It is always said that Starmada lacks some play out of the deployment zone. What if a warband with impersonation was added? Don't leave the thread yet, I'm not talking about a specular or a fiday ... Starmada are police, they don't need an assassin. I'm talking about a much cheaper unit, which represents an undercovered police role. No boarding shotgun or monofilament weapons. Para cc weapon, and a submachine gun or any weapon with non-lethal ammunition. And maybe a standard hacking device... To the enemy, he would not be much of a threat. He's not going to kill the lieutenant or his key unit. It is simply a menace. Knowing that there are one or two of those and not being able to do anything except waste orders trying to killing them or be the whole game paranoid thinking that they have infiltrators and not knowing when they are going to do something. This suggestion may be interesting for the gameplay, and also add more depth to the impersonator rule, not only leaving it for suicide killer troops ... But above all, I suggest it for the lore. I think the police should have undercovered cops So guys, what do you think?
I'd say that Impersonators belong better in ISS from the "undercover cop" angle, but Starmada could absolutely benefit from a less-crippled AD selection to achieve much of the same goal. Something akin to an air marshal could be fun though, with Inferior Impersonation, Decoy 2 and a straight-up ordinary Pistol on a civilian statline. Not much chance of really controlling the game, but a lot of fun when an enemy mistake leaves room for your guy to go all "Air Force One" on the enemy backline.
We've talked about an Impersonator in ISS for a long time. I would make sense if there's a troops shared by both ISS and Starmada. Sort of like Interpol. An organization used in a lot of Hong Kong action movies. I've also thought of similar but someone almost as good in CC as a Speculo or Fiday. But using Para weapons. But to me I want an Jackie Chan type character that has Booty and Meta-chemistry with re-rolls.
In most cases I tend to be anti increasing impersonation, parachutist (deployment zone), or infiltration +6 as most all of those models are really good at trading vs high point targets but that seem to be how the game is heading for braking fire teams especially for vanilla. I think making someone dedicated to the killing/removal of soft targets is good something similar to the Kiuutan Imposter in function as opposed to a Speculo or Oniwaban. I think EM is better then Para for a theme of this impersonator as that makes it possible to actual brake links. I think there are others or better solution then adding an impersonator to Starmada. There are a few armies I think an impersonator works for OS, ISS, TJC/BJC and so on. Other solution: My issues with Starmada can be summed as 2 things: there are no good distant gunfighters in a core link that is feasible and 2 no good marker midfield specialists. These two have a compounding effect on how Starmada builds and play as it means we have nothing to gun fight with some of the more brutal cores (Varuna Khamau msr or TAK Vet Kazak ap hmg links for examples) that we see and we need to move out of our zone aggressively to claim objectives. If we had one of those then we could lighten the load on Starmada without an impersonator. Do we want it here: Factions and sectorial are defined by what they lack. We may only get 1 Impersonator or parachutist (deployment zone) so do we want it here or would we rather save it for later, maybe a black op sectorial or a sectorial Noir. Brake down of Impersonator/Parachutist (deployment zone) by factions: Pan O 0 Yu Jing 0 Ariandna 2/3 Parachutist (deployment zone) depending on how you want to count Mirage 5 as it is 2 models bought as 1 entry. All are characters. Haqqislam 2 Impersonator 1 is a character Nomads 1 Parachutist (deployment zone) and is a character Combine army 2 impersonators and 1 Parachutist (deployment zone) Aleph 0 O-12 0 JSA 0 Spiral Corp/Tohaa 3 impersonators and 1 is a character If I miss one of the NA2 not mention hear it is because I do not know and I did not want to water the numbers to fallow down to much as I focused on dedicated lines. Sorry if it seems I do not care about them. With counting Spiral Corp/Tohaa as 1 entity and Ariadna as having 3 this brings the average to 1 Impersonator/Parachutist (deployment zone) per a faction. Yes this means some have 0 so others have more, it is not a perfect metric. The average for those factions that that have them is 2. Not even changing Ariadna to 2 does not change these numbers as I rounded because models are a discrete unit. As for infitration +6, they at least have to roll and the real bad ones are Oniwaban and Kitsune as the monofilament and hidden deployment compounds the +6 infiltration advantage. The rest are a pain but you can plan around when you see them be placed down, especially Andromeda which does not even have a marker state to protect her.
Do Crushers not exist for you guys? 2w BS13 mimetism FD8” that are all specialists and there’s an LRL option? And one of the best drop troops in the game? Starmada does just fine between them, Casanova and Andromeda. The game does not need more Impersonators.
It all depends on what you are after. I think Crushers are nice but like with Gang Busters the lack of a marker state causes them to not fulfill an important area for me as they are to valuable. Lets face it a marker state specialist is one of the most powerful things in ITS due to the protection you get from the marker state. To me the argument for an impersonator run parallel to the issues I have with Starmada as it is a different way to solve the problem. Crushers are ok at killing enemies as an independent model but defensive cores will snuff them out. The LRL is a fantastic road block as it vs most single operators is a close fight. There drop trooper is very robust and capable. If they ever make it so fire teams do not have +3 bs then Crushers's viability will improve a lot. Up until fire team bonus change and even maybe still after that Starmada fire teams are not up to the same offensive or defensive powers of others and as a whole feels like an older sectorial design. This becomes important when you feel like you are fighting to bring "strong" models outside of the DZ to make use of them, an example is a Bronze which has been tough for my enemies to dislodge but really needs to get to almost mid board to shine and as a result he becomes lack luster. Starmada is really good at being in the middle of the board, but conversely really bad at bringing powerful models or specialists there. To some the answer here is give them a model designed to disrupt the enemy or order starve the enemy. It is 1 answer, not my favorite as I stated before. I think an HI Sniper, Bronze ML or something with further then 24 for good range bands on a model with high then bs 12 in a link would work well if you want to increase there fighting power as for increasing there scoring power you would have to make something new or give them a Razor. This is how Starmada seems to me: They came up with a who: Space police. They came up with a where they are strong: 6 inches on either side of the mid line. The envisioned the when: early game rushing to the middle of the board They envisioned the tool: mix of speed, forward deployment, armor and reliance on red furies They thought they knew the how to get there: by absorbing a large amount of enemy fire??? But they forgot the why this does not work: Because people die when they are killed.
