You've clearly never played vs TAGs at 150pts. This is a large part why we stopped playing Recon at all seriously.
Serious question, since I have an idea of a 150/3 or 200/4 event, I assume you mean TAGs are OP in this format and banning them is a solution?
Even playing in my local store's escalation league way back in the day, Joan at 150 points was pretty nuts
I have faced a few times a TAG at 200, the game becomes a "if you have the tools to kill my tag, is your win, if not, is my win". There are TAGs that are a pain to take out, others are just oversized HI
In a 150/3 format on a 32" x 24" table, going first is extremely strong. TAGs are very skew at that format (but they're not the only thing that is), whereas at 300pts most factions can relatively trivially put in a defensive anti-TAG-rambo option it's far more likely that at 150pts this will constitute maybe a anemic Flashpulse ARO. Legitimately, at 150pts quite often it simply was your list or losing the Initiative roll. My point was more that we'd gotten to the point where you'd see T1 McMurder rampages, T1 Marut rampages or similar fairly regularly. It's not at all balanced, even with Recon's attempt to bring things in line. So it stopped being a reasonable as a 'hey this is a casual weeknight fun tournie', because we'd basically need to ban all the things we found 'fun'.* 200/4, assuming it's played on 48x48, is much more forgiving as you can always trade board presence to cost your opponent orders; that and the extra 50pts/1SWC allows you to properly flesh out a Combat Group with defensive options. (As Armihaul points out though, it's not without it's problem either though). I'd wait to do a 150/3 event until Code 1 is a thing. 200/4 as a 3 games in an afternoon format is something I've been wanting to try myself. Certain factions will struggle, but it's going to be less skew than 150pts, so you can probably make it work. * Which, incidentally, is basically what I'm hoping Code One does. Edit: basically, I want Code One to be balanced at 150pts. Which will probably need to make TAGs sub-optimal but playable in bigger Code One formats (useful as a stepping stone, but not really the optimal way to play the game). I also want to see Infinity stay balanced at 300pts; so TAGs should feel at home here. I want to be able to run a balanced tournie in 4hrs; I want Code One at 15pts to be designed with this in mind.
It was just so blurry I figured I'd wait to hope for a real official CB video before figuring it out. I also wonder if they'll replace the "Advance Pack" of 2-3 mini's with a Dire Foes release with the Operation. Seems a workable idea to me to make a dual-product for supporting the Operation while getting other folks to buy it.
There is also the fact that some units simply WON'T be available in CodeOne. TAGS seem pretty iconic (though not sure they're used that much), so they'd probably get a spot, but who knows? It's possible CodeOne won't have TAGS, Medics, Engineers, or any of the stuff they don't want to complicate things with. Or maybe TAG's just won't be able to eject their pilot or any number of things. But yes, I think it'll be nice that the Kaldstrom might come with the equivalent of 150 points for each army IN the box, along with a map that can be used for future CodeOne matchs, it'll be a great thing, IMO. Then later you can scale up to bigger games, while never losing the ability to play with what you bought.
The last two advance packs were both 3 model blisters, so a Dire Foes box fits in with the trend (even if we're swapping a S3/5 for an S2 HVT) Red Veil was also quickly followed by a Dire Foes that brought both sides to 200 points, so it's something they've experimented with before.
Certainly, but the advance packs were then split up and the figures sold separate, vs the Dire Foes which will always be a product. Before my day. :)
Is the code one rulebook going to be available when the new box releases? I have some long-dormant models and would like to give it a try.
Who knows if there will even be a printed rulebook for CodeOne, which is sort of disappointing since I like reading that way. Hopefully at least a pdf that is laid out right, rather than like some wiki or whatever.
I would imagine there will be some type of rules material in the code 1 box – it would be criminal to give potential players awesome minis and terrain and then points them to a hyperlink. I think they want to make this stuff as playable "out of the box" as possible.
There was a picture from CB of a Code One booklet on Facebook last week, presumably what's in the box, similar to the other Operation: Thingthing boxes.
