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Brainstorming around the new Hsien MMR profile (ISS)

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Weathercock, Oct 11, 2020.

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  1. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    In N4, the Hsien's tinbot profile comes loaded with a toy. The multi-marksman rifle should make the Hsien/Zhanying haris a very dangerous midfield player in N4. With a hacker Zhanying under the protection of a -6 tinbot and a third option most likely to be filled with a sensor Zhanying, you've got a pretty well equipped toolbox to mess around with.
    While I like the idea of wildcard options with the Hsien, I'm having trouble thinking about how to make them actually fit. As much as I absolutely would love to have a Crane partying with my Hsien, as a hacker he loses sixth sense (we're going to assume for now that CB will get around to fixing Stealth), and he's fairly pricey to boot. The madtraps sensor Zhanying could be replaced by a Crane for extra CC oomph and an overall boost in durability, but it also comes at the cost of losing the mad traps. What's more, the Crane's gunfighting ranges overlap a touch too closely with the Hsien's, especially ruling out the spitfire option.

    Where I'm having trouble now is actually fitting him and his team in a list. ISS comes with a lot of great new haris options that unfortunately won't get to play in the same pen as the Hsien/Zhanying team, as they'd otherwise compliment one another very well. We'll have to write these off for now, unfortunately. That said, the Wu-Ming haris can still be accomplished by running it as an undersized core, although this comes not without cost.

    The biggest limiting factor I'm focusing in on first here is going to be smoke. A list featuring a Hsien, especially a forward-operating one, is going to need it. Unfortunately, our only option for smoke received a significant nerf to its range band. Firing smoke without a core link is basically not an option unless we become extremely desperate, as our Celestial Guard's BS11 is painfully unreliable, especially with burst 1.
    Really, the only way we're going to get good smoke here is by running the CG/Kuang Shi link. A regular Celestial Guard link is an option, especially with the improved wildcard accessibility, but it still necessitates us buying an additional, separate smoke launcher CG to lead them, and the Kuang Shi are just better than additional CG in most cases anyway. This isn't a bad thing, as it allows us to tap into the order battery that we'd likely be buying into no matter what, and we can stiffen it up a bit with some wildcards if we want now. That said, HI without tinbot access leaves me paranoid as all hell in a game that lets B2 (and B3, in some instances) Oblivion exist, but we'll get to that more in a bit.

    So, now I'm 134 points and 1 SWC in, with 8 orders on the table. Not bad. The problem is filling in the remaining 166 points and 6 SWC in. And here's where I start to hit my wall in designing around this. I always feel like I'm missing out on something important by time I get to the end of this.
    On the positive side, our smoke lobbing CG/KS link is easier than ever to reform and dissolve, since Impetuous is basically a non-issue unless we want it. We do have the option to introduce other cores into the list if we need them, but our order split can make things a bit messy here. Attaching a spitfire crane and/or Xi Zhuang to the Kuang Shi core to round out our first group at 10 orders is certainly not an awful idea, but it's still pretty vulnerable to enemy hacking attempts and leaves us with some pretty obvious Lt options and not necessarily enough leftover to handle a worthwhile CoC option (real shame the Pheasant is still stuck with the still shitty Bao). Even with an improvement to our hacking options, ISS still hasn't received as strong a repeater net as the rest of YJ has, which leaves me a bit anxious in that regard without a tinbot in a link. Same goes for kittybot.
    The Wu Ming pain train got significantly more interesting in N4 with access to extra Zhanying and wildcards, but it's a costly endeavour that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for much else, and once more can leave us in a position where our obvious Lt doesn't get a whole lot of backup.

    One option for an interesting SWC vent and moderately costed cheerleader is the Son-Bae missile bot. Thanks to the Zhanying, we get access to a pretty scary spotlighting machine if something big needs to go down, especially if you manage to mix in the mad-trap/hacking mixup. And thanks to sixth sense, nothing can hide from you once you manage to push up in range. This could be pretty useful, as it's looking like ISS as a whole is going to be lacking in strong direct anti-armour options.

    So, musing aside, my question here is, how do you think the Hsien MMR is going to work in N4, and how do you think it could be built around? I like everything it's got on paper, I just need help figuring out how to make things click. ISS is kind of elegantly designed in that it can do quite a bit, but nothing comes for free or automatically.

    Unfortunately, I don't get too many games in lately thanks to Covid, so I can't really do a whole bunch of testing to work out the kinks organically. I've got a tournament coming up not too long from now, so I'm mostly just running things through my head in an attempt to fill in as many gaps as I can from not actually getting to play nearly as much as I'd like. But having some outside thoughts in here to fill in my blindspots would be much appreciated.
     
    #1 Weathercock, Oct 11, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2020
    Space Ranger and RobertShepherd like this.
  2. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    I was under the impression that @ijw had confirmed the intent for the Kuang Shi link was any CG could lead it.
     
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