With the Jammer-wielding Tian Gou as a wildcard trooper able to join links in White Banner, we now have a linked Jammer (with Holo 1, even worse) in the core game. Previously they were only a Spec Ops thing, and now they are in the core game. This is a very, very bad idea. Jammers are an area-denial weapon that doesn't require LoF and which has a range longer than troops can move and fire in a single order. So far so good, there are counters for that and you can Reset as you close in. Here's the massive problem though: with SSL2 thanks to the link they can wait until the opponent has declared their second skill. This means that there is NO CHANCE to Reset against the Jammer, because Reset requires an attack first so that you can declare it. So the linkteam with the Jammer gets to declare a no-LoF ARO that you just have to take in the face and most likely get Isolated. If they can hide behind anything else like decent covering fire or mines, digging that Jammer out is going to be damn near impossible. I pointed out how f$%cked up this is when it came out in Spec Ops. People tried to minimize this glaring problem by dismissing it as only a SpecOps thing. Well surprise surprise mofos, the most broken thing in N3 is going to be around -at least- until N4. And then it will only be nerfed if there are significant changes to Jammers (possible) or order declaration for Reset (unlikely). And of course Holo1 will make it even harder to figure out which linkteam member actually has the Jammer until you get close to it. I'm not up on the erratta for whether the Jammer still gets B2. It was ruled against at the iNterplanetario, but that's not an official ruling and WAAC RAW players will try to max out the brokenness of this unit with B2 unless there's a rule against it, you can bet. [EDIT: Yes, they get linkteam bonuses (another very bad idea). So that's a B2 WIP17 Jammer that you can't Reset against.] This is going to make playing against White Banner suck. A 16"-wide bubble of Jammer that you can't Reset against in the middle of the table preventing either advance or taking objectives covered by the bubble without getting Isolated is a serious problem, one that there are very few solutions in the game for, and many forces are largely without. Your options are picking it off with SpecFire, spending all the orders to advance and use a Veteran who -might- manage to kill it, or using Irregular warbands who get one attack apiece (with their Irregular order) after the Jammer Isolates them as they close in. And to do any of those, you have to figure out which linkteam member it is first. Just like Muttawiah, Jammers in this context distort the game and will require at least an order group to deal with, while your opponent has no such handicap. Not a good thing at all.
It's almost like this is an N4 profile and sectorial ported to N3 as a stop-gap for the few months until the new version of the game is released...
On a positive note, Adil Mehmut is pretty perfect for digging out linked Jammers, given his Vet L1 and Sensor with NWI so he can get in there, Sensor vs camo if needed (Hecklers or Zulu-Cobra) and shoot the Jammer before he dies. Pretty ironic that the super-broken linked Jammer and one of the best antidotes to it in the game are in the same army.
@colbrook : Let's hope so. I kinda doubt it: why not just make the rules not broken in N3, if the profile and/or gear will get modified for N4 to make them not-broken?
Heh... This reminds me of Hearthstone in the 3-4 months period before they rotate several expansions in to Wild format thus no longer making them available for normal games. The game becomes absolute chaos, and decks begin to emerge that have no business existing, while the balancing crew stands around shrugging, because they cannot be arsed to balance anything that's going to disappear soon anyways. Please stop using these shit terms. You're placing the blame on players in a tournament, when it is the company that made the rule who should be held to account for writting the rules. Also this has literally been answered by CB: Q: Do Jammers benefit from Fireteam bonuses? A: Yes. So stop saying its WAAC RAW players exploiting anything.
Oh, a thousand pardons! Now that's been blessed, those who use this obviously extremely broken thing are "just playing by the rules." What a difference this makes. Quite right about that though.
@Savnock Why are you blaming players for playing the rules as they are written? I'm genuinely curious.
Because when a rule is clearly broken in a way that will seriously distort a game, a player who values the fun of the game and their opponent enjoying the game avoids exploiting it. You're right, it's not like WAAC guys arguing corner-cases on RAW to foist off exploits and waste everyone's time. It's a different flavor of bad at this point. Yes, CB should not have published this gear even for the few months it will be in play. Players also have an obligation not to be dicks and use obviously-broken things as exploits though.
...unless they have a massively broken linked Jammer with Holo1 that prevents almost anyone closing with them. And who says they have to be clumped?
Considering the stereotypical terrain for this game ( Reasonably dense. ), then if the Jammer is the link Leader, that means the entire link is within 8" of him. And if he isn't the leader, he's within 8" of the leader. And this is at maximum, so the tighter the link gets, the tighter the anti-link noose of template weapons gets.
Good luck getting anything in there to use that template weapon past a B2 WIP17 no-Lof ARO that Isolates, especially if it has either mines or covering fire from other units outside the link (which are what White Banner seems to specialize in), or even from the other link members (they can lose one and still be SSL2 B2). You'll have to take that Isolate on the chin for one, possibly two rounds to get the template shot. You could throw tons of Irregular warbands at it if you happen to have that build, eventually one will get through and use their Irregular order to template the Jammer trooper. Otherwise you're not getting to whatever the link is squatting on. Oh, and you have to figure out which one is the Jammer trooper, because Holo 1. Stop trying to minimize it: this is broken. Spoiler: Example of annoying Linked Jammer Castle Not gonna get anywhere near this ────────────────────────────────────────────────── [I'm not even a great list-builder, and this still looks like it would be hell to close with if you need a central objective or to cross the board for the mission.] GROUP 1 10 RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1 | 20) TIAN GǑU (1st Section) Boarding Shotgun, Grenades, Jammer / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 25) LÉI GŌNG Shock Marksman Rifle, Nanopulser, Blitzen / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 34) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 15) ZHANSHI Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) GŬILÁNG (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27) GŬILÁNG (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27) GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 26) LÓNG YÁ 2 Panzerfaust, Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines / Electric Pulse. (0 | 20) GROUP 2 5 2 2 HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 25) PANGGULING Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) PANGGULING (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) 4 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
I'm not trying to minimize anything. Was just expanding on the ''clumped link team point.'' God knows I should N E V E R talk about balancing, or else we risk an Infinity where the only viable list composition would be 10 HI. T:
So, what's in this link team that you're worried about? Qiang Gao? Is it actually something that needs to be dealt with? Or is it just five orders holed up in a corner somewhere? If it's on the move, you really only need to strip 2 dudes to make it less of a problem, and you have a 40% chance at that point that you eliminated the problem entirely. If it's castled, then you start dealing with the visible reactive pieces. I don't really see it's much of a crisis.
Most terrain setups I've seen other than the starter set boards will make it possible to find a spot where you don't have to expose much of the Fireteam to templates or AROs outside of 8" with the only real weak spot being Grenade Launchers which will have a decent chance of wrecking the team from outside of 8". Because of the way the sectorial is made, a core of Zhanshi will likely be present in most lists and they'll be blocking off roughly a 12" section of the board for you where you won't want to put anything that's not Veteran L1+ - and that's regardless if there actually is a Tian Guo in there or not. It is a problem in game design, but you can work around the problem. The question is; at what cost? Because it's not costing the White Banner player much. Arguably, if Jammers are considered broken and in need of a fix by CB, then they wouldn't have released these profiles this close to N4 - much like how there's some pretty obvious places where White Banner units are missing rules (Hundun and Liang Kai). Maybe Jammers will get toned down, but I highly doubt CB sees the problem the same way (parts of) the community does. Personally I take this more as an indication that what'll happen to Jammers is going to be relatively mild.
Good call, honestly. Although I'd like to add the possibility that Jammers might not change directly, instead maybe indirectly if some other mechanic that they use gets changed, such as Resets, Sixth Sense or AROs. We already know Crits are going to change, it is, for once in the history of trying to predict what CB will do, actually kind of logical to assume they aren't the only thing that will change.
This is the same kind of lack of ethics as "tax optimization" is. Is this legal? Sure. Is it unethical to abuse the loophole to the hilt? Of course. Amazon paid literally $0.00 of taxes last year in USA. Hate the game, not the player? Why not point out that both the lawmaker and the "player" are doing something bad here? If Jammers remain as they are in N3, this is beyond broken and CB have no idea what playtesting is supposed to achieve. And players who use this to their advantage are a flavour of WAAC indeed.
