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Returning Thoughts

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Kai Wren, Aug 16, 2021.

  1. Kai Wren

    Kai Wren Well-Known Member

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    I finally got my first game of N4 in over the weekend! After a long, long break it was really nice to get the game on the table. My opponent hadn't played since N3 either, so it was interesting to see how the game felt vs how we remembered.

    He played Nomads with a list he had put together in N3 to try and make Guided work, which it never did. I took Yu Jing as I'd painted a bunch of models in lockdown that had never seen the table. Neither list was particularly optimised and we played Firefight.

    A few observations.

    Hacking felt a lot more powerful. Many of my units were heavy infantry and I felt like I really had to respect ZOC a lot more. I still think it is weird that if you are being hacked through a drone with a repeater on it you can't use your ARO to shoot the drone and prevent further attempts if you can draw LOS, but that's not changed from what I recall. I'm sure he was also annoyed that I could hang out my spotlit trooper near some of his unconscious stuff out of LOS to stop him dropping templates in later rounds.

    Spotlight + Missiles is nasty. He used his meteor zond in his active turn to put spotlight on my Yan Huo before it got to do anything and then blew it up. That felt bad and wasn't even reliant on spotlight through AROs. But it also cost him most of his orders for his first turn and I could potentially have protected the Yan Huo better.

    Not sure if I'll feel the same way if he starts using linked pitcher teams to pull the same trick but it didn't feel unbalanced; it just felt like the nasty trick he'd built his list around. I think every list I take in future will have at least one way to try and reach into the backline and take out a missile bot in future because that feels like a possibility that needs to be accounted for.

    I liked the dodge changes a lot, and many of the units I had taken in Yu Jing had bonuses to dodge distance. That helped me reposition and advance even in his turn which was very nice. I haven't looked at other factions to see how common this is (it might just be because I took a lot of HI?) but it felt like a nice differentiation between the two forces.

    I thought I'd be more annoyed about having two orders taken away turn 1 when playing a 10 model list, but being able to plan for that I just took the two order lieutenant Dao Ying and an NCO so I ultimately still got 11 orders turn one with a TacAware unit in there.

    The changes to airborn deployment also made them feel stronger. Obviously Firefight has even more bonuses to the check but in general his meteor zond took out my Yan Huo, a Wu Ming and a Pheasant Agent through somewhat careless positioning and strong hacking. My Liu Xing then hit back and took out his engineer and his TAG. Not sure how strong these will continue to be as we get back in practice defending our deployment zones but they felt like a nice, strong piece when my experience with them in N3 was that they largely felt too random to be satisfying.

    The crit changes didn't come up much other than to incentivise both of us to try fielding our generally tougher units, though HI into nomad hacking did feel like a bit of a liability.

    Overall I was very happy with the game; it feels like a much more refined and streamlined version of N3 without losing too many of the relevant decision points. I also really enjoyed being able to just look at a profile and have 99% of the rules text I needed right there on the page. That is a big quality of life improvement! Looking forward to getting some more games under my belt soon.
     
  2. Space Ranger

    Space Ranger Well-Known Member

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    Good write up man!
     
    Kai Wren likes this.
  3. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Lul welcome to N4.
     
    Kai Wren, Tourniquet and Hecaton like this.
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