Fire away, team. Lots of big announcements, so here are a few subtle ones: The rumor that MULTI Snipers were only Burst 1 in active turn has thankfully been debunked. We rely heavily on MSRs, so that's great. Squalo has ECM -3 vs Hackers, very cool. Patsy Frag grenades confirmed. I wanted this for a long time for her, to use that ORC PH14 and provide a new attack vector. Duo Bulleteers. Need to see how this plays out, but maybe there's some Wildcard potential there. Peacemaker Forward Deployment L2 is pretty tidy. Provides slightly fewer places where you can hide those templates for guarding a midfield objective on Turn 1, but works great in missions with expanded deployment zones. Sniffer is gone, so utilizing smart use of Sensor will be a higher priority.
It's dumb as fuck, but with the Remdrivers you can give a remote (including auxbots) CC+9 Auxbot with CC22 is real and can hurt you. Or you can give the bulleteer BS13. Bolts got marksmanship, which I feel makes them legitimately interesting to have in Vanilla I'm not gonna play PanO until Acon is back, so I've only looked at memey bullshit
Bolts are seriously fantastic now Tech-Bees can repair TAGs at range with decent success Linked Engineer/Paramedic is a whole lot better as a single success grants 1 W/S back even if the other fails (assuming both hit)
TAGs. That's all I would say. Hyperpower finally can show who's the real player when we bring the fancy toys out (+ like Cartographer said, Tech-Bee now helping more than an order token). And after double check, new Boyg is cool too,finally a use for that poor S5.
Sorry for bothering you again but, how to achieve this? You mean a fireteam with Engineer/Paramedic inside and activatig one with the same order? I'm surely missing somethin!
The 3-man fireteam bonus is +1B, allowing you to "shoot" twice with the Medikit/Gizmokit. This means you can get two rolls and if one succeeds, you heal/repair the target (regardless of if the other fails).
Links with Burst bonuses would do it, as would using a Coordinated Order- several Paramedics or a Tech Bee/Monstrucker combo could be fairly reliable if you have the Command Tokens to spare.
Not only did all of our tags get huge cost reductions, but most of our tags are now 1.5 SWC. Which is huge for list building. I’m also curious to see how much the Aquila Guards new multi marksman rifle helps. It’s also an interesting design choice to see that most of our standard 2w HI are about the same price as units with mimetism or msv. It kind of feels like wounds and armor are finally costed more appropriately.
Karhu are wildcards in SWF, so we have a mimetic, msv1 B4 Feuerbach using AP+DA rounds with NCO, climbing plus, and 6-2 Mov. This thing shreds the Avatar!
When Bolts will get Core in NCA they'll be better than Kamau Sniper most of the time. Karhu and Vargar are very nice. Specialist Sergeant nonsense got finally cleaned up. ZC Jammer will require more care, as the weapon is now Disposable (2). Nokken and Locusts - I still don't get the idea of such similar troopers existing side by side. Most of our characters (Bipandra, Konstantinos, Quinn, Agnes, Uma) are still underwhelming; even when playable and optimized, they're boring. Shona is ok, so is Joan. De Fersen and Patsy got better. Knights are an extremely mixed bag. MO is still going to be clunky when it comes to them, even though some interesting concepts got through. Combat Jump Santiagos are cool, though I think most people will be vary of taking such a risk. KoJ and Hospitaller options with FD have potential. Montesa was cool but pricy before, now he's just cool, RF loadout should be a nasty piece of work. Teutons, Magisters, and Sepulchre are a big disappointment. KoJ still feel like a solution in search of a problem. Aquila is of course better, but still boring af. Boyg is a cool concept with poor execution, I simply fail to see the point. TAGs are where its at, just as we've been predicting since the crit changes were shown. As usual, no Smoke, and (for now) no Eclipse for us. Overall PanO will be perfectly playable, but not terribly inspiring. I don't have much hope for NCA and ASA bringing in any fresh air, one look to new Nomad units clearly show where CB's imagination works best. Then again, it was always like this.
I'm really looking forward to nuBolts. The Sniper gets even odds against a linked Kamau while unlinked and in its active turn, and the increasing reliance on enemy Hackers using Oblivion makes them a real contender on the Hacking field. CoC profile lost its Drop Bears though, it's annoying to have to pick between fun versatile weapons and the ability to score. Locusts and Nokken both essentially unchanged, leaving us with only the Croc Man for a halfway safe midfielder. PanO has fairly crappy Tinbot access outside the Santiago KHD, we may be at a disadvantage against Hacking Fireteams in more dedicated Sectorials. Auxilia LTs aren't taxed anymore. That's neat. Squalo HGL has eaten a rangeband nerf in exchange for +1 Damage. Speculative Fire isn't quite as powerful when combined with Targeted as before, killing a potential synergy with Peacemakers and Hackers. Speaking of, the Clipper is now horrifying. BS Attack (Guided) lets them drop BS18 Missiles on anything not protected by ECM or a specialised Tinbot, forcing them into a Dodge dice-off with an AP+EXP Impact Template. Hacking changes are pretty good for us; still no Pitchers but only a few super-elite KHDs out of Nomads and the AI factions could really be said to fully outclass a spirited attempt at Hacking by PanO. Fairy Dust letting us slap a Firewall on REMs or TAGs as well as HI could be fun. Overall I'd call N4 PanO a wash. We've gained a few new methods of doing the same old shooting game and reaped the benefits of ARM and W recosting at the cost of getting, if anything, worse at maneuvering and scoring- no Smoke at all and a more hostile midfield aren't healthy for PanO's horrid Specialist pool trying to get work done.
Was pretty optimistic this would turn out well till we saw the first leaks last week. Has been a steady downhill trip since then for me. With Upgrade Programs, new rules, new Links etc finally visible, this is a full disaster on all fronts in my book. Not speaking about PanO in particular, we got off pretty good here, but N4 as a whole. I don't know who's idea it was to fix Sval by adding 6-2 C+ Karhu B3 Feuerbachs as Wildcards. I don't know who thinks B2 Oblivion Danavas was a good idea. I don't know who thought a better minmaxed version of the AP HMG C+ Tik was what MO needed. I don't know who thought Achilles V2 needed to get 11 points cheaper and AP for his Spitfire. I don't know who thought 17 point Tankos are okay, Berserk Asawiras are fine and MO can rot in a ditch. I don't know who thought Shinobu could do with C+ and Oniwabans only needed a E/M CCW to keep up. I don't know who thought every PanO Sectorial needs a cancer MSV Sniper to go into their Linetrooper Link and added Marksmanship to Bolts and Wildcard to Karhu. None of that is weak, far from it, on the contrary It's min maxed and effective. Playing all those Factions too, certainly gonna run that stuff, no question about it. But that doesn't look fun or healthy for the game. What's the point in convincing people to put a Manned TAG on the table when it just dies instantly to countermeasures flying around everywhere? What's the point in toning down warm bodies as defense, promoting competent and durable ARO pieces, when you add Burst 6 Kriza Borac Core Linked HMG, AP with heavy MODs everywhere to make it an all out RNG slugfest? I don't understand how this passed playtesting as good enough. At all. At this point I'm mostly looking at PanO Vanilla to spam TO Snipers and a Swiss ML, let all the fancy HI Links and TAGs bounce off layered AROs gotcha miserably. Or just play my Vanilla Aleph who look better than ever, despite slightly nerfed Posthumans. Looks like zero fun to walk something up the board vs CC, Hacking, Stun, E/M and just plain old AP. Could just climb that high building in front of my DZ with a Karhu or AP HMG Tik and rain death across the board from safety instead of trying to use my brain so much. The worst part is how little is good and exiting to slot in a list. Locust, Nokken, Boyg, had some hope for them. Nothing. Knights, nothing. At least Varuna looks fun to play around with and NCA is shaping up to change a lot. Then again, Auxilia still somehow cost 10 without the Auxbot, despite BS11. Blackfriar MSR is still the most useless guy in MO. Teutons are still trash, slightly less expensive trash, going down to BS13 certainly hasn't helped. Heck there's 2 TAGs with Berserk and DA CCWs, would graduating their AP CCWs for one of the fun options have broken anything? Don't know what to do with Vargs next to amazeballs Karhu either, FO as token Specialist in a Haris I guess? MO still has the same Lt problem as before, after getting a touch up for the 3rd time. It's just sad to see at this point, honestly.
The lack of effort in making PanO interesting is quite painful especially with the new sectorial and N4 as opportunities to push the boat. Not much more disappointing than when you buy cool looking models that are not fun or interesting to use.
Now we can actually make a decent list (depending on mission) with up to 3 TAGs and 10+ orders. https://infinitytheuniverse.com/arm...nAQIAADIBAgAAAQEGAAAWAQIAACEBAQAACgEBAAAiAQEA
not super hyped about PanO at this point to be honest when piecing through other factions. While I am excited to use TAGs in this edition, ill have to wait until November for the two sectorials I actually like using them in.
