It's also expensive compared to Nomad options like Bandits and Zeros which have FOs for 19 and 23pts. The difference between the Guijia and everything else you list is each other one of those TAGs has a gimmick it can call a reason to put it on the table. Squalo and Lizard have HGLs which on certain missions like Frostbyte are an absolute game changing ball buster, the Raicho now has a Mine Dispenser on BS14 which is basically the premier new piece of anti link team gear. These are great reasons to get these models off the shelf and onto the table. Meanwhile the Guijia has CC19. Hold up stop the presses, we've got CLOSE COMBAT 19 HERE GUYS. Sarcasm aside, I have a fully painted Guijia, I field her alot. Trust me when I say she's been an absolute disappointment every time I've put her on the table and leaves me asking why I didn't just save 30+pts and put a Su Jian on the table instead. Yes the Guijia is an "average TAG" but an average TAG is a garbage TAG. To make a TAG worth fielding they need a gimmick, whether it be a piece of gear or a noticeable points discount.
I would have said JSA was borderline OP, not vanilla YJ. The Samurai 7 list (DoTanko link, O-Yoroi, Yojimbo, Keisotsu hacker, doc, and engineer) is a nasty beatstick. I mean, that YJ Roulette list I posted isn't godly, but it's pretty solid. Gives a major challenge to the opponent to break the 4 camo markers in the middle of the table. Even has 5 specialists for Button-pushing, on top of 3 heavy weapons. The major downside is the fragility of most of those specialists, and the vulnerability of the AHD. That's only a 2pt difference on the Bandits, which is made up for by the Guilang being Regular. I will grant the Zeros, must have missed them somehow when I was doing the comparison in Army. Sounds like your meta has figured out how to kill TAGs reliably. Spoiler: potentially rude comment Either that or you're not running them well, but saying that as the first response would be really rude. And I'm pretty sure you know how to run TAGs, so that's really just there for completeness, I'm not trying to be rude. I'm sure other people would be thinking it. In such an environment, yes, the Su Jian would probably be better, just due to better speed and Climbing+ (not to forget smaller Silhouette). But the Su Jian isn't a TAG, so doesn't score in a couple missions. The Guijia does. But I still wouldn't call the Guijia 'garbage'. The Anaconda, maybe, but not the Guijia.
You know somebody actually turned around to me the other day at the weekly Infinity night and said "what about this list, this seems decent." and they were showing me one of your posts with that list. I pointed out to them it was great, provided you went first. If you go first your big guns storm up the table, get into great spots and lock it down with SF mode. However if it goes second it has a piss poor ARO presence and no bodies to soak orders, if it goes second it'll get run over very quickly. I reminded him about the times he's tried to run no ARO option elite lists, and how badly he gets crushed by people including me who just run over him with order spam and models trading up because he lost the option to go first and that was basically the end of that discussion. I would agree if the Bandit was some backline or last turn activation mook, but they're a specialist and a decent combat profile and have mines. They can always find something useful to do with their order in the middle of the table even if it's just deploy an AP mine. It's not like an irregular Tech Bee or War Cor twiddling their thumbs, or a Monk that's run out of useful places to toss smoke. It's less about whether or not people have figured out how to kill TAGs, which lets be real is about as difficult as point the nearest linked ML at them or AP high burst gun, and it's more about 88pts is too expensive for a BS14 Multi HMG, especially when it has a stupid size silhouette and can't prone making it excessively difficult to keep safe if it leaves the deployment zone. It competes with half a dozen different HI options which all either bring superior gear like Visors, Camo, Infiltration, or even just an even bigger gun like the Yan Huo. All for less points, all easier to wield. It doesn't have a unique reason to be on the table over any of the much better options Yu Jing has. The Lizard/Squalo have missions where the Lizard is the best possible damn thing you could put on the table to do the mission, the Raicho is a superb anti link team piece now. If you struggle with link teams and your meta is full of them, you can say to yourself "A Raicho would be really good for me." There has never ever been a game where I have looked back and gone "The Guijia was really good for me." Even when she kills shit, I look back and go "Great, Yan Huo/Su Jian/Hsien/Hac Tao all could done that, for less points, and been easier to do it with. The only reason I put that fat bitch on the table was because she's big, nice pose, painted, and I'm trying to play with models to impress new players to pick up the game." The TAG scoring missions are heavily overrated. Deadly Dance wants cheap, small TAGs you can push across the table in the event you got screwed by the starting zones and not care too much if they get hammered. In Show of Force you're better off just playing to your strengths and focusing on the alternative scoring routes to victory like using Tigers (an actual good unit) to dig out Datatrackers. The Lizard and Squalo are actually worth their points on Frostbyte because as I pointed out, the HGL is amazing on that mission. It excels at punishing cheap data trackers with speculative fire, and safely makes use of the bonus data tracker order in that mission just using it as a free Speculative Fire every turn onto stuff that can't dodge worth a shit like remotes to cull your opponent's order pool, or to force models to abandon SF mode. It's not worth its points and fails to compete with a multitude of HI options, and doesn't have a mission changing specific gimmick or quirk that elevates it. That easily fits my definition of a garbage model. Take that from a person who fields it, alot.
The Guijia is a 6-4 MOV Specialist Trooper that can take more hits than anything else in Yu Jing and carries a gun that can reliably destroy any opposition without a visual modifier. It can be effective from your DZ, unlike the Su Jian, benefiting from the attentions of the Mech-Engineer without huge order investment in movement. It can be a Lieutenant, being incredibly hard to bring down in missions like Decapitation or Hunting Party. It has a DTW for frying Warbands that attempt to rush it down, or stripping modifiers from camo troops and members from link teams. It looks REALLY COOL. That last point alone gets it a pass from me. In all seriousness, it is tricky to use without a gimmick, but nothing can get more done with its orders then the Guijia can except for a few other TAGs. That said, I absolutely want a different weapon loadout or two for it for variety's sake, and variety is something Yu Jing is terribly short on. Look at the back spikes, for Heavens' sake! They're on everything!
See here's a post that from my experience, is from someone living in fantasy land. I say this not to belittle or be mean or rude, but to point out that this is a post that sounds like it comes from someone who doesn't actually play the damn thing on a frequent basis. It is a specialist trooper, yes, and it is faster than average at 6-4. Do you know why it rarely gets to do anything specialist oriented or makes actual use of its speed? Because it is attached to a TAG, and TAGs are both difficult to maneuver into position and have this issue with Assault Hackers stealing them. AHDs are often camouflaged and in the middle of the table, or have access to repeaters in the middle of the table. The Guijia is normally skulking around the deployment zone, not zipping across the table at 6-4 movement, because it can't safely bypass alot of ARO problems, and it's severely vulnerable to getting hacked if it presses forwards. You know who moves faster up the table? A 4-4 Hac Tao because they don't need other models to deal with ARO problems for them, they can just run past with marker state up. Guijia rarely if ever gets to make use of 6-4 movement because of its base size and hacking vulnerabilities. It carries a great gun with a good BS. You know who else carries great guns with a good BS? About half a dozen models in Yu Jing and they don't cost 88pts and have better rules assisting them like MSV, TO, and Infiltrate. It can be an LT. Again please look at the various HI, you're not making a great case here because they do that and don't eat up +1 SWC for the priviledge. It can't prone and has a stupid Silhouette, and is more vulnerable to hacking which can be used to expose it to be taken out. It is still inferior to other LT options in these "defend the LT missions". The Dao Fei or an Executive Hac Tao are both superior at them able to defend themselves with a marker state, hide in more places, and go prone. It has a DTW. Have you, like, looked at alot of our HI? They also have DTWs. It looks cool. Yes, this is true. It's the only reason I play it. There's alot of things that look good or at least ok on paper but don't actually translate practically on the table. The Guijia is one of these. It's expensive, it spends most of its game time in your DZ, and doesn't even boast the best firepower available while it's doing that. Trying to argue that the Guijia has fantastic order efficiency is just so wrong it's stupid. If it had good order efficiency people would be all over the model. Basically any one of our other HI options gives better bang for buck with order useage over the Guijia, for crying out loud you can get a full Kuang Shi boat and an LT HRMC Yan Huo for 87pts over a Guijia's 88. That's 7 orders vs 2 and you get a bigger, better gun to boot. A Dao Fei HMG and Guilang FO is 84pts and none of these options feel as shitty as a TAG being trapped in your DZ because it's too expensive to fight the ML link team and possibly fail (because she's shit at it compared to the vis MOD HI) or get near the camo markers because they might posses her. These are the reasons why nobody seriously thinks the Guijia is good or value for cost at all. If CB don't want to adjust the rules or gear on the Guijia, to make her actually compete against our HI I guarantee you, without joking they need to drop her cost to 60-65pts. That's how badly she's outclassed inhouse right now. And for that loudmouth who's about to "muh maghariba" they can stow it, Maghariba is already cheap for a TAG and BS14 is an actual rarity for Haqqislam. With that said, I wouldn't want CB to take that route I'd rather they just improve the rules and gear to make it worth the 88pts. Hell, I would love to see it reworked into an actual close combat threat. If I was given something that cost 88pts and could reasonably reach CC and get stuck into a fist fight with Achilles and hold its own I would be thrilled to play it.
Zeros and even Foxtrots are just camo plebs(basic profiles with camo/infiltration), where as the Yu Jing SKs have gear like MSV1 and Holoprojector2, TO Camo, a Direct Template weapon etc. I'm not denying how powerful basic camo plebs are, but they are really bland profiles that don't offer variation, but instead directness.
Not to mention the history of being the faction to lose its toys while getting nothing in return. I sure as he'll didn't sign up to be the whipping boy AND the personification of Yellow Peril. Also I bloody liked Yu Jing being the awkward all rounder...which is why I kind of wished White Banner was released before IA. I love my HI and pain trains to a probably unhealthy extent, but more meatheads is probably not what we needed. The Swiss Miss is one key profile where it comes ahead. It can go kick down doors and make shots from downtown. Hell the Noctifer, even packs an assault pistol. The Hac Tao missile launcher is basically pigeonholed at it's 65 points and 2 SWC as a dedicated ARO piece. As are the Asura, Marut, Charonitid. I hope so, because that's like the only profile I can really afford to take. Occasionally I'll get them in melee, but basically they are just a KHD delivery platform with weak board presence. Because those baseline troopers are often good enough. that's a problem when they can bring 3 dudes for the price of 2 Guilang. Don't forget Al Hawwa and Steloks are also a thing. The Guilang is good, but other skirmishers in their price range bring other skills that can overshadow that MSV1. Farzan bring CoC. Naga get dogged and Shouded Automedkits. There are even full fledged TO skirmishers around their ballpark. Tomcats have been around since HSN2. And Paracommandos have been doing good enough for a while. Early post sarcasm aside, that's putting a lot of burden on a single profile. The main issue is that the rest of the army has to step up. Even if the Kriza isn't a match for the Tao, the Kriza brings enough capable friends to make up the difference.
To... the whole Triumph thing. Yes, it's a bit suboptimal in most respects. But the Guijia does bring unique skills and capabilities to the faction. And I have both played the Guijia, and think it's good, because in my meta people make mistakes. This includes me. The Guijia is just about the hardest thing to screw up Yu Jing has for new players unless you get the pilot out. Your concerns about the Silhouette and MOV being useless or liabilities can be fixed by building terrain that actually supports it. If I leave a Dao Fei or Hac Tao out because I miscalculated available orders, they're dead because nobody leaves home without MSV anymore. I just recently had a Yan Huo HRMC laze about my DZ nearly the whole game because I deployed him like garbage and he is slow to move. It seems you play in a mature meta with a lot of competitive players. Half of mine, judging by the tournaments I have attended, have picked up the game within the last year, and I've gotten halfway up each of those tournament ladders despite, or even because of, my TAG lists. I actually could have placed well in the second one if I hadn't failed 3 ARM saves against Combi fire on the Guijia LT out of 4 saves it made the whole game. I'm not living in hecking fantasy land. I live in Australia. Some of us play games badly. You should try sometimes, it's fun. On the Infiltrator front, I'm perfectly happy with the Guilang. It's pricier then the cheap, crappy Zeros, but its MSV1 makes it a predator against other skirmishers at mid range and WIP 14 lets me play the game more, instead of rolling to miss the keyboard on consoles.
All which cost more points than the Hsien. The Hsien out-ranges the Asura. The Marut is a TAG that cost over 100 pts. The Charontid indeed matches up well, but the units that drop smoke for the Combined cost 10 pts more than what the Hsien needs to pull off the same trick.
So we lost something, and despite I'm scouring through forums with a positive attitude about Yu Jing, gotta admit we lost some essential 'cog' that was needed for our gameplay, and that is why I lost the eagerness before Kurage Crisis. Playing Yu Jing was like running a delicate machine before. When it comes to solving the problems, there were right tools for that. Chaining the activations, surgically remove key piece via - goddamn it - Oniwaban, and from time to time, surprise the opponent by a Karakuri or so. That was the fun. That was the taste of playing this faction. Yu Jing has not fallen weak, I'm standing here firmly, but I do agree with @Durandal 's opinion. We lost our spices of play. Now we are only holding some remnants of formerly-good faction. And this is why I'm counting on IA; a brand new taste of Jack-of-all-trades. I want to play the thrill of destroying minmaxed armies by a solid, rigid built Yu Jing roster. TBH, I wasn't that aware about our loss - we had a local tourney shortly after Uprising, and I was the 1st tourney winner and 2nd tourney 3rd place. Not to mention pre-Uprising ITS. Looks like that's my personal bubble. Although we have like 45-50 players base here in Seoul, I hardly see anyone confidently face Yu Jing played by me - and I'm quite confident about it, to be honest.
I don't think there was anyone calling for a yu jing nerf except on certain profiles, this post seems like a post hoc rationalisation, cb did it so it must have been op.
The ninja is a crappy hacker. WP13 BTS0.... the KHD It's also a crappy shooter. I guess it could be worse, but. saying it's the best is kinda... oversized. Yujing has little force towards hacking The Yanhuo is nothing more than a vanilla HI with a huge gun. And an expensive one. Tigers are fine, but they are expensive. there are more reliable droptroopers out there (kodali, ekdromo, hakim, tomcat...). The liuxing is not usable yet and I'm talking about current Yujing. And I'm totally against the last point. The O-Yoroi may be lighter and with worse ARO power, but it's significantly better. It has stealth, it provides ground control with the koalas, it's lethal in CC You can take out nasty ARO troopers with some smoke help and as a bonuss it can take out objectives in CC pretty fast. Guijia it's probably the worse vanilla TAG of the game. Raicho, Squalo, Lizard... all of them are have interesting alternative loadouts that bring out different playstyles or have huge advantages. Squalo - BS15 Heavy grenade launcher with remote presence Lizard - BS14 Heavy Grenade launcher with killer hacker pilot Raicho - BS14 Heavy shotgun and mine launcher Maghariba - A Guijia 10 points cheaper for being huge Jotum - ARM 10 outside cover, and remote presence I'm not saying it's useless but it definitely lacks something aside the posibility of being LT. And dude, This is the very definition of averange. That's why I'm saying yujing lacks presence. In LI tournaments Aleph and EC are going to be the top played factions because they have major league tools, tools dificult to deal with. In non LI tournaments the spammy factions presence (ariadna, haqqislam, nomads...) shine. And between the average factions, Yujing looses in terms of quantity of available options. I think some of this problems will fade away once Invincible gets launched, but taking into acount the uniqueness and the very essence of invincible, I'm not sure It will add too much for vanilla. But that's something we will see it in 3 weeks. That argument is hilarious... What skirmisher doesn't do the Job? A 19p zero FO can definitely do the job for 7 points less Guilang are excelent tools but we're taking too much weight on them. An the daofei is also good piece but not so reliable as 3 skirmishers. the playing style for him requires careful choices and some luck. A lot of yujing players don't like it because it tends to die quite fast. Paying for premium or costly pieces adds a lot of risk to your tactics. you don't have the safe line of having replacements, so a lot of people prefer to pay a little more an use even more reliable options. That's why Hactao is more used than Dao. Or why players are migrating to EC or Aleph, that have more reliable premium pieces and more reliable options for the safety network
While I do see what you mean about weak ARO presence, I've never had a problem with it. Probably due to my local meta. You really don't rate 6-4 movement very highly. Either that or you don't have good TAG terrain in your group. All I want out of a Main Battle TAG is to kill things. And/or be a distraction carnifex. Guijia does that pretty well. Yes, you can get the M-HMG or even a HRMC on a Yan Huo, but the YH is slow. At best it's moving 6" an order, more likely 4" and shooting. If the YH is placed well, the 4-2MOV isn't a problem. But if you need to re-deploy that YH, you're screwed. To move 24" a Guijia needs 3 orders (and can shoot once, 4 orders to shoot every time), a YH will need at least 4 and won't do any damage in any of those orders. If you need to move that YH 24" and shoot on the way, you're spending 6 orders.
We can bring enough friends too. I think that early post sarcasm deluded it. And yes, you will put burden on him. He's freaking TO HI with top-notch stats. Who will take the burden if he cant.
Specialist tags are done for. Since you need 3 full orders (or even more) to take an objective and go back to your TAG. I'm not trying to say yujing way of play is pointless, but got quite hitted on the last year while some others have gotten new toys. And that's the main reason behind the drop of players.
Two orders. Dismount and Mount are free at the start of an order if the pilot is in base contact, so being Dismounted in base contact with the objective and TAG allows for more efficiency by using Dismount-Objective, Mount as the skill sequence. It's not perfect, but it can still be efficient if you are leveraging the 6-4 MOV. Edit; It also allows you to use the TAG as total cover for the pilot as it is not counted as activating when the Pilot dismounts.
Are people really disliking Guileng? I fear Guileng as some of the best skirmishers. Because MSV1 is so good. Midfield skirmisher do one thing alot. Fighting other skirmishers. Those guys usually have camo. Mines + MSV1 would be the loudout i put on my dream camo infiltrator. So skirmishers are always dying to mines. But automedkit or dogged overshadows MSV1? Wait wat? I agree with alot (alot) of things said in this thread but Guileng? I play Haqq and if i could i would bring at least one Guileng every game instead of one of my own infiltrators.
So the tag is teleported that 5 inches (4+1 base) up to the console. And you could use the tag like that on the previous rule setup too.
Ninja KHD is really good at counter hacking, because they can come out of camo and impose a -3 MOD from camo. Also, having Martial Arts, they can stealth around ZoC of other hackers as long as they remain out of LOS of those hackers. With a KHD, 13 WiP isn't bad. In fact, its the same WiP KHD Zeros use, which seems to be a standard people on this topic are using for SK units. Yan Huo have some unique weapons loadouts that I haven't seen on other faction HIs. Whether that they are good or bad are up to opinion, but they are not vanilla. The loadouts on the HIs Yu Jing have are what makes them unique. Perhaps there is still salt over the loss over the Domaru, but JSA doesn't have that version of the Domaru anymore either. As for the TAG points, the Guija does what it needs to do. I'm of the opinion a TAG is almost always a liability unless you need to take one for a specific mission, so I won't continue that argument. But I will say you are putting the Szalamandra Pilot in the Lizard TAG, because the Lizard pilot is just a Specialist Operative with a SMG. I believe Infinity is a game where presence is dictated by "what new things are coming out?" When Red Veil was released, every tournament I went to was Yu Jing and Haqq. Before that, when USARF was out, it was USARF and Ariadna. I expect a lot of ALEPH, Ariadna, PanO and some Nomads, but I think the Nomads might fall off a bit now. The only thing I expect to remain constant is NA2, because everyone loves mercenaries. Next Year, when the IA is released, I expect to see a lot more Yu Jing again.
Wut! As ARO you cant impose surprise, You can only do it in active. The same for stealth. It's not a counter hacker, is more of a hacker hunter, and as that the Kanren killer hacker is even better, because it has more chances to survive due to BTS3, and It's marker state can automatically be reloaded at the end of the turn A counter Hacker might be the zhanying hacker, because having 6SL2 can hack stealth hackers without surprise mods. But it lacks decent protocols against hackers, he needs back up And comparing it to a zero is not so good, because the zero is exactly the same hacking tool for 8 less points and add to that the fact that the zero shoots better, lays mines and doesn't loose the rest of it's uses Don't mistake average with good, please. It seems good because we don't have anything better. A Guilang Killer hacker, a Daofei KHD, Or a Liuxing KHD would spit on the ninjas face several times. A weapon change is cool but it's not enough to strip away a troop from being vanilla. It's as if I say Feuerbach orc is not vanilla. And if vanilla has some special characteristic is a soft flavour. A raw profile+a primary weapon. Out of that they are out of character or place. so for players they do not feel amazing, cool or flashy. That's just portraying the image that's provided by the Yanhuo profile. Over the book, It's not so empty, It has the ultimate can-opener, but it trades a huge amount of weakspots for being a HMC platform. Movement, hackable, relatively low BTS, lack of courage, Huge silhouette, bad closerange rangebands... so it's not bad but not so good either. It's just a specific tool against big guys and long ARO pieces That Doesn't explain why the EC or aleph were soo used during the last season, or Why tunguska was so little used on big tournaments. All the wargames have a seasoning based on some degree over the new things. Infinity is not an exception. But the state or capabilities of a faction during a certain set of missions is what drives the main use of one or another faction. Yujing was crippled, it may had nice options for performing the Job but it lacked flexibility. It is easy to predict and It's too dependable on expensive key pieces that are not too much durable or relatively easy to hunt on the enemies active. Invincible can bring some of both. but I don't know if it'll work in vanilla Yujing because It's almost an oposite concept of what worked on the past. More expensive troops.
