To me it kinda falls short on fun stuff. It's subtle like a brick to the face, and we have other sectorials for that. I hope they'll change a bit in N4.
I just like the fatness of S5s to be justified. Yan Huo's heavy weapons and the crappiness of the tech in the Ratnik and Blackjack are pretty good justifications, as is the Kriza's massive ammo supply and the Omega's stupidly-strong armour. The prototype nature of the Daiyokai and Boyg get them a pass, but I'm not overly fond. The stuff like Taskmasters, Mowangs and likely The Knight who Ate his Horse is what annoys me, where the technology exists to get that package of skills into an S2 chassis but just isn't used, for absolutely no reason.
Pretty much this. The Vargar and Karhu seem like fun, but there's not enough in there to warrant a switch from NCA's brand of bricks to SWF, or even from Vanilla. It doesn't help that the Knight profiles are recycled from MO so we've used them all before, and that the Infirmarer is pretty much dead weight from most judgements.
Maybe if that C+ was on SWC weapon profiles, or Specialists, or literally anything but a really expensive rooftop sweeper who's worse at his job than Uma in every respect save the second wound. He just suffers from stiff internal competition combined with the fact you can't make a sane link with C+ on everyone to make use use of that mobility. I'd like to see the full spread of options get C+ come N4, or at least for one of the options to finally get a non-AHD Specialist option.
Multirifle Orcs are looking at a pricedrop of close to 10ish points in N4 (okay 7-9). I'd recon in between that, Crit changes, Tinbots working vs Coms Attacks, new Hacking and the DTW on the Orc BSG increasing their anti Camo/CC capability - C+ Orcs are gonna be pretty good in N4. Not sure how you are using rooftop sweepers, but mine basically have to walk face first into Mines, Perimeter, Light Shotguns and DTWs. Which is why Dart is as great as she is and Uma isn't. PH14, ARM4 and a second wound helps a lot. Same as White Banner - designed for N4. You can kinda play them but it's obvious it doesn't work as intended yet. The big stuff are the new rule combinations that couldn't be implemented for N3 Profiles (Hidden Deployment Locust - maybe), price changes for heavy troops (SWF leans heavily on TAGs, HI and MI), Hacking rework (SWF looks to be more on the receiving end here) and the new stuff we haven't seen at all yet. Rules, Profiles, Link options etc.
My feelings on the N4 move: cautious. Theres few things about this that directly benefit PanO over other factions in the system. TAG cost cust is good across the board as everyone has TAGs that need that help to see table time. We stand to gain the most from this as our TAGs have eggs in one basket syndrome. Our support needs help too though. We reliably burn through command tokens to have our engineers not wreck these big pieces and thats not going to change. But we should be able to bring more back up to the TAG in terms of guns and with the loss of specialized hacking devices our hacking should be able to make a bit more of an impact overall. HI looks pretty positive overall for everyone. Cheaper and more durable with crit change. Pano HI has internal issues that seem to be getting addressed but CB has a bad habit of extremely conservative almost monolithic PanO design so I'm holding my breath. Big gain here is the shotgun change as it adds a ton of templates where there weren't any before. MI speed boost and cost cutting should help things like Bagh Mari get more universal play and be more aggressive. Nisse need help right now oddly enough as several factions are now copying the style and doing it better and the sectorial hasn't helped them that much. Bolts are okay right now and the msv1 change could help out their sniper a bit, but the speed and cost will do the most for them. Our drop troops stand to drop a few points which is nice because the alkalis isn't great, but as a no frills unit its cheap, and pushing that price point down doesn't hurt. LI going up maybe a point won't hurt too bad. Lots of our LI are pretty plain as is. We stand to gain from other pricing changes but this might hurt some backline guys a little. REMs: big unknown. All comes down to supportware. Sniffers going away is not good. 0/10 choice there lets be honest. Going prone is neat. Skirmishers: this may hurt a lot. With shotgun changes our more expensive camo midfielders or non camo mid fielders are now easier to deal with once we pop out. Makes odd skirmishers remain dicey with double templates. Cost is not a strength we have in this regard, as theyre usually around 30 points or more. Lack of sniffers will be a benefit, but we don't spam camo so any anti camo tech tends to hurt more than others on these guys. Sectorials is troubling news. We're getting to the point where shooting good is pretty damn common. Worse yet is White Company. PanO with smoke and all the tech gadgets it could ever want. It basically looks like what I would have hoped SWF to be. As is, its just better SWF. The ubiquitous design of fusiliers with orc buddy is getting too repetitive. Pano has 3 sectorials that do this with some spice thrown in if you want to shake it up, and now White Co does it. This isn't helped by MO having OS+FK ML and SWF has the same setup with the names changed around and a price cut. Rem reliance isn't helping differentiantion between sectorials either. I'm playing with similar stuff much of the time across sectorials and its rather dull design. Now, fireteams are due to change as well as points so it may very well be a less prevalent issue ahead with more of the unique flavors available as better options and I certainly hope so. We also can't keep getting double punished for higher ballistics on some units. If we suffer unit design penalties for better shooting we shouldn't be held back on shooting better than other factions when we dont have their capabilites. Tldr: everyone is benefitting from changes and its not clear that we benefit more than others. Our sectorials have issues that need to be addressed Profiles are up in the air so who knows.
Relatively speaking we get all of the buff (cheaper baseline HI&TAGs, Multi Rifles, Marksman Rifles, revised crits...) and get grazed by the nerfs here and there (Zulu Cobra Jammer, not much else is known). Aside from that we're probably going to get a mixed bag or the short end of Hacking changes (we do have a decent selection of WIP13 Hackers as well as options for Repeater coverage though, that's currently somewhere in the middle). That's all just Vanilla though, looks quite different from Sectorial to Sectorial. Varuna is looking at a big shake up, with Helots and ZC Jammers being less viable in numbers, and MSRs going down to B1 for DA Ammo we're looking at more heavy troops with support, rather than a bunch of light troops. For Sval we finally get to see all the pieces of the puzzle, I suspect there will be some surprises on at least Boyg and Locust. MO is finally getting the rule framework to potentially support a real HI centric army. The new Hacking and everything around it (access to Stealth, Tinbots, Support Programs,...) will have a lot of impact here. The Lt situation and availability of supporting cast needs a look. Choices like Sensor, Engineer, non linked AROs, Chain of Command etc. Lets also not forget that A Santiago + Magister Link already is very point efficient thanks to Frenzy/Impetuous, providing a somewhat similar N4 alternative alone without a better framework will leave MO in the dumpster. SAA is up for a redesign, current iteration should hold up very nicely with the Aleph troops, cheaper HI/TAGs etc. NCA, same as SAA is up for a redesign later in the year. New and improved C1 Aquila to carry their core Links, hopefully a significantly cheaper Uhlan, access to Devas providing some of the game's best backfield Hacking, revised Locust to provide a real Skirmisher choice and Bolts, whichever way yet another revision for them will turn out.
Sorry for the late replies here, folks. @RobertShepherd Hidden Deployment: I agree that the impact of Hidden Deployment on your order pool is something to be cautious about, but I think that HD for both defensive AROs and objective runners simply goes up in value because it's nice to be immune to alpha strike in an edition that will support alpha strikes. I'm sure you're up on the terrifying changes we've seen for the Su Jian. I can't see a static defense with linked AROs having much effect there... It's a problem for your opponent to solve. However, a Hidden Deployment Sniper with a Stun ARO (if Stun is even present in the game anymore) is one of the few things that could slow that threat down. @Teslarod No question that defense is changing. Fewer spaces in a list for disposable defensive tools to occupy, and a more pronounced focus on fast, high-durability alpha strikes. I'm continually shocked that few players seem worried about this threat; it's going to be really, really difficult to stop a Turn 1 opponent from doing very heavy damage on Turn 1. That's been occupying a lot of my mind as we prep for N4. I'm loving the changes for EB. A lot of units that were good with shotguns now become great with the added utility of templates. This is particularly nice on units that, as you say, having been overpaying for combi + LSG for years. Suddenly they're gaining a really excellent ste of tools. Still going to miss Shock, and I agree that the Tik's value goes down quite a bit without AP. I'm thinking the Guarda will improve though. Cheaper cost, plus changes to shotguns on the Auxbot so that the GdA can now threaten with BS15 and template hits is a vast improvement to its capabilities. I've been getting some Tabletop Simulator action in using 15 order lists. Defense is still really rough and ragged... I've had no difficulty making very heavy impact on the game when I go first, and that's something that frequently wasn't possible in N3. I'm feeling better about VIRD, but mostly because I've switched heavily to Crocmen. Crocs are bringing a lot of useful tools to N4, especially if a player can run FO with deployable Repeaters + Hacker and create nice synergy between those two units.
They will definitely be an existential threat with the BSG profile as your opponent continuously grapples with "Am I about to walk my entire link team into an invisible damage 14 template?"
I think Pan-O will be pretty good fitting in 15 orders. I have two wishes though: 1) Something to differentiate the nokken and the locust more than different loadouts and an ARM 1/2. Really dissapointed the nokken ended up being a sliiightly better locust. 2) This is probably unpopular but taking away inspiring leadership from Joan. I think Joan+Mercs lists are kind of boring and it'd be cooler to see something that fits more into pan-o. Maybe the +1 command token like Saladin has and maybe the tech bee ability (that can stack) to give +1WIP to engineers and crabbots. And a long shot: Eclipse grenades! I know the Assault has this, but more access to eclipse would make Pan-O feel a lot more whole. With more and more factions getting the smoke trick and amazing shooters, it'd be nice for Pan-O have increased tactical options across its sectorials. Maybe throw it on Gunnar?
@barakiel N4 lists with N3 ITS just don't work well, same problem Limited Insertion always had. CB will have to fix Alphastrikes in ITS missions, which means most of them will have to find a way to make getting OP a turn by turn thing, frontload it into Turn one somehow, make getting OP expensive in terms of Orders or a combination. i.e. move to McGuffin, unlock McGuffin with Specialist, a turn after you unlocked you get to start making points off McGuffin. If that doesn't happen properly I can see myself play a lot of NCA with Swiss ML and Hexas MSRs. The answer might also be symetric Combat groups and switch your active dude to the one that took less damage and remained operational. With 12 Order Combat groups being fairly easy to achieve (any TAG Lt) there needs to be something to reduce that down to at least 8 or 9 Orders. Stripping 2 Orders with the ever scarce Command Token just doesn't cut it (Counter Intelligence needs to die in a fire as well). Kinda looking towards Hacking to mitigate that problem a bit, but there needs to be something else as alternative. If 12 Order Jotum Lts + 5 Order group 2 are supposed to be a fairly normal turn 1, that's gonna get old pretty quick.
Counter Intel is such a hot mess. Removing two orders on Turn 1 is meant to be a quality-of-life fix, designed to address a specific balance issue that CB perceived in their rules. When you toss in Counter Intel, you're adding another rule that effectively repeals a balancing gameplay rule. It's just odd to see. Even with the mechanic of progressive scoring that you're describing, it's still not going to devalue Alpha Strikes. Beating your opponent to within an inch of his life as quickly as possible has always been a valid ITS strategy. Even with the game ending if someone Retreats, it doesn't change the fact that curbstomping your opponent right away was always good. It was just harder to do in N3 with bigger lists and more disposable, defensive units. Now, I really don't know if either the Core N4 rules or the ITS format can deter an Alpha Strike, short of completely neutering the Turn 1 opponent and heavily restricting anything he wants to achieve. I really don't know what the plan is for stopping a Su Jian duo for getting into your DZ immediately, triple-templating everything in sight, then hiding prone on a rooftop with their templates to defend themselves.
At least for my NCA when it comes out, I'm taking a serious look at Peacemakers. A good AHD equivalent (especially the Deva) backed by a Hexa KHD and/or EVO bot should be enough to slow down heavy hackable Rambos through their Repeaters, and the Auxbots and Heavy Shotgun can easily deal with lighter fare, especially if Overclock survives the edition change. Points could get tight given the usual cost of Hacking and my personal distaste for the Fusilier Core, but I've recently discovered I quite like playing a REM-and-Hacking heavy NCA and am not especially worried about its survivability come N4 against the usual HI or TAG alpha strikers. Ariadnan dogs still worry me though, as do well-positioned AD options or Impersonators.
NCA will be great. I can't wait to play them in N4. It just sounds like we're not sure when that will be.
So based on Bostria's comments on Mayacast that Bolts aren't 'featuring in the files [for Army] right now', are we just being hopeful that they'll be added in when NCA drops, as they're largely irrelevant to Vanilla?
Hacking I guess, with breaker oblivion all over the place the Su-jian's lack of stealth will be a bigger deal. On the other hand, good repeater coverage might be harder to achieve in N4 since the cheap remotes have a bigger opportunity costs. Sucks to be ariadna though.
