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Adil's armored profile is as thematically unsatisfying as it is mediocre and deserving another look

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Weathercock, Oct 16, 2020.

  1. archon

    archon Well-Known Member

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    I think his Crane profil should get CC24, Nano+1B and WIP 14. As an outstanding character with the crane rank his stats should match his comrades. Maybe he was bad at crane school and skipped on or two lessons in MA and his WIP lost a point for his soft thoughts about the human race ... but I think he should be in line with the other cranes. You can assume that the power armour somehow makes is CC a little bit better and the protection of the suit encourages you to strenght your mind also in terms of courage for example.

    X-Visor is a equipment, they hacker don´t have it so maybe a specialst should not be gifted with long range gunfighting. I can live with that.
    Dodge +3 vs. PH 13 is nearly the same, minor issue here. The choice between lt. (HI) and CoC (MI) could be explained by the fluff itself,
    in the story he could take over command due to his rank, but after his failure he goes to Svarlaheima and there he will only take over the commanding role in a dire situation.

    Adils MI profile is a bit inconsequent in itself becaue he loose veteran to get CoC ... fluffwise this is bad, in game terms its a choice to be made.

    I think his HI profile is still useful and interesting, at least its a little bit cheaper then the regular cranes. The mono makes him a big game hunter and veteran protects him from beeing isolated, not realy bad, but still a niche.
     
    #21 archon, Oct 16, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  2. Mc_Clane

    Mc_Clane Zhànzhēng bùzhǎng
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    my main issue with him is that he doesn't cover the Spitfire crane profile role and he doesn't have Xvisor. Thus, It's main place seems to naturally pivot to Wuming Fireteams or deva+dakini's since they lack almost all that Adil Packs up.
     
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  3. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    I don't know anything about the story yet. Is he Crane before or after the MI version?
     
  4. Paegis

    Paegis Vincible Officer

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    Crane is before. At the end of Betrayal Adil effectively gets demoted and sent to Svalarheima.
     
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  5. SpectralOwl

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    Same as with any other type of attack; how efficiently does it kill? Fast movement, Peripherals and safety measures such as Smoke make getting there faster while improved CC attacks help take down big or competent targets. There's a secondary role as well for CC defense against enemies, but this is less important since guns are usually faster. Typically I only ever personally use CC in defense or as a spot of fun, but this is a symptom of my army choices; Neoterra, MRRF, and a Bakunin that I rarely play as it's how I discovered I don't enjoy herding Warbands. When I proxy other armies, I tend to favour upfield assassin pieces like Ninja or Impersonators over the Warband package or DZ-bound footsloggers, using them to scalpel out models key to the opponent's attack plan quickly so I can contest objectives with harder ARO.

    ALEPH and O12 have Yu Jing beat in sheer numbers, with O12 deploying Adil-style PARA CCWs on almost all CC-competent troops, many of which are LT options, alongside a wide variety of CC Special Skills and the Varangian Guard for a cheap Dogged and Berserk Warband. ALEPH, through Steel Phalanx and Andromeda, has numerous easy options of getting into CC and better Martial Arts than YJ to boot. Both factions also have access to White Noise and Eclipse Smoke.

    Haqq has Fidays, which are the ideal CC troop and will always get into CC with their target if they go first. At least Al Djabel has outright better numbers than any native YJ troop, with MA4 on top of his Surprise Attack and exotic CCW. Tohaa and Combined also field Impersonators, with Tohaa also notable for its top-of-field Eclipse-chucking Warband and Combined having everything under the damn sun.

    Nomads have a full spectrum of LoS blockers, and Uberfalls will rip even Achilles apart while Bran can be a budget Shinobu on a good roof. Morlocks hit harder than Monks with their E/M weapons, Jaguars delay better with Dogged. Generally, there are just more options in Nomads to make use of CC skills.

    Ariadna has Antipodes and Dogs, which are a nightmare to defend against, as well as great conventional Warbands. Their fancy Characters would probably be as useless as YJs, but half of them get NBW so at least they can smash some Martial Artist face.

    PanO has probably more MA guys with swords than YJ at this point, but has no LoS blockers and can only deliver them with active Dodge and Hacking superiority. Looting and Sabotage only, unless the enemy is wretched at positioning.
     
  6. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Those are all pretty good points and concerns and under N3 I think you'd be right on the money. There's two changes that on paper don't seem that big and they're something that at times we're probably all still forgetting to do under the new rules:
    1. Stealth was de-nested from Martial Arts. A tonne of units including ones you mentioned lost stealth in the edition change. When a CC unit moves towards you right now while everyone is re-learning I highly recommend double checking it has Stealth, there's a high chance it doesn't.
    2. Dodge is now a ZoC ARO.

    In N3 the classic CC setup was you move up out of LOF, lay down your smoke so it doesn't touch the target to avoid them moving away from it, then move into CC with part of your base touching the smoke so you don't get shot at. This doesn't have that same guaranteed ability work in N4 if you don't have Stealth, chances are as you close in your opponent will pass a dodge check and move away from your Smoke which fucks everything up.

    Re-filter the unit lists for Stealth. Alot and I mean alot of units lost Stealth with the edition change. Morats are down to 1 CC competent troop that kept Stealth and it was the Rasyat of all things. Witch Soldiers, Gaki, Preta? You can run away from them now. Same for Morlocks, Chimeras, Varangians, Jaguars, McMurder etc etc.

    From what I've observed so far the only factions that seem to have kept Stealth as a rule of you had it nested before it gets to stay are Haqq, Shaas, Yu Jing, JSA, and the limited A.S.S. stuff currently in the game. The rule basically seems to be if you're Asian, Arabic, Greek, or a sneaky alien you're racially stealthy. So while I am immensely jealous of the weapon loadouts Morlocks sport, particularly the Assault Pistol profile for 6pts, the fact is my Monks are far more likely to make it to CC than a Morlock.

    Special mention should be made of fireteams. Core links are very hard to engage in CC right now with how Sixth Sense and Dodging works to the point where it's probably a waste of orders for anyone outside of JSA to seriously try.

    With those mechanics in mind, there are two other main things I look for in a "good" CC unit in the sense that CC is a main part of their design rather than opportunistic or defensive one. One is being cheap, which usually comes with the territory of being Irregular and Impetuous. I play into O-12 and they're putting down cool units like Varangian Guard and Shona rattling off all their fancy skills like Berserk, Dogged, NWI, CC Attack (AP) and MA 4.

    I put down a shitty 5pt Monk with his shitty Chain Rifle and his shitty Shock CCW. Do you know who's more scared of CC now? The O-12 guy. That shitty Monk with his shitty weapons scares the shit out of him. Shona's a CC goddess but she doesn't want to fight him. That Monk has crazy eyes and he ran out of fucks to give about anything a long time ago. He'll gladly tank 5 AROs to walk into CC with her and take a coin flip to smack her 27 point NWI regular bitch ass off the table and die in the process.

    The point being the more a unit goes up in cost the more it transitions from being a unit that seeks any fist fight they can to just being a bully. They just want to pick on nerds who can't fight back effectively. For all her CC skills Shona's dream CC targets are inanimate mission objectives and TAGs that she can brag about defeating to the nearest WarCor.

    Now I'm poking some fun at this, of course it's legitimate design for a unit's CC aspect, but I'm making a point of looking at other factions having units with all the skills and stats doesn't mean everything. Getting into CC is dangerous, it means being positioned in dangerous places and sometimes taking dangerous rolls on things. A 5pt irregular warband is perfect for this, a 10+ regular warband less so, a 25+pt regular unit is pushing into the territory of turning into an opportunistic CC unit rather than a focused one. An O-12 player isn't going to spend orders pushing Shona into the middle of the table to try to chase down skirmishers, he probably won't even do that with a Varangian, they've got so many other units that want to use those orders like that Epsilon who wants the Varangian to stay right next to him and just keep throwing smoke grenades.

    A Monk though? He'll gladly run to the middle of the table and trigger every perimeter weapon he can on the way through every single game. Someone playing against Yu Jing is going to need to consider their CC aspect more frequently than they would against O-12, or Morats, or Nomads or so on and so forth. To me your opponent needing to consider, to plan around your capacity to engage them in CC is a bigger factor determining which faction is "better" at CC than who has higher levels of Martial Arts. I put 3-4 Monks down my opponent is worried about them clobbering something every single game, same guy sees Shona, his internal dialogue is more along the lines of "She's very dangerous in CC, but she probably won't get into CC this game. I'm more likely to get shot at by an expensive guy with a big gun."

    The other thing I consider to be very important to good CC units is being a hidden threat. To my current knowledge Ninjas are the only unit that kept a combination of Hidden Deployment and carrying a CC competent profile. Even Shas, the archetypical Hidden Deployment faction, didn't get that. They have CC competent units but you can tell where they are for the most part. Speculo Killers are up there on the pinnacle of being a CC threat, but a good opponent is going to plan for them. They're going to defend their stuff with minelayers, hold their expensive most stabbable toys in reserve if they're going second, and ruthlessly hunt them if they're going first.

    The Ninja while not as statistically impressive, is in my mind a bigger CC threat because it's unpredictable. A player against Shas can see the Speculo and knows what to do to counter it. Same player looks at 3 objectives in the middle of the table against Yu Jing, maybe there's a Ninja hiding next to one of them, maybe 2 of them. Maybe there are none and there's a Liu Xing hiding in reserve instead. Maybe the Ninja said fuck the objectives and is hiding on a weak flank to run into his backlines and gut his order pool instead. The only way to truly prepare yourself against this is to deploy and play incredibly cautiously to the point where it becomes very difficult to deal damage or complete mission objectives. If your CC threat is causing your opponent to play like this then I would argue your faction is up there as one that is good at CC.

    Realistically I don't think like they're going to play like that, or they might make the wrong calls on where to defend, like my last game where my opponent over committed on defending against literally non existent airborne threats so that with the help of the Hac Tao a Ninja ran right through his front door and kicked his LT in the head. Camo state as a CC delivery system remains a strong factor in terms of bypassing AROs. The Ninja in my mind is one of the units most likely to find a gap, or the easiest unit to create a gap for, in an opponents defenses to reach CC.

    I'm also waiting to see how the whole courtesy list thing shakes out for the Kanren. If the printed courtesy list goes away it's possible that the Kanren might be able to change what it disguises itself from game to game, which increases the chance of your opponent finding himself ending a unit's turn closer than he should be to a Monofilament weapon.

    I'd like to end this by mentioning that JSA are a little different and they lie outside what I've described but that's to be expected because they're just built so differently as a faction from everything else in the game, they play a different version of Infinity that is very unique to them. However overall I don't think it's fair to class Yu Jing as one of the worst CC factions in the game, we have access to a fairly important combination of skills, profiles, and equipment that all contribute to the faction being a more credible melee threat than most others in the game. I think arguing that Yu Jing has a weak CC game is a very superficial thing and it's built around gaming by numbers rather than actually playing.
     
    #26 Triumph, Oct 17, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  7. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    Getting NCO might help to make Crane Adil a more attractive option.

    With the move to N4, ISS has lost some of the order efficiency it had in the past. With the hard 15-man cap, we're no longer special for being able to pack a bunch of Kuang Shi into a list. With that, our Lt order becomes much more valuable. Unfortunately, most of our aggressive Lt pieces are going to find themselves in fireteams where they won't be able to actually use that extra order without breaking the team.
    If anything, our Lt options have grown more obvious and vulnerable than ever, and our CoC options our fairly lacking, especially if we take HI Adil, who disqualifies access to his better profile. Mixing those options together might solve some problems while creating an interesting trooper. What about the following?

    Imperial Agent Adil Mehmet (Crane Rank Armour)

    MOV:4-4 CC:24 BS:13 PH:12 WIP:14 ARM:4 BTS:6 W:2 S:2 AVA:1
    Equipment: X-Visor
    Special Skills: Martial Arts L2, Triangulated Fire, Sensor, Courage, Dodge (+2"), Dodge (+2), Immunity (Shock), Stealth, Veteran

    Adil (Crane Rank Armour) (Forward Deployment 8", Chain of Command) -- SMG, Nanopulsar (+1B) -- Pistol, Monofilament CCW
    Adil (Crane Rank Armour) FTO (NCO, Specialist Operative) -- Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser (+1B) -- Pistol, DA CCW
    Adil (Crane Rank Armour) FTO (Lieutenant, Specialist Operative) -- Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser (+1B) -- Pistol, DA CCW

    (I went with the lowered PH value as a way to represent his buggered right arm, as well as a way to game the system potentially in cutting points, he'll need it)

    Basically, we get Adil choosing between a forward-facing aggressive CoC specialist with the bulk and independence to get objectives done and pressure the midfield, or an NCO option to fit in links and be a generalized problem solver. Throw the CoC profile in suppressive from an entrenched position and he becomes very hard to dislodge. Similar to a Hulang that trades visual mods for resilience against comms attacks.

    It'd be pricey, but at least it'd be cool.
     
    #27 Weathercock, Oct 17, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  8. SpectralOwl

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    Keeping NCO on all profiles and making the Breaker Combi options FTO would probably be more solid and consistent; CB seem careful about letting Fireteams start up the table under most circumstances, and NCO is both Public Information and seemingly free on LTs so not having it would be a dead giveaway that Cranedil is your LT. That said, this profile is stupidly hard to assassinate in a Core Link anyway so it might be necessary. You've still got some role duplication and have essentially rendered the Crane MR totally obsolete with the LT/SpecOp option, but the CoC oiption would be cool as a point man in a midfield-heavy ISS or Vanilla list that could protect him on first turn.

    What weapons did we see Adil using in Betrayal? Maybe that could inform some theoretical changes.
     
  9. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    Oh, thanks for mentioning the FTO bit. Totally forgot about that, definitely did not want the FD variant in a team.

    The NCO does definitely step on the toes of the regular Crane MR, although the different ammo types helps a bit, especially if your Crane selection is intended to travel with Zhanyings. It's not a perfect fix, but that's more to do with the challenge of trying to fit with the Crane chassis while not going overboard in one direction or another.

    In betrayal, we just saw Adil using a regular combi to shoot down a missile as it was launched (triangulated fire?), a regular pistol, and his sword. That's it. Although his fluff blurb in the core book does describe skill at infiltration and door kicking, which is where I drew inspiration for the FD profile from.

    With N4 providing a bunch of new threats with improved hacking, repeater coverage, and proliferation of EM weaponry, alongside ISS' typically weak repeater coverage (doubly so with the loss of biolocator!), I think a profile like FD Adil would help ISS' situation a lot. With our poor repeater coverage and an absense of camo options, I'm pretty leery about running solo assault pieces in ISS at the moment (sorry Su Jian, I love you but I just can't seem to fit you in anywhere right now). A trooper like this would help to mitigate that greatly while still fitting with the core principles of ISS as a faction.
     
    #29 Weathercock, Oct 17, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  10. infyrana

    infyrana Well-Known Member

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    A slight side track from the original topic - is there any issue to play either physical version for either profile ? I really like the Crane version, but WB only allows for the Special Division profile.
     
  11. the huanglong

    the huanglong Well-Known Member

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    They have the same silhouette value so even if someone has a problem you aren't obliged to care. It should be easy for you and your opponent to keep track of in WBA. In Imperial Service it would be good manners to stay really on top of what is proxying as what.
     
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  12. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    Thanks.

    Wasn't Jeong in that book? How is it he's available to IA but not ISS? I guess they were Vanilla in the book! lol
     
  13. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Jeong is an engineer stationed at an Invicibles base Crane Adil visits as part of a mission. He has nothing to do with ISS.
     
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  14. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    Aside from the Tiger weirdness where it's pretty clear that they're supposed to be part of the Invincible Army but also aren't, the book is a pretty good portrayal of circumstances that would lead to a vanilla faction's deployment.
     
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  15. Omni

    Omni New Member

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    While we're at that, and I completely agree that Adil's profile doesn't do justice to his sculpt, I am milldly irked that Crane in general didn't get 6-2. I could understand Wu Ming not getting it (though only barely, comparing them to JSA's HI), but Crane's are not far behind the premium league of Hsien/Hac Tao/Su Jian (at least cost wise) and they are for once one of these premium HIs I actually often march to the midfield to do his CC/sensor/short-mid range shooting magic.
     
  16. Amusedbymuse

    Amusedbymuse Well-Known Member

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    But at the end of the day you link them with Celestials, Kuang Shi, Wu Ming and other 4-4 units. What baffles me is why Hulang isn't 6-2. Not only he links mostly with 6-2 units but also as a solo piece he is short range/CC unit that would benefit from 6-2 more than most. Not to mention fluff that they are bloodthirsty killers that rush into fight. This is also where frenzy would make sense. But that was mostly off topic.
     
  17. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    It's true.

    The "Crane" Adil is so bad it makes me think he was written as a PanO character.
     
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  18. Mc_Clane

    Mc_Clane Zhànzhēng bùzhǎng
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    I consider a troop as a CC specialist if it fulfill 5 of this points
    1. High CC value (19 or above)
    2. Decent damage (14+) or decent CC ammo weapon (PARA, DA, EM, EXP, mono)
    3. Imposes modifiers to the enemy, has innate Burst bonuses or adds some bonus to it's dice roll
    4. Not being hackable, having stealth or being ultra tough against hacking.
    5. Since the situations to make it happen are casual, highly dependent on the board, the opponent, the game... It needs to have at least one helping tool to engage the enemy from the following ones:
      - superior move 6-4 or higher or 6-2 & kinematica+2inches (enables getting into a target with direct templates or shotgun on less orders/dodges/berserk. this is because a chain template has a little more than 10 inches of longitude)
      - high dodge, 14 or higher (14 to have a relatively decent chance against a shot of a BS11 troop on close range. Plus, it helps to avoid direct templates)
      - Smoke or eclipse nades (enables CC out of LoF and enables avoid direct templates)
      - Marker state (camo, holoproyector, Impersonation,...) or a hidden deployment+Stealth that makes the enemy less likely to shoot the troop
      - berserk (due to the assault mechanic)
      - Mimetism -6 (makes more likely to dodge or confront rolls. I find mimetism -3 not good enough by itself. Maybe wit h a crazy dodge on 16s or higher to grant at least a decent success threshold)
      - Infiltration, Forward deployment 16", iimpersonation or impetuous (makes it less order consuming)
    I think the last one is the key one. The one that measures the quality of a CC specialist. And that's where our specialists are a little behind. So little of them have 3 approaching tools. most of our CC specialists have just one or two while JSA ones have 3 or more. Adil Crane has just one tool to safely approach the enemy if you consider the CG smoker. the LI one is a little better at dodging and has less problems with hackers, what makes it a better CC profile.
     
    #38 Mc_Clane, Oct 19, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2020
  19. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    So out of curiosity apply that check list to everyone else who isn't JSA, because expecting us to compete against JSA in terms of who's better in CC isn't fair as JSA sacrifices many things to get that preeminent position. How do you find we stand against everyone else?
     
    #39 Triumph, Oct 19, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2020
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  20. Amusedbymuse

    Amusedbymuse Well-Known Member

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    CA: speculo, hungries, taigh creatures. Also daturazi with better ph and cc, mimetism tan monks and regular orders in TW.
    Nomads: bandits and Brann. Again jaguars are regular, technically weaker than monks but they can pack EM weapon.
    Haqq: I don't remember names but some of the infiltration/holo/impersonation hassassins are good in CC.
    Aleph: myrmidons, officers, achilles with smoke support. They only lack better deployment on their guys.
    O12: hippolyta, cuervo. Again varangians pack 14ph, berserk+3 with dogged and are regular.
    Ariadna: all dem doggos!
    PanO: ok they suck
     
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