I’ve had some fun with them in my two games of N4... the crane is a lot more flexible than in N3. It’ll take a bit more pain before I put them aside, though I think WB, IA and most of all Vanilla Yu Jing have the most potential this edition.
They are the arms from the Shang Ji hacker, with a press-molded shoulder pad from a crane arm. They fit perfectly, almost as if they were designed for this mini! The body is the Ltd edition crane from Giraldez painting guide II.
So, about Sun Tzu. I've been playing ISS a fair bit since N4, with moderate success, and recently my list building drifted towards our very own master of war. With ISS having been neutered in so many ways (smoke access and firepower to name a few), a good deployement seems to be absolutely essential, and this is an area where Sun Tzu's leadership abilities comes in handy (or at least saves you a lot of command tokens). But first: V1 or V2? I'm leaning towards V2, much to my surprise considering how much flaks the profile has taken since its creation. But V1 has this glaring weakness to hacking that makes it too much of liability in some match-ups, whereas V2 can't get oblivionned and is very resilient to guided missile tactics: spotlight needs to go through reset on 17, then it takes at least 2 missiles to take him down while you reset out of the targeted state on 14. It's not a marker state lieutenant, but really, it's the next best thing. He is also much cheaper, and the 1.5SWC tax for the sniper is a non-issue in ISS these days. So V2 it is. As for the leadership abilities, I've seen 2 interesting uses: The 4-man Haris, and the 9-6 split. The 4-man haris: Since you can hold 2 troopers in reserve thanks to strategos 1, you can deploy 1 potential haris member on each flank while keeping the other 2 in reserves, and form the haris on whichever flank is the best to launch an attack... or is safer to deploy since, unlike the strategic command token use, you can also do it if you go second. Here's a list example with a hsien haris: Spoiler: 4-man Hsien Haris 4-Man Haris ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 4 SUN TZE (Lieutenant [+1 Command Token]) MULTI Sniper Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 51) HSIEN MULTI Marksman Rifle, Nanopulser ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, AP CC Weapon. (0 | 53) ZHÀNYING (Hacker, Hacking Device) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0.5 | 25) ZHÀNYING (Sensor, Triangulated Fire, Minelayer) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, Madtraps / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 23) XI ZHUANG Combi Rifle, Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse, Madtraps / Pistol, CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 21) CELESTIAL GUARD Monitor Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 13) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) GROUP 2 5 SOPHOTECT Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31) YUDBOT PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) NINJA Submachine Gun / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 31) CSU (Specialist Operative) Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 11) CSU (Specialist Operative) Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 11) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) 2.5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army Side note: if you have the first turn, you can also spend a command token to keep 3 troops in reserve. So in this case there's nothing stopping you from either doing the split and keep, say, sun tzu in reserve as well, or the ninja, or even the whole haris and just throw Xi Zhuang in the kuang-shi team. The 9-6 split: One thing I've noticed playing ISS in N4 is that kuang-shis and fireteams often create issues with group spots, and very often I end up building lists where troops I might eventually want to spend orders on, like a ninja, have to bide their time in the 2nd group and either wait for a space to open up in the 1st group, or try to do something with their 5 orders. The obvious solution is to leave one spot open in the 1st group and just bring in whatever troop you might want to use this turn... but it tends to eat through command tokens like crazy. This is where Strategos 2 comes in handy. Spoiler: 9-6 Split 9-6 Split ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 9 4 SUN TZE (Lieutenant [+1 Command Token]) MULTI Sniper Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 51) CRANE AGENT (X Visor) Spitfire, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49) XI ZHUANG Combi Rifle, Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse, Madtraps / Pistol, CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 21) CELESTIAL GUARD Monitor Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 13) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) GROUP 2 6 SOPHOTECT Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31) YUDBOT PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) NINJA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 35) GARUDA Tacbot (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 20) CSU (Specialist Operative) Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 11) RUI SHI Spitfire / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 23) PANGGULING (Hacker, EVO Hacking Device) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 15) 5 SWC | 299 Points Open in Infinity Army Side note: Moving Sun Tzu around can also be interesting since he is worth 2 orders by himself, so you can adapt your strategy and either fill one group to the brim or spread your orders heavenly between your groups. For the moment I plan to test intensively the first list since the hsien haris seems to be the best stapple for ISS. I'll report here how it went!
Or camo lists... which I think is a travesty, considering one of the lesser known identities of ISS was that they were the best camouflage revealing army in the game.
It's all good to say, hey I've got this Hsien with a -6 Tinbot, your odds of a WIP14 Oblivion going through are only 25%. My response is I don't fucking care. Your list is that Hsien/Crane. That's pretty much all of your hard hitting firepower. I will throw 5, 6, 7 orders whatever to fuck them right up first turn. I kill your Hsien or brick him and his palbot out of the fight? Congrats, you're now looking at Sun Tze or some shitty LI with rifles to bring the fight to me. Good luck, I'll gladly spend my entire first turn more or less risk free de-fanging your army. Those armies do not have a plan B that can tackle the hacking issue. Which in fairness, that's really a global ISS/N4 issue it's not just a you problem. It does make ISS kinda shit though, and there's no amount of jank tank stuff Sun Tze can do to dig it out of that. IA can get away with this shit because they have semi decent redundancy. Did my opponent spend 7 orders getting rid of Shang Ji-sus? Thanks to fireteam wildcard soup that kind of order inefficiency is less likely to pay dividends when a Haidao with a MSR can take over a core link, or Krit with a FB and NCO grabs the 4 Zhanshi and runs off with them, or the Zencha in the midfield just start running around doing Zencha things or the Hac Tao NCO reveals himself and starts kicking ass and taking names while Lei Gong or Jeong take over the core or the Son Bae repurposes the core link into a defensive ARO link. Meanwhile ISS cannot expect the same heavy lifting from Ninjas and some Zhanying or the remaining CG linking with the Kuang Shi.
Well yes, but as you say yourself it's an ISS/N4 issue. I mean, just so we're clear, I'm not here trying to argue that Sun Tzu solve all of ISS problems by himself, but I'm lucky enough that my meta hasn't seen a proliferation of pitcher/GML yet so I can play my ISS, and you can be pretty damn sure I'm going to do so for as long as I can. I'm still trying to anticipate those issue though, just in case, but I don't expect much. The ninja has done a whole lot of heavy lifting for me lately. You just need to look at him as a proper skirmisher with a sword, and not just an invisible button pusher like we used to in N3. But I agree that those lists need more redudancy when it comes to big guns, I'm still working on it, but I just wanted to share some thoughts I've had about sun tzu since it's the topic at hand.
Yeah, the ninja is interesting with the HD profile, and also that you have the Kunai as an AVA2 ninja in some ways. That gives one funny way to solve the pitcher problem - set an obvious place to launch the pitcher and line up a TO sniper trap to pop the pitcher bearer I think the Sun Tze v2 lists look fun, definitely worth trying out to get some fun out of an unused profile. I would expect pitcher tossing hacker lists have their own hard counters anyway, especially camo heavy lists.
That's actually pretty shit. You're blowing 34 points and 1.5 SWC on a BS11 unit with a questionable success rate. Assuming that the pitcher model isn't a Tsyklon in which case it dumpsters your Kunai anway with its FB when you reveal it, shooting the pitching unit doesn't do shit to protect your models. Even if you succesfully down the pitching model this roll wasn't F2F. There's a higher than average chance the pitcher went down regardless of how the Kunai performed and your expensive model still gets dumpstered by a hacker leaving you in pretty much the same place as if you didn't have the Kunai. This is assuming your opponent also elects to suicide pitch, if they dodge even something as crap as a PH10 nerd with no ARM the Kunai is above a 60% failure rate which is pretty fucking embarrassing for something that was teased as an elite marksman. In general the Kunai is fuck awful, and is hardly a reliable counter measure for this issue ISS faces.
The Kunai doesn't have to be an awesome sniper to be a pain in the neck as an ARO piece. At least if you use it once in a while your opponent has to worry that ISS might have shit noctifers and can't always move around with impunity. I'd probably prefer the marksman rifle version, as it uses less SWC and can also be a pretty useful unit in the active turn if you don't throw it under a bus. Yes, a core linked Tsyklon Feuerbach will remove a Kunai sniper without much trouble. As normal though, you're assuming that the worst-case scenario happens 100% of the time and renders the tactic completely worthless. A Kunai in the right place can sweat up an opponents plan nicely. If you wait to reveal your Kunai halfway through an attack they've already invested 2-3 orders in they may well have to bring some other unit to bear to remove the Kunai before proceeding with their play. A good ARO piece just has to reliably waste 2-3 enemy orders, not kill something with every order spent on it.
Minor point of note, the Kunai MSR is basically a Guilang MSR with no MSV, better Mimetism, and trades infiltration and camo for proper hidden deployment. Both are pretty niche, but given how similar they are I sometimes wonder if the Kunai hasn’t gotten kind of a bad rap, seeing as how Guilangs are pretty well-regarded.
The Guilangs are well regarded overall between the two specialists and the minelayer profiles, the Guilang sniper profile specifically not so much. I occasionally used one last edition but with N4 power creep I have stopped along with the unlinked Haidao in Vanilla. They are no longer sufficient as ARO options. This doesn't really waste orders. If your opponent just throws the Pitcher and accepts maybe losing the model tossing the pitcher to a model that struggles to hit the broadside of a barn as the cost of nuking the core component of your army then no orders are wasted at all. You maybe get a kill, while they probably still gut your list. I'm telling you your idea is worthless because it literally doesn't work. You can't force a F2F to contest the roll, you need to both your shit marksman to actually hit and 1 hit delete a model that possibly has multiple wounds and you need what is probably a core linked pitcher to miss both their uncontested shots. To make things worse you're suggesting on using the profile that's going to probably be firing in its shit rangeband to try and pull this off. It's becoming rapidly clear that you haven't actually had to try ward off opponents that are running the current hacking meta.
@Triumph this is actually getting a bit annoying. Absolutely everything doesn't have to be seen through the prism of "does this hard-counter massed pitcher hackers?". Yes, that tactic is strong (but not quite as strong as you make it out to be) and absolute bullshit to deal with, but at some point we're going to have to be able to have a conversation about other stuff than specifically that one single thing. They both, unfortunately, have the problem that they're the only skirmishers with MSR that didn't get a special 5-point discount on their sniper profiles. They make it very expensive to bring them as a sniper due to such poor odds of hitting. (Edit: what I mean is that as ARO pieces they haven't been able to cut it for me as most units fairly reliable out-dodge their shots)
We will as soon as CB does something to fix the issue. Unfortunately we may be waiting a long time for that. If you don't want to talk about it feel free to acknowledge beforehand that list/unit or archetype X shits the bed when confronted with this meta issue and then I won't feel compelled to bring it up. If you ignore or overlook it (or suggest something utterly retarded or ineffective as a "counter"), then I'll probably bring it up.
I don't think I'd take Kunai primarily as ARO pieces, they're definitely stronger in the active turn. However, in a game where I strongly suspected a pitcher play, it's useful that a kunai could be deployed as a trap to try and slow the opponent down or give them a chance to make bad decisions. Also at events where you know the table often feature saturation zones, models like that become a bit more powerful in ARO. Low vis zones can also enter the equation - on a forest table the kunai might only hit on a single dice at 8s, but would be placing enemy models at -9 or -12 BS and -1 burst a lot of the time.
