Invincible Army post mortem

I'm not sure if English isn't your first language or you've just gotten lost somewhere in the conversation or something just hasn't come across right, or if it's your phone garbling the message and it's making what you're trying to convey difficult to understand.

Vanilla Yu Jing aren't, I think you're trying to write fucked, because we don't have Oniwabans and Raiden. However, what we are is limited to a particular playstyle because our range of units and their various playstyles have shrunk, the biggest offenders being the Oniwabans leaving. Yu Jing have a relatively weak ARO presence, it's a faction nuance, but it was offset by the threat of hiding super scary super killy models in a very unpredictably wide range of the table regardless of whether or not they were in the list.

It caused polarising deployment and movement from your opponent, it's like what the mere threat of a Speculo causes you to behave like whether or not you know a Speculo is in your opponent's list, and in a similar vein, how @ijw is hoping the Shooting Fart's explode rule will cause opponents to deploy differently and behave cautiously, because they might be in a list.

Now to cover the absence of Oniwabans causing defensive play, being cautious around the mid field etc, the offset you need to make is to strengthen your defenses and your presence during your opponent's turn to decrease his order efficiency. For other factions, that means strong ARO pieces. As we discussed, Yu Jing is on the weaker side there and it's not particularly viable, so the alternative is you simply choke your opponent with garbage. Kuang Shi, Monks, etc.

Hang on, you're arguing that we use cheap, Chain Rifle toting bodies as ablative armour to slow down your opponent attempting to gain access to your deployment zone and most valuable pieces? What?

That's my point. That's what I've been saying you need to do.

I want to go a bit further and remind everyone that Tarik is just once facet of this discussion and try not to tunnel vision on him, the reality is alpha strike pieces come in a a great deal of shapes and sizes, and they often benefit from a second combat group securing their path to your backline before they even spend an order. For example Ko Dali can go on a rampage from the get go if a Speculo takes one order to set her entrance up with a smoke grenade, while your opponent spends a few orders shoving a unidron link onto a central objective. Something like a Dao Fei can and will straight up ignore some or all of ARO pieces by Infiltrating forwards and then just dashing between cover using his marker state as a shield.

Trying to argue "Oh, Yu Jing isn't hurt by losing invisible board pressure! You could stop Tarik with XYZ" is a pointless argument. Yu Jing is threatened by hard Alpha strikes as a whole and Tarik is merely one example out of countless of ways to aggressively cripple your opponent's army if they don't have the right composition to stop you. That composition as we are both arguing is to bring literal meat shields armed with Chain Rifles to absorb orders and keep the lighter efficient "trade up" pieces out of your DZ.

This table is a little denser than normal, needs 2-4 pieces pulled off it but it was set up to be as eye catching as possible on a demo night at the LGS. It's a good example of why sticking stuff in the open is still advisable even on a fairly dense table

You don't "need to" but it is advisable. Cramming all of your models behind the same pieces of terrain, especially when you're running with 18-22 models and you have 3 55mm bases is a recipe for trouble. Grouping everything up can cause some horrific high value hits for your opponent that has template weapons. Things like Daylami, Grunts, Hardcases, Shotgun AD troops can and will destroy your shit and I've learned the lessons the hard way that accepting casualties and treating disposable units as disposable with the express intent of wasting orders is better than risking these crippling hits.

Additionally grouping up is a sure fire way to cripple yourself if your opponent has some form of speculative fire. Particular mention is the increasing prevalence of Mine Dispensers and Drop Bears, they can do some ugly things to your army especially if you've got say a whole bunch of impetuous order troops packed into those hiding spots. In that game against the Rudras I mentioned earlier if I didn't do what I did and packed all my troops in behind a few pieces of cover, that Rudras would've done some disgusting stuff.

Taking shots at this cheap trash does not feel good to your opponent and on the Panguulings I find they're actually flat out ignored 4/5 games because my opponent is too busy trying to deal with the more important warband troops and also get their half of the mission objectives underway, especially in season 10 where stuff like the Xenotech is causing even more stress on the order pool.

 

TBH I could never bring myself to waste that SWC on such a mediocre piece when you could have a better effect with an FO Guilang and put the guns on the Daofei. And if I didn't need the specialist I'd turn that Guilang into a Boarding Shotgun every time over a sniper, we've got so many better options in house for long range fights.

That's not to say I've never tried her. My BRV Guilang used to sport her MSR, but after many attempts and failing to impress anyone or do anything meaningful, it was converted into a rifle.

 

yeah, my point there would be you give the Daofei the gun and make the Guilang an FO or Shotgun one. You get the range and the marker state on a much better platform, and it can now abuse SF mode with camo as well.

Laughably because AHD's and the Guilang MSR are overpriced you now also save some points.

If you're hellbent on the AHD because I'll admit it stealing TAGs is actually a fun thing to do, just turn the Guilang into the AHD and give the Daofei the gun, you get +1 WIP to boot on your AHD out of this trade. There really isn't much of a good reason to make it the MSR.

 

I am apparently one of the few who already use her according to the army data. She's passable but she' s nothing special, and she pays points bloat for a literally useless skill marksman LVLX and a stupid CC 17, which feels pretty bad, and nobody can really come up with a good reason for a sniper to pay for Stealth other than "Muh Aristiea fluff".

If CB fixed her bloat and brought the cost down a bit or dropped the bloat and upgraded her to proper camouflage you'd see her played alot more I guarantee it.

Or at least just fixed Marksmanship lvlX so it wasn't a worthless rule jesus christ how hard is that to do? It's nearly 2019 for christ's sake we have the technology.