Not really, a riot girl ML or the new-and-already-dreaded BS19 sniper from tunguska/NCA makes it way too dicey for the hsien. ISS best option for those is coordinated orders with high damage weapons and/or akrylat BH.
Missile launcher you can't just smoke-and-forget. BS16 B2 missile launchers are no joke, better avoid the f2f if possible.
Depends. What's your definition of "reliably"? Even with if you spend the points on a Haris link the Hsien clocks in at under 50% on the F2F contest. About a 44-25% contest vs Kamau-like models.
Not that great and "reliable" was indeed misleading there, but that's what we've got in terms brute force options.
Sadly the Hsien Haris actually got worse at this in N4, as the Zhanying lost the ability to plug Saturation zones down where you needed them which helped swing the odds in the Hsien's favour. Why CB decided that Nimbus grenades were too complex and "nobody used them" along with Stun Grenades I'll never understand beyond assuming the playtest group has no fucking idea what they're doing. They removed two tactically viable grenades from the game but left fucking deactivators in the game? Talk about useless shit, they even nerfed the deactivators before leaving them in so it's not like they're an oversight their inclusion was deliberate.
They seem to love their ARO supremacy pieces. Atalanta, Karhu, Grenzers and Bolt snipers are yet another step in that direction, even after the meta defining mess that the Kamau turned out to be in N3. I'm really hoping they have some changes for fire teams in the pipeline.
Atalanta is less egregious than the rest of the list. She lacks sixth sense so she's vulnerable to Albedo/White Noise counter plays as well as Surprise Shot to bring her numbers down. That said I agree fire teams need to be looked at, hopefully there are plans to change them in the pipeline.
Not a fair comparison; Zuyong aren't in ISS. I'm not being dismissive of your point, Zuyong would be the objectively better haris, obviously. But IA struggles to hit 15 regular orders so it has to supplement its order pool with TacAware and LT2 powered NCOs. This is not an issue with ISS. I have never struggled to fit a full core and haris into ISS, nor have I ever really felt the lack of TA or NCOs. My main issues with ISS is the uncharacteristic need to be subversive around TAGs, but I think it's necessary to get ISS to play an honest game. Also I think the Hsien haris is a waste. He's already a great shooter, and I don't think Zhanying bring enough to the haris to justify their cost over a Devakini or Wu Ming haris. Paradoxically, I think they work great in a Wu link, where their load outs make more sense to support a pain train who intends to hold an armory or something.
That's not an equivalent, though, that's an advantage for IA. I find that every order able to be spent on a primary unit in the primary group is worth two in the secondary group, to put an arbitrary value on it. If Hsien needs to brute force a target you need the Haris. It's most likely better to use a buffed Dakini, though, because the Dakini is easier to repair and has similar performance versus non-Mimetic targets. I find Hsien is better at bullying targets that can't shoot back properly, either because of range advantage or smoke advantage, or simply because they've got a weak gun and is in the reactive turn. During N3 I've had good fortunes running the Hsien Haris, I foung the Hsien to be better at pushing the Zhanying toolbox up table than the Wu Ming core because the Hsien haris not only got cover from the Celestial Smoker core, but also synergised well with it. During that time I also felt that a solo Celestial Smoker was an absolute order hog for a simple support piece, effective BS 14 on a non-impetuous B1 unit simply isn't very good and that's down to effective BS 11 now.
It's plenty fair as a comparison given that I'm saying that Wu Ming are behind the power curve and badly in need of an update, they both exist for Vanilla to pick between after all. You claimed they are cheap, I pointed out they were cheap, past tense. They haven't been considered cheap for a long time. The fact is the Wu Ming look like overcosted garbage when you line them up against the Zuyong. This: 2 WÚ MÍNG Heavy Machine Gun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 37) WÚ MÍNG Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31) 1.5 SWC | 68 Points Should not cost the same as this: 2 2 ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Heavy Machine Gun / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (1.5 | 37) ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Combi Rifle ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (0 | 31) 1.5 SWC | 68 Points Open in Infinity Army The Wu Ming are objectively inferior. There is no way their outdated 4-4 move value and their statline match up the 6-2 Zuyong who pay 3 points each for TacAw and 1 point each for Number 2. Think about that. Wu Ming pay an extra 4 points each for the privilege of having +1 ARM and +1 PH and for their troubles wind up with half the number of orders the Zuyong offer and an inferior movement stat and lose number 2. That's fucked. They're not as you were claiming a cheap but valuable unit, for what they actually offer in N4 they're suspiciously expensive. In N4 Cheap disposable HI look like Domaru and Tanko and cost 20 points or less, or look like Evaders which have a bonus manual discount stacked upon a pseudo NWI HI discount as well. Wu Ming are fucking expensive for what they try to offer, they cost as much as ORCs and have shittier BS, Move, and PH on top of inflexible expensive link options. As Mahtamori pointed out, that's not a drawback, that's an advantage. There's no benefit to splitting your orders between 2 groups if you have the option to stick them all in 1, you're at an advantage if you take the same number of orders and cram them into 1 group versus the guy who has to split them between 2 groups. Why do you think nobody in their sane mind would split a 10 order group into 2 groups of 5? Also IA actually doesn't have much trouble hitting 15 units. I regularly have that many if I want it. Zhanshi core plus Zuyong haris is pretty simple to facilitate it. I mean shit you can do Zuyong Core and a Haris if you really want to spam the HI, even though I think Shang Ji-sus with the Zhanshi core is probably a much better list to build around. GROUP 1 10 3 ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Heavy Machine Gun / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (1.5 | 37) ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Combi Rifle ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (0 | 31) SON-BAE Yaókòng Missile Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 16) HǍIDÀO Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 21) HǍIDÀO (Chain of Command) Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 26) KOKRAM FTO MULTI Rifle(+1 Dam), Chain-colt, D-Charges / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 36) ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Combi Rifle ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (0 | 31) HǍIDÀO (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun ( ) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 24) DĀOYĪNG (Lieutenant [+1 Order]) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22) PANGGULING (Deactivator, Repeater) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 8) GROUP 2 5 PANGGULING (Deactivator, Repeater) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 8) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) Zhanshi YĪSHĒNG Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) 3 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army I can very easily take the following as a base of a list and fill it out to 15 models, and I've still got 2 TacAw, NCO and LT2. GROUP 1 9 2 ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI (Paramedic) Combi Rifle ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11) SHÀNG JÍ (Tactical Awareness) AP Heavy Machine Gun, Chain-colt ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49) ZÚYǑNG (Tactical Awareness) Heavy Machine Gun / CC Weapon, Breaker Pistol(+1B). (1.5 | 37) KOKRAM FTO MULTI Rifle(+1 Dam), Chain-colt, D-Charges / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 36) HǍIDÀO (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun ( ) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 24) DĀOYĪNG (Lieutenant [+1 Order], Hacker, Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun ( ) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 30) GROUP 2 3 CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) PANGGULING (Deactivator, Repeater) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 8) 3 SWC | 244 Points Open in Infinity Army If you think IA can't comfortably do 15 units producing 17-19 orders frankly you just haven't really looked at your options.
Arguably, unless you're facing a Combined player with Sepsitor in their list, the lack of a Cube is actually a disadvantage on expensive troops and one that's bitten me in the arse more often than a lack of Courage has. Another discussion point on that axis is when comparing to Orcs who seem to work decently in sectorials where they are consistently Wildcards and have more exotic profiles with Stealth, terrain skills, or mobility skills. 37 points of Orc HMG vs 37 points of Wu Ming HMG has the Wu Ming lose 1 BS, 1 PH, Cube, and 6-2 MOV while gaining 1 WIP, 2 CC, and +1" Dodge. While CB seems to somewhat move towards the touchy-feely points of other games that tend to generate play experiences that suffer when you deviate from the lists intended by the testing teams; I think the comparison is still valid if you consider the circumstances; Orcs aren't well received solo, either. Now, first off, the points formula actually checks out between Orc and Wu Ming; Orcs just get better stats for their points. Same with comparison to Zuyong, unfortunately ARM didn't get less expensive in N4 it seems, the base cost of unit with lots of it got lowered. So let's instead focus on whether Wu Ming actually work well in context of sectorial and what can be learned by Orcs. In my opinion Wu Ming don't work very well in either ISS or Ikari. They're simply too Milquetoast to demand most of your list's resources, similar to Orcs. Orcs got solved, at least in part, by being Wildcards and I think that approach may very well work with Wu Ming as well; both thematically and mechanically. Do note that ISS seem to have a clear division of Agents, Penal and External forces. Wu Ming are part of the Penal elements and as such it makes little sense for them thematically to Wildcard into the External forces "Here's a guy sentenced to Service Until Death for war crimes, friend Aleph, you make sure he doesn't go on a murdering rampage of the innocent civilians while on this mission" or worse yet "Hello, mercenary, we've assigned you number 41103 who lost his name because of... ah, burning down an orphanage. He's going to show you the ropes around here". Chucking the Wu Ming into a Zhanying Core would make sense, though. Same with Celestial Guards (from whom it's not unlikely given their background that the Wu Ming served when they committed their crimes) - though it does raise the question of "why the hell does a unit drafted from veterans from other regiments have barely better stats than a Zhanshi and why are war criminals better equipped than the semi-elite forces dedicated to guarding politically sensitive locations?". Oh well. Like I wrote in my original post beneath the quips and sardonic sarcasm; the problem with ISS as I see it is the sectorial design rather than the specific units. For Wu Ming I don't think the design of them being a core unit works, but their gear is sufficiently diverse that they might work as single elements to complement a mixed Fireteam of mostly Celestial Guard or mostly Zhanying.
Yeah I know it's a bit of a cop out but unfortunately that's the reality of N4, a big part of sectorial and trooper viability is how good/flexible their link options are. The more options you give for a trooper to either move closer towards receiving the optimal support in a fire team or being the optimal support in a fire team the more viable they are as a competitive option. Just look at the the state of Zhanshi fire teams. For whatever stupid reasons IA has better support wildcard options for their Zhanshi links so White Banner's Zhanshi links are far inferior. Until CB shakes up fire team rules we're stuck with that reality unfortunately.
That may not solve the design problem of the ISS but can we have riotstopper please? It would add so much to the Fluff of the faction. Sometimes even bad cops want to capture their victims alive, so they can kill them later. I know ISS has mad traps, but riotstopper would reinforce the theme.
