Maybe this has flown under the radar for some people, N4 changed the LT WIP roll at the start of the game to be public information rather than private like N3. This affects some factions more than others to a noticeable degree. Yu Jing and Shas probably don't give a shit at all as their LTs tend to both be bloody obvious and also under a camo marker, and they're both such high value profiles that it's very hard to find a reason not to take them and probably 9 out of 10 chucklefucks will be running them in any given list. Other factions, particularly those who have WIP15 LTs, such as Haqqislam and Nomads on the other hand find this change giving away profiles to anybody astute enough to recognise an alpha strike potential. I scraped this MRRF list off the first Concillium Watch battle report I opened. Lo and behold it immediately telegraphs the LT. Being forced to announce you're rolling against WIP 12 immediately gives away the 8pt Metro shitkicker as the LT, MRRF can't run anything else as an LT that's also WIP12. ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 9 1 1 MÉTRO (Lieutenant) Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 8) MOBLOT (Sapper) Heavy Machine Gun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 30) LOUP-GAROU Viral Rifle, Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 25) LOUP-GAROU Boarding Shotgun, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 19) LOUP-GAROU Boarding Shotgun, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 19) MOBLOT (Paramedic) AP Rifle, Light Shotgun ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 25) CHASSEUR (Forward Observer) Rifle, Light Flamethrower, Flash Pulse, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 20) CHASSEUR (Minelayer) Rifle, Light Flamethrower, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 20) Equipe Mirage-5 undefined / undefined. (2 | 66) MARGOT AP Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 37) DUROC Chain Rifle(+1B), Grenades, Smoke Grenades / AP CC Weapon. (0 | 29) GROUP 2 4 1 CHASSEUR (Minelayer) Rifle, Light Flamethrower, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 20) CHASSEUR (Forward Observer) Rifle, Light Flamethrower, Flash Pulse, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 20) MÉTRO (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration]) Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) MÉTRO (Camouflage [1 Use], Infiltration]) Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) WARCOR (360º Visor) Flash Pulse ( ) / Stun Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) 5.5 SWC | 299 Points Open in Infinity Army In N3 you couldn't be sure. Might be the LT, might be bait and the real LT is hiding under one of 8-9 camo markers as MRRF can run Jacques as the LT and the visible SWC on the table allows for it. Like I mentioned earlier the premium end LTs that pay for a baller WIP stat really get kicked in the dick by this, especially the squishy higher risk ones. For example Tunguska cannot obscure their Interventor if they decide they want to pick it as an LT, there's no WIP15 options. Similar story for Tarik his WIP15 immediately telegraphs him for rapid deletion through guided fire/impersonators or whatever method is deemed fit. Machaon also struggles requiring the army to also include Achilles to even have a chance of throwing your opponent off (or vice versa). Want to put a Taskmaster LT in a team of Riot GRRLs and not make the LT super obvious? Now you have also find room for not just his link but also a home for a Custodier/Moira/Kusanagi which probably entails building a whole Haris for that, which is pretty awkward if you only wanted a Riot GRRL Haris. You can't use the defensive Moderator core to fill that obfuscation roll anymore, or even just plop in a singular Moderator to try some mindgame bait because that sucker is WIP12. Speaking of which N4 also makes it harder to obscure LTs even if they share WIP values with other profiles in the faction, the Tactical Window limit makes it harder to even just have room to throw in random cheerleaders or extra profiles to help obscure LTs who share a more common WIP value. Overall I find it to be a shitty change. It means there's fewer opportunities for mindgames and outwitting your opponent and it makes the game lean more towards alpha striking instead of away from it. It also has a hand in making fewer LT profile entries attractive/viable, and for what gain? None whatsoever. There's no real benefit. Sure it's harder to blatantly cheat, but I would argue designing the game to mechanically impact things because of cheating concerns is a fucking dumb route to take. If you're playing with dipshits like that the game is going to suck major ass no matter what the rules are. Checking an army list at the end of the game is gonna give shit away immediately anyway.
N4 has also skewed away from mind games by making the Mimetism value of camo markers public information. I don’t know whether that’s generally good or bad, but it’s at least consistent. I’m really not sure what the intent was, in terms of play experience.
That's a less intentional change and more just a result of CB denesting rules. Before you always knew what the mimetic value of a camo marker was because TO and regular Camo had different modifiers. What you can't do now is use the different level of camo, like in the majority of cases my Ninjas and Hac Tao didn't use Hidden Deployment and opted to start on the board as regular camo markers. Hac Tao and Ninjas more reliably caught people off guard when they weren't looking for missing unit slots in combat groups. The WIP shit on the roll though? 100% targeted change and a fucking stupid one. They changed the sentence under the initiative part from making the WIP value private to making it public information. Overall though I agree there's less ability in N4 to play misdirection games and I think the game overall is a poorer and duller experience for it.
Haqqislam at least has CoC/Holo. Somewhat tangential: The thing that I don't like about making vulnerability to assassination a Nomad's weakness is how uneven it is at balancing the faction (if that's the purpose). To know the WIP of all potential Lts in opponent's force you need to be fairly invested in the game. It won't affect casual matches much (and thus is not a weakness), but in more ITS/tournament play it will be fairly easy to exploit by a dedicated player. Which potentially may result in the faction feeling fairly powerful in casual games but lackluster in a serious competition.
It affects some factions more than others, sure, but the factions that were affected the most were those who could play shell games with their Lts - factions like Onyx and USARF who had Lts that were generally pretty obvious don't care, factions with Camo Lts or good CoC access don't care, it's only factions who played the shell game on models with different WIP, which is a smaller selection than you'd think. I definitely think it should be paid attention to in terms of what it does to faction balance, but there's no reason to suspect it would have a dire impact, IMO, because factions with obvious lieutenants weren't at a massive disadvantage if they had other things to make up for it.
In TTS, I usually just sort Army by "lieutenant" and take a look when my opponent announces their Lt WIP. It has that functionality, which is nice.
I think its a good change. As good players were pretty accurate at picking what profile the LT was in all but the most dedicated to bluffing lists. Where as casual players didn't have a hope. This just evens out the playing field in trying to figure out Lts. Many factions will have options to include bluff Lts - at an investment. Whereas premium or standout Lts have a more noticeable drawback.
If I wanted the game dumbed down for me I'd still be playing warhammer. I'm all for making things more accessible, such as de-nesting rules, but dumbing mechanics down and making things boring isn't great in my eyes. Might as well argue we do away with F2F mechanics because the amount of casual players I watch struggle to add up shit correctly isn't a low number.
I think there's a difference between streamlining and dumbing down. Having a FtF roll where the numbers you're rolling on don't have to be declared isn't good for system verisimilitude. The arguments about whether you had to announce a crit on your Lt roll in N3 were kind of disgusting, tbh.
I mostly play vanilla Combined and MAF, so this change literally does not affect me. I think it's good to always have the target number for rolls be open information. That's fundamental consistency, not dumbing down.
It really wasn't. It was one roll at the start of the game with to announce pass or fail that's not exactly asking for rocket science. The only argument against it is I'm worried my opponent is cheating, to which my point is stop playing against people that you feel are cheating. Infinity is a game that's very easy to cheat at and fudge shit, gameplay experience is going to be ass if you're worried about needing to pull them up on everything.
I feel it goes against the entire core mechanic, and it doesn't add enough to justify that. Same with N3 Hack Transport Aircraft, although amusingly they kept writing it in such a way that it *didn't* violate the core FtF mechanic, even if they meant it to.
Half the skills in the game are built around being exceptions or adjustments to core mechanics. Hey kids, you get to ARO when people activate in your ZoC, but not if they're stealth because it's a counter rule, unless you have Sixth Sense because that counters the counter. It's one slightly different procedure at the start of the game, it's not a burden beyond triggering people's OCD. We went an entire edition without it causing any real problems beyond people pointlessly arguing over semantics for the crit business that could've been solved within 24hrs by CB making an arbitrary 1 sentence ruling as to their intent which would've buried the matter. Is this change going to cause major issues balance wise? Probably not, but at the end of the day it's a pointless change that serves no purpose and reduces player agency and choice. It's not a net benefit and really didn't need to happen.
Add to that the consumption of the LT order by a troop is Public Information too, and the means are too. Because your consumption of the Lt Order must indicate if you used NCO or not. And I think there are no NCO + Lt profiles. And yes, there are NCOs with marker status, or holomasked. It means either that CB considers players routinely cheat, or that the shell games was "not fun/good for the game". Considering how Code One is mostly a "charge and kill", wel... I would disagree in the assestment that this is a good think because it evens the playing field. Because I will claim then how unfair is for the other players to have better spatial assesment than I do. So let's measure before declaring. But they are better tactically. So let's make mirror sides of the table. But they make lists better than me. So all play the same list. But they have better luck. So let's play chess. But I'm bad at chess, so let's not play. The only "even field" is the nonexistant one, where no one can do anything. Removing options because of that, and considering that a virtuous and positive thing, is completely wrong. At best, it would be a necessary sacrifice. Please, rethink that second phrase, because to me it seems to convey that both enemy leaders must know who they face, their tactics, etc... in real life "for verosimilitude"... It was very simple: roll, both players announce if your roll was successful or not, and if it was, check if it was a bigger number than your opponent's, done. There was no need to announce criticals on WIP rolls since there were no extra effect from it... a WIP 12 Lt rolling a 12 didn't won Inintiative against a WIP 15 Lt rolling a 14. Streamlining means making things more compact, simple, and easy to understand. Allowing you, for example, to lower your Mimetism malus from -6 to -3 or 0 is not harder to understand (unless we go to the meme trademarked Rules Galician Redaction Style). Not giving the choice makes Libertos / Helots obvious, like any visible Mimetism -6. Forcing the Lt means of expenditure to be obvious makes 2-3 troops that can be in marked state to be obvious. And camo'ed Lts as well. Forcing to reveal your Lt's WIP value removes the protection the Lt has by being anonymous in several profiles. All that, while makes the game more "casual" also means people who enjoy the game because of its options gets suddenly deprived of those options. If the Lt has to be obvious, then it's as simple as not penalizing the players for getting their Lt killed. BTW, now that the Lts ID is easier to guess for "casual" or new players, I assume the next target to remove is the tools "hardcore" players use to hunt for the enemy Lt. To "even the field" and all that. The problem is not a single change, but the addition of all those changes together.
I'm more in favour of providing more useful and reliable defensive measures to affected factions and/or removing capabilities from armies that can easily kill LTs to stop them rolling the game off the turn 1 advantage (looking at you, Impersonator factions). The LT shellgame was never really all that fun to begin with anyway.
This goes further into the territory of removing every mechanic, you know... And I see little complication in a "there won't be LoL in your First Turn"... The only reason there was a shell game for the Lt identity was because of the penalty that imposes loses the Lt. The usage of the Lt order was so small (aside from certain factions) that the NCO skill showed up...
I think this is a nice change. Generally speaking it acts early to force a lock-in on lists which reduces the risk of cheating. I know, an ugly thing to bring up, but it has happened and this will reduce that to a small degree. For me, it also gives some information to work with against some factions like Yu Jing and Combined, while other factions become/remain somewhat more opaque like Haqq and in general I actually like that distinction. It's just unfortunate that the current edition is kinder to Pitcher and Grenade Launcher assassinations. @xagroth LT roll was a regular face to face roll with no qualifier or extra rule. Crits did do something, it automatically won the roll even if opponent rolled higher - and of course the core face to face rules did state that you had to announce a crit, so you were doubly obliged to inform your opponent. Just like now. The "only" thing that has changed is that now the WIP attribute is public. Let's hope we don't get Lieutenant(+3)...
Sorry for the derailment, I'll be quick. While it could be argued that for N3, in the N4 core book, pg 22, it states: No mention to criticals in this paragraph, explaining those in pg 29... Face to Face are explained in detail at pg 30, but are explained, without mention to critics, in pg 8. In the example at pg10 it does not consider criticals again. I find funny how F2F is explained not once, but three times up to page 22, but Critics aren't until page 30, with no mention to those on the Initiative roll.
