So, here are some satellite tournament results. Spoiler: Cancon Spoiler: Colder than Carbonite Spoiler: “Furor Teutonics” There are some PanO presence on top tables. I don’t think PanO is particularly weak or doesn’t have tools to win. I think the problem is rather emotional than power level in the game. AROs we face often shoot as good as our premium gunfighters but they have the tools like smoke, warband, and hacking device+ we paid for the premium gunfighters. I think PanO have the tools to deal with those premium AROs and usual problems (bears, GML, and so on) under proper player’s hand (don’t ask me what that is because I’m not that player). However, losses loom larger than gains, and even larger when we face others without that loss have similar things to what we think the gains (I mean, situations like facing Reverend core FtFs on par with our TAGs). EDIT : Don’t get me wrong. I’m having fun with PanO and I love PanO. Finding those pieces that work I haven’t thought to work (such as hacker KoJ) is so fun for me.
Apologies for double posting, but I enjoy this convo :) This is to me the exact problem we’re speaking about! You take the mighty Tik (the Montesa one being one of my favorite tags). Fully confident that with its high mobility, strong Ranged and close combat weapons you’ll outpace your opponent, and… Bham! There you are. Blocked by the Kaitok. What can you do? And behind this Kaitok, you have a fully functional armies, armed to the teeth with alpha striking Gakis, with a 1000 order pool, with arguably the best warbands, and super mobile specialists. And what do you have on top of the Tik? Meh… Is this unwinnable, no it’s not. You’ll take out the other units, deplete the large order pool, trying to avoid the Daturazis, trying to hide against their K1 weapons and spam of pitchers. You can do it, but god it’s an unfair battle
This is where leveraging Terrain come in handy. That and the Kaitok is probably the biggest roadblock the opponent will have. There wouldn’t be any ranged ARO of the same capabilities. Hoping to hide behind his Warbands and Kaitok so you can’t get to the soft squishy things. You have to peel that back. Prep the machinist have him in place ready to support in the event the TAG suffers failure. The TAG is designed to peel open these things for other stuff to slip through - like your midrange shooters with Spitfire/Marksman Rifles. Each component working in a Combined Arms fashion. You don’t look for a Turn 1 win. It’s a methodical deconstruction of your opponent’s force in preparation to capitalise on the objectives in T3. Be patient. Go through the process. It’s a 3 phased operation. 1. Establish Fire Superiority 2. Prosecute Opponent’s Mission Essential Equipment 3. Set Conditions for victory in T3. Now people complain about Smoke and objectives - Notably you could stick an MSV troop over the Top of that Objective and the opponent will still rush a unit through and soak the Objective roll unopposed because once he presses the button the troop’s life doesn’t matter. Smoke doesn’t stop the method of employment only ensures survival at which point. You spend an order in your turn killing that troop. There’s not some dark magical abilities the other factions are using. Like Smoke is just another shooting attack. MSV doesn’t stop the Smoke going down for everyone else either. It becomes a normal roll when engaging a MSV troop. The Warband just gets killed for his efforts.
A lot of things have been discussed. I would argue that Military orders is quite a popular sectorial, rightfully so, but by no means its an illustrative or representative sectorial for PanOceania, it is as far from that as it can get, while still remaining a PanOceania sectorial, and that is fine, if one should look as a sectorial been the representation of Panoceania gameplay this is primarily NCA, or alternatively SWF. While I discuss this, I would not consider MO as such a strong sectorial as it has been said here, it ahs its positives, its negatives, but if it was not the non specialized midfield firepower sectorial and was more PanO like, it would not have trinitarians, it would have Crocmen, MO have a unique for PanO gameplay and quite a few unique units because of this specific gameplay. SEF is another sectorial been mentioned, been one of the sectorials I play, I have to point out that while all the units mentioned are great, SEF remains a fragile sectorial expensive sectorial, yes it can have a great camo play and quite a few units in the middle, but it cannot survive blows landing and has problems dealing with smoke. I believe looking at what others have and wanting the same, will not go far, if PanO is to change it would change in a PanO way and not is a way that incorporates to PanO "foreign" elements.
Coordinated order with teutonic knight panzerfausts and grosier/trinitarian multisniper. Assuming that Kaitok doesn't dodge, it goes down with 85% probability. Now that I think about it, why doesn't MO just rolfstomp all opposition with 3xPanzerfaust+grosier multisniper fireteam? It costs only 75p and 1,5 swc and nothing in the game can really challenge it safely under 32". Volklak isn't super efficient ARO or attack piece. BS12+3 and ARM4 NWI without mimetism or MSV doesn't win a lot of firefights. But this isn't not the reason why volkolaks are good. Volkolaks are good because they are non-hackable and more importantly Total immune meaning that you can't easily remove them with the most balanced GML interaction and they aren't vulnerable to profilic multiburst DA/EXP/continuous weapons which you use to kill flies and overcosted HI in infinity during active and reactive turns. Same goes for bearpode. TI removes many order efficient tools that the opponent has and usually forces them to a f2f roll in which they have about 10% chance of losing the entire game on T1 or T2. Winning 1/10 of games during listbuilding phase makes a trooper excellent. If CB decides that Ariadna players have had fun and just removes the TI from those troopers, there will be alot of moaning. Suddenly those A-tier factions will be on the same category as FRRM.
Does this mean "No, I do not play with PanO?" as far as practical experience playing with a faction versus looking the statistics and making a few mock up lists, the difference is massive, even if one spars constantly with a PanOceania player, the knowledge gained facing them cannot compare with playing with them. As far as winning the ITS statistics show a different picture than this, thought one needs to study a lot this statistics, different countries varies a lot and there are many questions about why, local meta can only be a part of it.
A lot of this stems from the fact that core rules are solid and factions are flexible enough to work even if disadvantaged. The balance curve is fairly flat. The issue isn't the presence or absence of any singular unit, but with time it piles on. Looking at this from another angle, if CJC was to lose Sombras, Gator, and Vostok (edit: and MB got ARM 4 again, because wtf), it wouldn't really get significantly worse and I doubt it'd drop in stats any.
This is great data: https://stats.infinitytheacademy.com/ Sorting by the most used armies, allows us to see what you are probably going to run into during a competitive ITS event: Steel Phalanx Vanilla CA Bakunin JSA Kosmo It is also funny that based on the data available, Corregidor is ranked 13th in usage, but has a horrible win percentage (39.8%, one of the lowest recorded). So people are using Corregidor, but they are not having good returns. Even in Season 14, they were also ranked 13th in usage with again a horrible win rate (4th worse at 42.1%). So why are people still complaining about them? They might be "overdesigned", but they are not succeeding in ITS. Can we stop complaining about flavors of Nomads and focus on the real concern: Continuous domination of ITS by Vanilla CA, Aleph, and Steel for the last few seasons? But back to PanOceania, with the exception of MO, Vanilla and its Sectorials are middling in popularity for competitive ITS (probably due to the multitude of issues that the community noted in this massive thread). And with exception of MO, the few times they are used competitively, the are piloted to a positive win percentage. To me, that shows PanO viability is that it is hard to utilize as it is not that common, but can succeed with very skilled hands. And the few people who choose to use PanO competitively know what weaknesses they have and can mitigate it. So what could we do to make PanO more approachable for competition, while not making it over dominating?
Move it a bit sideways. Instead of focusing purely on high BS and direct firepower - increased technology integration: Expanded Auxbot access - more Auxbot types, more units having loadout options with one. Improved Remotes fireteam integration - ability to include more of them, specifically Pathfinder and Fugazi, into pure fireteams. Widespread EVO coverage - more EVO options, as well as additional, improved EVO programs, defensive and utility. Better Engineering support - more versatile Engineers, possibly a fast Remote one that could run Duo with TAGs (though there is some movement here already, with Karhu and Blade being good options).
Who's been playing NuCA since blades and blocker? I look at them and really do suspect they might be able to leverage shooting better than any army now. Bolt sniper with blocker and machinist is a helluva gun haris for 64pts, or blade for tacaware premium. I keep meaning to dust them off but I'm having too much fun with Shas.
I'm bitter about that as well, but let us all calm down about that. It's not like we're getting through, and the only result is increased frustration, both our own and others. Let's look for a positive ideas, otherwise what's the point in playing? Though I'm a fan of "deprotagonise" :D
I’ve gotten a single game with NuCA, but I actually used Blocker + Blade-Ops FTO Eng + Bolt Spitfire as a hunter/killer Haris. Did fairly well for me.
Bakunin, the 3rd most played faction with 53.9% win rate in 300pt games, is comparable to those factions you mentioned as dominating factions, So I think the rant on Bakunin or more broadly Nomad is appropriate. I think players have to change their fixed idea on rifles. I was also a big gun lover and overlooked rifles, but with more games and experiences, rifles changed my mind. Multi rifle and Breaker combi rifle are actually good weapons on right hand right time. Even mere combi rifle is good enough to kill midfield skirmishers. I 미내 think some guides to sectorial choices and list building depending on missions and matchups might help more players to have better experience with PanO. Some people said the low popularity but high win rate of PanO sectorials are because they are not universally good at all kinds of missions, so good PanO players choose which sectorial to play based on missions. I think this might be the case as VIRD has very limited D-charge or NCA has a few forward deployment/infiltrating specialists. Also I think every PanO sectorials have right tools to deal with any kind of gear check but they are usually too expensive or too specific, so it was usually difficult to fit them into a “General List”. I think MO is more extreme case of this PanO problem so many players, especially new, suffer with MO.
Me. You duo a Blade Engineer with a TAG and that engineer support is already there. The fact he’s stealth/unhackable means he can sweep away potential issues for the TAG without too much issue cause you can still mobilise the TAG while he’s getting to work. You can run Duo core/Haris of Bulleteer + Blade Engineer + Hacker and still have a Machinist to support the TAG + Sierra. Black Friar + CSU x 2 Haris sitting over an objective - Sixth Sense Everywhere, MSV2, B2 Templates on everyone. CSUs get unshackled to go push buttons. Bolt pure core is now about 10-20pts cheaper depending upon the options Bolt ML+Bolt Paramedic + Bolt Hacker + Blocker + NCA Machinist comes to about 105-109 pts. That is a big core sure but every person in that team is doing work. Chuck in a TAG or other gun platform of your choice. My current frame is - Mk2 NCO+Blade Engineer - Fusilier Core with Fusilier ML+ Blocker Hacker+ Fusilier Para+ Lt and his stunt double. - Sierra - 2 x Fugazi - 2 Auxilia FO The rest is fit to taste. Or mission
That is more or less how I view PanOceania and its sectorials, especially the sectorials, they have the tools and can be quite competitive, but they need a really skilled and experienced player behind them to shine. And interesting/ exciting to this and it is the true purpose of the thread. Not yet, I must play at least one game with CJC before I touch any other of the other sectorials I play, but I am really excited to see them on the table, but, as far as performance go, from the several reinforcements games I had with PanO, my standard core Bolt SF, Bolt KH and two Blade engineers have made me appreciate how fast, versatile and lethal such combination is. I might do some speculative list buildings for standard NCA lists.
If there is no intention to change Pano's design limitations, perhaps a review of some awkward and unwieldy loadouts on some units can improve the experience of using them. Linkability should be reviewed. Still no one understands the impossibility of linking an MSR Black Friar with Crosiers. Another possibility is the design of some new skill or equipment that allows us to better take advantage of the superiority in raw BS, to give us the feeling that we are really using "the best shooting faction in the game". It may come in the form of some specific technological advance from Pano and in the process take advantage of that technological superiority so mentioned but rarely seen.
Nomads get complained about because they're actually not very fun to fight (and get a lot of releases, yes), not because they're good. They're a whole MOD band (sometimes *two*) above anything the mid-tech factions have in terms of Hacking and run an excellent midfield control game with Warbands, Infiltrators and Mines besides. If you have the right tools to play into their weaknesses it's a fair fight, but specifically PanO and Yu Jing, which happen to have some of the forum's loudest voices for players, have a horrible and dull matchup into them due to missing options that has an excessive influence on viable lists. CA and ALEPH are definitely stronger factions on the whole, but I'd argue the only less-fun matchup in Infinity than PanO vs. Nomads is Ariadna vs. Nomads assuming the Ariadna player got cute and actually tried something other than full Camo+werebeasts+cheerleaders, guaranteeing total destruction by Spotlight. This is definitely the tricky part. Anything that has clearer options against enemy indirect control options will help immeasurably for less experienced players; both in my own games and those I've watched, PanO players usually go to pieces pretty fast when they get pinned by stuff that just kills them on their own Orders by trying to play the game, and nothing in the list can unstick the situation. The unintuitive advanced movement makes a big difference once you learn it, but having clear units/profiles/equipment to handle those situations would be a godsend. Something to dislodge Warbands on dense boards, anything that can stop a Pitcher being a near game-ending problem for a TAG list, a better way to handle E/M- just clear, obvious answers from listbuilding. Even Deactivators being made practical would help a ton. And then there's losing gunfights with enemy castle links and being pinned in the DZ. PanO's actually really vulnerable to that these days, given how top-heavy you have to build to enjoy a serious gunfighting advantage- when you lose anyway due to bad luck, your secondary option's usually a Bulleteer or the like, with bad range that's almost certain to lose. Weird suggestion, but maybe throw on some improved Medikits and Gizmokits onto the faction for better recovery of those top units?
Just curious, what is this 'advaced movement'? It is refering to the rules about 'cautious movement', dodge, stealth and vertical mobility skills? Or it is refering to arcane tricks such as 'activate fireteam with SWC-gun-carrying leader peeking from the corner, declare shoot, wait for ARO, now declare movement and move rest of the fireteam from Out of LoF into LoF now as they're now safe'?
