush his left flank without too much worry. I put supportware up on my Ru Shi and charged forward. I kept rushing in front of the camo marker that was there at the same time as the fugazi to prompt a double ARO but he didn’t take the bait. I dropped the first fugazi but the second managed a crit on my Ru Shi (again!). The TR bot rushed up to continue the offensive which prompted the camo marker to reveal but the TR both managed to drop the zulu, although it copped a flash pulse for its trouble and was blinded. Both bots blinded now I pulled them back to relative safety and left them there. The Haris then activated to move up to start pressing buttons but I realised that I could actually see Patsy out of cover from where they had deployed. 5 orders later and all I had done was a single wound to her but I was set up for later turns so didn’t mind too much. His First Turn: His link activated and began to rain down speculative fire upon Tai Sheng and his Haris. Six orders in and they had deftly dodged or saved the ARM from every grenade so my opponent gave that strategy up. One of the Zulus then moved up to fight my Ru Shi and managed to drop it, before camping atop the centre console. A trauma doc peeked around a corner to see my TR bot and managed to drop it as well, giving my attack bots an inglorious end. My Second Turn: Taking advantage of Pasty still standing there I activated my haris and finally dropped her. Moving up I managed to catch the advanced Zulu in the open and dropped it as well. My HaiDao KHD activated a console to reveal a decoy which was promptly blown away. My core then did that annoying thing where it has to advance up. The HaiDao sniper took on it’s PanO contemporary and the dice gods favoured the might of the State Empire. Pulling up even closer the HaiDao dropped the other kamau in the link and positioned itself as best it could in the awkward midfield. His Second Turn: The trauma doc that had downed a TR bot advanced up with a combination of cautious and prone movements to get into B2B with the right hand console, activated it to discover one of my decoys, then blew it away. Hugging cover she did a wound to my toolbox bot and then moved up to try engage the HaiDao sniper out of cover but fortune didn’t favour her that time and she was destroyed for her trouble. My Third Turn: My mech engineer repaired the toolbox bot which then moved up to activate the same console as the trauma doc, but as I moved up a crocman appeared and took a shot. The console was turned on but the toolbox bot died. The HaiDao then moved up and using it’s pistol dropped the crocman, taking a wound in the process. With only one HVT remaining the haris activated, turned on the final console, and blew away both remaining HVTs for the win. His Third Turn: In retreat there wasn’t much he could do to claw any points. 10-0 win to me. Thoughts: I was super worried about the zulu cobra hackers for this mission and spent a fair amount of brain power trying to work out how best to avoid them. Afterwards I did the mental math though and realised that even at max forward deployment at 16” it’s impossible for the zulu to jam you as long as you stay on your side of the board while activating consoles. So much worry for naught! The Ru Shi again didn’t do a whole heap but otherwise the list was working as planned. Overall Thoughts: With four majors and one minor I finished on top of the listings for the tournament, as well as being the only undefeated for the weekend. I was obviously really happy with this result, but mainly because I had done it with Invincible Army. There’s been a lot of talk about how viable they are as a competitive sectorial/army and I would like to think that this result proves that they are definitely a strong contender, if perhaps not one of the power house factions. There are certainly things that they are lacking, smoke and good CC being the primary two, but the same could be said for most PanO and Onyx Contact Force lists. Of my two lists I definitely felt that list one was the stronger of the two, with greater flexibility and board control, but list two certainly performed when needed. Coming from 17/18 model vanilla Yu Jing lists you certainly feel that lack of bodies. Looking at Invincible Army as a whole I feel they have a particular style of play that I’m not sure everyone is taking full advantage of. When the majority of your army is BS13 you can do amazing work with even a combi rifle, and you still have those great Yu Jing tools like the Ru Shi or Lu Duan. As said, I’m really happy with the result and I’m looking forward to trying some new things in the coming months, mainly the zuyong pain train and our new rollarskating shoop da woop lazer man. It’s exciting time for Yu Jing ahead.
Excellent job! And thanks for sharing your feedback and results. From you point of view what would you say IAs playstyle is? My next two games are up against Hassasins. Those Impersonators are a problem. Im pretty sure my opponent will put them next to my linked Haido if he can. He figured that out after our last game. For me a link Hiado has been an absolute monster. He is big and scary so the threat is great. He has also killed well over his points in many games.
I tend to think that Invincible's want to dominate the midfield and mid range firefights. As mentioned in the report above they have a truly terrible short range game with minimal CC or templates, but when basically every model in your army has a BS13 and a combi rifle even the filler troops can do good work. The usual counters to a dominated midfield like lots of mines can be negated by the high armour, high Phys and 2Ws on everything as well. The main concern is hackers, but I found that the threat of my haris'd HaiDao KHD was enough to make my opponents want to keep their repeaters well away from me. In fact my opponents docked orders from group 2 every time I went first in fear of that haris. I think this kind of play was exemplified by my Hac Tao and Mowang who buddyed up in both games and covered each others back, making my opponents waste far more orders than what they gained from it. Thinking of impersonators in general I don't think they should be too much of a problem for you. They really benefit from getting one hit kills off and again, your 2W and high ARM/BTS should be able to blunt a lot of that threat. Indeed I have. I've been on 3 times; Episodes 16, 52 and 87. I've also had three narrative stories, the very first story about the post-human fighting the combined (which was taken from one of my other tournament recaps), "Hollow" and "All of Them", which I was fortunate enough to win that quarters contest with. I've also been mentioned many a time by Ben and Marty during their tourament recaps.
Well played, and thanks for the report, that was an interesting read! I'm not really fond of your lists, as I'm less and less enthusiast about the zhanshi + haidao sniper team, but hey if they work for you who am I to criticize
I totally dislike your lists, as they are not in my play style, but I am very pleased that you managed to do so well and perhaps I should reconsider a few things myself the next time I build a list for IA. :)
Putting aside the usual arguments about the Liu Xing's overly expensive explode package being a hot mess the odds on what you were expecting to happen is actually alot worse than you're probably aware. The Liu Xing has almost a 2/5 chance to shit the bed trying to goomba stomp 3 linked fusiliers at 38.1% to fail to inflict a wound on his entry attempt. This isn't factoring in the PH test for needing to land and whether or not that's a F2F roll change the odds but it's very hard to math that out so we'll assume you pass/win the roll on that. Congratulations on your win but this was a small scale event with a low skill depth that used a game changing non standard extra rule with tactical window. It's just a local event, I hosted one on Sunday and the IA player who entered came dead last but I'm not pointing at that as any proof of anything. Take them to Cancon or Novacore (or bare minimum a tournament that uses the normal rules and doesn't invalidate a bunch of armies/lists) and report back from that.
Just thought I'd point out that with this post, you've come across as a total arsehole. You don't know anything about the event that was run, nor the players that were in it. I'd never think it okay to shit all over an entire event just to maintain my own sense of ego, and it's really disappointing to see someone else do it. By suggesting that the event was a "low skill depth" event, you've just personally denigrated every single player at that tournament, which is a total dog act. Way to go building our community up and support each other. Champion effort.
I'm simply being realistic. A low player count local event isn't going to be filled with a large number of high caliber players and trying to use it as a basis of an argument to judge game balance either way is a foolish endeavor. @Zewrath's write up from a satellite event at the German Masters is a useful thing to bring to the table to discuss game balance. A local event that's running rules that invalidate a bunch of armies and lists? Not a good thing to try to use to discuss how good an army is.
Oh, I must have somehow missed you there. Not sure how I did that, I would have thought someone of your stature assessing the skill level of all of the players would have been fairly noticeable.
As I said, you don't know anything about the event, and it's showing. There were several high caliber players at the event, some of whom traveled about 3500km to attend. You're not being realistic, either, you're being an arsehole. You could have said something like "That's interesting; it'd be good to see your success replicated in a larger tournament". Instead, you chose to put down every single player and the event itself, which was far more than just "a local event". If you think that's just being realistic, you need to learn some basic human empathy and try again.
Except... well they weren't. I'm not being mean I'm just being honest. Here's a slice from CanCon this year with 2nd place from the OP's event Omnishambles: I mentioned I ran a fun local event this past weekend. Well you'll see two names pop up again. I know Toad and Lona personally, coincidentally Toad is the IA player I mentioned earlier. They great guys, but they're middle of the pack, casual players, who are very busy IRL and don't get to play nearly as much as they'd like. They're not what I would classify as hardcore high caliber players, and that's perfectly ok. There's a reason I don't consider local events like yours or mine to be good indicators either positive or negative about how good anything in this game is. They're simply just not competitive enough events to be a good judge of it due to player spread, even more so when you add modifiers like Tactical Window onto the event which totally throw the standard game balance out the window. It's great that you all enjoyed your event I'm happy for you but unfortunately quotes such as the following aren't a good thing to bring to the table from it Good or bad, it proves nothing. It's not good data. It's inherently flawed. For future reference, a statement was made in the original post. I came in here and said I disagreed with it and explained why. It's not personal, but if you want to get upset by the fact that I don't agree that your event was as competitive as you happen to think it was then that's your prerogative. I don't really care where you fall on that either way.
Thanks for sharing mate and good write up! Having tried myself after a 5 game event it's no small task. Hopefully I'll see you at cancon!
Triumph - Our community typically hits 16-20 players for events. We had massive prize support, our first two day event and a bunch of people flying across Australia to play with us. For us, 27 players is massive. You've come across as dismissive of this, belittled a skilled player's win and frankly, you've insulted us all.
Congrats to your wins and good fights with IA - I´m glad to see, how the IA makes a stand against other armys - to of the momentan "top tier" armys (shas and varuna). Your lists are very different from what I expect or field. I miss the core pain train. But they are definetly interesting and I may try out this kind of lists after I finised my Tai and my Mowang. My last and small turnaments with IA went from good (3 of 12) to very bad (8 of 8) so far. A few thoughts to your thoughts: I second that. I had some good success moving and mowing down with my core HMG and later let the combis do the work, when the HMG missed its good range bands. That just blunt force, but it worked. One of the diffecult parts is, when to pull back to not get overrun by warbands etc. In CQB IA has to relay on the BSG. Right. But for HI the armour is not so high and the PH is usualy low compared to "better" standard HIs. Still it worked. I walked with my troops through mines and managed to tank or dodge the most of them. With Tinbot and KHD we are very good against hacking. But you have to make sure not to work in a hacking area unopposed. Against mono ccw this is of no help ... :-/
Congratulations, you know some good players? Speaking of NovaCore and CanCon, our local meta has last years CanCon champ in it and I went undefeated at NovaCore so have we earned enough e-peen points to be worthy of you? I get what you are trying to say but the way you said it comes across as unnecessarily snide and arrogant. You are trying to shut down discussion instead of started a dialogue because you have the firm belief that only your opinion matters. It doesn't. I was replying to the comment about Bahram. Against Speculos the game is alot harder I'll certainly agree. Barring those weird factions that get and take BMVs I think you just have to do the best you can against Speculos. Within my list choices I would try to hem the speculo in if possible. If I'm going first I'd do as I did as in Round 4, discover it and pin it down as quickly as possible to negate its opportunities to get into CC. Going second, and assuming no stratrgos, I would try to lock it in place with another model. This could be the helper bot, the Zhencha in camo state or even the Daoying LT in camo state. Basically you just have to force it to reveal before it can get into range of your actual pieces. Once it's revealed its easy pickings.
Strongly disagree with this. Couple reasons why. Firstly, you're characterising the Western Australia community and the people who traveled to this event unfairly. They've got a solid community of players with good heads on their shoulders. In particular, having had the opportunity to watch Proletarian play and interview him about how he went at a much larger event, I trust his assessment of the event, his lists, and competitive chops generally. And I trust the WA community to properly challenge those chops. Secondly, there's no good reason to down-select your available data set on the game to exclude anything but very large events. Any information is useful, and in a game with an iteration cycle as slow as infinity, five games of any sort is a useful data set. Not to mention, it'd be incorrect to assume that 100-person major events are indicative of the way the game is most commonly played, or in some way represent essential peak performance. They're just another event type, and most of them don't run any more rounds than the Perth event reported on in this thread did. (Also, speaking from personal experience, it takes a lot of a number of contributing factors to win a hundred-person event, including luck. You're just pointlessly limiting your perspective if you down-select to lists and players at that level.)
