Releasing Forum with a new List

It'll probably work fine, though I'm really not enamoured by Assault Hackers and especially not the Daofei Assault Hacker. My personal preference would be to alter the Guilang to something without SWC cost and to have the Daofei be the Sptifire LT.

I also don't like the Kuang Shi, but you'll not get a list even remotely what you're trying to achieve without them, so I wish you the best of luck with cleverly exploiting game mechanics to have them not die and leave you order-starved on round 2+.

 

I've seen you make this complaint about them in a few places now, what is your problem with them? They only move 4 inches per turn, so if you start them far enough back they should still be in full cover from most enemy models on turn 2. I rarely lose more than 1-2 during the first turn + impetuous phase of the next turn if I go first.

How are they any worse than line troops for the first turn or two?

 

It is quite situational and table-dependant. When you go second, you risk Alpha-strike from an AD troop that will prune your weaker orders (it can be too god an opportinity to pass it up), meaning you will have to deploy them on the sides or so the enemy has to go through your stronger troops first.
If you go first, then it is critical to make sure the Impetuous movement won't place the Kuang Shi near one of your other troops, since a cleverly positioned enemy ARO troop with Missile Launcher or Heavy Rocket Launcher can affect both, and the non-activated troops will have to go straight to the ARM roll (if the Kuang Shi fails/loses the FtF CD Vs Dodge). Also, you have to consider the enemy deployment, since the last model can really wreck your "safe kuangshi strategy" with an Advance Deployment troop, or just having others back, or an infiltrating non-marker troop (Moran, Zerat).

As for the list, I would think about changing the Guilang for a Ninja with KHD, it goes to TO (allowing the "is he going to deploy an AD troop? Or a TO? Or is it just that I counted wrong his points?). Those two points should be used to improve something else, since there is no way to use them effectively on their own.
Another change might be getting a Pheasant since the HMG is going to be your Rambo Lt, and rember you are vulnerable to being IMM, which will be a bummer if it's the IMM-2 since you don't have an engineer.

 

The denser the tables get, particularly with large buildings pathologically blocking LOF to deployment zones, the easier they are to use. I have a distinct feeling that the more your tables deviate from the norm to which the rules were designed, the more heavily Kuang Shi swing towards being as strong as people on these forums tell tales of.

In particular I don't like them because they never or seldom present an opportunity to do anything. I disrespect Keisotsu for the same reason. Mileage varies strongly depending on opponent, of course, and I play in a meta where a Chain Rifle typically isn't ever allowed to become game changing. I also don't like them because of how they pigeon-hole themselves into becoming this weird resource that's more valuable locked up in a room somewhere (and due to how the official rules work, locked up is very much the operative word here) and what's different to Keisotsu is that a Keisotsu will stay put exactly where you tell them. Often I will value this more than the double price per order I spend, in particular when it is less certain that the table I will be playing on will have buildings that are 8+" covering my DZ

What should have been a disposable suicide troop has become a volatile but valuable resource. I think Kuang Shi should be redesigned to become a human version of Pupniks (Pupniks with guns instead of claws), and ISS in particular redesigned slightly to reflect the loss of cheap regular orders - my suggestion would be to make Celestial Guards a go-between of Zhanying and Zhanshi (make them actual veteran Zhanshi) and introduce actual beat cops as the order generators (Keisotsu-ish level stats, but with less militarized weapons). These beat cops can be introduced as mercs to be shared with other planetary security sectorials if they have need for them and should it be deemed that vanilla Yu Jing does, in fact, not need reimbursement for loss of Kuang Shi as order generators.

 

That's an interesting idea, making kuang shi more like pupniks. ISS doesn't have any synchronized troops apart from helper bots, so it'd be a fun new thing to play with. However it would be such a huge change to the faction.

A kuang shi core link is an incredibly strong option for ISS, which can fire extremely reliable smoke and lock down a big portion of the table with dogged burst two chain rifles and pistols. Most people overlook it and go for crane links and wu ming links, but a kuang shi link supported by su jian / bao haris or hsien haris and a rui shi or two can make some very solid lists. It's normally pretty easy to keep a few additional kuang shi alive. Unless you play against an extraordinary amount of MSV2, I don't see how you couldn't advance under smoke with that link and get into chain rifle range when you need to.

In vanilla, you have the option of smoke on the shaolin letting you spread out your impetuous kuang shi and cover them with smoke before they advance a lot of the time. It isn't foolproof, but it can give you a ridiculous amount of board coverage for cheap when it works and let you play kuang shi very aggressively. It's a very poor table design if one or two opposing MSV2+ troopers can cover the whole table.

 

We play dense, but I would say DZ to DZ lines of fire make for boring games. You park a Neurocinetics Yan Huo there and that whole side of the map is boring. I don't think there should be more than 1 or maybe 2 DZ to DZ lines of fire on the ground level (where Kuang Shi should be positioned) if you're playing correctly. (Just out of curiosity, are you in Europe? I play in America in a meta known for having particularly dense tables.)

I guess this is just a disagreement we have about the design of infinity. Isn't the point of a shared order pool that some units are okay to do nothing with?

I am curious what you mean by this.

This is an excellent idea, I think. I think it would fit the lore better as well. The alternative could be to make them regular and have the control device make them regular like Hungries in CA (which would also fit the lore better.)

 

I think he means you want to put them in a building with a door that requires some sort of specialist/hacker roll to open, so they probably can't use the impetuous order to try and open the door. Allows them to generate orders without running wildly into a hail of gunfire.

 

No. It's enough that the room has a door. It takes a short order to open a door and impetuous order doesn't require you to spend that short skill plus you have to stop before you go spend the short skill.

European, but that really doesn't matter. I'm trying really hard to make sure my meta leaves even room for AD troops at all but we have enough open tables or small buildings to keep you on your toes.

Keisotsu and Kuang Shi are sufficiently incompetent or short ranged that they reliably fail unless it's a Keisotsu FO. It's not a case of that most models won't move, it's a case of them being essentially defenseless or worthless as a fallback option.

 

Kuang shi defenseless? Bwahahaha.

They regularly take my most kills award. An ISS Kuang Shi link crossed the table, made it past an Asura and killed an Aleph LT in a recent decapitation game. Dogged, a pistol + chain rifle and a bad attitude will rack up kills if you let them out of a room.

My favourite new trick with them is climbing up buildings to pop up by enemy models in awkward places. For most line troops without climbing plus a climb order is suicide. As your opponent knows the climb order is a full order you'll get shot in the face. For the noble Kuang Shi, if they take an unopposed shot to the face they can still explode to catch your enemy OR go dogged and pile further orders into killing them.

 

That's a waste of orders that could have been spent on Su-Jian.

I am also starting to wonder if people AROing is unheard of in international metas.

 

You can't always have the tool of choice available in every scenario. In that decapitation game, my Su Jian was already in NWI and suppressive fire having killed the enemy HVT and duked it out with several other models. A kuang shi link was able to get the LT killing job done, with orders and models to spare. A lone kuang shi was also able to scale a building and kill the enemy data tracker. Yes I had to deal with enemy ARO options one way or another before either of those plays would work, but they worked out fine.

In many metas, leaving ARO pieces out is inviting a good active turn gunfighter to just murder them. Unless I'm dealing with an enemy tag I'll generally alpha strike them from smoke with a marksmanship rui-shi. Even with a handful of unlinked kuang shi they each bring a regular order, so I start each turn with a choice - do I want to pay their order to keep them in place and have the order later in the game, or is it ok to risk a dodge against an enemy ARO so you can spend the order on something else this turn.

 

Look, @YueFei23, you've not managed to make a very good point so far. Not only are you discussing ISS when the thread is about vanilla, you're also trying to counter a complaint about the solo performance of a unit by presenting their performance in a link team. Not only that, but you're harping on about their link team to someone who also regularly complains about the link team being too good*.
And regardless of which, herding zombies is a learning curve.
* This isn't to say that its performance is stellar, but rather that the cost-effect efficiency is stupidly good.

 

Ok, fair enough with the ISS point - that's what I play. But I still don't have any problems letting Kuang Shi off the leash and keeping them alive.

When I look at building theoretical vanilla lists, the first thing I want to do is throw in 4 shao-lin and 4 kuang shi as I think the impetuous smoke from the shaolin makes keeping the KS alive easier in vanilla and gives you a huge amount of warband utility that's autonomous and order efficient to spread out and cause trouble across the table. I've played against experienced local players using that combo with devastating effect. Yes, there's a learning curve, but that doesn't make them a bad unit.

You countered my point about climbing orders working well with dogged troops by saying I should have used a Su-Jian, which is a ridiculous response. A Su-Jian can't be everywhere at once. Say a TO proxy sniper pops up on top of a building across the table from your Su-Jian but you already have a Kuang Shi pretty close, wouldn't it be worth sending the Kuang Shi up that building to clear out the sniper?

 

Su-Jian, Crane, Hsien, Guijia, Tiger, Oniwaban, Ninja, or even a couple of Madtraps moved into B2B - whatever else you have that hits harder than a single D13 hit or disables them without spending orders on a limited range trooper that is easily dislodged. There are so many units that are more efficient at getting shit done than a Kuang Shi that a Kuang Shi should be your last resort when all you have is the choice between a Zhanshi and a Kuang Shi and a limited number of orders to get it done you choose the one most likely to get it done. I also have never seen anyone infiltrate a TO sniper close enough for a Kuang Shi to be useful without wasting orders on the Kuang Shi to get there - and that's my biggest annoyance with your rather un-nuanced claim, that you seem to claim that Kuang Shi are worth spending orders on over so many other better options and that this is some sort of tautology.

You literally claimed that Kuang Shi is your deadliest piece. Kuang Shi are useful because orders are useful. There's no way in hell you can convince me that their stats make them good when every single mathematical model confirms my game play experience with them.

 

I have the impression that this is kind of a pointless discussion.

 

It's getting pretty silly, for sure.

I didn't say that a lone kuang shi was my deadliest piece. I said that in many games my kuang shi end up killing as much, or even more, than the designated attack models in my list. Granted those are ISS games, but multiple kuang shi get work done and I'm pretty sure some good Yu Jing only generals would agree. I'm laughing that you'd leave them at home because of perceived weaknesses when you could have an extra four regular orders in your vanilla lists.

Here's why they rack up kills:
* they get in place with impetuous orders and sometimes get an attack opportunity for free.
* you can afford to take risks with them - losing a 5 point kuang shi isn't going to cripple your list.
* if a kuang shi is somehow the closest thing, you can start to attack with it for free and push the offence without the cost or risk of getting another model into place
* because a chain rifle will hit camo/odd models automatically and you can fall back on pistol face to face rolls if someone chooses to dodge.
* because even if they eat a hit they stay dogged or explode, so get a second chance to do work.
* once they've gone dogged, you may as well get the most out of your zombie troop that you can. He's going to die anyway.
* there are classes of models in the game that are extremely vulnerable to chain rifles. Unidron link anyone?

They've got all kinds of utility apart from that. They bring cheap regular orders. They can fall on their face as a repeater. They're pretty great perimeter guards in turn 1. When you get to kill an umbra samaritan by detonating them you'll remember it fondly as the finest moment of your Yu Jing career.

If you mathematically model a face to face stand off with most other models in the game sure they'll die. However that doesn't factor in how they play on the table. They're pawns. Pawns end up taking lots of enemy pieces in a chess game because you have more of them than everything else.

I can agree to disagree and it's perfectly feasible to go for cheap regular orders if you don't want to deal with their unpredictability but there's no way you'll convince me that Kuang Shi are a bad unit or just some kind of order battery that should be locked up in a room to keep them safe.

 

Think about some of the factors that make them less desirable though:

* Impetuous orders are much more likely to get them killed than get them in position to hurt someone without committing way more orders to them. An impetuous order on a bike is strong, an extremely impetuous order on a slow troop with only a close range weapon is not so much.
*Losing 1 Kuang Shi doesn't hurt your list, but having 4 orders who are incredibly easy to remove can certainly hurt you. A cheap regular order is as much a disadvantage as an advantage.
*Kuang Shi as an order battery are actually fantastic. The fireteam to suppress their impetuous orders is pretty strong just in of itself -- it makes them five orders that are very difficult to remove from the table, rather than 5 orders running out into AROs.

 

While I am quite a fan of the Daofei+Guilang combo, I really think that taking an Assault Hacker just about requires taking a Killer Hacker along for protection. Good news is that both KHDs (Ninja and Kanren) are 29 points, so you only need to find 1 point in your army list. You can find 2 spare points by changing from the dual ML to the HRMC, though it will also cost you the Madtraps.

 

Right. So ideally you take the Kuang Shi paired with Shaolin in vanilla. Each shaolin has PH 13, so if you lob a smoke grenade within 8" of the shaolin you have an 80% chance of getting some impetuous smoke down on the table for a kuang shi to advance in. If the shaolin flubs his smoke roll or they're both staring down the barrel of an msv2 sniper rifle, you have the option of burning an order to keep the kuang shi alive for a turn.

I'll concede that Kuang Shi are harder to use in vanilla than in ISS, but I think they're still worth putting on the table. That Kuang Shi and Shaolin combo will net you a lot of smoke coverage for rui shi and hsien to wreak havoc, which should give you a good chance to remove any ARO pieces put out to execute your kuang shi.