She killed all three primary targets up there, and she and the Oniwaban locked the area down. Machaon who was downstairs was a bit too dangerous to allow normal rolls from so no jumping down. There were also I believe a MSV2 Proxy or otherwise MSV2 long range trooper on a building that severely limited their movements - but since the mission was last chapter of Alive, I had a Tikbalang to take potshots with. The Lu Duan disguised as a Rui Shi and managed to lure Penthisilea to attack it and while Panthisilea was lucky on the Fire save, the resulting loss of ODD meant she got kind of stuck between a rock and several light firearms that could now hit her. All in all, specifically, the lucky roll on Infiltration (which annoys me to no end how much the game hinges on that single roll) meant the biggest problems simply evaporated. Both since Shinobu was allowed close enough to do her thing without taking too many lucky shots and because I was allowed to set up in the middle of a hostile group that couldn't pose much opposition.
Really? I've stopped feeling that way when I realized there's a lot of galaxies full of cheap symbio-pokemon and nobody who use them "felt like cheating" ;) :P Mask
It's mostly that when you do manage to infiltrate Shinobu it tends to get really one-sided really fast. You know, Infinity on easy mode.
Depending on the enemy faction and deployment it can be a super efective tool or a bad idea. For example against Yujing ISS with their kuangshi overdose, Vs ASS of aleph with cheap Martial artists with nanopulsers, vs haqqislam wit nafatums and muttas... It can become pretty hard to squeeze all the potential of shinobu.
You list problems that are fairly universal. Combined with their very cheap flamers, Tohaa with their multitude of flamers, etc etc. Are they guarding key units? Can you exploit such over-caution with the rest of your troops? Aleph might have cheap martial artists, but they have chain rifles as their longest reaching weapon (and they're much worse than Shinobu) - are they going to be guarding Teucer's or Atalanta's back on the rooftop? Will they be able to prevent you from assassinating the Marut? Have they clustered their Martial troops to protect all of their non-martial ones - can you disassemble the Thorakitai link? Do they leave you no opening, well does this mean they have left themselves unable to operate well and you can bide your time? ISS can post Kuang Shi everywhere, but can they place Kuang Shi where they will stick around long enough? Maybe waiting a turn for them to jump to their deaths will help with clearing what protects the Bao sniper team. Sun Tze is absolutely a juicy enough target to sacrifice Shinobu for - over 80% chance of taking out the guaranteed LT is fantastic odds, only problem is Strategos deployment issues. Haqq's Muttawiah does present a very real problem that you can't really handle well, but this is not a unique challenge for Shinobu - they are going to be a difficulty that doesn't even come close to their cost regardless of their opposition unless the tables are specifically set up to allow for long range fire support to reign supreme - if the table allows a Yan Huo to do flanking actions, Muttawiah are screwed and Shinobu out of work. Otherwise, I don't see much in Haqq that actually presents much of a problem. Succeed the roll and you'll start trading assymmetrically. Bottom line is that Shinobu is a very very strong tool if she succeeds the roll. Her biggest threat isn't direct templates, I've found, it is Sensors and stuff that can discover her when on approach, so in a way ISS is her worst enemy, but not from Kuang Shi, but more from having Discover tools and a lower likelihood of having key units in isolated positions.
You got to keep the loyalists. The ranks of Kuang Shi and Wu Ming swelled nearly as much as we depleted them during the UPRISING.