The developed Shape of the seed soldier is missing 'surprise attack'. Since developed profile is applied for the entire Order Sequence the seed soldier can't make use of 'surprise attack' with anything else than with chest mines. This actually happening sounds unlikely. Is it intentional that the developed profile is missing 'surprise attack'?
It seems intentional to me. The developed shape doesn't have camo or anything, so it feels like the intent is for surprise attack to only apply to the camoed seed.
Well, if that’s an intentional change so that they can only benefit from surprise when performing an ARO as a seed, then so be it. I was hoping to be able to get off a single surprise shot upon transformation as they could in N3. Thanks for the confirmation.
Can't use surprise attack in ARO, so it'd only come up when declaring a BS attack with the seed-embryo profile in the active turn.
Surprise Attack is only usable if you idle/shoot with chest mines. It's completely superfluous, imo. Surprise attack as developed shape when you spawn is a worthwhile ability - as an embryo is not. As an aside, seems like Shas is really the dumping ground for hyper-niche rules that sounds like they'd be cool but are functionally pointless. Cadmus and Seeds are apparently the poster children for garbo rules.
Correct me if I am wrong the example intention of Suprise attack on seed embryo is something like this: 1. Spend order on camo marker “seed embyro” declare short skill move to gain LOF on enemy fusilier. 2. Fusilier declares dodge 3. Seed Solder reveals declares shoot with panzershreck. 4 roll F2F Fusilier takes -3 to dodge due to suprise shot. Is this correct?
I was hoping that this would be the intention. But therefore the developed form needs the surprise shot rule. IMHO if they had it they would actually be useful and sometimes worth the 16 points. (if I remember correctly this was possible in N3) But as it is now only the embryo has surprise attack and therefore you can only use it on chest mines... this will never happen and even if it does it won't be worth 16 points.
Forward deploying specialists and camo markers are still good... Trouble is they're only the tiniest bit more than Nox, who are easily overpriced, imo. But because the discrepancy is only slight, inside SEF there is reason to take them - they're just nowhere near as cost efficient as similar options elsewhere.
A shrouded costs only 5pt more and is a much better camo midfield specialist. There won't be many games where I would pick a seed for that role. I guess the seeds can be taken as a shell game cheerleader that stays in its shell as long as possible.