Can we talk about SEF in N5 please?

Calibans are AVA2 in vanilla now, but they also lost access to their most important profile. That said, losing the engineer Caliban does more to hold vCA back (although vCA is still absolutely insane, and the loss barely hurts them) than it does to really empower anything SEF does for having it.

Gwailos (HRL only, you can completely disregard the trash tier HMG profile) are actually pretty amazing now. MSV2+Albedo is a very strong combination now, and the Gwailo is the only one in the game with it that also gets to use a respectable shooting profile with it.
SEF definitely has some identity problems right now, but do not underwrite the Gwailo, he can be a menace. Right now, he's the reason to play SEF, and list compositions for the faction should always focus on taking advantage of his uinque strengths.

 

Try jayths jaris, with fisco baller and bsg-nerf, they go great

 

You can get the +1SD bonus with just one Jayth buddy. Why bother with the full haris? You get 2.5B on the HRL, and 3.5B on the Carbine. If you need to go against harder targets that you don't want to risk a fair fight against, have a speculo toss smoke to shoot through.

 

Let me jump on the topic.

Gwailo is at least a great option to considerate. As stated before, you can make a pure duo with Jayth or a harris, including a TA drone for more order efficiency.

Nox are not to be missed, due to suepr-cheap hacker profile and a linkable, guided, sniper rifle. At this point it is the only linkable guided piece in the game. In addition to that I see it as very smexy, due to rangebands, which matter now, and multipurpose - it's a still a linked sniper.

Caliban is still a quite good unit. I'm wondering, if he was missed when updating CC PS - it might happen.

Q-Done having AVA 2 is no joke.

Noctifier is AVA 3.

Speculo is more than playable at this point. They are not super-optimised, but that's a smoke at opponent's door right away.


SEF is considered to play tricks. Hidden deployment ARO missile is one of those. Speculo is another one. Playing with GML should be one, but sectorial does not support it. You can try with M-Drones I suppose, but we all can agree SEF lacks a pitcher option, or deployable repeater via Shrouded.
Jayth bring a lot of toys, like E/M granates, E/M mines and DiscoBalls. (BTW those could be cheaper and impetous).

As an older sectorial it needs a groud-up rework to enter a competitive range or just to give a player easier acces to play the game and feel as the Trickster. More mines, more decoys and more active-turn shooters.

 

I played a few games with them (none with Sheskiin), they are serviceable at the moment, but I can understand and relate to the discussion here.

Out of curiosity, what people think Shasvastii core gameplay/ theme is or should be.

 

Let's take a look into some potentially great (but not) units:

• Seed Soldier - it's great they received surprise attack. One step from beeing really good is the option to use non-emryo weapons during reactive turn efficiently. From my understanding you have to hatch it via move-labeled short before shoting with Panzerfaust. If you could react with one of two profiles - that would be smexy.
  Additionally their camouflage is still S: X, co unless you put them prone, it's obvious what's there.
• Cadmus - landing on 12(or 15 with EVO) isn't the best deal if you lack any option of putting it onto the table with Paratchutist. They lack mentioned skill or Imetron's note (deploy it during deplyment phase).
  Morphoscan is... well... useless? I can't imagine how low my odds are to pick some good stats with it. Maybe it should have more adaptable options, like three options of enhancment of the player's choice (MOV 6-2 / CC 20 / BS 14). But maybe not? (wet dream is to give them option to pick Vita stat as well :D )
• Jayth - I'd give 'em Impetous in order to reduce cost, but that's me. It could be SEF warband. And it alligns with it's backstory.
• Shrouded - There are so many ways to make them shine. As a base statline is fine. Recent profiles showed the community how the trickster profile should look like: decoy + minelayer, decoy (2), minelayer (2).
• Malignos - I love the sculpt, but I have no idea how tu play it. Silent button-presser activated on the last round? A bit expensive for that. More of a area-control? Without minelayer is worse than Shrouded.
• Taigha - just give then Chains back.

 

I think what would give SEF a leg up without radical changes to the unit profiles would be if they got a generic rule that increased their lethality if they attacked from either LoF or got the Surprise effect. Because right now, they feel like a glass cannon who forgot the cannon at home

It's the same issue that Drukhari had in the 10th edition of WH40k, where their first detachment (special rules gained for the army) was a glass cannon that had forgotten the cannon at home. They then later got another detachment that was a proper glass cannon that could hit really hard while being fragile.

The SEF lacks this; they just feel fragile without the ability to hit hard, and you're dependent on a few units that can hit hard without being fragile while the rest keep their heads down until the end of the game, where they burst out to do things.

 

On the other hand I'm not sure SEF should be like glass canon. Too many profiles has regeneration. I think they suppose to be kinda though. Maybe like cockroaches, swarming and coming back.

 

And CB just modified this!

 

There are too many Shock weapons for Regeneration to really make a difference :/

 

I love Shas and always enjoy playing with them. But it is true that I can't help but keep thinking how I would have rather had X from Vanilla to solve my problem. But below are my personal highlights to SEF.

I will probably have the unpopular opinion on this. But for most targets I tend to send my Caliban against, I would honestly say he's gotten a buff more then a nerf. The main reason is both how criticals and MA worked in N4 and prior but TLDR he still can't miss a CC attack against a non-MA user with D-charges and the old crit range did very little to help against said non-MA units but now gets to roll 2 dice (and take the highest).

The more in-depth explanation is that against said non-MA units which many times is going to be a TAG or a good number of HI models (where the D-charge is particularly useful against), you still are going to be on CC 20 because you get +3 from MA and then -6. And the old crit rules where you expanded the crit range at the top of your dice range meant that rolling your single die can just as easily have you still roll a 1-5 and lose that CC attack and have your 30pt Caliban just die. There have been too many times my Caliban hilariously died to a random line trooper. But with MA3 being the magic breakpoint for making that CC far more reliable with the +1SD now means it's significantly more unlikely that you will low roll and additionally it pushes the average resultant roll up significantly. He's not as good as he could be, but against non-MA targets is he pretty easily better then before.

Against MA users, so long as they are single wound then you simply use the CC weapon which PS5 is pretty likely to drop as most MA users are going to typically be a WB or WB-like model. But you also have the option to just shoot them too.

The Gwailo though is quite excellent, especially in a faction that will likely get your opponent to want visor wearers. The MSV2 HRL is slightly held back from being completely dominant simply because our only smoke option is the Speculo which is not linkable to get that +1SD on that smoke to make it more order efficient to get it down. But on the upside the Speculo is now good enough to just take for the sake of having it, with smoke shooting with the Gwailo being a bonus. And smoke shooting with the Gwailo is extra punishing since you need MSV to shoot back, but then you take the -6 from Albedo. MSV1 gets especially boned shooting back at a -9. And the Jayth with the Disco Ball does still pair nicely to deal with close threats but let's not forget that the Gwailo does also have an 3B E/M Carbine which also solves problems in different ways and that Disco Ball can help you close the gap.

Victor Messer is also the cheapest HD+ in all of CA in a faction that will regularly see visor users against it. White Noise is very good. And perhaps I am understanding this correctly, but it should stack with Albedo as far as I can tell? Casual -12 to MSV/Marksmanship users? Again, not exclusive to Shas but having it at a discount is nice, and linkable with the Gwailo + Jayth to just drag that White Noise generator around. And he is also a specialist option to drag around with that team.

Nox was previously mentioned and not sure I agree on their own, simply way too pricey as line troops for what you are getting. But their link options got a lot better. T-drone still just as nice as before. Octavia got quite the glow up with a B2 ML or B3 HRL. And the benefit to either of those options is you only need a single Nox in a duo to unlock the +1SD benefit. Tensho E-Mitter + Disco Ball is a profile worth also considering.

Dukash is still a highlight for Shas. Especially as he went to 1 SWC in Vanilla which doesn't prohibit him there but Vanilla CA has so many good toys that the SWC crunch is certainly felt. 0.5 SWC for all that Dukash brings is indeed bonkers and him with a Speculo is 1.5 which is that magic number for best fitting heavy weapons. Immunity ARM with 2 wounds means he's all but assured against the vast majority of AROs that he won't die to a single shot. You'll need atleast 2, and he's got mim -3 on top of that. And he pairs really nicely with the Speculo for attack angles to make it very difficult to not have an opening of some kind. Not unique to Shas for that pairing but 2 SWC is a weird enough spot that it can force concessions in list construction.

I would also note another Shas benefit is 0 SWC Mentor LTs as opposed to 1 SWC in Vanilla but you are probably more likely to take a Mnemonica model in the latter. Having a counterintel camo LT with decoy does make him far more survivable then a great many LT options out there and even in games where I have lost almost my entire force on the board, the Mentor is almost always the last to die. And by that point I just do not care if I'm in LoL as I'm probably already in retreat. It's gotten to the point where I've rarely ever considered the Caliban CoC for that reason. Even the Mnemonica models can still be isolated to put them in LoL and with linked pitchers really long-bombing them with +1SD and 0 band out to 24" it's really not that hard to do also. And the loss of the Skiavoros means the only Mnemonica models are all hackable.

AVA 4 on Seed Soldiers is still nice. I like taking the FO/Paramedic for mid-field specialists late game but you do always have the option for 1pt more then a Nox and now it's a camo regular order which is a lot less likely to get picked off and has a shotgun + panzerfaust. And I learned today that Transmutation Hatching was indeed changed to make them S2 camo (thanks Foux). I'm assuming they still obey the same rules as mines so still only attack at S0 since you have to check requirements in resolution but potentially you can declare a dodge, reveal yourself, and still get the dodge roll since you were allows to declare the ARO (and hope you don't fail lol).

Let's also note that the change to "Limited Incursion" (the can't remove 2 orders if you have 10 or less) is a boon for Shas. Vanilla CA is less likely to run quite as many HD+AD models to get under the 10 order threshold whereas plenty of Shas lists might have already been there to begin with. With some of the main benefits being multiple Noctifiers, Dukash who will be in almost every Shas list I have, and less reasons to run Taighas as a list filler will probably have a good number of lists that will meet this requirement.

Shas still are far too heavily poached in Vanilla CA though. And getting access to the wealth of excellent models in Vanilla CA is still likely the best choice to play primarily Shas lists from a competitive perspective. But Shas can still do some things and has a few tricks that arn't practical for Vanilla CA to pull off. Stuff like multiple Speculos, or Caliban, or Noctifier are a benefit from the sense of your opponent can't just deal with the singular threat in your list and then can more easily manage the rest. Multiple pieces in Shas are still very deadly at moderate cost and often you need to shut down multiple threat pieces before you can breathe easy against Shas. Not going to say that they are the best at that strategy but it is still something they can pull off and it gives you leverage points you can pull to still get some good work out of them.

(Minor foot note that difficult terrain is slightly more punishing now in that you have to spend a new order to move again, and only the Vector Operators, E-Drones, and M-Drones are the only non-Shas units that have Terrain Total. And the minelayer Dazer Shrouded is 0 SWC in Shas. Doesn't really move the needle much but it's a thing!)

 

Hello there!
I`m playng infinity since 2012, collecting and bringing to play nomads most of the time, but kinda dropped the game at 2019s.
Now I`m back, and totally in love with new (for me) Shasvastii, and already purchased most of their available minis, but it seemd that solid part of the sectorial (3/4 of seed soldiers, all of the cadmus, 2/3 of speculos, the most useful caliban, some jayths) are defiance-only models, and its too late for me to participate in kickstarter.

Are there any news or rumors of repacking defiance-only shasvastii minis, or the only way is to look for the box on secondary market? Because seeds, speculos, smg calibans look very useful,

 

Don't think Defiance repacks are ever going to happen. CB is quite clearly on a trip of only providing the bare minimum of sculpts for each unit these days, and Shas has a complete roster available already. I'm afraid you'll have to scour the second hand market.

 

Has anyone done a duo of Haiduk? Cheap in points if not SWC. They have BS attack (shock) with AP weapons. I actually hate Sapper but it at least gives them mim-3 and cover. I wish they would just give them Nanoshield.

 

Sapper is the NWI of cover mods

But also, not having Nanoscreen instead is probably one of the reasons they are "Cheap in points if not SWC"