I think it's unfortunately very true. There's a bunch of interesting concepts in there, but ultimately it's all support stuff and the sectorial is missing a primary driver. It's like playing JSA but with worse melee and worse ranged game or a version of HB where basically everything has an equivalent that is more optimised; Asawira are better than Cranes at a similar points as Wu Ming, Ghulam/Barid are better than Celestial Guards at a similar price, Muyib better than Zhanying and Wildcard, a Farzan or Fiday are better at any job you can assign to your single Ninja, and so on. Single exception I'd say is the Govad vs Bao comparison where I think both are sidelined and Hsien where Yara has more utility but is weaker. In either case what I would like to see; * Hsien, Sforza, and Zhanying wildcard * Taowu and Sun Tze fireteam with CG * Panggoling FTO fireteam with Wu Ming * Ninja and Kunai bumped to AVA 2 * Sun Tze v1 dropped 10 to 15 points, because objectively they missed doing this. Probably won't be enough. * Adil Crane Armour non-LT gain NCO. He's already paying the points. * Wu Ming HRL and HMG gain Tac Aware. As cliché as this is I think it's necessary to make lists with them work. * Su-Jian TacAware on both and Spitfire upped to AP Spitfire. This needs to become a valid TAG equivalent and able to challenge other TAGs. * Bao core, BSG to be Hacker, and a new HMG profile ...but as long as Frenzy and Impetuous keeps being blocked by Fireteams I think this will not be enough to challenge HB other than through some versatility, but it should put ISS on level of JSA
If Sun Tze's profile doesn't change he has to link somewhere with a cheap tinbot, he's unplayable without it (even without the threat of being hacked he's still barely playable profile wise anyway).
Taowu makes him playable, but he's not going to be a good choice without some cold hard cash (aka points) improvements that literally everyone but Qiang and Sun1 got. Same problem as Taowu has in this sectorial, unless he's masking as Sun Tze he just doesn't make believable sense outside a fireteam
I dunno how I feel about spending 85pts of my army on relatively combat ineffective models. Paying 60pts just to get a now nerfed Strategos on the table already hurts enough as it is.
CG Doctor/Paramedic/Enginerd , ASAP. Dakini Special Fireteam (with CG most likely). Sophotect is Overpriced, at least give her Shock Immunity and/or Special Fireteams. Bao Troops need an FO, or Hacker, profile. Seconding Hsien, Sforza and Zhanying Wildcards, add Ashcroft Haris option or Wildcard. CSUs and ABH need "counts as a Bao Troop or CG for Fireteam composition" Wu Ming need a slight cost reduction (they lack cubes and thus no doctor rerolls for them). Sunny T v.2 Haris, Sunny T V.1 Wildcard (or special fireteam) Crane Multi Rifle upgraded to Multi Marksman Rifle, Crane Spitfire Upgraded to AP spitfire. Pheasant Wildcard. Special Fireteam: "The emperor's finest", 1 Hsien, 1 Crane, 1 Pheasant, 2 Zhanyings (or 1 Zhanying 1 Gui Feng Xi Zhuang)
I'm more inclined to ask for nerfs elsewhere instead of turning ISS into a weird Fireteam soup (mostly just murdering any easy elite linking with sub-20pt cheerleaders in a Core). Pheasants not getting Wildcard felt weird to me, though, given their role, and Sun Tze doesn't feel like he offers enough to warrant his big price tag.
Generally speaking I'm inclined to agree. Mainly the Core bonus makes Fireteams in general push the game in a very weird direction, but the problem is that ISS without burst and +3 BS will suck real hard for deploying smoke which is absolutely essential to make the sectorial tick. ISS is the only sectorial I'm currently willing to place in an F-tier and unless CB implements sweeping nerfs more than half of all units, many of which significantly, ISS won't even be treading water. Thing is, I think many sectorials are able to skew enough to punch down at vanilla by using higher AVA on specific super-units and superior MODs from fireteams. I don't feel ISS is in a position where it punches down like that. It primarily consists of units you don't want to take in vanilla and tthe units that you do want to take in vanilla they have been careful to limit to Haris only. The good and bad thing with ISS is that the problems it has are traditional sectorial problems that we've seen before and that the sectorial itself operates as a traditional sectorial - none of the heavily-skewed kind of thing we see in OSS, Kazak, Shas or IA. The kind of problems that gave Asawira and Riot Grrls the maligned Frenzy discount together with hefty upgrades, the kind that spawned Yara Hadad, Nadhir, TOFOS Sergeants, and Kanren (even if the latter is a bit of a wet paper bag), and that has given oh-so-many sectorials a plethora of Wildcards. Basically, they've solved these problems before, what they need to do is decide what ISS are meant to be strong at and then go ham with fixes to that effect*. As far as I can tell from CB's trends, the Fireteam soup is here to stay. It's taken them nearly 6 months to get Army to the stage it is in, where Fireteam notes are routinely messed up every time they make profiles updates. Realistically the best we can hope for is an Imperial Service 4.0 shortly after they've done what's probably going to be Military Orders 3.0 in the themed week. * E.g. at one point they were sold as the surveillance sectorial; what if basically all proper ISS units had one more visor than they currently have? And then have the mercenary elements be the ones dealing with White Noise and Albedo as well as make up the cheap(er) orders with a Core/Haris team that can consist of ABH+CSU+Miranda+Sforza...
Let bao link with celestials, give pheasants wildcard, ans some wu ming profiles TA. Give uns an additional skirmisher with smoke that the kanren can pose as. AP spitfire for su Jian. AP HMG for the hsien. Or kuang shi with smoke grenades to make them really obnoxious
Su Jian getting a new gun isn't going to help it much. The profiles in a vacuum are good right now, but I don't take them because I can't protect them adequately from hacking. Paying the 2pts it costs for a -6 tinbot would drive up their viability far more than sticking AP on a spitfire. Hsien is fine as is it just needs link options that don't feel like they're from early N3.
The Crane and Asawira comparison is an extremely damning one. We pay 10 points more (in the most generous of comparisons) for a trooper that is packing a worse statline and worse equipment in pretty much every way. How the hell is this even a thing? It's not like we're paying for any unique and potent unit interactions on this one, either. By and large, Hassassin nets better fireteams with more nuanced utility, in addition to hitting harder and covering more range bands effectively.
Arguably, it's not quite so bad a comparison when they're not in a Fireteam, but I don't agree with how they seem to have cranked up the Frenzy discount further in N4.
The ridiculously good fireteam options that Asawira get kind of throw even that fringe benefit out the window (because in what world would you actually want a Crane in vanilla as they are?), however. Took just a couple of minutes to throw this mess together ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 ASAWIRA AP Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 39) MUYIB (Minelayer) Rifle, Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust, Viral Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 26) MUYIB Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 24) GHULAM (Doctor [+3]) Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) GHULAM (NCO) Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 15) 3.5 SWC | 119 Points Open in Infinity Army This sort of shit runs train on anything ISS is capable of conceiving. as a sectorial, you're absolutely right in your placement of ISS as F-tier. We give up far more than HB while not even coming close to that utility or firepower at the moment, let alone the ease of putting that all together in a functioning list.
Yeah... but that's true for all Frenzy units, though. Name one Frenzy/Impetuous unit that isn't excessively good in a Haris or larger fireteam. Sure, Asawira partake in Fireteams that they seem to have intentionally tried to avoid make available to ISS.
The point being, what does ISS have in return? You could do the comparison with any actually functionally playable sectorial, and ISS will fall short to similarly frustrating degrees. It's like when they all came to the table to design ISS, CB was more concerned with what ISS shouldn't be able to do, rather than what it was supposed to excel at.
Also, ISS had a niche where it excelled at, camo hunting, thanks to tools like, Marksmanship LX, Sniffer, sensors galore, Intuitivw and Speculative attacks, the KanRen was able to deliver sniffers up the board, disrupting skirmisher lines. However with the changes to N4 ISS isn't in a particularly excellent position to do this, We retain Biometric Visors (dubious piece of equipment tbh considering how impersonation works, really good against Holoechoes though) and Intuitive Attack unnerfed, everything else was nerfed down or downright removed (rip sweet prince sniffer ;_;). Tactical Window butchers ISS's order efficiency and cost mitigation (as good as kuang shi are, we all know you took 8 to bring down costs for heavier troops). And oue defensive stats on heavy units are garbage tier, Bao lack Mimetism, Pheasant too, Zhanying, crane etc you get the idea. Meanwhile Ariadna, Nomads, Haqqislam, OSS, have gotten MI or Pseudo-HI with Mimetism (frontoviks for example, Kriza Boracs full auto and you know the rest) We fork over 50+ points on shooty dudes that can't, wont or shouldn't be taking ARO duties. Lacking proper engineer and doctor support on a sectorial that mostly needs to walk up the board is so stupid I can't for the life of me see this as NOT INTENTIONAL just like weathercock said. Wu Ming are no longer discount HI, they pay a premium for decentish weapons or take cheap weapons meant for skirmishers and Warbands. Again, the Tinbot was their saving grace and a thing that's become loved by all Yu Jing Players, I'm sure these guys could be toned up a bit, their Box is super pretty even nowadays so you'd think it would be in CB's best interests to keep selling the whole ranges of miniatures. ATM I'm not so sure anymore, and you know what incentivices players to buy a seconds or thirds armies for a game? Not feel like their army underperforms because it's not shiny and new, making me ,a client, not want to buy a second army because ISS was my first army and feel like I got Shafted for liking some of the prettiest miniatures in the game...they could fix ISS... But it's not in their plans apparently.... Finally, for an army limited in skirmish, combat jumping and Hacking, I do not feel we make up for it with brute strenght or sly trickery anymore, and definitely not in CC. Which is why I proposed more optimized fireteam options since they obviously want ISS to move up the board instead of infiltrating it or jumping into it. For this gameplan to work as intended ISS needs good Offense, and Decent Defense (ARO capabilities that aren't hamstringing) also, our Mad Traps got nerfed, so...
Arguably, Hassassin doesn't have much to do with ISS at all. There is no "in return" because the starting point is not a transaction from Hassassin to ISS. The problem is that the Service hasn't got an identity to build up from. Unlike IA's N3 problems which were largely systemic due to how heavy infantry worked, I don't think you can pin point anything systemic on ISS' troubles because here it's all about design, just like you write. The core of the sectorial's N3 strength was that it excelled at dealing with light units and that it had more light units than anyone else. The name of the game now is heavy units and ISS stands about as ready to deal with heavy units and cost effective TAGs as they did were ready for the JSA insurrection. Because of this they find that they are outnumbered, outgunned, and outperformed. We're getting into the nitty gritty here but there's stuff I both agree and disagree with. Mainly I would argue Wu Ming never were discount HI. They very much were standard no-frills, no-compromise, HI. You always made a concession playing them barely being able to afford an LT, alternate attack unit and a Doctor/Engineer. What's changed is that no-compromise HI have nearly all got something new to make them exciting and push their advantage - be it increased ARM, increased stats in general, NCO, TacAware profiles, one step higher Tinbots, Frenzy to reduce the price, etc - Wu Ming are unique in that they do not. Even the most basic HI, the Jujak, come with flamers and panzerfausts. You'll also find the same thing among many of the LI and MI in the 20-30 point category; you're rolling straight dice, ignoring no MODs, imposing no MODs, being protected by nothing better than cover. This leaves these units without a decent way of leveraging their abilities while still costing a premium. I don't think Bao necessarily lack Mimetism. Yes, Mimetism solves everything because it introduces a good MOD for a very low cost. In the case of Bao I don't think it's appropriate. Instead I think they need to reconsider how the unit as a whole is built and what it's trying to accomplish in the sectorial. Are they like the fluff dictates a unit who likes kicking in the door and interrogating suspects before they have a chance to spill the beans or are they a ranged support unit? If they're a ranged support unit then maybe it would be appropriate to tone down the WIP and BTS, give them X-visor by default or possibly Marksmanship. If they're meant to be a door-kicker then maybe it would be appropriate to make sure they have an order efficient way of getting close with Wildcard, the means to survive the kicking through Bioimmunity, and possibly a bit of equipment that the player wants to deliver such as MadTraps, Repeaters, Hacking Devices, D-Charges, and a bit of melee ability. Basically: take the current Pheasant profile and replace Chain of Command with MSV and BioV. And speaking of the Pheasant; let's just reconcile with the fact that players don't want to spend this many points on a Chain of Command who has no extra wounds and no MOD-imposing skills. Martial Arts is not a good defence for a Chain of Command and as CB has admitted with the introduction of NCO, the ability to use the LT order does not make the unit naturally a rambo if the unit is also designed to be in a Fireteam and gets kicked out if they use it. Aggressive CoC is not a thing. Now, writing this as someone who owns 9 Kanren so that I can have proper Holoecho units instead of "cardboard cut-outs"; I do think that Holoecho and Forward Deployment just doesn't work, at least not for a melee-oriented unit, and that Impersonation (Imp-2) would be more appropriate for these as well as a rather good direction to take ISS. Extrapolating from Jaan Staar, Kiuutan and Greif, I estimate the price to not change significantly except for the SWC on the Minelayers that'll probably shoot up to 1+ (finally a way of using all that SWC gain profiles) or see the profiles removed (which would be fair enough). --- End of the line is that the stuff that used to work still work the same, but what they struggled with before has become much more important to deal with. The stuff that didn't work well still don't work well for the same old reasons and that's prime hunting grounds for allowing the sectorial to deal with the new meta.
Also for thematic reasons all the madtraps should be swapped to koalas. ISS went full retard with the genocide route in Uprising so packing non lethal perimeter weapons doesn't fit lore wise. Plus space cops is O-12's thing now anyway.
For gameplay reasons I'd prefer to keep Koalas. I find stopping power to be more important than damage potential when it comes to autonomous weapons.
Jokes aside I actually prefer Koalas now. Alot of the nastier things that run at you these days can shrug their way out of a Madtrap on like 8-11s, unless you can contest that dodge to make it fail it's actually not that reliable at ending an incoming threat so I'd rather just threaten to deal a wound. N3 an Avatar/HI would think twice about invading a Madtraps space. N4? It doesn't give a shit. So if we're not going to scare big scary stuff away I'd rather it just threaten to kill the 1W shit or at least take a wound off a Knight or something.
I dunno, TAGs other than Blue Wolf dodges on 11 which makes dodging out of IMM-A a roll of 5 or lower which is terrible odds. My reasoning for not liking Crazies is that it's only a DAM 15 Shock attack and most things you find roaming around the tables right now will either laugh at how easy the Dodge is since the Dodge is on unmodified PH or laugh at how unlikely a single DAM 15 hit is to do serious damage. The potential to do some real serious damage to the order pool with MadTraps is very high not to mention that finishing off something caught by a trap is a lot safer for a unit like Kanren.
