I went with yes, MSV2 in links has become more frequent but so has white noise and it's still just one strong dude in an otherwise vulnerable team.
I find the poll problematic. I feel that the kamou sniper is not just a msv2 sniper like the hadou. The combination of msv2 + mimitism + shock immunity is why that model is so good. Fighting the haidou is just a friday for me. Strong aro presence, but just use a strong active turn hmg/spitfire piece with appropriate doctor/engineer on call if my dice go really south as im favored to win that fight. Im never favored to win against the kamou.
For the first time since I started playing, 6 points warband actually feels like they're worth 6 points, rather than being the most universally undercosted entity in the entire game. That being said, I don't particularly like MSV2 + Fusiliers. I would have much rather had cheap SMG Kamau as filler for a Core. But that's a stylistic choice. Mechanically, the MSV2 has never really been an effective counter to smoke-tossing warbands... It just didn't tend to work. But now, I like that those short-range warbands feel like they have a natural predator, one that helps justify their cheap cost and force the owning player to adapt their tactics.
Has White Noise actually become more frequent? I don't think it's actually really propagated outside of its usual homes. It still only belongs to 3 factions (Aleph, Nomads, CA) and a couple of merc sectorials.
Good question. I guess it kind of depends how you categorize Tohaa... Both the parent faction and Spiral. But Tohaa did get very good access to White Noise in the form of the Kriigel Agents (Mirrorball Pheroware.) Speaking generally on the topic: For me personally, I'd probably expand it the discussion to lump White Noise and Eclipse together. If we do that, we get: PanO (pretty lame platform, but technically they have Eclipse) Nomads Combined Army ALEPH Tohaa Some NA2 That leaves Yu Jing, Ariadna and Haqq who don't really have passive solutions, needing to find active solutions instead. I think Yu Jing's probably the worst off in terms of easily available tools. Vanilla relies on smoke very heavily, plus the interplay of Kuang Shi and Shaolin, so that sucks. But both the Rui Shi and Hsien are better platforms than most for tackling linked Kamau. Ariadna and Haqq can do just fine. Both can apply a ton of Turn 1 pressure that starts in the DZ... Both have access to 2-Wound units with strong mechanics (Dogs, Fatality L2, good Spec Fire) and both are pretty good at doing coordinated hard-hitting BS attacks (4 Daylami coordinating is easy.) Another decent counter I've seen a lot is the Camo Infiltrator LGL. I never really thought of that as a good investment, but I've seen it work very decisively in more than one game. I've also seen folks buy a couple of Minelayers, then try to infiltrate them right up close to the Kamau Sniper nest. The Kamau starting in the trigger area of a mine is pretty rough.
For my forces with it, Dahshat, Ikari, IA, I've not seen them dominate a game at all. Even Dahshat with all the smoke they can put down. In both Ikari and IA I can only have one and in Dahshat the cost gets to high to have more than one. Though so far I have yet to go up against Spiral and they do seem like the big baddy with this. The Tagma seems so cheap!
That is a fair point I did forget about them. Eh strictly speaking for Vanilla neither the Rui Shi or the Hsien are good in practice at tackling the Kamau. Rui Shi has major range band issues and runs the risk of getting locked down and the Hsien's odds just aren't worth the risk factor in his cost. Compared to any sectorial just trying to brute force it with a linked HMG that has decent BS he loses out because of the lower burst on his gun. Honestly my go to is avoiding the Kamau or getting a mine close enough to go off in its face or coordinated orders. The Hsien and Rui Shi never really factor into it. I think the Lu Duan has some overlooked potential in combating the Kamau too, more so than a Rui Shi. Unfortunately there's only one Pan-O player in my meta that I think actually has a solid grasp on the game (not this guy for sure) and he's still relatively new and has mostly been playing MO so I haven't really had an opportunity to give that mileage in testing yet.
If I had to find a fast definition, I'd say they are strong if they have a 30+% chance to cause a wound in ARO against an attacker or force the usage of a high amount of orders to get ignored/removed from play while denying a large amount of table space while still alive.
Well, the mine's one way to do it. Coordinated Orders are great too. It's counter-intuitive, but an unlinked Hsien HMG's probability for success is basically identical to a 5 man link Zuyong HMG being modified by Mimetism. The Rui Shi's edge isn't in the f2f roll, but rather the repercussion-free advantage of being able to easily repair it. When you combine the decent f2f odds with the extra level of Unconscious and ease of repairability, it's a very good bet for knocking down the Kamau without really incurring any lasting risk. Doubly so if you stage for the attack during deployment, so that you can make the process extremely Order-efficient. One element of facing Kamau is that you virtually always know where they're going to be, since there's no way to mask where those 4 supporting Fusiliers are going to set up. Actively gunfighting the Kamau isn't risk-free, but both the Hsien and Rui Shi are less dependent on terrain variables, or misdeployment by your opponent, compared to the alternate 1-dice approaches like mines or Chain Rifles. Straight gunfighting, with support units for Doctoring/Repairing, is subject to fewer variables, is (generally) less order-intensive, and is much less dependent on the VIRD player making an error. If you really want to skew it in your favor, arrange for -1 Burst. Shoot through a Forest or Nimbus Zone, and you crush the Kamau's f2f odds down in a big way.
The Zuyongs are better at it purely because if you flub it losing a Zuyong isn't as bad as losing a Hsien for Vanilla due to link bonuses and redundancy. They also tend to have access to a Haidao MSV2 sniper in the link who is better than both of those at dropping the Kamau but that's neither here nor there. Uh we have very different definitions of risk free there. At the -3 rangeband sure you're probably not gonna die outright to one go, but at the odds you're shooting into 25-58 what you're going to do is probably destroy most of your entire order pool plus a bunch of command tokens on engineer rerolls just trying to combat one ARO piece on the first turn. You might as well just hand the game over to your opponent at that point. Like that is a legitimately terrible piece of advice, I wouldn't advise anybody attempt to tackle any ARO piece on that kind of odds for order wastage. Yes Nimbus grenades are fantastic unfortunately it's extremely difficult to justify getting them into a list for Vanilla when they're shackled to PH11 Zhanying. You have to have a mission or a meta that really benefits from having a sensor in the list to help justifying them into the list. ISS has less issues because they fill out a decent Haris but it's really hard for Vanilla to make a solid argument for them alot of the time. My favourite Kamau be gone so far has been Lunah and a Pheasant together out deploying everything with the help of Strategos. Coordinated MMLX can pretty safely delete any one wound ARO piece.
Even a BS14 HRMC (like a Yan Huo or Szallie) doesn't have good odds of success! OK, that is an interesting point. I really feel that we wouldn't be having this conversation if MSV2 Snipers in mixed links had been in the game for a long time, say, since the start of N3. But with MSV2 snipers in mixed links being a very new thing, people are really struggling to find ways to deal with them.
I’ll say yes but with some ambivalence. I think that it’s certainly stirred up the meta and added a wrinkle to the game that wasn’t there before which has a lot of downstream effects. Things that were mostly useless like nimbus are suddenly good and things that were good like cheap war bands are suddenly less of a sure thing. Using coordinated orders to attack isn’t something I see a lot but strong AROs are why that rule exists. In general I feel like the game pendulums between favoring a strong active turn and favoring a strong ARO turn. It seems to be one of CBs core design principles that these have an inverse relationship. Having felt a couple of these shifts personally, I definitely think that when AROs are stronger it can lead to some “feels bad” moments. Depending on the board and lists involved, when a strong ARO locks down the board you can just feel stuck and powerless on your own turn. Granted, you can get just as dominated by a strong active unit on your opponents turn too but at least then you are in a more passive role which I think is less frustrating for some reason. For newer players especially, getting shut down on your own turn is a bit of a shock.
You know that's fair I did completely forget about that one.... and I don't think I hate it as an option? Maybe can make an interesting Vanilla duo out of it.
I almost auto include MR nimbus when theres VIRD in ITS lineup. The face they make whenever Kamau Sniper gets busted by Hsien.. It never bores me.
There are good things like that that never get old. Seeing my BF Albedo running past MSV snipers to hunt down the support and the midfield to finally toss one Drop Bear to their attention is also another way to treat them.
Remember too that the game has gotten a lot of hyper-aggressive short-range troops. We now have a surge of short-range Total Immunity units, all of whom can utilize smoke. We have a fresh wave of Impersonators (both new units and new profiles for existing units.) Airborne Deployment got a massive overhaul for this season, and may very well persist into next season. There are multiple Fatality L2 Spitfire-ranged units in the game. Active-turn mixed-link murder machines are everywhere. Plus we have armies that can easily use 12-14 Orders on an active turn link. This is actually a pretty good time for some armies to have decent ARO / Defense capabilities... The kind of units that make an attacking player stop and think. We're seeing nuance introduced to Infinity list-building and meta considerations. For years, players have been able to solve every problem with a linked HMG. I like that players might actually have to use some other tools / rules now too.
