While there is a deck called Body and Soul in MTG, the Body and Soul in this case is referring to a Warmachine/Hordes theme list (basically a sectorial taken to it's logical conclusion) that belonged to a faction that at the time had been sitting at the competitive rankings since the earlier edition of the game, and like a few other theme lists was a balance fuck up of monumental proportions, shortly after this the game as a whole redefined term codex creep. MTG was brought up as a lot of the gameplay and list construction elements are similar.
The issue is that it's actually both (we hope). The alternative is someone at CB understands that you can't declare a Reset in those circumstances and thinks that that's ok. The problem likely is, however, that CB doesn't understand the implications of the rules they're writing, as in the LoF rules you mentioned above. It's not that they weren't functioning as intended - it's that the implications of the LoF rules were not thought out (i.e. you could come at someone from the top of a building and fire unopposed). I'd like to see that specific interaction fixed *and* Jammers deleted, but the smart money's on neither, because at this point I kind of doubt anyone at CB pays attention to what the requirements to declare Reset are. And no, in competitive games you use Reset against Jammers quite often - because you have no other option, in a lot of circumstances.
Body and Soul was a Warmachine second edition theme force (sectorial-equivalent). It had: about the most powerful board control effect in the game the most consistently powerful model recursion effect in the game a unique mechanic that was very cool on paper but which produced an effect that typically made it correct for the opposing player to literally never activate their most powerful model, or else lose the game immediately and savagely in short order. Warmachine adopted an MTG design and list construction philosophy focused around unit synergies and deck-like army lists that had some strengths relative to infinity but also some weaknesses (these being a very separate topic), but in short letting Body and Soul through to the players showed the weaknesses off. The way model profiles, stats, skills, face to face rolls, crits (probably including N4 crits) and so on work in Infinity means there's very limited capacity for it to actually produce a power disparity between factions on par with ones you saw in Warmachine (which, it should be noted, was still mostly a very tightly balanced competitive experience). Khador was a powerful faction but had a nearly zero percent chance to beat a Cryx pairing that included Body and Soul. Infinity's factional win/loss rates are a small miracle of design by comparison. TL;DR: infinity is pretty balanced. This good.
This is one of those differences of experience that is probably unbridgeable. The last time I reset against a Jammer effect was when I was also moving through a dazer zone to an objective room so had nothing else to do with my second short skill. I'll take it on faith that you reset against jammers a lot.
I'd just point out here that it took the community literally years of collectively playing N3 for someone to spot that. And once it was discovered, errata dropped in relatively short order (by the standards of miniatures games rules errata). Backshooting from elevation was a properly fucked interaction, no question. But suggesting that the LOF rules weren't thought out is a bit of a stretch.
It really didn't. Some people spotted that earlier and quietly agreed to not to do it and not to mention it. Q.f. Infinite Boosting Koalas as something that was discovered and resolve long before the community considered it an issue.
Actually yeah that's a point, the FAQ that produced the issue was definitely a design error (and I assume not a product of playtesting, since it was an FAQ). Took a couple of months between cause and effect for people to figure out the issue if I recall correctly?
Sorry but you remember that wrong. This was very quickly spotted and was never an issue due to mutual LOF when both models were facing eachother. This all changed when the FAQ now changed this so when you could see the back arc of a model, despite having same facing, then there was no mutual LOF. Almost immediately, same day as that FAQ dropped, a Finish warcor (his user name escapes my memory) was quick to point out that due to this new change, a trooper on a rooftop could now, by default, ALWAYS get normal rolls on any model on the table he could see below him, in the same context the super jump LOF abuse was also mentioned.
Not really getting into the jammer discussion, but I'd like to point out that, in any "technical" job that implies interaction of more than, let's say, 10 distinct areas of work, error detection by a single user can be immediate, but the application of corrective measures can take really long. CB is not a big company, but runs a relatively complex business, and it's perfectly understandable that some "errors" take long (yes, year-long periods) to be solved. This guys are not paid to read 500 posts a day and then unilaterally sort conclusions, even if those could be spot-on. There's data classification, trend analysis, discussion about ramifications of the issue at hand, resource designation, cost opportunity assessment... and that goes before definition of the solution. It's ok to share opinions and for any company, error detection by the user is an invaluable information...but try to be a bit mature and don't tell CB how to do their job. Because judging by the numbers, they do well enough.
To be fair, they don't have to do that. There is literally someone tracking unanswered questions for them in the rules forum at this point, and balance-related threads like this eventually veer so far off-topic that the whole issue of the thread can be summed up in a page or two.
Given you were the first to say that acknowledging that a game aspect is overpowered isn’t part of a fixed mindset, does this not come off as a strange thing to say? You’re suggesting that it’s common place to be forced to have your only option be to reset against a jammer; I’m suggesting you ask yourself if anything else could have been changed about every other decision in the game so far that brought you to the point where now you have no other option but to run towards a jammer and reset in order to win. The problem with that is even if you could summarize this entire thread into two pages, there still isn't a consensus about whether a jammer in a core fireteam is even a balance issue to begin with. CB knew what they were doing when they created the unit, this didn't slip through by accident. For all the criticism they get about play testing or understanding the competitive meta of their own game, I would make the comfortable assumption that they know what the fireteam bonuses are and how jammers work, or at least know where to look them up. If we look at two of the changes that we could reasonably say were based on player discontent, that being symbiomates and crits, the things CB chose to correct were the non-interactive mechanics. I think if they address the issue along these lines we're likely to see the reset issue fixed, and it's at least possible they work in an additional layer of interactions with jammers, such as making them comms equipment and hackable, but I wouldn't count on it happening.
My main reason for saying that is that during the reactive turn, you don't get to decide if your opponent is going to Jam you from the other side of a building or not. Well, maybe; the FAQ situation that @Zewrath mentioned above shows that some of the more technical stuff slips through the cracks sometimes.
Jammer vs Reset in the Jammer's Active isn't generally a problem though. Unmodified B1 vs B1 is order intensive; particularly since their range is capped at 8". Even with WB the requirement to move a Fireteam within 8" of a target worth Isolating counterbalances the effectiveness; and the if the 2 Camo Jammers miss their Surprise Shot they're on the worst odds of all Jammers. Active Jamming is specifically a problem vs Hacking: its ability to effectively defang a Hacking threat without risk further limits the match ups where CLAW programs are worth investing in. It contributes to CLAW programmes being expensive and unreliable. So we're back to: 1. Jammers are extremely strong in particular missions and merely very strong otherwise 2. Jammers are stronger vs low order count lists than vs high order count lists 3. Jammers replicate key features of Hacking generally better, while simultaneously providing an anti-Hacking solution 4. The SSL1 and Reset interaction is broken and has been for years, it's just Hacking is so limited that nobody cared* Given that: 1. There is strong community sentiment for low order count lists to be viable 2. There is strong community sentiment that Hacking should be a reliably viable part of the game 3. These sentiments seems to be shared by the designers (their public statements on the direction for N4 and several years of ITS changes) Then it follows: Jammers are broken because they do not help achieve the game's overall design aims because they distort the meta in undesirable ways. [/I] Put another way: Jammers are strong vs meta-poor options that the community like (and probably the Devs find desirable) and relatively weaker vs meta-strong options that the community has more mixed feelings about. A reasonable conclusion is that Jammers contribute to this distortion. This distortion is bad because it drives the game in a way that is undesirable. Ergo Jammers are broken because they drive the game in a way that is undesirable. None of this discussion is at all relevant to actually playing N3: my argument is purely about the state of the game in N3 to make conclusions that are useful for thinking about game design direction for N4. * If this isn't an indication of the relative utility of a Jammer and a HD (of any variety) then I don't know what is.
That's a good point that I'll try to keep in mind. I play order heavy lists as a rule, which colours my perspective.
In fairness, you play extremely order heavy lists. You consider a 15 order count list to be low on orders. [emoji14] Edit: it's also worth noting that most of the easy counters are things like Libertos and Warbands.
Guilty as charged but in when determining the sentence I would like to request your honour consider that the White Noise TTS event was tactical window and has been a really useful experience for re-learning how to play like a normal human.
I’d be more inclined to agree with the general gist of your argument if there weren’t many unanswered questions that did not, in fact, imply interactions with 10 distinct areas of work. Instead, there are quite a few where the answer should simply boil down to “this is how we mean this to be played”. CB’s silence here is deafening. Also, I understand what you say about designers not being paid to sort out the community’s output. I believe however they are very much paid to produce robust design that is correctly playtested before being put out there. If the company is not big enough and the “business” too complex, then perhaps a more conservative approach towards dangerous mechanics with far-reaching consequences is needed. And if I may, while I fully understand your last sentence, my feeling is that Infinity does well for a number of reasons, including strong and innovative fundamentals and awesome minis, but it does so despite too many undefined interactions, the lack of a comprehensive FAQ and a very slow cycle of questions/answers where rules are concerned. I don’t think there is anything immature in pointing this out.
I have to admit I am resisting the urge to make a sarcastic or snide remark. I'm going to apologize in advance if one slips through. Please let me know if anything isn't appropriate here, I'm trying to let level heads prevail. It's definitely an internal balance issue in WB. I think anyone in this thread would agree that any list that didn't have a Jammer Tian Gou would be stronger with one. And that's a huge issue when a unit even being available to an army is supposed to be a threat. For a good example of this, look at Helots or Hecklers (another Jammer carrier). The risk you face when playing against these units is "what could be under this camo marker?" Against Helots, you have to keep in mind that any one of those DZ-bound camo markers could pop out with a Red Fury. Against a Heckler, any camo marker in that position could pop out with a Jammer. That is good design, because it allows players to make an implicit threat / play an interesting bluff game. The problem with the Tian Gou is that the mechanic is so powerful, there's no reason not to include one. It comes at a remarkably cheap price (24 points) relative to its utility (Jammer, Nanopulser, WIP14, Holo1, Wildcard). It existing in the army at all means you need to be prepared for literally anything that isn't a camo marker to pop out with a Jammer, meaning in reality, engaging any non-marker in WB at a range closer than 8 inches is an idea that needs to be weighed pretty carefully. Can we at least agree up to there? To talk about whether this is an external balance problem, I first want to lay out some things that I am not saying. I am not saying that the Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer can't be outplayed I am not saying that the Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer should be banned from tournaments because of "sportsmanship" I am not saying that a bad player with a Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer will beat a good player without one I am not saying that White Banner is a good or bad army Here's what I am saying (as someone who thinks this isn't balanced): The cost of outplaying the Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer is too expensive compared to the cost the player using it pays for it In a hypothetical matchup between two players, one who is 10% better than the other, the Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer may give the worse player an advantage. The Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer mechanic in and of itself is not in line with the rest of the game. Statistical analysis shows that Tian Gou Jammer / FT Core Jammer is one of the most powerful AROs in the game within 8 inches, even if SSL2 was fixed The interaction with SSL2 is bugged and makes the game non-interactive I don't think the first and third points are particularly controversial. The second point I expect to be very controversial because the forums are very bad at analysis of player skill levels, especially when they have to look at it in the abstract. The fourth point I think is more fact than opinion, I would be glad to see if someone else could find an ARO as widely powerful within 8 inches as the FT Core Jammer. And the fifth point is definitely a fact. Oh, I definitely agree that CB put this in the game intentionally. The disagreement isn't about whether or not CB understands their own game mechanics, it's about whether or not they understand what those game mechanics look like on the table. Fixing SSL2/Reset would be a good start, but it would just put us back in the same position with Jammers we were in before -- when they were still described as a non-interactive mechanic. Jammers have always needed some sort of counterplay, and there are tons of implementations of this. Making them comms equipment and hackable solves some of the problems, but limiting the effectiveness of the Jammer so that it doesn't affect units that leave its ZoC, or that Jammed units are unjammed if the Jammer is destroyed (this would make sense), etc. There are tons of mechanics that could make Jammers more interactive, and then we could have a serious conversation about the internal balance and external balance of factions with Jammers. I really don't think Jammers are a huge problem in and of themselves, it's the combinations that Jammers have been offered in. The Mutt's Chain Rifle / EMarat / Jammer / Smoke profile seems as if it is made to be as non-interactive as possible, for example. The only thing that could make that profile more non-interactive is if it had Eclipse Grenades. Mutts can effectively force normal rolls in any situation. The Tian Gou is a different flavor of the same problem -- SSL2 forcing normal rolls. Even a nominal SWC cost to Jammers (0.5SWC) would make this better. And last point, based on the rationale CB offered for Symbiomates, I don't think that their definition of non-interactive is the same as what a lot of the playerbase (including myself) sees as non-interactive. CB's explanation is that all actions should be associated with a roll -- but their definition of "all actions" seems to be a bit more limited. In the case of the mate, it still goes off after the f2f like normal, but now has armor rolls. They might argue that the Jammer is "interactive" because it allows the affected player to make saves. I don't think this argument holds water, of course, but it would be in line with what they had argued previously.
