Yes. The Kamau is the pinnacle of defensive link tech but here's another secret you're clearly either missing or entirely overlooking. Only one sectorial has that, but just about every sectorial in the game has access to BS11 line infantry that are often given that job, with sniper rifles or MLs of some sort. Anybody who plays a sectorial has a high chance to leave some kind of defensive link hanging around. Whether it's a Kamau or an Keisotsu. Your claim that nobody leaves snipers out in LOF is demonstrably false, hell even your mate is outing you there. ARO pieces exist to slow people down. Just about everybody leaves some kind of ARO presence on the table from flash pulse REMs, to TR bots, to link teams, to your Intruder you point out yourself is doing just that. Trying to pretend there's never anything to shoot at is disingenuous at best and just outright wrong as well.
As a bystander it was actually the correct tactical choice, I simply derived amusement from the conversation
If you want your opponent leaves a MSR Alguacile or whatever stood around ready for a Yan Huo to shoot them then I'd absolutely say they made a poor tactical choice. Unless, of course, they are forcing you to spend orders getting boxed in, in which case, the Guija is good because it can quickly take advantage of the gap. I still think the Yan Huo doesn't do what the Guija does, which provides speed to put LoF on guys the Yan Huo needs to slog around to do. Seriously cannot believe I'm having to defend 6-4 MOV here.
Because you completely overlook the part where you can't leverage that 6-4 MOV effectively, because charging up the table has an extreme risk of losing the TAG to possession. Guijia has to sit in the rear with the gear until hackers are both scouted out (which involves checking camo markers and making sure there isn't an AHD drop troop) and removed. Last person I ran into who moved his TAG up without doing that promptly gave me a TAG to destroy him with. That was literally 3 days ago. If you don't respect hackers the worst case scenario is they murder half your army with your TAG, or simply make it climb a building and swan dive off it. Either you don't have a TAG anymore or you don't have an army anymore. If you want to pretend that this significant liability does not exist, I could understand why you think it's actually viable to be aggressive with a TAG that can't defend itself with a marker state.
Take Killer Hackers to eliminate enemy hackers, take regular hackers to support the TAG with exorcism. I very recently hacked a Yan Huo and immobilised it, then killed it with a MSR from surprise. This is hardly a unique weakness to deal with. Also the question was "why would you take a Guija when a Yan Huo does the same " but it doesn't do the same, because it's much slower and less tough. Yes, hacking is a consideration for TAGs, but there are many advantages it brings.
Honestly, i feel like giving the Guija a duo option would have been enough to make it interesting with all the wildcards we have in IA. A TAG moving around with a Deflector L2 TacAw Shang-jì, an haidao engineer/khd, or his very own repeater is quite new, and i think the uproar it would have caused amongst pano player alone would have made it worth it
Yes, the Yan Huo just died. It didn't turn around and kill 7 of your models first then commit suicide by jumping off a building. There is a significant difference in the level of hacking vulnerabilities here. But it does. The Guijia has to sit in the deployment zone for an extended period of time just shooting from there while you scout the table and figure out whether you can move up without getting possessed. While it's sitting at the back there it's not actually leveraging its move speed and might as well be a Yan Huo plugging away with an HRMC because at least you save 30+ points, get more orders, and don't have to baby sit it in case somebody tries to pitcher possess the damn thing from long range and wipe your backline out. Seriously, the tin cans are not even safe sitting in the deployment zone, you have to make sure they're kept in repeater range and B2B with something or some Barid is gonna long bomb a Pitcher and suddenly your Guijia is rampaging behind you and you've quite possibly lost the game at this point if it inflicts even a modicum of damage.
Naturally. Take your pick from our HI roster with big guns they're basically all more viable than the Guijia.
I don't know what meta you have, but I certainly wouldn't describe the risk as extreme where I play. I can absolutely leverage the 6-4 speed, though I've found it best to wait for turn 2 to force the enemy to move closer and reveal their big guns and specialists or risk losing the chance to take the objective. Going nuts turn 1 and overextending is a good way to get any TAG wasted, no matter how many Marker States it has. Personally I've never actually seen a Pitcher used across the table, that seems like a colossal waste of orders given the BS of troops that usually have them. In all serious @Triumph, why do you play Yu Jing? You have been very vocal about issues with Hacking and the CC tax, what is the redeeming factor for you?
Because I happened to play them before Uprising, very much enjoyed how vanilla played, and I have all these painted and assembled models. I would rather CB fix what they screwed up rather than rewarding them with more money by buying a whole new faction. If I hadn't sunk a huge amount of time into growing the Infinity community around here I honestly would've quit. That's how shit Uprising was, the only thing keeping me around was the fact that my reputation would be utter shit as well if I straight up quit and abandoned the game after convincing a bunch of people to buy into it, build, paint, buy terrain etc. Not to mention getting the LGS owner in on the game to support it and make tables and terrain for us, I'd look like a total idiot if I bailed on it and he'd definitely think twice before helping me out again with any other system. So for better or worse I'm stuck with it for at least a few years. Best I can hope for is for CB to pull their finger out of their asses and do something about stuff like the Guijia. Couple of orders to move a Pitcher up the table then fire one 16" is worth it, you then extend the hacking area 8" from that so actually you can have a model essentially provide a hack from 24" away. Assuming your TAG is positioned half way up its deployment zone that's potentially all of a single MOV-MOV order required from the pitcher to get it into its +3 rangeband, Barid for example sinks that shot on a 15 or less. We have many people who aren't afraid to play infowar in the meta. The only regulars who never pose a hacking threat are an Ariadnan player, a Tohaa player, and an MO player although that may honestly change with 3rd offensive with the KHD Santiago the AHD Father Knight might show up more now with the Hospitaler/Magister link getting canned. Personally, I rotate AHD Guilangs in and out of my lists to keep people guessing what's under the markers. Even the Steel Phalanx lists bust out AHD Ekdromoi around here on the occasion, one of those was present at the last tournament ran down here.
Oh right, and if you've never seen it done Nomads naturally are the king of this shit. Tsyklons have X-Visors, so they fire Pitchers up to 24" on base BS of 12. Nomads threatening hacks from 32" away is a normal thing. If you don't ground your TAG in your DZ basically you're gonna lose it against them and then everything else around your TAG. Hell if they're desperate they can drop one 48" on 9s which while not great, is a decent play to make if you're trying to sneak your way back in from a losing position. You can often sneak in some very long range and unexpected pitchers down the flank of either board edge. EDIT: And because I know someone is gonna pipe up with "hurr but you're not gonna play Nomads that much" Nomads were THE most popular faction in season 9 ITS. In fact 2 of the top 3 most popular factions are competent Infowar factions with good hackers and hacking programs, and hacking support.
I honestly never noticed how good Tsyklons were for Hacking, and I actually have a Bakunin army. X-visors always just fly under the radar for me somehow. I do remember somewhere somebody mentioned that leaving an Engineer's G:Servant in base contact with a TAG is a good idea, as even though impact templates can wipe it out, if the TAG is Possessed the bot can Electric Pulse it with decent odds, before Engineering next turn to take away IMM-1. If you have two there, like IA can easily do, then the enemy has to waste orders putting down at least one bot or the TAG will be bricked on activation as it can't attack more than one G:Servant at a time, so it will get Immobilised for sure. Not a perfect solution, but hopefully it helps for people's TAG games.
While I feel the Guijia is just fine, I don’t think he’s good in IA but he is in Vanilla. In IA you can’t seem to give him support, either in orders or troops. In Vanilla you can make more orders that it can use. There might be Lt.2, NCO, and TacAware but those are things only those troops can use. I suppose it’s fine if they only use those special orders and nothing else it helps. However, NCO, and TA are on fairly expensive troops and most of your points went into the TAG itself. I do think there were missed opportunity to at least just make him more flavorful if not better or worse. But too late now. It’s going to be several years if there’s anything. Meanwhile I think CB is going to be seeing less sales because no one is taking it. Maybe then they will change their tune. If the sales continue, it’s because it’s a cool model. I certainly love the new one, though I don’t have it yet and probably never will. I’ll just never have the money. I’d rather buy 4 or 5 figures for the same price as 1 TAG.
What I like about this thread is people saying things like "gah, but TAGs are PanO thing so YJ can't have any" while FUCKING MILITARY ORDERS IS A THING
This is a valid point, but that's ignoring that CA and Onyx are a thing, meaning for symmetry reasons we should be borrowing a different sectorial's schtick. I don't think Doctor Plus and large number of aforementioned profiles are all that spread out... (though clearly that's not even remotely a Yu Jing thing)
Yes they're a good option for grounding the TAG. The other thing you want to make sure you do is you sit it in range of your own repeater, so when it attempts to punch the Yaozao you get to attempt to free the TAG with your own hacker. If you set up defensively like that it's probably enough to dissuade them (or most opponents with hackers) not to sink orders into attempting stealing the TAG immediately as the order drain to pick apart the defenses is too high. However if you insist on using muh 6-4 movement and running off from that safety network well it's all gonna go bad real fast.
Uh... well they're not what I would qualify as that. I mean Onyx has exactly one HI unit and it can only duo....
