Fusilier fireteams are fine in Varuna, it's the Kamau MSR in a Fusilier team that's the problem. If it were just a Fusilier fireteam I'd just blast them off the table.
The additional 4 orders introduce huge liabilities for the strength of the piece that the Yan Huo doesn't have. The fireteam can easily be targeted on its weaker links by impersonators, drop troops, and spec fire, and introduces huge issues with mobility. You end up in a bit of a dilemma -- deploying more spread out is the way to mitigate those weaknesses, but also traps your KoJ in a single position. And let's not kid ourselves, it's not usable in the active. Otherwise Tanko fireteams would be viable. And take it from someone who spent a long time trying to figure out when active turn missiles were viable, the answer is "basically never". You don't get performance for free. At risk of sounding too sarcastic, you've discovered the tradeoff between vanilla and sectorials. It's definitely the Kamau that was the mistake. Fusilier cores existed in NCA for forever, and even reworked Acon got the Bagh Mari + Regular core. BS13 and MSV2 while removing the visor tax from the non-SWC weapon Kamau was the mistake. As I explained above, it also has a huge footprint on the table and 4 units that have ARM1 and minimal defensive abilities. This hypothetical profile would be great if you weren't able to remove the deadliest of its abilities by killing ARM1 fusiliers armed with weapons that don't shoot well over 16 inches.
Q: When are active MLs viable? A: Vs targets that aren't shooting back. Carbonite, EM, Stun, Adhesive, Coordination, -12ing-your-target all allow you to set up that situation (or a close approximation). That's rare, but absolutely not "basically never". I've done it, or variations of it vs appropriately heavy opponents I wouldn't be able to touch otherwise on several occasions. With the changes to Crits likely resulting in an increased usage of TAGs coupled with a decrease in the effectiveness of HMGs as anti-armour weapons I effect it to become one of my go to tactics.
Luck is there. I've seen really good players loose against a newbie because that dude got 7 crits on its first reactive turn. That dude has managed to get top on several tournaments while knowing not much about rules or strategy of the game, just because he has a "flower in the ass" ("flor en el culo", an spanish expression for extremely lucky people), managing to do from 6 to 10 crits per game against the alpha strikers, most of them in aro, while getting none against him. I am one of the other side people, I am one of those that get crited on aro, while my "crits" are on "arm rolls", or against cheerleaders in my active turn. In a interplanetario years ago, I got my intruders crited back on aro, trough smoke-combo in each game, in its first or second order (so no overexpending on him). Las game I told my rival: "first order, your aro? doesn't matter, you will crit him, so you can choose shot back", and he crited. Be it at 1s, 2s or 3s, it happened in each game. That year (the last year I used an intruder), the only times one of my intruders survived my first turn were because I placed 2 of them for doing the same task, or because I didn't use them in that turn (And died next), because the first one I used died every time I spent an order on him and the enemy had chances to shot back. Of couse, I got games where luck was on my favour (last european, a HM survived a speculo killer more than 6 times in a really crazy an fun game), but luck is not only getting more or less crits (what is a crit for a trooper, would not be for another), but also when to get that number: is not the same getting a crit when you are a B4-BS14 when shotting an B1 BS10 arm0 dude, than when you are the B1 BS10 arm0 dude getting the crit in aro. in the end, all rolls have the same chance, to get a given number, and we all have seen good players placed in bad possitions of a tournament because they got a "bad day". Good players know how to minimice luck effects, but that doesn't mean it didn't exists, just that luck, while important, is not the only factor (neither the most important factor)
Luck is also a reason why smoke is so effective. Denying the enemy the chance to FtF-roll takes the chance of a crit out of the picture. Ecplise grenades are even better.
This would imply ... If I have a 54% chance to wound a Marut and a 38% chance to take it of the board (because it already got one wound from a mine) I should skip the shootout because there was a 23% chance to get a wound in return? If yes, then I ... would almost never shot at anything. If playing a board Control Mission, this would make it very hard to win. And just to give some missing Information: No. Unfortunately not many dice. Unfortunately it happens when I have my active turn and the opponent is only AROing. But, that's the game. I know that theoretically it evens out over many games. That's just not my felt impression. That's why for me it often feels like a pure coin flip.
But that's no solution against MSV-2-Troopers or if shooting at link Teams (or both). And with Eclipse I can't shoot myself. And some missions call for shooting.
imho it's more a question of taking the 30% chance of success with no way to terribly fail instead of the 70% chance to succeed while letting 20% of fumble if the opponent crit. With the N3 crit mechanism and the F2F roll system I see most of the "action orders" (orders spent doing something else than positionning) as any action requiring a roll in Blood Bowl: you want to avoid them. You want to roll some dice only if it can't turn bad, or if you can't avoid it because you have no other option, or if you don't care if it turns bad and want to try your luck (in order of preference).
I've found that Eclipse is great for shooting, especially vs aggressive links (where more are visible than a lone Kamau), as you can place the no-LoS zone however you please and slice the enemy models, engaging them one by one, with no possible response from the rest of the link / other ARO. Even if it's a lone linked sniper, between LoS-blocking terrain and Eclipse you get to decide that you won't get enganged by anyone else. You're basically placing infinitely tall scenery items on the table.
Sounds more like playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game on hard difficulties. I didn't know you have to play Infinity this way. What are you doing with your orders? Running around, not rolling any dice? J/K. I'd really like to watch something like a game of Quadrant Control when both sides avoid rolling dice. Without irony I am really interested to see how this works and if this is fun. Or just plain silly.
I'm sorry, but it sounds like you are intentionally misconstruing what Stuffist was saying. No-one is arguing that you can win a game without rolling any dice, but rather that you want to make sure that when the dice fail, it doesn't end in defeat for you. I'll try giving some examples: - Make a move-move with a camo token instead of a move-shoot in order to get an unopposed shot in the next order. -likewise utilising smoke or even the position of other models to move into a better firing solution. - Engage a link with a template weapon, forcing a choice between breaking the link (a win for me), all the link dodging (no fail state for me) or shooting with the point man and supporting with the rest (a likely win for me). - Do not reveal a TO-model to ARO when the opponent attacks past it, instead revealing on your active turn to get unopposed shots. - Engaging with G:servants to lock down key enemy pieces - Placing mines around corners and letting the opponent spend orders to clear the way. - basically any instance where you attack with a G:synch trooper, without revealing its controller All of these are techniques that allow you to hamper the opponent's efforts without risking your own models, in the right circumstances. It is interesting that you take Quadrant Control as an example, since this is a mission where the opponent has to move forward to score, thus opening up flanks to abuse. To get back to the subject of jammers - yes, they are a very good area denial tool, but the opponent has to use them to control the correct area. If you can move around that area and attack from behind, the jammer will not help. In my opinion, the game is full of stuff that deletes enemy pieces in different ways with enough certainty that a better option in the same category doesn't really change the game that much. Sheskiin deletes targets at range in the active turn, but so does Achilles, or a linked Grey or Vet Kazak. You hide the same way against them. Jammers just make you apply what you learned playing HI against AHDs to all your troops. Same problem, same solutions. I know that the argument can be made that some armies get better choices for less points, but if I browse through Army, every (vanilla) faction has more tools available than they can fit in any single list. Some sectorials are a bit limited. I learned to detest MSV2 snipers playing Caledonia, but then I learned to deal with them. We had other benefits.
Been there, done that. But this is your advise to mitigate luck? Most of it only works if your opponent overextends himself or late game. Or to make it short: I know all this, but not all of this does work for every trooper in every situation, so sometimes/most of the times, you just have to shoot something to be able to achieve something.
I just hope that people realize that eating 2 STR on a 38% chance versus 25% risk of being wounded is generally speaking good odds versus a Maruts and bad odds versus a Lamedh, even if the consequences versus the Lamedh are less severe. It's bad odds if you're using an Avatar to do it to a Marut, but it's fairly good odds if it's a Krakot - most of the time. Position and order economy may change this, of course, but a good player will find the risks worth taking and if possible take riskless advantages if they are sufficient. It's about knowing when and where a Jammer is going to be effective or if a stronger and riskier ARO is going to be necessary or if you can afford to try to stack both, it's about knowing when and where you're able to challenge a camouflage token to ARO you in the open, it's about avoiding stacking enough "second chances" that a game doesn't boil down to a key unit face-tanking a mine.
Frankly, I don’t care what tricks you personally know or don’t. This is a public forum, and the discussion is (or at least has become) about general principles of the game. If I understand your argument correctly, it is that it hardly matters what a player does during the game, since the result will simply be decided by luck in the end. I and others do not agree. I provided some examples for the discussion, which you, if I understand correctly, think lack relevance because they are too difficult to achieve in actual play. I find it hard to see a productive continuation of the discussion if we cannot elevate it past the boundries of personal bias. It is simply difficult for me to take seriously the notion that the game is a pure coin toss when many players have shown repeatedly that they can win consistently with many different lists. The logical conclusion to that line of reasoning is that anyone who wins more often than not is cheating, and I really hope that is not what you are implying.
I don't think the issue is that you shouldn't shoot on a 54% chance to wound, sometimes that's all you have. It's that understanding as far as probability of success goes; 54% is kinda bad, and so if it actually is the best or only option, that's fine. But you can't be upset when it goes sideways on odds like that. If your "Plan A" consists of a 54% chance of success, you either need to dig deeper for a better Plan A, or you need to make sure Plans B through F are solid. Look, I want to make it really clear that I'm not looking to pick on you. The only reason I'm commenting is because this exact topic seems to keep coming up for me this week, and I think it's a very important one. Rather than going through them in their entirety here, please take some time to look into fixed and growth mindsets, identifying them is something that is immeasurably beneficial when it comes to infinity. The tldr is a fixed mindset looks at bad luck as uncontrollable, while a growth mindset continuously asks the question of what could I do to mitigate bad luck next time. And as far as risk/reward goes, I would gladly spend extra orders or take a reduced chance of success to mitigate risk. I had a game recently where I revealed a Farzan to shoot at a Lambda while they were out of cover. I intentionally decided to do it from 20" away even though it would put me on 9's to hit, because it also meant shooting back was impossible and they were forced to dodge. I could have moved up and engaged from 16" and given myself 15's to hit, but doing so would have put their ARO on 5's, and I didn't want to have the risk of a crit or bad luck. It's these types of seemingly small decisions we're talking about, the personal anecdotes or tactics given are just examples of possible solutions to help get the concept rolling around, not a step by step playbook. And to bring it back on topic to jammers, all the same principles apply again. I think by now we're starting to see a definite difference in the types of players saying "Jammers are broken and bad" (fixed), vs the ones trying to offer solutions and advice for how to circumvent or mitigate their effect (growth). As far as the design question of whether linked jammers with holoprojector are too order intensive to play around or if that was exactly the intent, that's for CB to answer. And whether the community judges their answer as right or wrong; it is after all, CB's game.
I have plently of advice for reducing the penalties of bad luck as do others, but no one is looking for that here. So don't bother.
Failing to acknowledge that a game aspect is overpowered isn't a "growth" mindset, it's just a failing; this is separate from tactics one can use in a game to circumvent or deal with them.
I feel like those conditions are still pretty rare. If you have IMM-2'd a TAG, why waste orders positioning a missile to spend orders shooting at it when you could go for the remaining engineer instead, taking it out of the game for a presumably lower cost? And a couple of those don't apply here -- coordination is out because we were discussing it in the context of a Fireteam, and -12ing is more rare because as far as I'm aware there are no missiles in the game that can -12 someone except a Swiss Guard/Hac Tao. And while those units can take advantage of active turn missiles, they definitely aren't representative of what most missiles in the game look like. There's also tactical issues at work. The types of pieces most vulnerable to missiles are almost always going to stay in positions where it's prohibitively expensive (in terms of orders spent to results achieved) to target them in the active turn, especially if that missile has to carry around a clunky Fireteam. The dynamics have definitely changed since I was playing JSA, but tbh active turn missile as JSA is probably worse than ever now... These are totally separate issues though. You can both think Jammers are broken while analyzing solutions to deal with them. In fact, I would say people who agree they are broken are going to take those solutions more seriously because they understand they are broken. The non-growth attitude are the people in the thread who are arguing to house rule these interactions out, or are arguing that it's "unsportsmanlike" to use the mechanics that exist in the game. They exist. Whether you like them or not, you have to deal with them. Whether or not they should exist is an entirely separate issue. It's like if we were having an argument about the law, and I said "this law shouldn't exist in this form" and your response was "well it is legal right now so you will have to deal with it." Yes, I'm obviously going to have to deal with it, but how I deal with it is entirely separate from the issue of whether or not it should exist in the first place.
Declaring a brand new unit to be overpowered without first spending some time playing against it and trying to learn to beat it, to test whether it actually is overpowered, is absolutely a "fixed mindset" if that's the terminology we're using. I mean, I would have just called it "jumping to conclusions without any evidence and then belligerently telling everyone who disagrees that they have 'failings,'" but I suppose "fixed mindset" is more polite.
