The answers, in vanilla or ISS, are plenty. Several people have already talked about it. Seeing as your main concern involves IA and how to "counter" her there... Well, we don't have the army yet. No clue about Haidaos or other cool engineers except the basic one, but that should be kinda mandatory on a heavy-heavy infantry army (pun intended). That should be enough to deal with those EM grenades and such.
I hope for the Haidaos to be veteran Engineer MIs, so they could be an interesting addition to HI linkteams in order to counter the E/M hazards. Being inmune to E/M could be the thing Invincible needs in the frontline the most
E/M immunity might come as a low-stats HI with an additional E/M Immunity rule in IA, as it seems that it's important for CB to: - Have "HI" flag on all IA new entries - Add enough additional rules so that you have to read an entire rulebook at each wave, splitted on several different profile in Army :D
Not a huge point, but Climbing Plus with Camo often means it's hard to trap Dart on a roof. She can get up and down while keeping her Camo state. Best thing I can say about fighting Dart is that she's really got to be close for much effectiveness. A mine or chain rifle won't take her down right away, but she certainly doesn't like having to contend with them. If you can land smoke up on her rooftop, you'll have options for climbing up there and dealing with her. Spec firing smoke up on a roof can be a little sloppy, but can be worth if if you're starting a Shaolin pretty close by and able to make good use of Impetuous to get Close, Irregular to attempt the toss, etc. Note too that, despite her lore, she's weak in Close Combat.
No, the best Way of locking her up is with a reactive sensor seing only the rentire rooftop line and any other regular ARO piece. If she tries to get out with C+ You'll have a WIP19-3 for discover her. She has no Cover while climbing And if she tries to take out the sensor, she's gonna receive incoming fire in her bad rangebands. If she does a move move, then she's gonna get out of camo. So, she either will eventually end out of fuel or she becomes targetable by your aro and Active pieces. I have the feeling that sensor bots might be regular pieces inside Invincible
Sensor cannot be used as an ARO. A Flash Pulse bot in cover on a sniper tower might be a decent way of preventing her from re-entering camo, but a Camo token will ALWAYS be able to make at least one order before they can take damage from anything save Mines, Perimeter Weapons and Explosions. In that respect it's actually stronger than a second wound. IA's defence is going to hinge on profiles we don't have yet, but Vanilla and ISS have some of the best counters available: Mad Traps, Kuang Shi and Shaolin and their cheap templates.
sensor grants a +6 to regular discover rolls. (Shit! i've got owned by colbrook) Yeah, a single impact of flash or stun can disable dart for one turn
Nope. Camo markers don't trigger perimeter weapons. Camo markers need to reveal themselves before mad traps will attack them.
After a quick skim of the dossier thread (thanks McClane for putting that together!) it looks like the Haidao is carrying D-Charges and close-up weapons, if it really is core linkable it will be oppressive for skirmishers who have to get close if they can't easily flank it to deny cover. The Daoying is even more interesting to me, as it has mines, a Boarding Shotgun and a MULTI Sniper on its dossier. It's a bit of a question mark, but I expect big things from it- the IA sectorial is otherwise weak against Camo, with no Warbands or Minelayers, and having the faction weakness be so common that only one sectorial in the game can't do it as part of standard deployment (MAF) would have come up in playtesting. From the stuff we do know for sure, it seems like "Deploy Inconveniently" about covers what IA can do against a Camo'd Alpha Strike, relying on Lu Duan flamethrowers and engaging G:Servants to buy time for its first turn, when it can do some real damage. Knowing what little I do about the game, it seems the best defense against Dart is the Active Turn, and the fact you will almost always know where she is from deloyment on- the only other CH:2 units in any of her sectorials are Nagas, which have full Infiltration and no Climbing Plus, so if you're worried you can either hide, or deloy a Guilang Sniper just for her. Concerning the above rules corrections; good catch, I must admit I haven't actually used Sensor before and am only recently learning about the confusing joys of Perimeter Weapons because of my Nomad Taskmaster. I appreciate any small help people can give concerning rules I mess up as it helps me not make mistakes at the table. The Sensor info can be especially handy for the Crane; with that X-Visor or Triangulated Fire, they can beat some unusually bad odds, so there might be a case for putting a Crane on a sniper tower for Camo sniping.
She has FDL2, so she doesn't get to start as far up to the line, which hopefully you can take advantage of that by putting up some good perimeter defense. She's still vulnerable to Comms attacks, DA aros should still put her in her place. As others have said flamethrowers and melee should keep her pinned. Vanilla has Shaolin, Kuang Shi, Lu Dian, Guilang, Husong, Kanren, and Ninja to try and keep her back. Yes Climbing+ is a pain which will force you to really think about your deployment. IA is in a different situation. You don't wanna risk Zhencha, or any HI for that matter. Shang Ji are an expensive soft counter. Zhanshi teams, defensive Haris, REMs, and Hac Tao are gonna be some of the better bets until we see the rest of the IA units. Did CB announce when they'll demo the books in a vid? We don't have the whole picture, but I'll wager we'll have some way to keep her at bay. My money is on Daoying and Haidao being solid units that round out the Sectorial and will help with her. Edit- Well, looks like everyone had this implication on the second page. Merp. It's funny because I'm more worried about max Helots in a VIRD list.
