BACKGROUND Yu Jing is currently in danger. It's not an economic question, nor is it a social question, and it's also not an alien threat. It's envy felt by our rivals. The prosperity and stability of our society, along with our accomplishments and advances, are the wonder and envy of all other powers that undeniably feel threatened by the glory of the State Empire. Yu Jing advances unstoppably towards its destiny and our rivals will do anything to thwart it. This is why Yanjing remains vigilant to the outside. However, it is within, our own home where our enemies can easily hide themselves, spreading their venom into the ears of our citizens, corrupting them with their liberal ideas that are the antithesis of the Party's program of well-being. To watch and monitor all subversive activity the Imperial Service has created the Kanren (Bold Edge) Counterinsurgency Group. This unit is made up of brave men and women that track all kinds of insurgent, subversive, or radical groups that may want to implant themselves in Yu Jing. Their modus operandi is based on undercover infiltration into their ranks to gather information and learn everything necessary about said movements. Before delivering the blow that will break the group apart, Kanren operators identify and locate all of its leaders and members, as well as their sources of financing, support networks, and allies. In this way, they ensure the insurgent movement is completely destroyed without any possibility of regrouping, guaranteeing the security of the StateEmpire. However, the work of these men and women is not easy, and on numerous occasions revealing their identity as law enforcement agents prematurely in order to avoid catastrophe. That is the type of operations they must fulfill: one of them against all of them. These operations are therefore specialized in close combat and urban combat techniques. This is the reason behind the name of the unit, Kanren (Bold Edge), because they are the sword of justice that stand alone in the wolf's den.
Pretty sure you'd need Holo3 for that to work. Even then the overlap in rules (marker states and all) makes this combination very limited in functionality.
Yep, both have negative feedback, so either Holo 2 or Cybermask, needing Holo 3 (only Patroclus have it) being needed for that to work... and it's kinda strange to have three markers moving around and only one beig the real one. Trippy XD
Wait closed list for ISS? That just make no sense? Why the helk they will make clsoed list for a sectorial that is playable? The closed list should be from IA and i hope for at least some new porfile or a Shang Ji rework.
Yeah, I wasn't clear. I meant that either cybermask or Holo2 is pretty close. You're only out the deployment shenanigans of Impersonation, and frankly, using Cybermask and then popping holoechoes once discovered is better than Impersonation.
For what it's worth, Impersonation also comes with pretty amazeballs deployment options, which compared to multi-layered marker tend to do nasty things. By the way, a few weeks ago a fellow from FLGS told me that there used to be some rule (probably buried somewhere in campaign, on in some previous edition... or in his imagination, possibly) adding Impersonation Kempeitai profile useable against YJ only. Was it ever the case? Just curious.
Yes, there used to be a Mercenary Kempetai with Impersonation in N2, but you could only take it against Yu Jing and (obviously) only if using mercenaries.
In fact, until at least very recently, when displaying mercenaries on the Army you could get a Kempeitai, but he would have nº2 only, so... of little use by himself XD
For an IS closed battle list, I'd like to see mixed links more. Given the link composition in recent armies, I think that is the way their going. I enjoy variety and would prefer no more than 3 of the same model in a list. That being said, I also want to play around with 5 man links since as a vanilla YJ/tohaa player I haven't had the chance yet. It being a CBL using only existing models I'll have to settle for something like 3 zhuyong + 2 shangji, though the shangji is not really interesting enough to make that fun. Maybe a tiger haris or duo.
Probably Sun Tze V2 in link together with Bao. Not sure I'm looking forward to that list, though, it's got all the hallmarks of what makes Bao links somewhat ineffective scaled to 11.
"Play Imperial Service like you've never played it before! A 9 order list with no Kuang Shi and the worst fireteam we could possibly cook up using a dumpster fire we stole from the local hobo." Something to look forward to I guess.
Your only argument so far has been low order count. While the PanO CBL aren't ones I'd play for other reasons (ex: A leaves the Hospitaler hanging and has incomplete Fusi link, B double-dips in expensive mercs instead of filling Fusi team up with specialist, C is actually kind of interesting, D is kind of okay, and all of them are missing engineers), you've been unable to state any reason other than that you prefer order spam. It's getting a bit annoying. I'm not expecting wonders from the list, mostly because they chose to make lists for one of the most feature complete sectorials out there and the only really interesting stuff we could get I don't hold out for. A true merc fireteam would be very neat, CSU + Bounty Hunters and maybe Miranda, but with the lackluster approach to the mercs in ISS I wouldn't hold my breath. That said, they're going to be hard pressed to make ISS less than 10 orders. Jotun costs as much as two Cats after all.
They're bad for a whole host of reasons, I really don't feel like typing the whole lot out each time I make fun of CB's total lack of ability to build a functioning list because I'd be here all day and I really don't think it's necessary when it's so obvious they're all laughably terrible. D sucks hard too btw. Nisse Haris and Jotum means you're building for missions that don't need specialists, and yet then they go ahead and do stuff like cram a TO Sergeant into the list like they're also trying to make the list go for midfield button pushing missions, and then cram Pathfinder in there for the same mission type. It comes at the expense of basic shit like the Engineer that you've identified. It has the same fundamental failure that all of the lists have, it was built for fluff reasons, not for mission(s). It's not going to function anywhere near as well as a properly optimised list because of that. It's a bit ironic, they're cutting the basic support gear that does actually fit in the sense of a generalist pick because they function regardless of the mission, in an attempt to diversify the list that instead backfires and overall harms its functionality.
The biggest criticism I can lay on the PanO CBLs is that they have made of them and in them they have only explored one single feature of Svalarheima; Nisse Haris. The only other concept they explore seem to be aimed at MO, which is the OS+Hospitaler Haris (which, by the way, is super interesting 'cause it's a HRL OS that's got Haris) So across 4 lists, they only manage to get 1 unique feature. What this tells me is that they weren't actually ready to release this feature. Hopefully they have ghad time tto develop it by now. Because of this, I seriously doubt the PanO CBLs are representative of anything (other than, possibly, that CB actually do release stuff before its done - and the dip in quality that this bring) P.s. and button pushing isn't something all lists need to do, and specialists should arguably be useful in their own right for their abilities.
All I can say is you clearly have more faith in them than I do. I do hope that you are right and that the CBLs when they arrive are both fresh and competitive, but given their recent history of mishandling stuff and general poor efforts over the last 6-8 months my personal expectations are very low indeed.
