I was surprised Ikari was not axed in the N5 transition and after having seen them in Army I'm even more surprised they are still here since CB obviously don't care about them. Other than trickle down changes from units getting updated for other factions there weren't even one Ikari specific change. No new units, no changes to fireteams, not even any "what counts as what" changes. If you are going to keep it as one of a much shorter list of NA2 factions then give it some love at least, please?
Now that JSA Oban also has access to YuanYuan, and Ikari's fireteams and wildcards are weak... I really don't see any real reason to play Ikari over Oban
In the unlikely event that this is actually read and acted upon by someone with the power to change things these are the issues that Ikari Company suffers from. First some historical data. In N3 Ikari mainly suffered from their rigid fireteams. The team had to include certain one off troops which both hurt list building and was a pain point while playing as a single loss often meant that you could no longer recreate the fireteam. In N4 this rigidity was fixed which was very nice but Ikari was hurt badly by several system changes. Ikari have always been an army with lots of cheap irregular units and as such the 15 trooper limit was a hard hit to their play style. An standout feature of Ikari has always been the Keisotsu + Tanko fireteam where a Tanko Missile Launcher could be propped up by cheap Keisotsu for a nice defensive team. While this combo was definitively strong it was never oppressive as the Tanko lacks both Mimetism and MSV. Even so this combo got nerfed twice by system changes, first the fireteam purity change in N4 as the Tanko does not count as a Keisotsu and now a second time in N5 with the changes to Impetuous in fireteam so that the Tanko now only have Limited Cover. Then there is another standout feature of Ikari, the Yuan Yuan. Yuan Yuan also got 2 system change nerfs (sort of), first the change so that they no longer keep their irregular order if they Combat Jump in using their impetuous order. As an army with lots of irregular troops this really hurt Ikari order economy. There just isn't enough orders left to do anything with a Yuan Yuan after they have dropped in the current system. The second is a more subtle change where the combination of max 15 units combined with cheaper HIs has lead to a more armored meta where there are less targets for a Yuan Yuan to bully, they just don't hit hard enough anymore. Looking at N5 changes this will get even worse. Together with the fireteam changes in N4 Ikari got a couple of wildcards but the problem is that everything they got just count as Druze which also got changed from Core to just Haris a bit earlier. This makes the whole change look unfinished, like they where building something around a Druze core but never got around to finishing it. But this also creates an issue with faction identity, there is no point in an Ikari Company that is just Druze light. There is also the apparent lack of direction, first Libertos was added then taken away again like 2-3 years later with no comment to why. Was it not supposed to be there in the first place? It can't be for balance reasons since Ikari has never been a particularly strong faction. So that leads to where we are now. What changes are needed to bring Ikari back into its own. First they should get their own unique Tanko ML profile that does not have Limited Cover and that counts as a Keisotsu. It's perfectly fine if it costs 10 points more but please bring back that stand out ARO profile to Ikari. Secondly to make us less Druze light add more options to the Wu Ming fireteams. Not sure exactly what is needed here, maybe Brawler/Digger can also count as Wu Ming, maybe some Ikari unique Wu Ming profiles (see below for one suggestion). Just something. Then there is the LT issue. The LT choice has always been very limited in Ikari but sometime during N4 Arslan was added with an LT profile. This of course makes us even more Druze light but it also mean you are fine with more LT options. So how about a a Wu Ming HMG LT option to spice things up a bit? With no CoC it would be dangerous to run but at least gives us some options. Sadly I don't think there is any way to fix Yuan Yuan in Ikari without reverting the order system change.
Important to note, however, that the changes to the Keisotsus (namely the improved Hacker and the new Thunderbolt (BS-3)) and the Tanko (Disco Baller) open up some new options; a pure Keisotsu Core can now bring a competent Sixth Sense Hacker and a relatively decent ARO threat for an extremely affordable price, while Tanko Duos can bring (roughly) the old ARO threat but also block firelanes with Eclipse. Druze/Brawlers also bring some more options, like a Druze Hacker + Brawler Sniper Defensive Duo. Arslan also picked himself up a Disco Baller alongside the standard Druze X-Visor and Warhorse (and a 1-point drop). As for the rest, Wu Ming got some insane points drops (5-9 points!) and some killer new gear (Boarding Pistols, E/Marats, AP HMG) and unlike ISS you can actually take an Engineer with them (who can even turn off Pitchers in ZoC now!). Daiyokai dropped 2 points and can now bring a Disco-Baller with him for a nice HMG-range threat, and Ninjas got a nice overhaul with the combination of a hefty point drop and the addition of Climbing Plus. You also kept Armand when most other factions lost him, and he got himself a shiny new Viral CCW and a 5-point drop in price. And if Death from Above is what you're looking for, the Bashi Bazouks have given themselves one hell of a glowup, AP T2 Shotguns, a B3 Contender (which is now a serious threat), a slew of new Specialist options, and B2 Boarding Pistols across the board, and they can even Combat Jump now (albeit on poor PH). And while the TAGs aren't anything special, Scarface and Cordelia saw a 5-point drop alongside new Mines for Cordy, while Triphammers dropped 5 points on the AP HMG/Spitfire profiles while the HSG/MK12 profile swapped the MK12 for a Thunderbolt (+1B) and dropped a whopping 11 points. The old Flammen/Panzer profile only dropped 4 points, but upgraded its Flammens to a full on HRL. The old Ikari tricks may be worse, but there's quite a lot of new toys too.
For the moment there isn't much in the way of articles and videos, but there is this: Spoiler: N5 Reac on all lists Épisode 130 - the MEGASODE of the N5 release https://lossoflieutenant.podbean.com/e/episode-130-n5-release-megasode/ Infinity N5 All Factions Tier List - Deranged, Two Days Since Release, Hot Take Edition Episode 132 - N5 Faction Tierlist
New contents for Ikari. Ikari Company N5 Initial Reaction - Biggest Glowup in N5??? - Infinity the Game N5 Here's a collection of comments made in the Ikari reaction video.
