@xagroth You make 250/50 list. When you lose 50 points from the main force, you can trigger reinforcements. To explain my idea, lets's compare two lists in a hypotetical situation. List 1 - 10 orders in combat group 1 (including commdude+1) - 4 orders in combat group 2 (with two ARO duty troopers with total point cost of 50p) - 2 orders in reinforcement group (total of 50p) List 2 - 10 orders in combat group 1 (including commdude +1) - 6 orders in reinforcement group (total of 100p) Game example: - List1 goes first, but suffers loses the two ARO (50pts in total) duty troopers opponents 1st turn. Reinforcements are triggered during 2nd turn. Total orders during game = 14+14+14 = 42 orders - List 2 goes first, but suffers loses the two ARO duty troopers opponents 1st turn. The reinforcements are triggered on the 3rd turn. Total orders during game = 10+8+14 = 32 orders. In reality the situation is even worse for List 2 because it's pretty easy not kill 100pts of troopers during two turns.
While that was my initial assumption, you wrote that, because of using less points in the reinforcement group, you had more orders on your main group than your opponents. Considering the rules do not allow changing of any troop but the commlink the turn those reinforcements arrive, I don't see how did you manage to have more orders than the others. Even if you were to count the reinforcement orders as new ones, dropping to about 50 means at best 5 extra orders? But you should be able to get a similar order/points ration with the regular troops than with the reinforcements, since there are no "Tachimoto get tactical awareness" rules. Please do note that I'm taking for granted that all of those orders are either regular, irregular or TacAware. Again, this has nothing to do with Reinforcements, and all to do with spamming cheap troops. Not all factions can cram 14 orders in 250pts! (and the cheapest order/ratio I think is Jelena Kovacs in the Nomads, 23pts for 2 orders, so 11.5pts per order against the remote called "tachimotos" in the last ITS)
What confuses me is that you first praise CB for how they wrote the Reinforcement rules... ...only to show us that the way you won a Reinforcements tournament is by explicitly NOT playing Reinforcement as intended by CB, but rather gaming the rules to your advantage in a way that they weren't written for. So what is it? Are the rules perfectly written as is, or is it only fun and competitive when you play it completely different from the rules?
I kinda understand. It's a 15 man cap. So you put 14 in the 250pts, and only 1 in 100pts. With NCO and TacAware you have even more orders.
Perhaps I should have said that I had more orders during course of entire game which I tried to explain with my example. In my example it was 10 orders, but it might be more or less depending on when you trigger reinforcements. I think that 10 orders is a lot. Yes, there a definitely winners and losers with reinforcements just like any rules change. Change is good and keeps the game healthy. Yes, Jelena is an excellent reinforcement trooper. But even she gets better if you can trigger her arrival before turn 3 by pairing her with another mid point trooper like Browler and having the right price point ARO troopers to slow enemy down. I mean sure, you can wait for turn 3 to trigger her tacware once with a large (slot hogging) fireteam if you want.
Now that you have the telepathic channel open to CB please tell them that their unintentional(?) ruleset works perfectly. Rules are perfectly written as is. Considering the CB history of rules quality, I'm genuinely surprised myself. Just look at my message history. I think that my approach to reinforcements opens up the profiles in creative ways. You can still play two trooper reinforcement group (a TAG and overpriced HI is about 100 points) and it may even be a good choise in certain matchups, maps and missions but that's not the only way to play reinforcements.
Can you please refer where in the Reinforcement rules pdf I can find this ("the unused points in the main force also lower the reinforcements threshold")? I am under the impression that in a 250/100 REF game Reinforcements enter the game after a) you lost 100+pts from your main force or b) starting turn 3.
Because your Reiforcements enters when your Victory Points gets below 250 points, considering your surviving main force plus the reinforcements
Exactly. It's not that you have to lose 100pts, it's that you have to go under the 250pts threshold, which (most of the time) amounts to about 100pts in a 350pts REF game. But if you start with fewer points, you go under the threshold sooner. Robert Shepherd tried to use this to his advantage by using fewer points in his main group, but you can of course also switch it around and take a very light Reinforcements group. Which is why this still makes no sense to me if you deliberately play those allegedly perfectly written rules differently than they were written.
On the contrary, I play the allegedly perfect rules exactly as written (RAW). You on the other hand claim to have special knowledge about the intent of the rules (RAI) which you obviously don't have. Are you sure that the rules aren't intended to work as they are written?
Ah okay, we're quibbling. Didn't know that was what we were doing. In that case I won't press the matter further and just assume you know what I meant.
Somewhat late to the party but this has been the general feeling of my group and from what I can see other UK ones. When it comes to running events I have no plans to run any reinforcement ones, much of my group is outright refusing to try reinforcements again until the game mode is changed and when I run events I want people to turn up to them! Reinforcements as it stands is adding a barrier to entry when as an event organiser I want there to be as few of those as possible. I've already had folks asking if I'll be using reinf. at my Satellite in May and the answer is no, the event should be as accessible as possible so it can engage with as much of the community as possible. --- Other feedback, I've found thus far that resilience ops works pretty well with reinforcements (other than the going second end of game board domination issues), still finding 300+100 to be a far more enjoyable format but still resenting Commlink having altered a 300pt list to replace a model i actually wanted (A daturatzi) and 3 gakis in another combat group with 1x commlink vanguard. Reinforcements also really need some last points to use up options, way more granularity in reinforcement pool points costs, or flexibility on the limits of reinforcements and main group, trying to fill out essentially two small army lists with additional constraints is still not fun.
Ok, this is new to me and up to now I only played REF with both teams spending every point they have. Thanks for the clarification!!
I disagree. Change for the sake of change is a meaningless endeavour that more often than not, leaves too many people behind. Change ofr the sake of balance, on the other hand, is what the game needs. I doubt they wrote a ruleset stating 250+100pts only for you to praise how good it is when you play it 250+50 to force a fast arrival of extra troops. Specially when we consider that most people are forced into a 10 (somewhat light) or 9+4 troops or so with reinforcements... with the usual spread on a 300pts no reinforcements game being... 9 or 10-4 or 5. For the record, in 274 posts in this feedback thread, there has been about 2 people saying this, and both of you share the same theme... "I won so it's good!". No feedback at all, which at the minimum would start with "the thing I love the most is..." and "I don't really like ... but...". Heck, even saying something kippy like "I don't really like how the commlink is a hidden tax, but I find it an elegant way of making people accept a non-rounded number for points and SWC (240/4.5 + 100/2 if commlink were to be free like being a Lt)." RAW page 2 of the PDF, grey box: By playing 250+50, you are not playing RAW, since the box does not include "UP TO" before any points. Silly thing, I know, but... RAW is RAW, and not being able to fill 2-3pts or some SWC is not against the RAW, dropping enough points for 2+ troops in the list... is. You are never forced to use up all the points, but you would not be playing "RAW" by intentionally doing so, since the "up to X points" is never used that I can remember.
Myself, I have to say Reinforcements have been a flash-in-the-pan thing for me. I mean, the mode was out for 3 months now. In that time I was able to play one - literally, one - game of reinforcements. It wasn't bad, but I'd need more of these to see if I actually like that mode. But if I don't have anyone to play Reinforcements against me, that becomes a moot point. Between real life getting in my way, and - which is important here - my meta not really having models / interest for that (new players don't yet have enough models for it, one of them disliking proxying - so he won't play a profile he has no model for, the other old hand who is still active having recently bought into a new army and not having enough models for it yet). The mode also requires people to have more models. Physically. All those 10 in the primary group, 5(+1 /+2, if you can squeeze them in the alloted 100pts) in the secondary - that is a problem for the new players. Not really for an old hand like me, with my pretty extensive collection, but for the newbies - looks like it is a nope! button. As a way of making me buy more models - it doesn't look like a working idea. at least not at the moment. Because between the 7 armies I play (4 Haqq, 2 NAA & Corregidor), I either already have most of the models announced in the Reinforcement boxes, or I won't be able to play them outside that single game mode. So, back to square #1 - if there's no interest in playing Reinforcements in my meta, these models will be useless to me. Therefore, no point in buying them. I consider the release of the mercenary companies (NA2 outside of JSA) an excellent move from the CB's perspective of selling more miniatures (hey, get yoursefl a new army today! You already own half of it from your previous army, right?) - having catched on that bandwagon twice (and still fiercely resisting the temptation of starting one more) myself. Sure, they are so-so from the fluff POV and the greater scheme of things, but the idea allows the producer to churn out more mix-and-match armies to sell. And if someone isn't interested - no harm done, they don't have to start another army to participate in the game. Now with Reinforcements - either you can and agree to field a list with these, or you won't be able to play a game with that extra. Given what i read here about a negative response of the communities to the new mode, and the TO not willing to include it in the tournaments, this looks pretty much like a flop of the idea. A flash in the pan... Note: the above are just my musings. Thinking aloud, if you prefer to call it that.
The bad marketing is my feedback for Reinforcements. It is less about the rules (which I don’t like). I honestly don’t think REF is going to do well. I feel because the marketing is just horrible. They will say it’s a success of course. No figures ready to go when REF came out. My store still hasn’t gotten the November release. New troops are not available to play without consent of both players. But even then, you can’t move them from the Reinforcements group in Army. They should be available to the generic factions. Horrible price! Wow that’s a lot of money for 6 figures I can only play occasionally. True that’s probably most of my troops, but to buy it knowing I’m not going to be able to use them, is not good for getting me to part with my money. As I’ve said elsewhere, they should have done many sets of 3 instead of a few of 6. New players might not buy because they tend not to play tournaments.
I think that majority of the negative feelings from reinforcement game mode come from disgrunted vCA players, who have used to winning games and tournaments with their S-tier faction using non-interactive GML play. They know that with less points, swc and the only vanilla faction commdude+0 along vAleph* they are no longer S-tier faction. Mayby not even A-tier. CB could have triggered the same response by removing pichers from Bit & Kiss. They are off to a good start by reducing KIss burst, but they could do more. * vAleph is fine because she has proxies and GML game has been nerfed into oblivion.
We agree to disagree, but the good thing is that reinforcement mode also addresses balance by nerfing the S-tier factions that rely on GML alpha strike. Again with the telepathic connection with CB. You don't have that so why do you keep pretending that you have? LIke I said before, there might be missions where full 100p of reinforcements is the optimal way to play. Are you saying that 50p reinforcements are somehow problematic balance-wise? Yes, commdude is a tax but a necessary one to nerf GML. Players have had too much time to optimise the 6/300 gamemode. There is dire need to make all that optimisation obsolete. You can archive similar (but not as good) results by playing 5 swc/250p game. I regularly play games that use only 1 or 2 swc (out ot 5 or 6) and no one has ever had problems with that. Somehow not using all swc or points from reinforcement section becomes a problem for people who don't like reinforcement mode because their favorite faction got nerfed hard in that gamemode.
If we can talk about CB intent, I think it's clear that CB listened carefully all the whining and moaning about GML alpha strike and made a game mode that nerfed that interaction without changing weapons, rules or profiles*. As a QA professional, I'm impressed. * I mean Bit & Kiss had to touched (in vCA) but that pair was broken.
