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What i would do with Imperial Service if i were CB

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Fed4ykin, Sep 8, 2021.

  1. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, maybe I was unclear.

    If you can't weight winning the dice roll you need to not crumple.

    Shang-Ji do that really well by being high armour, having two wounds, and usually having a paramedic with them in case they do go down anyway.

    Zhanying crumple easily, sometimes straight to dead, AND don't stack or negate dice mods. You can stick a Wu Ming in to be a budget Shang-Ji, but you're paying a ton more points for the troopers to back them up and you probably still don't have a paramedic or doctor nearby in ISS because neither the agents nor the Wu Ming can be those things.

    So you have a tough time winning a fair fight and you can't easily make it an unfair one; that's basically the crux of the ISS problem as I see it.
     
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  2. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    All true. One of the reason I'd like Bao to be a core again or up to one wilcard.

    This not a great core but better than some. If at least the BSG could be a FO or KHD, it would be. But we don't.

    BÀO TROOP MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 29)
    BÀO TROOP Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22)
    BÀO TROOP Combi Rifle, Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 24)
    XI ZHUANG Combi Rifle, Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse, Madtraps / Pistol, CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 21)
    ADIL (Specialist Operative, Veteran) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 32)
     
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  3. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    Being able to take one Bao in a Celestial Guard linkteam would also be pretty sweet.

    I don't feel like a BS12 MSV2 sniper core linked would be that OP given what some other sectorials are rocking, but I'd be a lot more tempted to field a Celestial Guard linkteam if they could field one in there with them, doubly so if they get paramedic or (even better, though I think it is still unlikely) doctor.

    It might be just enough to let them encourage people to keep their heads down if you are going first without making ISS feel like it is stepping on the toes of the sectorials that should be better at winning straight up gunfights.
     
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  4. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    If Varuna can get this kind of BS.

    KAMAU (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32)
    FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 10)
    FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 10)
    FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 10)
    FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 10)

    1.5 SWC | 72 Points

    We should get this that costs more and not nearly as good. (Though I will say if they kept the +3 Discover, it would be over the top)

    BÀO TROOP MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 29)
    CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
    CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
    CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
    CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)

    1.5 SWC | 81 Points
     
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  5. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    Eh, the Kamau gets Shock Immune, Mimetism and an extra point of BS. I reckon keeping the Discover +3 instead whilst still costing more would be pretty fine, comparatively speaking.

    But I'm not a game designer, so whilst I don't think it'd push ISS into suddenly being top tier I may well be wrong.
     
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  6. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    When it's the SWC weapons in the Core, I do pay attention to whether they're shock immune or not, 'cause it's a lot of investment when the base unit is over 20 points. I care a lot less for units like Adil being vulnerable to shock since they won't be taking shots if I can help it. And yes, I do tend to make sure to run a doctor when running a wound-rich core. Doctors have been very valuable in sectorials for me the past couple of years.
     
  7. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    You also don't always have to shoot your way out of your DZ every turn to start getting stuff done. It can feel like that sometimes, but it's probably a sign you haven't built enough versatility into your list.

    • A Su Jian can cautious move 8", and a couple of those can easily get you into a happy attacking position. I think you can also cautious move in and out of a repeater zone without triggering an ARO, which is an interesting quirk of the rules. (As an aside, unless you're stealthy you can't cautious move into ZoC, which is a good reason why the Su Jian mobility form probably shouldn't be given stealth...)
    • A Garuda can drop in and start chipping away at weaker link members...
    • A Kunai or Ninja can use hidden deployment and token state to get into a useful position.
    • A Lu Duan or Kanren can book it towards the enemy with holoechoes and bait them into holding, then close the distance.
    • Smoke can often let you move a few things around, as long as you're not staring down MSV. Granted, this got much worse for us.
    • In N4, you can often move then dodge to clear an ARO lane in the resolution phase without triggering an ARO. This is huge, and one of the things only just clicking for me. A Su Jian can often move 8-4 safely, with the last 4" being a safe way to bunny hop an ARO lane. A hsien can move 6-3". With a combination of longer cautious moves and ARO proof dodges, you can make it across a table much quicker and ignore more AROs than you could last edition.
    Just some food for thought... try not to hit Pan O shooters head-on. Hit them with a burst 3 heavy shotgun up close!
     
  8. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    I take doctors too but not ones that cost 31pts! I used to take the Sophotech but found it was worthless as a doctor. I used it's speed mainly for getting to buttons, D-Charges, or fixing Rui Shi.

    TBH I was trying to make a point earlier that we are no longer limited to only 1 Zhanying. I probably wouldn't have actually used that team either.
    I'd probably do something like this.

    WÚ MÍNG Heavy Machine Gun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 37)
    WÚ MÍNG Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31)
    ZHÀNYING (Hacker, Hacking Device) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0.5 | 25)
    ZHÀNYING (Sensor, Triangulated Fire, Minelayer) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, Madtraps / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 23)
    XI ZHUANG Combi Rifle, Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse, Madtraps / Pistol, CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 21)

    2 SWC | 137 Points
     
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  9. SpectralOwl

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    OK, I'll have a try. My main is NCA but I started with YJ in N3, and ISS has a lot of the same problems NCA does; reliance on Hackables without competitive Hacking, relatively poor midfield and scoring choices, high cost-per-unit. Unlike NCA, ISS can't shoot its way out of a paper bag, with firepower topping out at a horribly expensive Wu Ming HMG in Core or Hsien in Haris. Here's what I'd do for fixes:

    Bao: The big one. Expensive infantry that start in the DZ but have close-range weapons need a big payoff for moving them, especially in links and in light of how common Templates are now. Given this, Bao get a new skill: Quickdraw. It would let them evade Templates when declaring BS Attacks against the template's source, as though the BS Attack were a Dodge. Kinda ridiculous, but Bao need a Bolt-tier rework to be good anyway, so why not make them the oppressors they were meant to be, specialised in killing poor Warbands and Skirmishers?

    Pheasant: These suffer from being a backline support unit without a way to put their expensive CC skills to use, being both more expensive and more vulnerable than Bao. I actually think these should be upped to 6-2, alongside Cranes, changed to MI with some fluff junk about cyberlegs, and given C+ to both give them a nice rooftop role and bloat cost a little more- their real enabler is going to be Smoke, and ISS needs more Smoke. They could also survive a shift to Wildcard; it's not like you're taking them to cheapen or strengthen a link, they're in the link to save spots for Order generators.

    Zhanying: Good as they are, filling a nice premium LI slot with lots of versatility. They could have more though, and as part of a faction that needs to fight its way out of the DZ without top-tier shooting, and as a unit that once had Nimbus Grenades... Eclipse Smoke.

    Wu Ming: I actually quite like these guys, with their mix of line HI stats and bargain-bin weapons, but they need to lose some cost to fill their role as close-in linebreakers instead of just being the only quality HMG outside a Hsien. They ought to get the NWI/Shock Immunity treatment; more valuable troops in IA have to live with it. The MULTI Rifle/GL can also benefit from the fix for...

    Celestial Guards: FIX THE GRENADE LAUNCHER RANGEBANDS!!!

    Beyond that, upping Chaiyi AVA to make all the costly Agents affordable, more widely-accessible Smoke and at least one amped-up KHD to stop Nomads from being able to just blob all over the battlefield, ISS should be in a fair, if not exceptional place. Fixing Sun Tze would be a nice bonus, for sure, but I honestly don't know how to.
     
  10. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    Kuang Shi peripheral was an idea I had with the Jingwei that I still stand by for imperial agents. It's a controversial position, but moving them from full order battery units to peripherals available to select unlinked agent profiles would allow ISS to move beyond the conceptual compromises that only serve to weigh down its design space, and would allow Kuang Shi to be used more sacrificially as intended in the fluff without compromising your (now limited) order pool. Cranes, Pheasants, Zhanying, and Celestial Guard all gaining a peripheral (or peripheral x2 profile depending on the trooper) would open up some interesting gameplay opportunities.

    As for individual units, most of these I would consider either with or without changing Kuang Shi in such a fashion:

    Hsien: The HMG Hsien is a conventionally strong trooper that would be too good with broadened fireteam access, yet doesn't gain much in exchange for the relatively enormous cost of putting him in a Zhanying link. Remove fireteam access from the HMG profile entirely. Instead, turn all other profiles into FTO wildcards. Every non-HMG Hsien profile is loaded with lots of cool functionality that really wants to see it set up in a fireteam to push up the midfield, but the Zhanying haris alone is too limiting.

    Crane: MR Profile gains smoke grenades (#vapecrane2021). With the maiming done to the grenade launcher, ISS needs a viable form of smoke. Spitfire profile becomes Breaker Spitfire. 6-2 MOV. PH14 would also not be out of line, they're in the same armour as the Shang Ji, after all. Sensor on all profiles. Consider cost adjustments (there is no world where an Asawira should cost over 10 points less considering how much ridiculously better it is. Even disregarding the Frenzy discount, the Crane is massively overpaying here). These guys should compete with the Asawira and Knight of Justice, which they really don't right now.

    Adil Mehmut (Crane): 6-2 MOV, 14 WIP, gains Para CCW. Considering his actions in Betrayal, a Kuang Shi peripheral profile would be a natural fit. Additionally, Berserk and Marksmanship wouldn't hurt (dude took a mono-blade to the hand in a trade against a speculo with only a little flinching and can shoot down a helicopter through its missile tube with a rifle while in a moving vehicle, how is he not BS Infinity?), but would probably inflate his cost too much.

    Zhanying: Bring back eclipse. Otherwise, not great, but they can bring some cool functionality to the table. In general, if more weird and cool stuff can be given to them, I'm all for it. Wildcard may be appropriate here (for agents in general, wildcard just feels like it makes sense for the sectorial).

    Pheasant: Wildcard.

    Kuang Shi: Peripheral idea or not, biolocators were cool, and ISS would actually be in a position to be pretty funky with them in N4, I want those back. They weren't even that complicated. If you want to get around the whole classified doctor/medic issue, just have move them straight to dead and replace them with a repeater entirely. Problem solved.

    Wu Ming: Changing them to NWI+SI to shave off a few points wouldn't hurt here, but the above listed changes would probably be enough to help with most of these guys' problems once they start joining Wu Ming fireteams. That said, going through with removing Kuang Shi as order batteries may necessitate such cost reductions in order to clean up the rest of the sectorial.
    As a whole, Wu Ming represent troopers with bad track records but with skillsets too valuable to simply liquidate. With that in mind, as with the Zhanying, I'm all aboard piling more weird stuff profiles on them too, which would also serve to differentiate them further from YJ's glut of basic HI as a whole. A funky engineer profile would fit in with the new theme of YJ getting a slew of really badass combat engineers. And being Wu Ming, you could get really weird with it.

    Bao Troopers: CB got the Bao right when they redesigned them and gave them to O-12 as Bluecoats. Just take that base, add some flagrant disregard to human life, and return them to ISS. Oh, and for flavour's sake, let them fireteam as a haris or core, but only if an Agent is present.

    Sun Tze (1 and 2): I really don't know. He's in a rough patch for sure right now. Fireteam access might help a bit, but it won't fix the foundational issues here.

    Everything else is mostly fine. I do like the mention of Taowu getting fireteam options, but I wouldn't consider it necessary (although it would be necessary for me to ever put his gorgeous model on the table).

    Oh, and Justice for Jingwei. Duh.
     
    #30 Weathercock, Sep 10, 2021
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2021
  11. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Sophotect feels like a gun held to my head when it comes to list building. It's way too expensive when the goal is maintaining premium infantry, so I tend to go with Dakini Haris, the only other Medikit in ISS, which means I get enough REMs that the Sophotect's Engineer side gets useful... Even at 34 points, Sophotect is better than running naked.

    Anyway. This all would change drastically if Celestial Guards got a Paramedic profile or if ISS got a merc doctor more focused on being an actual doctor, like Dactyls or something.´

    Mainly he's just terribly expensive, strategos on an LT with just 1 order is obsolete in Yu Jing, and the corrections to Total Immunity hit him hard when he was already struggling to be relevant in N3.

    Improving the LT skill to provide +1 order is almost necessary for his skill set to be relevant - in the context of ISS and Yu Jing. Cheap skills that would synergise well are Bioimmunity and Veteran or simply give him a discount to encourage his use, now that CB has started doing that...
     
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  12. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    An interesting fix for him might be to stick Holomask on him and make him an ISS wildcard. Whilst your opponent would know you have him due to Strategos, you could do some interesting things with exactly where you are hiding him and it would play into the 'warfare is won by knowing your opponent' theme.
     
    #32 Kai Wren, Sep 10, 2021
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2021
  13. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Hmm... Lieutenant+6 would be an interesting and unique ability.
     
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  14. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    I'd definitely test out the 51 pt sniper version if it got Lieutenant +6 - just for some of those missions where securing whether you go first or second is a massive advantage.

    I'm still not sure I'd be able to keep him alive and he's still 1/6th of your points likely struggling to have much impact on the game after that first roll... but that first roll might be enough to be worth it some of the time.
     
  15. SpectralOwl

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    I'd personally go for winning both Initiative and Deployment automatically- but only on Sun Tze 1 as he is now and with no further buffs to ISS as a whole. One hell of an early strategic advantage, at the cost of playing ~50pts down on your opponent with last edition's leftovers.
     
  16. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Kinda funny, but with the new stats and ability spread on Sun2, I was excited to play the MRifle profile... turns out that removing it was one of the changes.

    I think that you won't have as much problems keeping Sun2 alive as you'd think. It's still the unlikely profile in people's consciousness so setting a Taowu or Sforza on the table disguised as Sun1 will probably throw people off simply on the assumption that you're using the minis you've got at hand and most people will only have one of each Sun.
    After that it's a matter of tempering your zeal. Avoid open fields and set him up to guard approaches to your DZ rather than trying to cover objectives. Yeah, it's super-weird to do it with silk gloves when all other 50+ point miniatures tend to be heavy hitters - first or second mini to cross the mid field kind of deal.
     
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  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I know this kind of thing happens in other games, but I don't think it's good design as other factions will be paying a modest amount for their WIP on the LT. It might not be the 7-10 points that Sun pays, but a Haqq LT still has 2-3 points of its budget allocated to this which makes it crummy design if a Yu Jing player can just come and say "Yeah-nah, I just ignore the WIP roll".
    Getting +3 on whatever Sun rolls on LT still gives the possibility of flunking the roll, but tilts it heavily in Sun's favour without negating completely what an Avatar, Keisotsu or Hector would roll.

    That said, simply winning the LT roll off isn't a big deal enough on its own to offset that Sun is kind of bad at combat, can't push buttons, still hyper-vulnerable to hacking, and obvious. They can't make the initiative a big deal, either, and they've been good at limiting its effect to primarily psychological (and thus a factual, if difficult, advantage to exploit!).
    Outside Limited Insertion, of course. Limited Insertion was a mistake.
     
  18. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    You can also use a Kanren and not use the Forward deploy if you want cheaper.
     
  19. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    I'm aware. I just like Sforza and the idea of having Counter-Intelligence ;)
     
  20. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    Speaking of Holomask, that's something that would be good on the Pheasant too?

    A bit more on the Pheasant. We need ask some questions and points about them.

    • They have great 14 WIP and BTS3 with two different hacking profiles. But the Deva does actual hacking better for close to the same cost.
    • All profiles now have Chain of Command. So all are specialists.
    • They have a good BS of 12 but only a Red Fury to take advantage of it. Also expensive with Tac Aware whether you want it or not.
    • They have a Great CC of 23 with only Martial Arts L1, but at least a Para CCW (-6). However very little way of getting into CC unless it comes to them. Even if he wins he needs another order to actually kill them. And how of does CC even happen?
    • A profile comes with Madtraps but only a BSG.
    • They can only join a Bao Haris.

    What is their point?
    What is it they are meant to do?

    I think if they were wildcard that would help immediately. No other changes even needed.
    Add a Lt. Option. He's a Lt. that could defend himself really well against impersonators. Also a good WIP for the Lt. roll.
    Change them to just CC (-6) and give them a CCW (+x dmg) or DA or something that kills.

    Side note: I'd like a rule where immobilized (captured) enemy troops at the end of the game count as dead for the purpose of counting victory points. I think similar was in a previous mission.
     
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