Ohhhh, for 40k. I misunderstood, I thought you were claiming that for Infinity and was wondering where the heck that statistic came from. Thanks, carry on...
A 10 order list isn't brain dead, a 10 order list against a 16 order list creates an interesting game. A 10v10 on the other hand means both players really just want to go first and alpha strike something to cripple the order pool.
I thought you were talking about Infinity. That sounded really off. 'Insert predictable comment about proper scenery here'. But for 40k, from what I have heard, I would be surprised if it was as low as 70% win rate for first turn.
People may be down on 10-order lists, but I think List C is deceptively powerful. That list has a big gun for every situation, and each big gun tows a specialist along with it. The only piece that doesn't, the Crane, gets a free Lieutenant order every turn. With good planning, you can get something close to a two-for-one on every order you spend, and that's a great way to make a 10 order list operate like 15+. I also can't overstate how crazy strong the Su-Jain + Weibing Duo will be on the table. The Su-Jian is amazing, but it has a few weaknesses: it's vulnerable to hacking, it doesn't deal with camo particularly well, and it can't push buttons. Enter the Weibing, which conveniently addresses all those things by being a repeater for your SSL2 Celestial Guard hacker, Sensor to reveal those pesky markers, and pushes buttons after the Su-Jian mows down any opposition. The non-FO Celestial Guard hanging out with 3 points left to spend hurts my soul, but I would happily play this list into a large number of scenarios.
Actually it's because the pheasant's price is incorrect: red fury without harris is 35pts, not 32, hence the 3pts disparity.
I like CB. They do weird stuff sometimes that I don't understand but I really like that they go out on a limb and do what they want. I feel most of these lists are a little quirky, and with a little touch up would be nicely competitive in my play style and meta, but they're not terrible. The Sval CBLs really didn't excite me, but these look fun. Missile Launcher lieutenant? Yes please! Imagine the smirk you'll have when you spend your lieutenant order to stand from prone and blast some shmuck chilling, thinking you'd be too chicken to risk your little LI ML. I look forward to playing in a CBL-only tournament once they've released enough; everyone will be running these odd, unoptimized lists where everyone else knows all the tricks beforehand. It will test who can walk the walk of "it's not your list, it's you".
Yeah, nooooooooo. Look, I get what you're saying here and I agree that LI encourages an alpha strike if you have the option, but there are key differences between 40K and N3 here that you're missing. N3 uses a lot more cover than 40k, and a player concerned about an alpha strike isn't going to give you any targets to just have a shot at (save, perhaps, ARO pieces designed to soak your fire and eventually die). That means spending a pile of orders to get in position to kill one or two things, which may or may not die depending on rolls, so you just wasted your entire first turn (maybe) knocking a couple of orders out of your opponent's pool. It also means you've now left one or more of your own precious orders vulnerable in or near your opponent's deployment zone. That's hardly an efficient use of your orders in most ITS scenarios. Add into that the fact that a LI list is naturally more resilient to whatever you're throwing at it, and the chances for a really profitable alpha strike become even dimmer. I'm not saying it can't work in some situations--I'm certain it can--just as I'm certain that it can work in regular play if you're (1) very lucky, or (2) up against an opponent who doesn't plan for what's coming in his deployment. But the fact that part of the time my Sphinx ruins your day doesn't mean the whole LI system is broken. And in missions where button-pushing and objective-grabbing is at a premium, you would be well advised not to alpha strike, because what you're really after (especially in a tourney) is the OPs. I absolutely agree, however, that they should re-allow the use of command tokens to knock out orders in LI. That seems, on balance, like it would be a very good call. Spoiler: Tohaa example of doom: I threw together the following list as a helpful example of just how resilient to an alpha strike a 10-order list can be (granted, it's Tohaa, so making resilient lists is pretty easy): Tohaa ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 10 2 NEEMA Lieutenant (Advanced Command) Breaker Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust, Nanopulser / Viral Pistol, Shock CCW. (+1 | 46) SUKEUL HMG, D-Charges / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35) MAKAUL Boarding Shotgun, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 19) SUKEUL Missile Launcher, Light Shotgun / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 36) MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13) GAO-RAEL Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW. (1 | 31) RASAIL Viral Combi Rifle + 1 Chaksa Peripheral / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 39) CHAKSA PERIPHERAL Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife. (- | 4) RASAIL Spitfire + 1 Chaksa Peripheral / Pistol, Knife. (2 | 39) CHAKSA PERIPHERAL Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife. (- | 4) KAELTAR (Chain of Command) Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse + 2 SymbioMates / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 21) KAELTAR (Chain of Command) Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse + 2 SymbioMates / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 21) 7 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
I love C and D, i'd play the hell out of those. Maybe even E - that SMR Bao is juicy, but his lack of a full core team is sad. And I don't have a Guija anyway. But hey i'm obviously some kind of weird anomaly since i almost always play Limited Insertion type ISS lists with more elite options, like tons of agents and su-jian, and don't even own kuang shi models. :P
I'm a '10 order' YJ player too, and they look interesting. I detest ISS generally, so have almost none of the models, so I'll probably be stuck in vanilla.
I made a few first impression notes on each list: List A… silly Guijia shenanigans. Weibing rui shi duo is cool. No hacker to buff the rui-shi. Gah. Yay, we brought a smoke launcher. No engineer for the guijia Assault hacking lieutenant seems really suicidal, especially in a list that wants to run repeaters up field. You better play a good shell game with your KHD kanren. Remember, your enemy has read the CBL. List B… silly More guijia shenanigans. Defensive link with a sophotect Defensive duo with a dakini multi sniper Hey! At least you can buff the dakini with a hacker! Your sophotect can’t heal the gui jia without moving up table. Not a great plan for an engineer in a defensive link. Nice to have a missile launcher ARO that is also your LT. Not smart. Feels like you need to attack with your Gui Jia and hit buttons with one FO kanren. Hope that works. List C… pretty silly. Kinda cool ninja hunting duo of weibing and su jian. That buffed bao with a multi sniper could really do some work, if we’d had the wits to bring a smoke launcher instead of a boarding shotgun celestial in our link. Duo of zuyong is close to what you could already do Wu Ming and have ARM 4 HI for the same points. No engineer / doctor, which would be great keeping important models alive… or not nuked by e/m grenades. List D… actually kind of cool Brutal link with hsien, crane and wu ming. Hsien with full link bonuses will kick face if given the chance. Yay we brought a smoke launcher in a haris team! Burst two smoke for reliability! Our pheasant is burst 5 for once! … And a sophotect! With a yudbot! Yay! Minesweeper Panggulings have pistols now. Be afraid of shock shots to your kneecaps! Still we’re obsessed with not bringing kuang shi or two order groups… but this one could work. List E… cool profiles, but hard to make it work Even more Guijia shenanigans Hey! That shock marksmen rifle bao for 25 points is a good deal. His core link tops out at 4 total though, and while he did invite celestial guards to his party they forgot to bring the smoke he asked for. Zhanshi Gongcheng! A cheap engineer would be a great addition to ISS… fingers crossed this escapes the CBL format. Two kanren clog up midfield with holechoes. Which… sorta works, but without madtraps, mines or anything nastier than a 1/3 chance of eating a chain colt or boarding shotgun blast, why wouldn’t an opponent charge them one by one? Wishlisting: For LI lists, a kuang shi controller haris would have been really fun. Bring a little ISS flavour and reliable smoke without taking the omnipresent 7-8 kuang shi. It’s just me, but I really wanted to see Yan Huo much more than Guijia.
I feel Jealous, these lists are much better balanced than Svalarheima. They are good enough to win with. I don't think most would take a CBL to a tournament but thats because people who want to win like to min-max their lists to their liking. But I do think these lists are good enough to win with in one off ITS games with friends.
I mean... I'd have made Closed Battle Lists out of a "Shield" division too. But I'd have made the background for them all about how they were woken early in the uprising by the execution of their MPs and have been fighting to protect Yu Jing citizens against Japanese atrocities since then. A unit which has done everything it can to abide by the rules of war in a dirty campaign, one which has its actions to protect civilians and losses due to being ambushed because they refused to fire on civilian occupied buildings... ... So, yeah. Somewhat different to this.
On the bright side, you can have your Yu Jing units fight against the abhorrent Yuandun Division. Perhaps the Yuandun are violently harassing Japanese who are still Yu Jing citzens. So another Yu JIng army unit steps in to protect those who are still under their protection. Que Yu Jing vs Yu Jing battle.
I'm going to start off by saying that I find the lists interesting. Too bad the fluff makes me physically sick. Hell, it's about time... Very much this. I think I can field these lists (well, except for the Su Jian, I don't own a new one and sold off my old one), but I don't know that the other Imperial Service player in my group can. Oh, but we gave the baggagebot a Heavy Pistol and Flash Pulse, just to screw Airborne Infiltration units. The Chinese word for sneaky bastard is Cike (spoken 'Ninja') (ok, it's spoken "chee-KAY", but everyone knows 'ninja' already) Yeah, you follow the rules of war or you get convicted and hanged for Crimes Against Humanity at The Hague (or wherever O12 holds their Tribunals. I'd hold them at The Hague or Nuremburg on general principles) This makes another good reason for CB to replace the sitting Emperor in the next book, because it's obvious that this one has lost the Mandate of Heaven. No kidding. Yup. That's about the only good thing to come out of this.
I like the D group alot. That Hsien is gonna be bringing the pain in direct action missions. I also have 0 problems with these guys fluff wise. These are the no nonsense, 0 fks given, we are tired of you terrorists, power armored enforcers. A buddy of mine has gotten the new JSA and we are getting our own uprising tournament pack to play amongst ourselves and I will most likely be bringing one of these groups to bear atleast on one mission to show them how bad they've messed up.
I'm reasonably unfamiliar with Closed Battle Lists, but are they typically a prelude of what is likely to come, or simply a temporary thing? I've been playing Yu Jing almost exclusively for several years now, including LI and none of those lists are particularly interesting. With the exception of list D, which I will absolutely be trying out! I often run a Hsien Haris for that extra juicy burst, and the thought of a Hsien being able to join core fireteams is giving me the shivers! Here's hoping it becomes a permanent option!
This is the second round of them, so they probably haven't settled in on exactly what they are. The first ones, for PanO, looked to be a prelude of sorts for their Svalarheima sectorial, and since that hasn't been released we don't know what from those CBLs makes the transition into permanence. That CBL-as-sectorial-preview is also why when we initially heard about Yu Jing CBLs a lot of us thought they'd be a preview of Invincible Army. These ones seem to be a far different thing, more about playing around with existing ISS and vanilla... makes it even harder to guess if the content is just a fluffy one-time event or a test for revisions to ISS.
I'm pretty sure just about any CBL is going to be limited insertion, with the exception of Ariadna (unless they're TAK CBLs with 3-4 Vet Kazaks in every list). It's always been CB's preferred format.
So.... any good ideas on how this would be handled, especially with keeping the fireteam intact in mind?
Frenzy and Impetuous fireteams don't need to break apart. Just apply the no cover penalty they already get when impetuous or enter the impetuous. Gives you a reason to still form those teams (ignoring all the impetuous penalties, except the cover one, and still get fireteam bonuses) and still giving them a downside (can't use cover bonuses).
