Tohaa clear Winners and losers

IMO Gao Tarsos is fine for having 2 wounds, comparable to the Fraacta in OCF but with the profiles flipped, might should drop a point but not terrible. Kind of going to miss the HMG profile, but the Spitfire is just much better range-bands for an AD troop.

The Longarms are a pretty good contender for Loser, as even though they got a LOT of buffs with the transition to N4, A: The fireteam buffs are only applicable to Spiral, not Tohaa and B: even then they're still not really worth it.

Really excited to try out the Taquel though; having Endgame available natively is *chef's kiss*.

 

There's no 'at the moment'. Most Warbands lost Stealth, and that includes Makauls.

 

Taqeul is a win, the loss of bugs is a shame though, truly.

Makauls are an easy win, don't expect them to get stealth back based on other warbands. Free contender certainly doesn't hurt, especially with how much damage I've had then do with just the pistols.

Gorgos, along with the other multi-wound symbiont armour benefits greatly from the loss of fire as a concept. Point decrease and a better pilot are also good, however the inability to repair him (doubled by the loss of revitalis) and the loss of nulifers as hacking protection doesn't leave me too too excited about him. That said we severely lack armour cracking ability so his ap spitfire is a big deal.

Kamaels are really really lame still.

Ectros getting so minimally cheaper/not at all feels weird, compared to the discount Neema got.

We also won a lot of deployable repeaters, I'd like to ship them to my Aleph if possible.

 

There are some really weird viral rifle costings, where it seems cheaper on some models than others for no reason I can discern. Maybe the rasail just gets them cheaper for no reason?

 

The Igao's CC changes are a wash, or potentially even a net loss. His CC went up by one, and his PH went up by one, but:

• most midcost units in the game got CC increases of 1-3.
• The Igao had MA3 before (when combined with his iKohl), which put him a step above MA2 and MA1 units. Now anything that has MA2 can compete with him pretty closely.

I'm planning on doing a writeup on the changes to CC dynamics in the game at some point in the next week or two, but the short version of it is "anything that had MA3 got a lot worse, anything that had MA2 got a lot better, and all CC pieces that rely on Surprise Attack got a lot worse because the Surprise Attack got a lot worse"

With the addition of the contender, I feel like there was a net gain for the Makaul, but not really that much of one? How often will you opt to use the contender over Eclipse Smoke?



In my opinion:

Taqeul is a huge win, it's Triadable and has unlimited Endgame. I'm a little sad that Symbiobugs didn't get reworked into a "Targeted" Pheroware, but my only real complaint is that the profiles are in weird order on mobile.

Gorgos is the other big win. 11-12 points cheaper, buffs to the "pilot" (BS +1 and the pilot now keeps the whole loadout of the Gorgos), and a SWC reduction. Both peripherals also got buffed, swapping Stun Grenades for E/M on the LSG profile, and picking them up for free on the Pulzar profile. The army also has a bit better support for protecting the Gorgos from hacking with a couple repeaters floating around now.

I don't think I have a third one. Sakiels are a point cheaper across the board and picked up E/M Grenades on all of the non-SWC profiles, replacing their Nimbus Grenades and Nullifier, so that's nice I guess? Nimbus Plus was cool but E/M Grenades are probably more widely applicable.

 

On the other hand, an increase in CC on a trooper with CC over 20 is worth exponentially more than an increase that's lower than 20 due to crits and stats over 20 rule.

Their "I-kohl" now works against STR too.

 

I don't know if I would go as far as "exponential" -- it's definitely better, but we're just talking about an extra 5% chance to force an additional save, since the 5% chance we gain to hit is mostly cancelled (or more than lost) due to higher game-wide CC values.

"iKohl" against structure is nice, but fairly niche in application -- Electric Pulses are mostly PARA CCW(-3) now. Electric pulse was equivalent to CC17, and most REMs with PARA CCWs have CC of 13 or less, so that's a net loss for them (even moreso because they can't cancel mods to CC/PH now).

So I guess the big bonus is that we can tie up TAGs better? What other units with STR are we really going to feel that change on?

 

It's not a 5% increase to hit, it's increasing your minimum roll as well as increasing your chance to auto-win the F2F roll.

 

In the general case, I don't think it does. For every time you hit that new 5% gap and auto-win, your opponent will hit their new 5-10% where they would have lost the f2f roll before, but get to stay in it now. I feel like I'm having trouble expressing this clearly.

Let's say before you were CC26 (critting on 14), and now you're CC27 (critting on 13). Your minimum roll is 8 (7+1). Your opponent is a CC18 model who used to be CC16 (there's a ton of these). There's a 50% chance you roll between 8 and 18. Your opponent also has a 10% chance now to roll a 17 or 18 now, CC values that normally would mean they get hit by you (because you cannot possibly fail), but now can potentially cancel your roll between 8 and 16-17. That's 10% of 50% of cases, so their CC buff of 2 completely takes away the benefit of that extra point of CC in 50% of the cases where it comes into play (so 5% of the time, they're winning where they weren't before, and 5% of the time, you're winning where you weren't before -- these even out). Is that more clear? Ultimately, this is the rough equivalent to just shifting the window of crit ranges by one.

And as I looked back, this case doesn't actually apply directly to the Makaul because I had N3 levels of MA screwed up in my brain. The Makaul wasn't applying any positive mods to its own CC before (it was applying a -6 to the opponent), but is now, so it's a gain of +4 to CC in most rolls for the Makaul. This is big enough to be a net gain in CC in the huge majority of cases (some exceptions for Para CCW, and other units that got more significant CC buffs.)

 

Exactly, its not just an extra 5% chance to hit, but at least an extra 5% chance of winning the F2F roll, a significant difference!

 

But you don't, because for every one time you're winning the F2F roll with your new crit, you're losing the f2f because you rolled below your opponent, and your opponent rolled in a range where they would have originally failed but now beat you.

Edit: This is a low burst situation, so we can actually model every possibility and show the change. Give me a moment.

 

Ran it through Ghostlords real quick, though it's using N3 crits and there's no option to turn off damage:

CC 26 Igao vs. CC 16 Igao (no other mods): 77.56% vs. 11.15%
CC 27 Igao vs. CC 18 Igao (no other mods): 75.95% vs. 12.87%
A third situation, where both models got +1:
CC 27 Igao vs. CC 17 Igao (no other mods): 78.15% vs. 10.90%

In conclusion, that extra chance to crit and auto-win does (very slightly) make a model that already has 20+ CC benefit more from +1 than a model with <20 CC. It's a small extra benefit, but it's there.

EDIT: Also the +2 Damage from MA3 is actually pretty significant; going from DAM 13 DA to DAM 15 DA+Shock is a big upgrade; from testing on a brawler, it went from an 80.94% to wound (35.56% to kill) vs. 3.64% chance to a 85.24% to kill vs. 4.08% chance.

Sure, you get wounded .44% of the time more, but you push the damage through the armor
roughly 5% of the time more while more than doubling the chance to kill thanks to Shock.

EDIT2: Forgot Brawlers got +3 CC, not +2. Fixed math.

 

I just mapped out all 400 possibilities for this roll to show it, and it takes out DAM as a confounding factor.

CC16 vs. CC26
CC 16 wins by roll in 36 cases, wins by crit in 13 cases = 47 / 400
CC26 wins by roll in 202 cases, wins by crit in 133 cases = 335 / 400
Bounce in 16 cases

CC18 vs. CC27
CC16 wins by roll in 45 cases, wins by crit in 12 cases = 57 / 400
CC27 wins by roll in 173 cases, wins by crit in 152 = 325 / 400
Bounce in 18 cases

Do you see what I mean now? The number of cases where the higher CC model wins actually fell by about 2.5%, but the percentage of total cases where it wins by a crit increases by 19 / 400, a little less than 5%.

So you don't actually have a 5% higher chance to hit -- your chance to hit actually falls in this case. You do have a much higher chance to crit though, and that will make a difference.

 

That’s also what my data showed, if you read it. +2 CC beats the +1, but +1 on a model already over 20 beats +1 on a model that hasn’t hit 20 yet due to the very slight bump in crit. So yes, the Igao did indeed get slightly worse at the FtF roll against models with W.

Even then, the differences are small enough to be negligible. Losing 1/40 fights isn’t going to change any game plans, and the damage boost more than make up for the lost FtF rolls.

 

Yeah, and that's where I was wrong -- the Makaul didn't just get a +1 to CC, he got +4 to CC from the change in MA2 (I swear Makauls had MA3 before, but I was probably confusing them with the Igao), and he's inflicting the same negative mods that he was before. That's a net win. A lot of other CC specialists (especially those with MA3) did not make it out so well.

 

Yeah Makaul went from great to REALLY great and even picked up a nice ARO gun should the fancy strike them. Or if you need Anti-Materiel. Makes the DA CCW option slightly less attractive, probably?

So very, very excited to try out Taquels now. I do wonder where Symbiobugs will return though, as unlike the Pheroware, Mates, and Bombs the Bugs are listed in the Core rule book, not the Annex, so you’d think they’d be SOMEWHERE.

 

What do you think the use case is for the Contender over tossing Eclipse (w/ better odds) and making them come towards you?

 

Short version - everything got better, except for stuff that was outclassed in-faction already, and the best stuff often got the most betterer. On the other hand, the new meta is not necessarily playing to our strengths.

Winners:
-Igao: I hear that Mirrorball works essentially like Eclipse Smoke, if thats true this guy is a fucking nutjob. I never noticed it in Spiral because I didn't re-read the Mirrorball rules. If its not true, and still just blocks MSV2, I go back to not caring about the profile and in fact finding it worse due to the MA2/MA3 shift and upscaling of everyone's CC.
-Makaul: MA2 is good, +1 CC, CC-3 working vs TAGs and Contender vs loss of Stealth. Already been covered, overall best unit in the faction got even better, and vitally got better at hitting TAGs with a poisonous stick
-Taquel: Went from a pretty shitty guy that I sometimes tried to make work, to a powerful suite of options with good LT and CoC capabilities.
-Ectros: The LT+1 Order options need an outlet, and until they change LT to work in a link team or something that Ectros is where its at. Also, all Ectros upgraded to Pulzars which is sweet.
-Sakiel: Price reduction and EM grenades across the board, makes the cheap Paramedic triad really good and the LT less costly.
-Diplomat: Best warcor in the game got wildly better and might actually survive the transition to Tactical Window.
-Neema: Cheaper, better at CC, meta shifts upvaluing the breaker combi loadout
-Jaan Staar: The two reserves option for first turn player along with symbio- allocation changes on the Kaeltar allows you to run this guy with a symbiobomb and a symbiomate, plus he has B2 viral pistol CC now
-Kerail: I'm pretty sure they did not have CC-3 before, but even if they did, it now works on their primary target: TAGs.
-Gao Rael Spitfire: 4-4 MOV makes this guy no longer a boat anchor for your triad
-Kamael Hacker: In theory this could be a good thing to have? I dunno, been playing largely hackerless for years don't even know what to do with him.
-Sukuel Commandos: Meta shifts turn this guy from an an autoinclude (with HMG) to autoinclude (HMG profile + one of the anti-ARM profiles)
-Hatail Aelis Keesan: Always been on the fence with this, but getting access to another hacker and to dep.repeaters plus the meta shift that will favor the K1 combi helps sell this expensive 1 W model.
-Gorgos: A price cut and a cheap, co-ordinate order profile along with EM grenades on the peripherals pushes this from a meme to a legitimate if B-grade TAG. Feels a lot like Scarface in that it kind of wants to run forward and wrecking ball stuff. Such a good platform for the EM grenade IMO
-Gao Tarsos: Got more expensive? The HMG to Spitfire is a straight upgrade IMO, HMG AD has not been good since 2nd Edition!
-Nikaul: MSV1 scaled up big time especially against Ariadna

Losers
-The faction: New TAG and ARM and Hacking centered meta is not a strong area for Tohaa, and we were one of the better 16+ order factions too. We either need to force K1 Sukuel or some such, or rely entirely on our CC which can do the job but sometimes requires an opening which we may not be able to get. Will be interesting to see how the faction adapts to this new style of play.
-Things that had nullifiers: Losing this tech for a deployable repeater for our crappy Kamael or the Killer Hacker character is downgrade in my book.
-Ectros: Neema is still the cheaper and better Ectros, but now by even more due to better CC and a cost reduction.
-Kiiutan: Already outclassed by Jaan, this thing just does not exist any more after the buffs for Jaan. I don't care that it can do the same trick with the Kaeltar, just delete it from your mind.
-Gao Rael Sniper: A points hike for a speed boost he won't use. Still an autoinclude.

Its more complex than that, because most profiles gained some CC and many gained quite a bit (3-5 CC), so in some ways the reliability of CC as a whole has gone down due to a reduction in the stat difference between them and many of their targets.\\

 

Trying to kill them. Like stopping an objective run. Or if they only have a shotgun and you catch them outside 8”.

It’s absolutely going to be very niche and I don’t foresee using it very often, but hey. It’s there!

... I’m pretty convinced the only reason it’s there is to avoid the formula from dropping them to 12 points.