With the shasvastii rework now done, how do we feel? Winners? Losers? What's obviously strong? What looks like a dark horse? What's getting more attention than you think it should? I'm curious to hear peoples thoughts on new Shas.
A certain model seems to be dominating most discussions. Speculo with mines looks nasty to me. Caliban and Mentors look good. Haven’t had a chance to really dig in due to work. Other than the Sheskiin issue, they seem to have their own flavor and they make the rest of CA better.
SEF is very cool and interesting, and I'm looking forward to playing it. However I'm even more looking forward to using all the new models and profiles in vanilla combined. Also just incidentally Onyx getting kinda good mobile midfielders out of the blue. All this, combined with the fact that I'm a diehard Gaki player who's only problem was that the models he was using are kinda short and more like S1s, makes me willing to stake the claim that the biggest winner of the book is not just combined army players in general but me personally in particular :P
I'm still struggling. There's alot of interesting but weird things and the link seems like it's just a sheskin delivery system. So I dunno, I am keen to playtest it.
Definitely got me interested. Now gonna wait for new shasvastii models and then buy them. So many interesting things.
Between Camo, skirmisher and Taigha screens, and new toys like Dazer (I strongly suspect people will soon start take note who in their armies has Multiterrain), it'll be very easy to simply bog down enemy in his active turn, make him spend orders for little gain, then counterattack from a good position. There is very little fat on the muscles here. For now I can only think of Tensho. For an army with no MSV we got a surprising number of it, all in good spots, too. Our CQB and CC capabilities went way up. Nox/Seeds indirectly boost expensive units; now we can have cheap yet capable support to use heavy hitters. Access to Albedo and White Noise is crazy awesome. Oh, and Decoy combined with AD is the closest thing to broken. More so than Fat2 on Sheskiin.
I'm very happy with the update overall. To start with the losers: I wish the Shrouded and Malignos had gotten a once-over with their costs (Automedikit with no Shock Immunity is too expensive if you ask me). Tensho Expert could've been more interesting. As it is, he is very bland but costed appropriately. Gwailo changes make me sad because I loved the old Gwailo Core. That being said, new Gwailo fills a niche and does so with style. I just wish he was in Vanilla CA, because he is hard to run without Strategos or Imetrons for order support. The winners: Caliban got the biggest upgrade in usability. I can't see me leaving home without at least one. They're a great package that applies a lot of threat in the middle of the board and are great for doing Classified Objectives. Mentors are hot. Ambush Camo on your Lt? Yes please. Counterintelligence? Sweet, now I'm not punished for running 11-12 expensive Camo models. Taigha are an amazing Blitzer that is going to be very hard to plan for. S1 is hard to pin down, and having a 12" Assault order will really put the hurt on your opponents if you manage to sneak them up the flank. The game-breakers: I think Fatality L2 on a linkable B4 model is a mistake. I don't care if it's Sheskiin or Tarik of a regular Khawarji, it just shouldn't happen. Sheskiin in particular having a baseline 40% chance to win any firefight with a Crit, not even considering that she has the highest BS in the game and so will win many more without Crits, is not something I want to see. I'm not going to straight-up say it breaks the game, but I'm worried about how uninteractive it is, and for that reason I won't be using it.
I´m very happy overall, will run my new list tomorrow. Honestly I really like the Malignos KHD and the LT option, yes expensive, but im diggin it :)
Remember that FAT2 has no effect with an effective BS of 21+. It's still incredibly powerful, but really it just means that she doesn't lose out on the increased crit chance when the FT drops below 5 members. In other words, she's just as effective at landing crits with a 3-troop FT than a 5-troop, but no better at it at 5 than 3. If I did my math right: 3-to-5-troop FT on normal rolls: 41% for at least one crit (all auto-hitting). 3-to-5-troop FT FtF: 38.9% for at least one crit to make it through (remember that the opponent can also crit). 3-to-5-troop FT FtF against linked ARO: 37.0% for at least one crit to make it through. Solo/Duo on normal rolls: 34.4% for at least one crit. Solo/Duo FtF: 32.7% for at least one crit to make it through. Solo/Duo FtF against linked ARO: 31.0% for at least one crit to make it through. All in all, about a 6% increase in chance to crit with the extra burst.
The only update I see to Onyx are the Grief Operators (Merc unit? They are also available to Spiral Corps as well) which have AVA 1 other than that I do not see any other changes for Onyx. Did I miss something? Overall, I can't wait for the new sculpts to drop to add the last Sectorial to my CA list building potential. I am a liitle sad SEF lost all the Medium infantry (except the special character). I am just sad that MAF didn't get any updates that I can see. Their Medium infantry could really use a small point reduction (2-4) like certain other Blue MI. EDIT: Ok were you referring to Ko Dali? if thats the case that I can see the power with that addition.
Bit of an outsider perspective here: After having given a few glances at the new SEF, it's giving me... a lot of mixed feelings. New HI unit. I have a highly unreasonable liking for them. So a new HI unit is something I'm always in favor of. And the new Gwailos... it looks pretty goddamn rad. But it isn't available in Vanilla, so it'll only ever be found in the SEF. So that's a bit of a sad thing to me. I don't even want to bring up the concept of Sheskin in a three-Shas link now being able to brute force most engagements at any range thanks to her access to BS15 Burst 5 FAT2 now. I mean, I'd understand if it was a special, very expensive Haris link... but a Wildcard here just feels silly. But this topic has been rapidly beaten to death and I do believe it is currently going to the meat processor as we speak... I think the new Nox Troops are pretty cool though. Despite my overbearing bias towards SCG lists and HI... I am honestly quite the sucker for basic line troop/schmuck links. Something about the lil' guys working together to accomplish something way greater than they ever would seem capable of just seems adorable to me. All the other reworked stuff is pretty cool too, though it looks a lot cooler to me in the context of vanilla CA since my general ''Subtlety is a bit overrated unless we start calling a TO HMG HI subtle'' playstyle would fit vanilla CA far better ( Albeit ATM the Morats still remain the most interesting part of CA to me... ). So like... on one hand there's cool new stuff. But on the other hand one of the cooler things is only available in the sectorial itself and then there's Sheskin with her Ultra Tarik stand. Is confusing, really.
I loved Em' before... But not enough to buy the crappy old models Imho Taigha FTW they are moving 24" a turn... I can spend 40 points and swamp anything I want... Truly a Scene from Aliens.. so good deployment let your enemy bring himself up to the Midfield couple of well-placed coordinated orders and whatever you want to kill/tie up is going to be swamped... but until this line drop solid I'm going to be on Spiral... The epitome of horde army 1 1 TAIGHA Chain-colt / AP + Shock CCW
True it's a thing, I just feel that MAF MI is over priced a bit, especially the Yaogats. It's the unit defined to counter smoke and camo and it is so expensive you can only really afford to have a Harris. Even making their points comparable to Rodoks would be a huge boon in my opinion.
There are many good options to love, but personally, Seed soldiers, they are finally what the fluff said they were, they look simple and many will pass them for more extravagant units, but I really love how seed soldiers evolved in this update.
My personal favorite as a new Shasvastii player is the Haiduk MSR. With two additional Q-Drones and the midfield coverage it seems to be a pain in the ass. Spoiler: Example list Shasvastii Expeditionary Force ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 Q-DRONE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26) Q-DRONE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26) SPECULO KILLER (Minelayer) Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenades, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Monofilament CCW, Knife. (1.5 | 39) SHROUDED (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Dazer / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 24) SHROUDED Hacker (EI Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27) MALIGNOS (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 36) HAIDUK MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 26) MENTOR Lieutenant Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22) SEED-SOLDIER Combi Rifle, D.E.P. / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) SEED-SOLDIER Combi Rifle, D.E.P. / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) GROUP 2 3 R-DRONE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) NOX Hacker (EI Hacking Device) Submachine Gun, Zapper / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17) NOX Hacker (EI Hacking Device) Submachine Gun, Zapper / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
Sheskiin is pretty ridiculous. Minelayer in a Impersonator is also quite over the top. Yes, his SWC cost does reflect this, but being able to plant mines on the enemy deployment zone is... ummm... Overall looks pretty good, tbh. Bit light on fireteams, but lots of interesting options. Still have not tested the army in the field, however
Faced it so many times with Aleph minelayer infiltrators who refuse to fail even a single infiltration roll that I cannot even pretend I am surprised.