It’s worth noting that with all of the different Bureaus in O-12, it wouldn’t be out of line for this force to be a Sectorial from the get go, Section Spatha, with access straightaway to Fireteams.
I'd actually hoped this would be the approach that they would have taken. Release a sectorial and dumps the models into "vanilla" and add in the inevitable bounty hunters and the like. Next sectorial, do the same. But we do get another round of "vanilla" is bad verging on making the game about 23 factions and whatever you want to call the NA2 stuff. Just hope I get enough advance warning to liquidate before the market dropped out.
As someone who hates having to push around 5 models every order to get best results out of an army, I'm completely on board with another Vanilla set. At this point there are as many NA2 Sectorials as there are army choices without Fireteams; 7. In fact, I'd be happiest if all this hyper-optimisation in O-12's roster is a clue that the faction will never receive a Sectorial at all and instead will benefit from design more focused towards performance of individual profiles, instead of how well they abuse Fireteam:Core.
In the end, all units have been compared in a vacuum for their point costs, being what they can do (besides shooting and eating damage) what gives the army a theme. What has me more worried at this moment is how O12 fits in Infinity, both in the "what is this army's playstyle" and in the "reason to be" (in the active tabletop game), specially since they are paired with Shasvastii and, while I'm the first accepting that the initial missions "nerf" all profiles to something manageable to new players, those players will start playing complete games soon thereafter, and facing against full camos with a single MSV2 can be... frustrating. The problem comes when those competitive units go to the sectorials and become murdermachines with Fireteam Bonuses (Sheskiin, Devas...) or worse, they become iconic and when ported to a sectorial, they become less interesting than in vanilla for the lack of some tools (Asuras, for example, who go into a haris, but is a very expensive one). I agree with the tendency to the LI, but not about "Hard mode". It certainly makes the listbuilding more complicated (even more when you add the new factions), and it gives an advantage to factions more reliant on skills than attributes (for example, Aleph and CA, against PanO) who can also deploy troops with multiple roles in the battlefield (again, Aleph and CA, this time against Nomads, who have the best reserve of cheap and varied specialists to call upon, but whose low cost makes them focused specialists, good at 1-2 things against the 3-4 the elite units in CA/Aleph can do). Leaving that aside, I prefer LI in tournaments because the games tend to last less (about an hour of gameplay after deployment per mission), and without limits this can become ridiculous with certain factions. Of course, another advantage in LI is to deploy huge amounts of camo markers as bait, of which TAK can do easy enough, since you can force the burning of orders on your opponent. I agree there, but I think the clarification would be that all new sectorials to factions with vanilla are LI-oriented (regardless of how much need said faction has for a LI sectorial), with NA2 being some sort of "random population" aimed at players with lots of different models (or no problems about proxying) First, a real review of what each trooper classifies as would need to be done, since I find (for example) kinda unfair for CA to lose access to the Skiavoros, anathematic, Charontid and Avatar (available only in vanilla CA as HQ troops) ;) While I agree that it would be more logical to be like that, we had official confirmation that what comes in Wildfire is a vanilla, not a sectorial :(
What? No. Dashat just has Tac Awareness profiles and easy access to cheap units, unlike IA. It makes amazing use of Tac Awareness, without the downside of having expensive baseline troops like IA. Dashat is the "the designers actually took the time to make us powerful" sectorial, as opposed to IA.
What I meant is that only new sectorials to "classic" factions (PanO, YJ, Aleph, CA, etc...) are LI oriented, NA2 is a different beast altogether.
That's just not true. VIRD isn't particularly LI-oriented, neither is TJC or TAK, unless TJC is running the Hollow Men pain train. I just don't agree with you. If NA2 is a different beast altogether, it shouldn't get access to the mechanics that IA was given to ameliorate its low model count. Dashat gets the upside with none of the downsides. I wonder if the guy who runs Dashat in the setting was Gutier's rpg character or something, it would explain a lot.
Tunguska and OSS have Counterintelligence OSS still has netrods VIRD has ava total on Fusiliers and Helots Of those in particular OSS and VIRD usually get pretty spammy in 15 orders minimum
Played with wildfire on friday doing a game with the intro set using the full rules and it was a nice balanced encounter. Gwailos Browbeat the Gamma into submission with the HMG, caliban flanked the Epsilon and shot him in the back, delta glued down the Gwailos, Nox and mentor with his splooper ( a truly hilarious weapon to have on a drop troop). Game ended with one surviving kappa and a lot of IMM2 shas, literally came down to a nox and a Kappa trying to kill each other.
OSS "spammy" part is all about Dakinis, which are not new (just very cost-effective troops... damn, I remember a tournament in which a paramedic Dakini kept a frigging Seraph at bay for two whole turns xD). The LI feeling I get comes from the "HI" that is the Yadus. Personally, I see a smoke Vs Fireteams when it comes to Aleph Vs OSS, and the Fireteams do not add anything to my gameplay that I don't have from other factions...
Putting "asphyxiation" back into "less lethal". Takes longer to die -> less lethal! (Seriously, though, seems a bit cheap for Adhesive, I'm expecting Stun and that way I don't think I'll be disappointed)
TJC is dessigned to be the nomad LI sectorial. It is well balanced for LI, but not for the normal game (even when going with securitate core, you need to spam the 8 point remote to get to 14-15 orders, usually is easier to get to the 11-13). The new sectorial seem to me that will be in the same boat, but with troopers more optimized, or cheaper, or more powerfull, or all 3 at the same time
While single group Hollow Men lists proven well for me even against hyperspam armies like Aconticimento, even in Tunguska 2 group lists are more optimized. Having 2 flash pulse bots and a warcor is crucial for surviving first reactive turn and Puppetmaster bridges the gap if you are going 1st due to counterintelligence (also brings the defensive mine sometimes). My buddy skips on Kriza completely and just builds like 15-16 model lists that rely on perseus/securitate team with spares, hecklers with red fury and Raoul - those, in my opinion, are the most optimal lists for that army, even if they dont have enough shiny toys (so I dont follow his example, I love my big serbian 5 dice man and useless hackers). In the faction context yeah, Tunguska straight up builds better LI lists than the other ones.
Well, spamming 8-points bots and spare line troppers for the core (6 or more of them) can make almost any army go 15+ orders. Whith that argument, no one army is made for LI. But in non-extreme lists, I find hard to see a 13+ order list in tunguska, with perseus and raoul in the same time without spaming that could be called powerfull, or at least, is not as powerfull as other list that doesn't need to spam to get to those order count (they have the numbers and are as much powerful. Just wanted to state that TJC is designed for LI, even if they have counterinteligence, in a trooper made to create a extra pseudo-haris in LI btw.
Every competitive pano sectorial list brings full ava of bots and spare fusiliers/regulars for the core team, it is not really extreme.
"Every". I am not sure they are forced to, to get to that order count. There is a big difference in "can" and "are forced to".
