Point me in the direction of all those factions with, let's say, Nomad's hacking game or discount HI. You can also add to that same amount of different TAGs and midfield presence. All of this at once, please. I'll be waiting (for a long time, I'm pretty sure)
Try playing other factions then, or try playing Nomads the way you advocate, you will find the results yourself.
Combined Army and ALEPH say hi. In all seriousness though, Nomads have 5 NCO options. None of them are very bad, none of them are insanely good either. I'm definetely getting a bad taste from the Demonist, but it's more of a 'dude why?' than a 'what the actual fuck?' Like, it's not bad. I just wish someone had come over to the game designer and asked 'Dude, do you really want to add this guy to this army?'
We'll drop NCO and an LTL2 on one 36pt mini when other factions lose pitchers and deployable repeaters :)
This unit was designed by a Nomad player who got bad touched by a speculo/fiday one too many times and decided to make a personal fix to the problem.
Definitely a real 'what the fuck' moment seeing that pop up. I don't even know what Nomads are supposed to be anymore. They're just the everything faction now. I'm thinking CB went a bit too far with this update.
For every Nomad player wincing at the cost, I still see this as an autotake in any tournament containing a scenario that awards points for LT kills. It's got even odds against every Impersonator, shooting or stabbing, and putting it behind an appropriately-buffed Jazz, Interventor or other good Hacker makes it rather unappealing to gun for with a Repeater- Resetting on 14s with a -3 MOD to the attack, while being hit back by some of the game's top Hackers, is both dangerous and unreliable for the Hacker and at that point your opponent may well have opted for Spotlight and GMLs anyway so the HI designation doesn't matter as much.
I don't know about CA, but Aleph wishes it had the hacking power and midfield presence Nomads can muster, let's not even talk about the myriad of TAGs and cheap warbands. And I agree with you, it's not about the profile being strong or not, it's about the fact there is no need to keep giving everything to the same faction and it's actually unhealthy for the game.
Just give PanO the god-forbidden smoke already. Why bother? It'll give enough reason to toss off a chain of command to Nomads ;)
They kinda do though. Like what do they not have? Msv2? Now they have at least one msv2 in every sectoral. The one thing they didn't have was good LTs now they have one. And I'll keep complaining about cause as a JSA player I get told I'm supposed to be the underdog faction and I don't get nice things cause that's how my army works. The prevalent attitude towards nomads has pretty much been they are the everything faction for a long time.
I'd honestly like to get the opinions of some real top, competitive players on why they don't play Nomads. Most Infinity players seem to play whatever they like and make it work, but there's got to be some win-at-all-costs types somewhere in the community that can explain things. Personally, I dropped my Bakunin at the competitive level back in mid-N3 because I was total pants with Warbands and figured Auxilia would be more my speed (I was right), but I don't imagine "personal incompetence" to be a faction choice criteria for people who are actually good at this game. What exactly do Nomads lack at the top levels of play that drives people away?
@RobertShepherd does a good explanation in his latest video why the Daemonist is not that great in Vanilla Nomads: He does rate Vanilla Nomads very highly because it has so many tools. Maybe he will be able to talk about why they are lacking the consistency to do well in the ITS environment.
I still think its value rises enormously in Decapitation and the like where your opponent will be gunning for your own forces. I can see the points not being worth it for a purely support unit, but this is definitely better than anything else in-faction at surviving a serious alpha-strike. I'd certainly want this over a Moderator, points be damned, against any faction in the game if their objective was to take down my troops, and especially my LT, instead of needing their orders and Troops for scoring in the midfield. You do definitely need NCO with one though, it's not doing jack with its own Orders unless your opponent has units in your DZ.
Honestly, a Taskmasker would probably be a better LT for Decapitation. Its more survivable, can fight, linkable in both Vanilla and Bakunin, and the opponent would only get really one shot at it with most assassin pieces.
Seems like the edge in a close-in fight goes to the Taskmaster in terms of saves, but the Daemonist gets a bit more CC against units without NBW and can apply Guard out to 8. If you're being shot from the other side of your DZ the Taskmaster pulls ahead handily with his Red Fury's range, but you should usually be able to position so that isn't possible on most boards. Ultimately I think this one comes down to whether your list can use the extra LT Orders, or need the Taskmaster to provide his own Koala, I can see lists using either. Don't think a Duo link helps defensively, but the Morlock Haris or embedding the Taskmaster into a Riot team would be handy with its bonus to Burst. Personally, I'd prefer a Custodier for these game modes, but I run a rather odd Bakunin when I break it out, using 3-4 Hackers and lots of Repeater coverage to zone out Hackables, and my local meta features no Tohaa, very little Hassassins and enough Shas that I find the Hacking defense and Cybermask a better combo than a conventionally tough LT.
