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ISS Fireteam Changes

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Knauf, Mar 24, 2022.

  1. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    Well, 51 extra. And you'll still need something to be your LT. It's also going to be changed up by mission, terrain and opponent meta.

    My gut feeling is that properly supporting and fuelling a Su Jian is *sometimes* a viable strategy. I head to the Rose City Raid every year, and they make a point of difficult or very difficult terrain on half or more of the tables. In that case the fast attack and multi-terrain capabilities of the Su Jian+MBH and the possibility to drop Sun Tze behind some kind of saturation zone and/or low viz terrain make this more appealing to me.

    When I get the mission set for one of those events, I'll do some analysis, look at what I need to do to win the missions, try to remember tables and opponents I've faced before and see which factions and lists I feel like taking. There's no guarantee it would be Sun Tze V2, but he can certainly have some headspace in the "thinking outside the box" phase of list building.
     
  2. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    To me I'm not sure it matters if something is optimally good or bad. The question is, am I having fun or not. If not, then why? If winning is the only way to have fun, I question my hobby choice lol, but really then ok min-maxing is good. If winning is an exciting game with friends and you may or may not win, then I do what like because it's cool. Neither is good or bad. I'm not pro player who needs to win games to put food on the table. I'd be dead already. But there are certainly times after loosing over and over again it can be a little frustrating. So the balance between the two needs to be found somehow.
     
    #162 Space Ranger, Apr 12, 2022
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2022
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  3. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    And that's fine and all, but part of the fun in Infinity is the game of problem solving through list building, and intentionally picking bad profiles defeats the purpose of that mini game. You're not creatively problem solving anything anymore, you're just throwing shit in the pot. It only really works if you accept it as a handicap. And we really shouldn't have troopers who's existence is meant to sandbag on opponents you don't respect.
     
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  4. Delta57Dash

    Delta57Dash Well-Known Member

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    For what it's worth: the dice calculator works fine if you know how to interpret the results.

    Plug in BS 17 vs BS 14, Damage 20, 0 ARM, gives 58% to win, 34% to lose, 8% to tie

    Disregard the ties, 58/92 = 63.043%

    I do find it somewhat amusing that there were a dozen posts arguing the percentages when I'd already posted them though...
     
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  5. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    Well, the important thing to note here is that @Triumph was wrong. (cough).
     
  6. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    You gotta explain the math like I'm stupid or I don't get it.
     
  7. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    The funny thing about Sun Tze V2 is he looks bad in analysis, and I can see most of the arguments put forth against him, but he works surprisingly for me once he's in a list. It's only two out of three turns you have to avoid taking risks with him - using him as an active turn shooter or leaving him out for ARO on turn 3 really isn't a bad idea. He doubles your chance of getting an alpha strike or beneficial table side and fuels an order group like nobody else. If you pop him in a coordinated order he is perfect bait that can walk away from a missile to the face and save something much squishier like Lunah etc - people will tend to let him eat multi sniper or explosive rounds and forget that he has total immunity.

    There's a lot of utility there, if you look for it, and that in itself can be quite fun.
     
  8. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    There are no ties in initiative rolls! If you use the dice calculator you have to throw out the tie results and re-calculate percentages based only on the valid outcomes.

    If it helps you grind through it, try a perfect theoretical face off between Sun Tze and Sun Tze. You'll know you have the numbers right when it's 50% and 50%.
     
  9. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Oh yeah I get that now, I was reminding him why I didn't get his post the first time.
     
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  10. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    Perfectly valid! It's fun! I make lists all of the time but thing is making a list that's fun to play, can win, and goes with your play style is the balance. Then test it out. Now I will say too that I don't do a lot of tournaments, even before covid. I play for fun. Finally we have one coming up in the summer.
     
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  11. Miraclebutt

    Miraclebutt Well-Known Member

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    I've been chewing on the Zhanying hacker for a while now and have settled on her being one of the high tier profiles I always try to find a slot for. ISS doesn't have repeater coverage worth much, and their mobility isn't super hot, but their efficiency is extremely strong. You probably won't get to dive the Zhanying into your opponent's DZ and start bricking TAGs, but you will be able to quickly get her up the table when she's dragged along with Wu Ming or a Hsien MMMR, and that's where she can use her 6th Sense to bulwark the rest of her link.

    I feel the same about Xi and Pheasant minelayers as well -- a Hsien MMMR, Xi, and Zhanying haris gives the link an incredibly tough defensive perimeter that requires significant order expenditure or extremely specific tools to disassemble. A couple orders to move up the table, one or two for rolling out some MadTraps, and then set up to template anything that gets into range. Your opponent can probably get them eventually, but unless they're very lucky they'll either trade the troops they sent to get the job done, or expend an entire turn on it.

    This also leads into something I've been noticing with ISS; I love to trade. Like, love to trade. Any exchange that involves trading templates almost always works out in my favour; I'm down a (probably very cheap troop) while their opponent is down either a wound or a body. ISS army design also reflects this -- there's just a lot of single wound guys between 20 and 30 points with low armor, average BS, and no shock immunity or NWI, so actually taking fights should be something you do when you don't have a choice. I had a game the other day vs a vanilla YJ opponent -- by the end of it I had 5 bodies left: three Kuang Shi, my Hsien Lt, and Sophotect, and I won because my template trading was so good all the troops he was using for attacking kept going one-for-one with my harised nanos and chain colts. Also Adil got to Sensor out then monofilament a Daofei so he gets high honours for exceptional service.


    Anyway, all this is just a rambling way of saying that ISS is a lot of fun. I've been having more fun with them since this update dropped than any other army since N4, and I've been painting up a bunch of old new minis that have been sitting on my shelf since I bought them with genuine intent to play them in future games. It's a great time to be an ISS veteran.
     
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  12. Miraclebutt

    Miraclebutt Well-Known Member

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    Double posting a little but has anyone played a few games without the Hsien HMG? He's been a permanent resident of all of my lists now that it's so easy to get him into a haris but I've been wondering just how necessary he is to punch a hole through my opponent's AROs or if I should just be maneuvering around better.

    Admittedly I'm insanely guilty of cramming my links full of Breaker Combis and the Hsien might just be enabling bad listbuilding habits because he's so goddamn good at his job.
     
  13. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    I play lots of games without the hsien hmg. These days the red fury MBH does a lot of the heavy lifting, or Major Lunah (sometimes in a coordinated order, sometimes w/ triangulated fire).
     
  14. Miraclebutt

    Miraclebutt Well-Known Member

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    Is that usually a result of table design or are your opponents leaving some gaps for you to exploit with shorter range weapons?

    Leaning on the Red Fury MBH to brawl down AROs is gutsy, but I can see the value in that. Cheap, don't really care if it bites a crit and dies, minimal order expenditure to get it into position.

    Maybe I'm just reluctant to give up my safety blanket, all my Hsien lists are bringing CoC and a Sophotect just in case and it hasn't failed me yet.
     
  15. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    You might not.
     
  16. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    I got trained out of taking a Hsien HMG in ISS about the same time I got trained out of always taking a Wu Ming hmg. In N3 the Rui Shi was my workhorse, as it was the only thing that could reliably crack ARO pieces like a Sukeul ML without endangering 50+ points of investment in my army. I got used to using fast-moving individual attack pieces that I could deploy as a reserve to use as my opening gambit, because if you're going first with a link your opponent will often counter deploy in a way that makes it hard to get optimal range bands without making risky moves with a link first. The MBH is a pretty nice substitute for the Rui Shi - the shooting is almost as effective because of mimetism and it requires less smoke and marksmanship support. Against mimetism AROs I'd prefer to use lunah with her MSV1, and I like to have her on the table to shut down bears etc.

    I love running the Hsien HMG and still do when the mood hits me, but it's not a must-have unit and I'm very cagy relying on it to open things up in the first turn. It got a nice buff in N4 though, with the extra profiles and 6-2 mov.
     
  17. Delta57Dash

    Delta57Dash Well-Known Member

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    I... have serious questions about how you managed to reliably crack a Missile Launcher with a Spitfire.

    With the Missile Launcher being 24"-40" and the Spitfire being 8"-24", you shouldn't be able to get a good shot off on the ML unless the opponent places their pieces fairly poorly; the ML should ideally be as far back in their DZ as possible overseeing the longest firelane on the board. Even worse vs. the Sukeul example as Tohaa have rather excellent midfield/backfield pieces like Clipsos or Impersonators.

    Even with an EVO giving Marksmanship, if you try and fight the ML in its rangeband you've got about a 50% chance to go unconscious (B4 on 9's vs B2 on 13's). And you need 2 wounds to down the Sukeul example (more if they attached a 'Mate).

    Now I could see it working if you used smoke to move up safely and shoot through; that would swing the odds decisively in the Rui Shi's favor. That gets order-intensive though, especially if you have to clear the midfield first.
     
  18. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Sukeul don't have MSV. You just drop smoke and move up the field. Sukeul also don't have sixth sense so they're ass at shooting back too if it's coming out of smoke. Not that I'd recommend it but it's 47% to 15% shooting at 32" with the spitfire just because the ML is firing on 7s so it's not even a completely terrible option if you really had to for some reason.
     
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  19. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    The Sukeul cannot see through smoke and I would use smoke to get into 24" range. This was always a thorny problem for me, as the Sukeul tended to be buddies up with a Gao-Rael sniper that could see through smoke.

    Still, there were more opportunities to manoeuvre and use smoke with a single reserve drop model than there were with links. If you're going first you could often put your Rui Shi reserve dropped forwards on the edge of your DZ, fire smoke to block LoF past it or on it, then get into cover at a good range band. N3 ISS also had orders to burn for this setup and maneuvring, compared to N4 ISS.
     
  20. YueFei23

    YueFei23 Durian Inspector

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    @Triumph has got it.

    These were the best numbers you could get against that Sukeul with ISS: https://tinyurl.com/yckywvwk

    If you tried the same with a Hsien in a haris (without being a jerk and aro forcing w/ madtraps), he'd be shooting on lower numbers, would probably end up being your LT and the risk of him exploding to a lucky crit would be game ending.
     
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