Agree with both points. The reduction in points alongside the change to LT (+1 Order) is a great boost for Neema as a solo Rambo. But it is also true that it's a selfish change for the army. Having Strategos L1 with Neema or putting NCO in Kiel-Saan or, ideally, Rasail, would not only improve Neema on her own, but also provide great army synergy and more flexibility. On another topic, for me one of the biggest improvements for Spiral, is the fact that now Jaan Staar and Kiiutan Imposters can recover the IMP-2 state as they swapped "Inferior Impersonation" for "Impersonation (IMP-2)". This, for me, is just massive and one of the changes that has made me change focus on my lists and start including almost always 2 or even the 3 impersonators in my lists.
Aaand we lost White Hacking Device =\ So, the only 2 ways to counteract enemy hackers to our HI/TAG are to take Brawler hacker or Wardriver =\
It looks like they cleaned up the Kaeltar. Now each comes with 1 mate and one bomb (except fo the CoC combi). It also looks like the restriction of assigning to symbiont armoured models is gone. I still think they're not fully fixed as the combi profiles are 5 and 7 points more than the LSG profile with no other differences. I think they forgot there were tohaa profiles in Spiral and slapped this together last minute. The tagma still has zero pain and can aro a hacker to counter it.
Is no one else excited that the Diplomat got Eraser and Igao got Mirrorball, which now creates an eclipse zone? That's pretty nasty imo.
Ah, I hadn't got to that part of the rules yet. I assumed it meant any model with a W characteristic (so not kaurii).
Oh, we are, just discussed earlier and/or in Tohaa thread. Diplomat is autoinclude now for me I personally would love boarding Igao with mirrorball
Dead profile to me. There's no argument to take Neema unlinked in the faction with Tri-Core -- whatever you're gaining from the Lt order you're losing in shooting efficiency by not being B5 BS16. The extra command token was a huge boon for both lists that wanted to swap the tricore Taagma around and for those that wanted to coordinate skirmishers around the table.
Tagmaa has one hacking program, Zero Pain (which also works agains Jammers and other Comms Attacks) An Aelis is still a KHD
Aelis with the KHD and the "no roll cybermask upgrade" is now more interesting, order eficiency at least to reach cover, see an enemy and next turn Triangulated
While I can hope a single KHD is enough, how is Spiral and Tohaa as an extension supposed to handle hacking. Previously we could ignore it by opting out of hackables, or nullifier usage, but with spotlight being usable on all troops and nullfiers destroyed we are left with our single KHD, and the wardriver who isn't so much a threat as an existence.
I think we can still largely ignore it as long as we don't use hackable units. My Neema triad will always bring an engineer, now, though. Also, there's the zero pain Taagma to counteract opposing hackers. Those are only my first impressions, though. Gotta play some games to validate
I played my first ever game against @OrphanOfToast this weekend and brought Spiral Corps. You can see his bat rep and some small commentary from me here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/n4-battle-report-acquisition-nomads-vs-spiral-corps.37845/ This is basically what I did, no hackable units, and I just had to tank the interventor spamming spotlight through a repeater.
This is my biggest concern, as far as I know zero pain still only defends the user, so it shares the same problems defensive hacking devices did before. The idea of eating spotlight all day also sounds lame, if there's only a couple hackers kiiutans can probably solve them, but if they have a bunch it'll be more difficult...
TBH, it doesn't feel that bad to me. Hackers are still a big investment in points and SWC. I don't think my opponent was particularly happy to have put zoe, an inteventor, and a KHD zero in his list, just to run into nothing hackable. At least now he was able to get something from them though, instead of grumbling about how corvus belli created this great infowar game and then removed it from the fluff multiple factions and sectorials. There is a lot of holomask in the spiral corps. So you could take or fake taking the Haitail KHD special character in lots of your games to screw with your regular opponents. And Pheroware (don't forget your much more likely to have a symbiobomb with the bonus -3 attack) is a comms attack, so I believe you can use it to face to face spotlight hackers and enemy jammers if you really wanted too. Overall though, however you felt about the tohaa version of infowar in N3, not much has changed in N4. Also, the general practice of not taking defensive hackers still stands.
Anyone else notice the update on the Igao? Mimetism (-6) and CC Attack (-3) and (shock). Coupled that with Mirrorball, the thing is an absolute beast now...
CC Attack (-3) would correspond to the old iKohl, but I didn't notice the upgrade to Mimetism (-6). He definitely can take advantage of it given the loss of efficiency for Shotguns, but Mirrorball on top makes the Igao a real consideration. I'm thinking that Spiral might lend itself even more to tactics that involve dominating the midfield. Something like this list looks like it could be pretty viable.
