Your assumption is bad behavior is encouraged with results and this is the justification to continue the same pattern for possible future results. Instead of any other justification for changes to happen. I would strongly advice against such assumptions.
Annihilation is not marked as "Suitable for Reinforcements". Note that very similar Firefight and Cutthroat are. Reinforcements Marked the "Suitable for Reinforcements" missions Highly Classified Mindwipe Countermeasures Decapitation Unmasking Evacuation Looting and Sabotaging Supplies Firefight Last Launch Cutthroat
I was speaking in general, taking lower points for advantage is not restricted to reinforcements only.
Missed this post, sorry. - Those are OCF lists, which in my opinion are still less effective at GML than regular vCA in 6/300 gamemode. Perhaps with commdude+1 and B&K burst3 pitcher give OCF a slight advantage in REF games but I wouldn't count on that. GML appears to be not that effective in REF games. - The Nourkias list isn't a GML list because it lacks forward observers and regular hackers. It cannot inflict "Targeted" state. Bit&Kiss pitcher, cybermasking and button pressing is a very handy way to filter 2nd combat group orders so it's probably not a surprise that they are an autoinclude for OCF. Any orders spend on destroying repeaters and killing of Kiss! is one less order on advancing and doing the mission. You may be wondering about T-drone, but it's cheap (very useful for REF triggering) and the only long range ARO piece for CA reinforcements. It also has synergies with E-drone in keeping up the ARO pressure, so the choise was obvious.
Straight from the Rulebook: And If it is ‘unfair’ to bring less than ‘around 300’ points into a game by it is not ‘an abuse’ to bring less than 15 troopers into a list? Everyone playing ‘limited insertion’ lists should be called out. As we know, this is not the case thanks to the fact that Order Economy is so vital to this game that it is much more clear to see the disadvantage the player is giving himself due to not brining 15 troopers. And harder to perceive the reduce in ‘quality’ present into the table in the form of less points being used. Let’s play non-Reinforcement game of Firefight. I now bring a list with 300 points and 15 troopers with a grand total number of ZERO specialists. Now I am negating you the 2 objective points of “Killing more specialists than the enemy”. Add some salt to the wound by bringing a list that can use a Mim -6 Camo Marker State LT, and double down by making that Camo LT an Infiltrator who can end in the most hardest to reach point of the game. Now you’re not directly making it impossible, but making it extremely uphill and unlike the other 2 available objective points of “killing more LT than the enemy”. Let’s play non-reinforcement game of Frostbyte. I now bring a list with 300 points and 15 troopers with a grand total number of ZERO troopers that are not Heavy Infantry, Remote or TAG, with maybe just bringing one trooper that is neither of all those to make him the hazmat-ops. I am now directly ignoring the “Killing Cold” rule of the scenario. This is giving me now an extreme advantage of the game, and can in fact almost play this game as an Anhilation match instead. Not only that, thanks to me being able to ignore the Killing Cold rule I can now devout myself to destroy ALL the heating units of the table, even by suicide runs if needed and then castle up. My enemy is unable to score any points from heating units, as they’re destroyed. If his army is balanced all his non HI, REM and TAGs are dead by end of game no matter what happens now. I have turn myself more easily to claim the 5 available points for “killing more points than the enemy” and “dominate the exclusion zone”. There are lots of ways to ‘take advantage’ of a certain game mode or mission from army list composition other than “amount of army points being used”.
Hi, no, I was disagreeing with his assertion that the was playing RAW rules, since Reinforcements rules make no allowance to intentionally expend less than the maximum possible points. Mind you, I don't care either way regarding the points, just that he was not playing RAW (and yes, the regular version of the game states the "up to" option, but Reinforcements make not such allowance, making it not RAW regarding the reinforcements group XD) Instead of "surviving points = X then deploy reinforcements", make it so "Casualty points = X, then deploy reinforcements". I think I mentioned it in a previous post. It's not the same thing as leaving aside points enough to deploy not one, but several troops. No, since it doesn't use the Reinforcements extra, where the points are listed in a more exacting way than in the core book for regular play. I disagree. It limits options, but the problem that is the efficiency of GML is not that you have lots of hackers capable of using Spotlight, but 2-3 hackers capable of such, and a sufficiently good Repeater Network. Since Nomads can get away with the needed repeaters just by devoting 50-60pts and have access to cheap hackers, it means they invest little more... and of course they have Lts with +1SWC too, so they can ignore the 1SWC lost in Reinforcements mode. As for the Alpha Strike, it has removed the disincentive to use such tactic, that is Retreat. You would need to have a list around 320-330pts total (meaning 70-80 reinforcement points), so that the Retreat Threshold can be achieved despite having a Reinforcements group, otherwise you have more points in said group than those needed to force a Retreat, which means the turn 1 alpha strike can hit as deep as he want without fear of losing the tournament because he scored close to 0 objective points in that round. Specially in the "score at the end of the game" type of missions that are not about killing/surviving more. GML has two problems: lack of interactivity (dodge and soak is not interactive, it's like waiting your opponent's turn in a GW game... only they call it Armor Save and Wounds roll), and excessive efficiency, since it works always no matter what you have in front of you (as much as single dice rolls allow in a d20 system), not being widely used because most people (me included) find it... disgusting and boring. Rules are rules because it takes one willing to ignore "morals" to make a mess. By forcing Spotlight you are not forcing me into the Hacking game, you are attempting a debuff that I have (cumulative) penalties to remove against physical combat. And better not talk about how E/M ammo truly devastates HI/TAG for the whole game unless your engineer is still alive... A Jammer does a better job of forcing the Hacking game on other models, imo, the problem is the ISO -9 to Reset... Thus why the makers need to listen to the community and balance sincerely what they want, what they say, and what the community makes of it... I agree, Tanan doesn't. And ironically he tries to desperately defend that he is right because he won, while accusing us of trying to protect the status quo because we play GML & Alpha Strike (I've spend hours cakling at his not so veiled hints... My CA ML bit is glued to a magnet to use a Xeodron as an Overdron from time to time, and I think the only S3 remote I have with ML is the old Aleph scorpion/spider... which has been a cheap flashbot for the past 8+ years XD). Oh, the irony XD. Cheaper reinforcement units tend to be the "specialists bots" (Tachimotos) for all factions, in fact Nomads cheapest ones cost 13pts (no flash pulse, no sensor, no triangulated fire), plus their 2 each of Vostok, Tsyklon or Lunokhod... But I digress, the point of Nomads are the Heckers with fastpanda, the Moran with repeater, and the Initiates with Deployable Repeater and Minelayer, all between 18 and 23pts, all AVA 2 or more, and all with cheap good hackers (plus, to boot: 24pts Interventor, 25pts Zoe -who no longer needs to bring Pi Well too- 19pts Uhahu, 22pts Jazz FTO, the last two with their own Pitchers to boot) that allow them to pick basic infantry hackers for that second dice. However, please note that some factions have a GML in the reinforcements pool too >.< (Aleph, CA, YJ...) Having suffered twice the Kusanagi EM grenade launcher + Moira (first sniper, second HMG) + Wabara + Cenobite HRL + Cenobite Chain Rifle, I agree they can do more than GML and be more than annoyed (once my Epsilon was down it was just a suffering slide and a free buffet for the Uberfallkommando), what won't get EM will face a -9 at least... And that's just Bakunin. I will break a lance for Psychoticstorm's sake here and say that there is one thing to make a list with less than the maximun amount of models, and another thing to make a list leaving away points enough to insert more than one basic troop just to abuse the rules. In the end, we want to play and that means to be as sportsmanlike and courteous as possible. Balanced in that you can suffer the same from the opponent, and note that AD troops exist for a reason. Also, if you can make such a dedicated list, the TO has make a mistake in the lineup or you are renouncing scoring options in at least one other mission. You are also renouncing a lot of utility (few HI troops carry smoke, for example) and I'm not sure you can reach those 15troops (you can reach a single combat group, however), much less having all the needed specialists to keep the dudes working (YJ can, Shang Jesus and zujong-character-/jujak have paramedics/engineers, but the costs are great), but you are not abusing the rules to create a list by using so many less points you could fit 2+ troops!
I find @xagroth comments about Retreat very dishonest, which is an ongoing theme in this thread. They should rename this "the daily gaslight thread". Like when did any alpha striker shoot himself in the foot by triggering Retreat on the first turn? Has that ever happened in the history of Infinity? Doing 225 points of casualties using only 5 rockets is even more impressive. No, GML is all about crippling the opponents order economy and teeth with zero risk and forcing the opponent just to sit there for whole three turns doing basically nothing meaningful while you carefully count the casulties and score maximum points from the mission. Such master strategy. This is safe, repeatable and boring tactic is exactly reason why it's being used by most 6/300 gamemode tournament winners. Because some people here have trouble reading, let me repeat myself. The conversation about Retreat exploit has nothing to do with my REF approach and the people pushing that lie know that. I have hard time believing that it has ever happened in a real tournament. And if you truly think that it's a problem, you should only play missions that don't have Retreat or start a new whiny thread about it to force CB to cancel that game-ending condition. I used about 50p of reinforcements. I didn't use GML successfully. My list where brutal ARO lists instead of the usual alpha strike lists. My opponents all got three full turns to play. Everyone had fun game, instead of someone playing and winning the tournament with stupid GML alpha strike list. If this is cheating, I want to get cheated in every game. If CB clarifies that you must inflict 100p of casualties to trigger reinforcements, the game will go back to crippling opponents order economy while simultaneously counting carefully that you haven't inflicted +100p casualties. All reinforcements groups will look alike, becase you want to use 100p of reinforcements (using as few slots as possible) and while this isn't (6/300 gamemode GML alpha strike grade) bad, it's still boring compared to my approach. Sphinx and other 100p TAGs will be popular, because you can trigger reinforcements by playing the TAG aggressively. Either your TAG wins you the game or it gets destroyed in which case you trigger reinforcements early. I have hard time believing that people who like REF gamemode truly want to play this way. REF haters would ofc want to cancel this gamemode by offering poor advice.
I think you made your case, I think accusing everybody disagreeing with it "gaslighting" you is a bit far fetched.
To be honest, what you are saying here does not line up at all with my experience of reinfor and the discussion I've participated in surronding reinfor. GML has never ever been order efficient (at least in the aggregate), unless you are getting reactive spotlights (and even then, why is your opponent headbutting into your repeater net with something that both doesn't have stealth and is valuable?). It is consistent, and can threaten anything not in a marker state or without ECM, but it's relatively order intensive for the damage you do compared to other powerful attacks using warbands vs null deployment or apex gunfighters if stuff is standing up/you are on a very open table. I agree that GML (really repeaters) lack interactivity for the reactive player. I agree that it being B1 vs B1 is stupid (in an ideal world, I'd love to see GML balanced with a B2 spotlight). But you are missing my point. If GML didn't exist or was nerfed to N3 levels of uselessness, I could have all of my investment into hacking suddenly be rendered useless because my opponent decided to not bring anything that is hackable. 'Cool hacking net, but unfortunately the points and SWC you've spent on it is useless because I'm playing CHA' isn't exactly good game design. At 300pts, it is p trivial for an experienced player to inflict a devastating alpha and not have their opponent enter retreat. Retreat is not a significant limitation on alpha strikes. What reinfor does to make alpha strikes worse is simply decreasing the available order pool and SWC you have available on turn 1. Alphas at 300pts will typically use a smaller group 2 to remove a problematic ARO and/or support the main group in some way (maybe planting a dep rep, maybe impet smoke throwing), and follow that up with a larger group 1 to do the actual damage. At best in reinfor, you are going to be operating with maybe 3 troops in your group 2, and have less SWC to spend on gunfighters and support for those gunfighters. If you spend 2-3 orders during turn 1 busting through a tough ARO like Armand or a pure core RG ML, that's ok at 300pts, but around a third to half of your available orders in reinforcements. Most missions are favored for the player going second, which is balanced out by the devastating nature of a well executed alpha strike. In reinforcements, the scales are tipped in favor of the reactive player, and the result is a lot of dully static play dominated by hard AROs in a lot of missions where you are punished if you try to push your opponent.
On the tangent of spotlight, I have found that Spotlight on its own to be sufficient advantage that losing my GML doesn't render hackers useless (unless the list has far over invested in them). It will provide a useful advantage (but not enough to merit resets) and hackers remain one of the most universal specialists in the game. Also, on the same tangent, GMLs weren't useless, just niche, and hackers didn't get useless if opponent opted out, though assault hackers did. Ah, how I miss using Zhanshi to put Marksmanship on my ("pure") linked Son Bae...
2 morans in the middle of the table: more than half the center line is under hacking threat. It is not that the opponnent, as you say, headbutts the Hacking Area, it's that the mere presence of those repeaters and hackers (capable of more than just using Spotlight) make the presence of a single GML remote a threat, and forces precisely to use more orders than otherwise needed to navigate the hacking areas. That is a direct attack on the Order Economy of the opponent, that for Nomad lists becomes extremely cheap, since they carry Pitchers on all three sectorials besides Tsyklon Sputniks (in fact, the less efficient is Tunguska, because both Jazz and Uhahu carry their own pitchers, and while Zoe doesn't, Piwell -which is a good choice, and carries its own repeater, by itself!- does...). My point was never that GML is a great strategy for all, but two points: 1) N4's change of allowing Spotlight in Reactive and the state to last until removed boosted the efficienty of GML from abysmal to adequate by itself, since you may mark targets (not always the ones you want) in your Reactive Turn (usually by way of repeaters of some kind). 2) Nomads can just slap the GML bot in most of their lists with minimal opportunity cost. EDIT: Also on #2, the removal of U-Turn as an ARO option by an EVO. Having a Supportware "purge protocols" or similar program (removing all hack-induced states for a single type of troop) may be a solution Falacy: if you bring 5 KHD and I bring exactly zero hackers at all, your hacking investment is useless. Should Corvus Belli then give KHDs programs that they could use against non-hackers? The truth is that a specialist is a specialist, so a hacker of any kind is never useless, since they can go score points. Also, EVO hackers. Why bring them in Last Launch? Ah, they give easy points, so they get used even if no remote/tag/HI/DA are in the list (more realistically, however, lists get changed to include some troop that can take advantage of one Supportware). Is it? If I'm in a tournament and my opponent start pulling out the Army app to count my point's troops, I will call the TO and ask for a timer, mind you, and frown on someone trying to pull off something he's not prepared enough. And if he is experienced enough to count precisely... well, believe it or not, I have seen Retreats happen (and not once or twice) when it was most inconvenient to the striker, so I doubt it was intentional. Heck, once I made a terrible deployment (thought it was a normal one but we had +4'') and lost too good troopers in my first turn (I was first) and then my opponent culled me too much (the Marut went down more than expected)... and suddenly I was on Retreat, with Aleph, with 3 netrods (N3, they were not Veterans), a Mk1 engineer proxy and little more... and I scored enough points to win in my 2nd turn in retreat. Those things happen. However, with Reinforcements, it is impossible to go into retreat unless you kill every single enemy troop on the table, there are no HD/DA troops in their list, and there is more than 88pts in the Reinforcements list... I agree there has been a compounded effect between the going second advantage to "close mission objectives" and Reinforcements, but it also gets even more pronounced in missions that calculate the score at the end of the game, those in which objectives are checked every turn are less affected. Also, I mentioned before that Reinforcements, as they are (optional on turn 2 if you are in the points threshold, but I prefer "having suffered X casualties", and mandatory on turn 3) are good... in a 4 turns game. I doubt people wanna plan for 3-4 hours per game, which is the theoretical timeframe for WH40k with more than 4 times the number of models >.< Indeed, it has not been contemplated by many that a good ARO on a Mimetism-3 or -6 troop brings it back quite a notch, specially pricey elite troops that need it for lacking Fireteam bonuses or are cheap, "hard to see" mimetic troops. MSV1 are more readily available than MSV2's, and, to use a fairly simple example, a Haris of Riot Grrrls (spitfire leader, tinbot BSG, Uhahu) suddenly has the advantage against a Marked Phoenix because he's no longer at -3, but at 0, and it's B2 BS14 vs B5 BS13... it suddenly changes a lot (or a linked BS12+3 Kappa sniper against a linked BS11+3 HRL Marked cenobite...). Sadly, the only ones with lots of options regarding a repeater network are Nomads. The rest may have one or two extra remotes, and maybe one or two troops with pitcher... the fun part is that the worst ones are Ariadna (predictable), YJ and O12 (NA2 may be even worse or not, I don't consider them so I don't get crazy with all the combinations).
This is why I keep saying it's a sportsmanship violation, not a rules violation. Being below points threshold triggers negative play experience mechanics i.e. premature end of game, which harms the other person't ability to enjoy the game they thought they were signing up for. Bringing fewer than 15 troopers does not trigger such effects, therefore it is not comparable.
This discussion could have been avoided entirely by just writing game sizes as ranges ("251-300 points") instead of single values and replacing The total sum of the Cost of the Troopers that make up an Army List must always be equal to or lower than the number of Army Points agreed upon for the game. with The total sum of the Cost of the Troopers that make up an Army List must always be a value in the number range of Army Points agreed upon for the game.
Premature end of game in an standard 300 points game requires fielding a 75 point army list. That's 225 points not being used. Which it is impossible to be reached by a full 15 trooper list. Not even a full 15 man 6 points caledonian volunter can reach that low of a treshold. The bare minimun would be 89 points counting the Liutenant and a warcor for such a list. A full 15 man 'kuang shi spam' imperial service list would be a bare minimun of 97 points. Even a generic Haquislam 15 man "5 points Dailamy and Muttawiah's" would reach 81 points counting the required liutenant. That implies that to reach that infamous '75 point army list' you need to have less than the maximun 15 available slots for troopers. So you need to have less of both limits: Points of the game "agreeded" and avalible trooper slot "maximum", in order to be unsportmanship. @Tanan decided to use his full allowance, or almost, of troop slots. The only thing that he did differently was that he decided to maximize the non-reinforcement troops this way instead of the reinforcement. And nevertheless he did not trigger by default the reinforcement call treshold: So he can not call his reinforcements on turn 1 top being top initiative player, neither on turn 1 bottom being bottom initiative player if the turn 1 top player decided to not kill his hard ARO pieces. And some factions (Pano/o12/Aleph/CA) can replicate such a kind of approach to reinforcements mode by using the full allowance of 100 points for reinforcements but instead of bringing 5-6 reinforcement troops just bringin the equivalent of TAG + 1 support and use more expensive than usual ARO pieces to make sure than once they're down the Reinforcement Call treshold is reached... ... Myself I bring a Zeta and a Peeler bot in my reinforcements mode o12 main list for this very reason. But what I contest to @Tanan, and to the reinforcement game mode in general, is that when it is played in this way of maximizing the number of troops you're bringing in the main list to be as close as the usual '15 troopers' as possible. And you disregard the reinforcement themselves as an afterthought, with them being 1 or 2 troopers at much... And you find it 'fun'.... ... You're having fun not because of what the reinforcements provide, but because of the lower point and swc limit (including the commlink) makes the 300 points meta to break apart. So maybe what we need in N4 is not a reinforcement mode but becoming 200 or 250 points games the new standard instead?
Not that it's relevant for this discussion, but vCA can reach the low bar of 15 used slots and Retreat! at the start of the game by fielding 14 Gakis (4p, AVA:T) and Morat Vanguard LT. I have to slightly disagree here. You are correct in saying that I do think that REF trooper profiles are pretty average and taking average troopers make little sense if you can take excellent troopers. For example there is a distinct lack of camouflage, minelayer, hidden deployment, multiwound mimetims-6 rambos and total reaction troopers in REF profiles, which is probably an intentional design choice. REF troopers are meant to be average. The REF forces are also lacking really cheap cheerleaders, which makes their combat group ineffective if you look at number of orders generated and rambo stats. But what makes REF combat group excellent is that they can be positioned anywhere in your half of the table. The helperbot can spawn next to unconscious trooper. Melee fighter can spawn next to enemy Hac Tao. ARO trooper can spawn on top of building. The REF force can usually get a lot of value for their limited orders and average statline. Obviously it's very easy to get maximum output out of one or two REF troopers. Three troopers are doable but in my opinion need a very good combo (Nourkias LT+REF CoC) and some optimal ARO troopers which a clever opponent can try to exploit. the bigger the REF force is the more difficult is to use it optimally. Yes, this is an added benefit. I think it takes at least a year for the optimal lists to emerge from boundless hive mind of the Infinity gamer community. There has never been a better time to play infinity at the highest tournament level and having a blast while doing it. So much variety and creativity. I'm not sure if I said it, but I also think that 5/250p is probably more balanced than 6/300p. The problem with 250p games without REFs is that the game still heavily revolves around gutting the enemy order pool and null deployment, which is somewhat boring.
While 250/5 is an interesting and challenging level to play Infinity, I am afraid there are a few sectorials (like MO and IA) who struggle to game in this tier and retain their flavor.
Unclear what you’re accusing me of; I’ve been pretty consistent about saying that I think playing significantly below points is a sportsmanship violation, both in this thread and elsewhere. You seem to be missing the point. “Premature” doesn’t necessarily mean “starts the game in retreat”. It means “enough of a decrease that normal play patterns could easily trigger sudden death before a full three rounds are completed”. I also think your examples are intentionally skewed by focusing on filling out 15 trooper slots as the primary list building goal, which as I previously explained, it is not. A possible fix would simply be to have retreat triggered by counting down models killed rather than counting up surviving points. Then the player who is 50 points down doesn’t get reinforcements early and doesn’t trigger retreat early, and it truly is a one-sided choice that doesn’t negatively impact their opponent.
What I'm reading here is both playing games at less than 300 points or more than 300 points nerfs alpha strikes. That's not a reinforcements success, that's what many people have been saying for ages.
I am not sure, I have (and have been) alpha strike in 250 points pretty hard so 250 points are not shielded from first turn attacks, I have little experience and no volunteers for 400 points to share experience on that level.
