N4 Yu Jing; the good the bad the ugly

@Amusedbymuse Thank you! I was 100% sure that someone would say Remotes ;) To limit my initial purchases, I would plan to do any Remotes with proxies from my Haqq ones. Tigers is a great spot cheers, is the box of two perfectly adequate or should I be hunting down the hacker for any reason?

I can't deny the Guija is a nice model, but this brings me to the crux of my query - would I need an entirely new purchase list to support it alongside Liang Kai and Jing Qo ? I assume the Guija base size is the same as something like the Jotum or Iguana for proxy purposes?

 

Guilang are still some of, if not the best skirmishers in the game. Kaldstrom is good value.

Liang Kai is mediocre since they cut smoke from him so PanO could use him, and Jing Qo is pretty bad, so I'm not a fan of his fireteam options. Gorgeous model though, personally he'll probably get more use as a regular Shaolin for me.

As for the rest of Kaldstrom, the Daofei is still great, even if he didn't receive the point cut we all wanted. All load outs have merit.
Hunduns look great, although the HRL profile is considerably more desirable. The MSR is the profile I'm least interested in, but at least the sculpt is good and it'll still pass for the marksman rifle once we (hopefully) get an HRL sculpt.

The hacker Shang Ji wasn't looking too interesting in N3, but N4 breathed new life into it. It should compliment the AP HMG Shang Ji as a link partner very well in White Banner.
Ye Maos look like solid, optimized profiles all around.

The Jujak is a loaner from NA2's White Company. It is an alright trooper that can serve as cheap link filler for a Shang Ji link. The engineers are probably the most notable profiles for it in white banner.

 

Yes Guijia is s7 just like jotun and iguana. Well all of the remotes are worth buying. Pangos for new Evo in n4 and LSG profile if you ever plan to play IA. If you have haqq rems then proxy is a good idea, but having 4 of them would be advised as smetimes you end up taking 2x15 and 2x7 point ones, and on top of that in WB you can use them as Yaofang proxies until we get models.

 

@Weathercock Thanks, that's too bad about the Kai and Jing Qo, but I like the idea of using them as generic Shaolin Monks (perfect reason to source both scuplts of Kai!). Shang Ji HMG doesn't have a sculpt yet does it, would Hac Tao be a good stand-in for use in Vanilla as itself?

@Amusedbymuse Oh that's good to confirm - I have stand ins! The Yu Jing remotes always confused me! My Haqq rems are being built as an HMG and a Flash Pulse, the second two likely another Flash Pulse and an open (try to magnetise Missiles/Rifle). I note the Yaoxie (Ru Shi and Lu Duan) are S4 instead of S3, so I would need to find a spare base to make the proxy work.

 

Yaoxies are based on the same body as YJ baggage bots. If you already have haqq baggages then you could proxy for Yaoxies and see if you want to buy them. But I'm sure you will, lu duan never ceases to amaze me with how good it is. And now with b2 flamer, deployable repeater, holoprojector auto activating in both rounds and msv1 seeing through smoke I can't wait to test it in n4 :)

 

The Hac Tao is better served acting as himself in vanilla. With the huge buff that is NCO, he's an absolute monster (moreso than he already was) and he will get a lot of mileage as is.

Zuyong HMG is probably the closest analogue to the ol' Shanger at this point. The Shang Ji is basically a roided up replacement for it, after all.

 

Fair points all. I hadn’t really looked at how some interactions had changed since N3.

 

Further thoughts on the Daofei hacker profile and competition tightening.

If you just want an infiltrating hacking specialist the Zencha is probably the more cost effective option for the job. If you want a hacking specialist that's also up for a bit of close quarters fire fighting the Hac Tao hacker is actually only 6pts more and you get a pretty relevant stat bump with the TO camo, +1 BS, +1ARM, +1WIP, and +3BTS (and BTS 6+ is pretty big for hackers in N4). Losing the positioning on Infiltration is less of an issue too with the Guilangs packing the deployable repeaters they still allow for the hacker to force project on turn 1.

Losing my ability to shell game the Hac Tao and Ninjas as other camo models was annoying, I rarely used them in Hidden Deployment in N3 and preferred to deploy them as regular camo. On the other hand in N4 the Liu Xing is a really strong threat and Hidden Deployment for the Hac Tao can obfuscate the list towards having a Liu Xing instead.

 

So the two Adils... Am I missing something about them that makes them worth taking?

 

Regular Adil looks solid, a wildcard packing CoC with sensor on a scary CC frame with NWI.

Crane Adil though? I can't see why you'd take him. He pays more than a regular Crane for a worse statline and no X-visor. He gets veteran and a mono CCW, but loses CoC from his original profile. Seems like N3 Kokram levels of hot trash to me, and I can't see why you'd ever want to take him over a regular Crane.

 

Crane adil is better than regular crane at taking down TAG and such (breaker combi + mono CCW > multi rifle + DA CCW), which is interesting considering there are no AP spitfire/HMG in ISS. It's also an HI lieutenant who can't be Isolated, and while he doesn't give any SWC as a lieutenant he can be selected as such and remain a specialist all while being almost a kuang-shi cheaper.

 

I think that mmr hsien in haris is the best anti TAG unit in ISS. Without fire sensitive mimetism things like Cutter, Avatar and Sphinx are looking nasty in n4. Hsien doesn't care, he can shoot at them through smoke with B4 AP rounds. Or if you are in 16 he can send madtrap before shooting and basically force dodge aro.

 

Do you think they will bring out a Guilang Combi Rifle model anytime soon? I wanted to pick up a second Guilang but I missed out on the Sniper in Red Veil Beyon and only have the Shotgun model available, but go to profiles would appear to be the Combi.

Any ideas if a weapon swap between the hooded Zanshi and the Boarding Shotgun Guilang could work?

 

I swapped one of my two guilang sniperrifles with a winterzhanshi combirifle.
So if the goal is to have a guilang with combi that should be possible to achieve.

 

I did a very simple arm swap with one of the Red Veil Zhanshi. Both models usable after the switch. If you squint you can see the resultant Zhanshi sniper with the pink hair. The real Chad move is using the Combi rifle from the Painting set forward observer, but that is a lot of buy-in. IF we are patient maybe someone will produce aftermarket FO attachments for conversions.

 

@infyrana to clarify, I took the red veil Zhanshi and Beyond Red Veil Guilang, and made one cut on each of their right arms, along the red line in the photos below. I then simply swapped the forearm+gun for each model and filled any gaps with paint.

 

@the huanglong Thank you for the confirmation! I was unable to see the original image on this browser so that definitely helps. It's awkward that I cannot find the Red Veil Guilang for now (who I'd just ran as she was unless I had two), but this should at least give me ideas / hope for changing something out there :) Worst case scenario, I use my spare Zhayedan breaker as a proxy (he's a great miniature) until they bring out a blister of Guilang!

 

Gosh darn, that's looking good.

And here I just cut 95% of the barrel off of my Red Veil Guilang's MSR so she could have her own custom bullpup combirifle with built in scope (With BS 11 she needs all the help she can get :p) XD

 

I did exactly the same!!