Sectorials vs. Vanilla

I personally think that while it was a buff to vanillas, the fireteam change is mostly a buffs to sectorials.

I think 5-man fireteams were not the optimal way of playing most sectorials, and a buff to flexibility is very significant.

 

I think there's too many moving parts to decide one way or another as of yet. Bear in mind that most sectorials gained the ability to form a new genre of haris: 2 line troops + wildcard, which adds a great deal to them imo, offering a cheap, punchy second fireteam, often making group 2 more of a backup offensive option, rather than a dumping ground for support units and irregulars. That could prove significant.

Overall I share your concerns that vanilla gained twice from this update (one in terms of the drop in +3bs fireteams in the game, the other in terms of free duos which can be very decent).

 

Remember, the reduction in +3BS Fireteams is a gain for many Sectorials, too; now running into a BS17 ORC requires a serious skew list, Fireteams are a lot more free to build for list gimmicks or objective play rather than being a buff engine to counter the other guy's uberlink. I've also found the +3 to Discover on pure Haris teams to be a lifesaver against camospam, at least in my WIP12 PanO, since it turns even fairly humble ARO pieces into threats to the enemy's mobility and scoring.

 

I've found that I'm definitely feeling less constrained in my list building. I don't need to focus as much on getting that full core out there, can do with smaller, agile teams, some sectorials getting 2xHaris helps a lot.

Basic troops with heavy weapons have a role to play again, too.

Can't really comment on vanilla vs sectorial balance, as no one here plays vanilla

 

I've found for IA lists that were built originally without an actual Haris team can now accidentally form a Zhanshi Haris with Wildcards while the refills wait for the Core to have space.

 

You're asking pretty early after the changes, so I think you'll get more hypothetical answers than experienced-based answers. Mine is largely hypothetical.

I don't think the increased fireteam flexibility changes the fundamental issue with fireteams, that it's not actually an advantage to advance more models into the midfield. Solo attack pieces can be as strong as fireteams, and you lose fewer orders when they die to the inevitable counterattack.

That's not to say the changes didn't buff sectorials - I don't doubt that they did - but vanilla still feels stronger to me. Especially since vanilla can now benefit from perhaps the only big advantage to moving multiple models - the ability to advance a gunfighter and a button-pusher together. I don't think all vanillas got that equally, but Haqq certainly got a major buff - I can confirm that much from experience.

 

I have a really (overly?) simple view of this; it doesn't matter what your link can do if it dies or takes serious damage top of turn one. +3 BS helped with certain forms of attack, but not with some of the best ones - impersonators, bears, superior infiltrators, GML etc.

The game is better off for this change, but I would have liked to see it paired with a reduction in the insane attack power of certain alpha pieces and in the flexibility of vanilla in general.

 

Vanilla is better than before as its become more order efficient for no cost. I don't like how arbitrary the application of it is. Some sectorals are still really shooty (nca for example) but others are going to really really struggle. There was nothing that deigned that mrrf and cha should take a nerf, but they took a nerf anyway.
I have a feeling there'll be a swing further to vanilla in competitive play, but we have no data at present. Need a year's data to really see how it's panned out.

 

I haven't played as much as I wished since the new FT rules came, but still I had some interesting matches thanks friendly games, tournaments and leagues. In some cases I played exactly the same lists as I did before the changes, in order to see where I could go, others where more "tailored" to the changes.

My temporary conclusions are:

-"Vainilla's become stronger than they were before the changes". But those vainilla which were good before the changes now are better. So, not all vainilla can take advantage equally of the fireteam bonus downgrade.

-Vainilla with duos... some duos are really stronger, others they are an "ok" option which allow more flexibility while making list. This is always a good thing. But again, not all were equally benefited.

-Sectorials they have now more fireteams options, this is true, so we can put theoretically more flexible lists, but we have to remember that not all sectorial have received the "downgrade", and even while for most of them the changes were the same, the impact for everyone wasn't the same.

-Sectorials which were having troubles fighting this N4 they will be probably in a worse place than they did previously: FRRM, for example, or Winterforce. Even Hassasin, they go from TOP-table to MID-table (but for this ones I don't care too much because the incoming box... probably they will change again).

-ARO to some players were almost dead when N4 begun, at least the classic ARO (a couple of good shooters with a bunch of regulars guys on top of one roof), after the changes probably for that players ARO are more than dead right now. This maybe is an exaggeration, but ARO in sectorials become weaker and stronger in vainillas.

So, in general, dependant of what you were playing frequently you will notice a "postive change", "pretty much none" or a "really negative one".

 

Actually, I think ARO might make a resurgence now that uberlinks are less common.

A humble TR bot is a nice threat to stuff like bears and dogs, and it's one that requires stuff like MSV+Smoke or Surprise Attack to deal with, stuff that can be worked around or that can force order expenditure. I like it. Other stuff that people don't often consider, like putting models in suppressive fire (Seriously, why don't people do this?) or those weird total reaction snipers that Nomads and Aleph got can be a lot more useful when people can't brute force through them with a BS16-18 HMG wihout actually putting in the points now.

I do agree vanilla continues to generally be the best option if you are a competitive player, but the difference is small enough that I don't feel like most sectorials are handicapped. There are some bottom of the barrel options, sure, but that's inevitable in any game with 30+ factions.

 

Because it often doesn't actually cause any order drain.

You put a Zerat in SF mode at the start of the game? Ok, sure. The natural predator to a Zerat is some warband dickhead with a DTW that's just going to spray him down in a trade anyway. That doesn't actually cause any real speed bump to an opponent because that was the plan if they wanted to engage that model anyway.

There's also the factor that the units that benefit the most from this also tend to be too valuable/expensive to toss away as an ARO piece much less sink more resources into it.

 

How many orders is that warband going to take to get there? Two? Three?

If it's two, then that's on me, I played badly. If he takes three or more, then it's a net gain, my opponent spent three out of his 15-16 orders to take out one of mine. As far as I see, that's a net gain.

I always thought ARO was about forcing the opponent to burn orders, not to kill stuff. The problem is we had (probably still have) too many effective ways of killing stuff with few orders spent. Removing cheap superpowered fireteams from the game addresses one of these problems.

Yes, there are others, I'm not blind, I'm just saying there are more things you can do now.

 

That's relevant if you are assuming your opponent wasn't going to send their warband upfield early looking for a trade up. That's what warbands tend to do.

It's not really wasting orders if they were traveling in that direction already, all your command token is doing is increasing the lethality of the unit it doesn't actually drain orders.

SF Mode needs a great deal of things to go right for it to be useful. You need an appropriate unit to leverage it namely mimetic, non fireteam, not too expensive, non camo, and not an important specialist. They also need to have a gun that is allowed to use SF.

You then also need to have a spot where it can take a fight at about 11-16". Any closer and it's DTW chow, any further and it starts to become ineffective because of MODs. That spot then also needs to be in a position that defends the spot where you want to block some kind of movement against your army.

You need this perfect storm of bullshit to make it really worthwhile.

Or you could just strip 2 orders from most armies. Easy and effective.

 

Well, one is probably an impetuous order and two was probably its own irregular order, so you're probably not getting much of an order trade in all honesty. But then infinity is all about layered defence, there's probably more than that lonely zerat covering off that lane

 

I don't know what planet a person can live on to claim the new fireteams are a buff to sectorials, unless you very narrowly focus on Haris options.

No one played moveable 5-man links on any serious level.
The build was (mostly) a static link and have the rest move around and this aspect is now dead on almost all sectorials, as now many core links are now trivial to remove and many sectorials have now been reduced to a shittier version of Tohaa flexible fireteams, without the variety offered by Vanilla.

Also, I think it's appalling that CB have such a massive disconnect with how their game actually works, when not only do they not address the isues of Vanilla, but actually literally buff them.

Lastly, and worst of all, is the inconsistency of the re-work and its impact.
Dahshat is designed around mixed linked fireteams and making links "impure" makes literally all of their core links, moveable or static, meme-tier (and they weren't even good to begin with). The same applies to almost every single YJ core links who are almost all designed around mixing profiles.
On the flipside, the approach of having "pure vs flexible" fireteams is immediately hurled out the window, as soon as the new monkey army needs to be make profit, and now 80% of the profiles counts as Morats and almost everything can mix and match to such an extend that it could make former Corregidor flexteams blush with envy.
Other armies, by sheer luck, are almost entirely unaffected by the changes. My Acontecimento lists are largely unchanged because Pan-O links, even with basic troopers, have almost always been really good. I changed my Bagh-Marri Sniper in the Regular link to a Regular Sapper and while the lack of MSV1 hurts, it mostly serves the exact same function as before. Alternatively, I continue using the static 4 Regulars + 1 Orc Feuerbach because although he was nerfed to no longer having BS17, having BS15 on a semi-high ARM multi-wound platform is still very decent as far as ARO's goes.

I think the fireteam re-work was handled about as well as the 15 order cap.
The idea and concept are both fine but they (CB) lack any competence to actually balance/design/maintain their ever growing number of armies to actually implement it on a serviceable level.
Sadly, I'm under no illusion that this will improve any time soon if the revealed Gator and the recently added Beasthunter/Diggers are anything to go by.

 

The 15 ordre cap was a great idea. At some point very few people played tag and hacker, which is a shame for a SF skirmish game.

Juste liké the fireteam rework is great. Everybody was playing thé same cheap troop + 1 élite. Now there is room for compétition in each sectorial.

Even if it's true that vanilla faction get a de facto boost they keep for themsleves to bé à ton a of fun and thématique. Also order efficiency with different trooper in a fireteam is a thing.

I think CB know what the customer base will enjoy better than people on this forum. And actually since N4 releases they have done exactly what I would have done and much better (simplify hacking, incent to play HI and TAG, limit order spam, stop ARO bait tactics, make pure fireteam more attractive again)

 

That was my initial knee jerk reaction to noticing the disparity with fireteams between Morats and every other sectorial.

With that said after thinking on it a bit more I came to the conclusion that the Morat flexible pureteams was largely fine. Realistically Morats are what a limited sectorial should be like in terms of fireteams.

Yes a Suryat running around with BS16 sounds like he's god tier, but he's really not he's just falling in line with most other stuff. Morat pure team bonuses are making up for the fact that their fireteam gunners are very bland. What you see is what you get, a BS16 monkey with a bare bones HMG. There's no Mimetic Feuerbachs, no Mimetic -6 shooters, no Burst 6, no marksmanship REMs, no 3 wound Greek monsters, no Mimetic+MSV shooters... I've had people freak out about a BS16 monkey with an HMG only to calm their tits when I point out the Dakini mixed link is still shooting at them on 17s and it's hitting them with Mimetism.

Where CB dropped the ball I believe is that they didn't pay enough attention to other sectorials, I find MO an example of this their Fireteams should've received much closer attention. Joan and the Hospi's should've had bigger changes applied to them, and the Teuton AVA really should've been updated to give them better options. Then there were things like MRRF getting absolutely shit on by the fireteam update...

That's not to say MAF was flawless execution. There definitely were some mistakes like the Dartoks while a necessary evil given MAF's total lack of hacking defense and camo states never ever ever should've received a pitcher.

 

I don't have much incentive to use HI/TAGs since Nomads will just take advantage and there's no real defense.

 

It's hard for me to say anything since no one in my group actually plays vanilla right now. It's about 8 regular guys and about 3 more occasional players at our store. We just play what we like thematically.