So what is the point then: not all Sk are anti-rambo speedbumps? Sure, that's worth making a point about: but equally YJ has a decent density of anti-rambo midfield speedbumps. What it used to have and doesn't anymore is a 'here there be dragons'-piece that forces your opponent to be cautious about aggressively pushing into the midfield. Result: you need to use the tools you do have to actively counter the rambo, because the threat / reality of an Oni isn't there for the job. Yes that sucks but no it's not the end of the world, nor is it the case that you're limited to playing a single list reliant on Kuang Shi and Shaolin. YJ can still play an excellent midfield game. And it's got a solid enough ARO game if you play to it's strengths.
The point is mines bring a tremendous amount of utility for skirmishers. It just happens to be one way to do it, not the only way. Other examples of utility include templates, smoke, other deployables, and skills such as doctor, chain of command, etc. As someone who readily reached for flooding the midfield with our warband units, shouldn't you be excited about mines as well? Considering they do the following: A) impose -3 PH to dodge B) Can go off even if LOF is blocked off by Smoke/Eclipse C) Detonate against CH marker states D) Can still secure an area even after their carrier is no longer present E) Carry useful ammo types It subverts your case when you insist a unit is one of the best in its class when so many others deserve that title more. Its a top TO Skirmisher because it has TO? Being hidden an all is great and all, but TO alone only tends to get you so far. With most missions, you'll have to fight and sneak your way to an objective, even if you start relatively close. And then there is actually securing the damn objective. I thought we were discussing the non KHD profiles. Okay. Fine. So having an extremely useful piece of equipment is a trap? That's a load of crap. So are you are leaving your 26 or 29 point model off the table, not contributing to the order pool until your opponent deep dives with no support what so ever? And if you aren't in the right spot, it'll take multiple orders to get into base to base with the offender. Do you even have that many orders to spare? You know what else is a good tool besides mystically having your ninja in the perfect place to gank a fool? Smoking that fire lane and dealing with at your leisure. Fair. I find the CC costing on the Ninja way overhyped and the AHD Ninja especially so. To, you know, dodge enemy deployables? I'd like to give my opponents at least some credit and say they are at least trying to make a melee missile rune difficult. Or create a face to face roll when are not in melee and shooting with either your bow or pistol (considering we're both disregarding the combi profiles completely) isn't a good idea? Or maybe try to infiltrate past the halfway line? I agree with the sentiment that TO skirmishers really don't want to reveal in ARO. There is also the fact that sometimes you have to sacrifice that and expose your TO model if you want to prevent something really bad from happening to the rest of your force. Don't forget they have a tragically singular Mad Trap profile. And a sniffer profile.
My opinion about ninja, that he can do decent sk job, just see him like TO hacker in hidden deployement at midfield, trust me he can do real shit here, after reveliang himself he has optional tool (melee) for defending himself. Second issue ninja suck at hacking and ahd version cost is too much, if you dont know your next oponent. P.s i try to tell my opinion, sorry if i anger someone, im not good at english(
I have been playing Vanilla solely, that is 100% incorrect. If you don't build body spam you open yourself up to getting rambo'd hard. That comes from preferring to play lower order count 12-14 model lists, my list construction has warped immeasurably thanks to Uprising. Unfortunately they suck now in comparison to how they used to function, I've found they irrefutably don't work well and it's not from a lack of trying to make them still work. They have a massive gaping, liability in their build. I do not like having to play 18+ order lists every single game, but if I want to put a competitive list on the table that doesn't risk getting trashed, that's what it needs to be. Your assessment is off mark. YJ still has a decent midfield game but it's far from excellent. Losing access to viable infiltrating TO attack pieces, and not having access to extremely cost effective and cheap harassment pieces like Grunts, foxtrots, Zeroes, Hardcases, or Daylami makes them fall far down the ladder on mid field skirmishing. Yeah sure we're not the worst at it, we're certainly better than Morats but that's a pretty goddamn low bar. We might've rated as excellent before, but the Oniwabans departing has really blown a hole in that assessment. Similar to the Close Combat faction status, YJ really isn't a particularly amazing midfield skirmisher faction anymore either. And again, their ARO game is bottom of the barrel. Stop trying to pretend it's solid. YJ's active vs reactive ratio is a pretty commonly understood and accepted faction quirk, nothing has changed to lessen this. Realistically the uprising deletion only caused it to become more prominent. Probably a good moment to remind everyone that the Ninja's current CC capabilities are not actually good enough to dissuade many rambo effects from coming at you either. Trying using a Ninja to scare a MO Knight link, it doesn't. Joan, Achilles, Hector, Greeks/Scots in general, Dogs/McMurder, the Japanese, hell even Tohaa Triads with Makauls don't really give much of a crap about a Ninja trying to threaten them with CC because they either match them or straight up outfight them in CC. And with a mighty Tactical Bow they don't even have the ability to threaten them from a surprise gun fight either. It's rather ironic that one of the factions whos rambo tech is the most vulnerable to getting engaged by a Ninja is Yu Jing itself. Hsien, Hac Tao, and Su Jians are all not particularly great in a fist fight. Good thing we pay that CC tax ain't it? An E/M CCW profile would go a long way to helping the Ninja actually leverage that CC stat as a threat because at least then it's only gotta get 1 swing through into one of these Rambo pieces to at least isolate them, it would help keep a larger range of models scared.
So, half the SKs in the game are shit? Gotcha. Because I went through Army and sorted by unit type. That's a list of *every* unit that is a Skirmisher.
Seems about right for Infinity standards of shit (ie one of the other profiles is better, or the profile has a really specific niche role that's not really worth including it for most of the time). Looking just at a Guilang: 2 profiles are top tier (FO and Minelayer), 2 are close to top tier but are usually displaced by the top-teir profiles (BSG and AHD), 1 is niche and uncommon (MSR), 2 are complete garbage (Combi and Lt). So depending on your specific POV you've got between 2-4 profiles out of 7 that are 'shit'. The same is true of Ninjas: 1 profile that is top tier (KHD), 1 close to top tier (Tacbow), 2 niche and uncommon (MSR and AHD) and 3 that are garbage (Combis). So depending on your view of Ninja MSRs /AHDs it's between 3 and 5 profiles out of 7 that are 'shit'. Kanren OTOH are 'odd' in that all of the profiles have different and unique uses. They're all good and you choose which one you want based on what role you need filled. It's not unrelated that Kanren are a 'new-style' SK profiles whereas Guilang and Ninjas are 'old-style' SK profiles.
Yeah, getting an EM CCW Ninja would be really nice. Not an Oniwaban's MonoCCW, but it's viable and not really breaking from the basic Ninja profile. If I'm really wishlisting, I'd add something douchebaggy like an EMauler and/or EMitter. Or a Jammer. OK, fair point. I'm not hugely fond of AHDs, regardless of unit, because I think they must come with a side order of a KHD to be useful. So you're looking at an additional ~30pts in support tax. The Ninja MSR is distinctly Niche, but Razgriz gets disturbingly good mileage out of them. No loss to push a Ninja Sniper all the way to the opponent's DZ to shoot someone in the back, because if you flub the roll and start in your DZ you still have the long-range weapon to use. But how many of those TO Camo SKs do you consider to have across-the-board good profiles? All Croc Man, all Tuareg, and 6/7 Malignos have mines, while half the Spektrs, half the Daysus, and half the Clipsos profiles have mines. If you look at all the SKs regardless of camo level, the units that have CC capability tend to not have mines or other deployables.
On the whole SK break down 4 ways: Speedbumps Attack pieces Button pushers Infiltrating MSRs (it's distinct enough from the others that I think it deserves to be considered separately). There's overlap on several profiles (most Nomad players consider BSG Spektrs to be 'attack pieces' but that can serve double duty as a speedbump if you're desperate; Ninja KHD can do duty either as an attack piece or a button pusher). If we just compare the Human Sphere factions then the Ninja with 1 great (KHD), 1 decent (Tax Bow), 2 niche (AHD, MSR) and 3 garbage (really 1, because the difference between AP CCW, Shock CCW and DA CCW doesn't really make any difference) is on the lower end of 'useful' profiles but it's not a crazy outlier. PanO out of 9 TO Sk Profiles have 2 garbage ones (Combi, Lt Crocmen) and 2 niche (TOOS MSR and Crocman MSR) and the rest are on the spectrum from good to really good. Nomads have 1 garbage TO Sk profile (Combi Spektr) the rest are good to great (at BS12 and as the only TO SWC weapon in Nomads the Spektr MSR loses the 'niche' role it has in other factions where it competes with Hexa, Swiss and Hac Tao). Haqq has 3 niche profiles (Sniper Taureg, BSG Taureg and Rifle+LSG Taureg) and 2 great profiles (Taureg AHD is up there for one of best TO hacker in the game and Taureg Dr is extremely good). Once you get off the main sequence (IE Aleph, CA and JSA) it gets a little weirder so I usually don't bother.
I hadn't actually considered a Jammer but I'd settle for one of those if it was a on a relatively cheap profile, <35pts, sure. The threat of hidden jammers on rooftops would certainly make rambo tech think twice about over committing on turn 1.
@inane.imp There is a wide gulf of garbage profiles by those standards. A lot of those are the 'base' profiles that for just 1 more point, you can get a specialist. Little intrinsically wrong with them. Then there is do not touch with a stick EX non chain rifle Shaolin. On jammers, I feel trepidation on having more of them, but the cat is out of the bag. Shang Ji with jammers?
I would approve Infowar Shang Ji- Toss on some Cybermines on a Minelayer profile too. That'd be neat.
Jammers are supposed to be craptastic in-verse, though I see the fluff blurb has changed slightly the past couple of years (or did it change with the Tunguska release?). In either case, it's a weapon you don't put on real troops, even the JSA Keisotsu were valued higher than handing them Jammers.
It was a a you for the last sentence, in that you're making good points, but its part of a wider conversation which has a lot of mostly negativity. So its harder to just focus on those points. No-one is arguing that yu jing aren't due for some epic amounts of love. I'm more trying to push the conversation into a "well, whats working with what we have, because that will naturally lead to a conversation about actual holes, rather than perceived ones based on losing things and seeing new toys come out." Point in case: jammers. A solution to a problem I don't think is yu jings largest problem. A ninja is good at what it does. Its an assasin, but its also a specialist. There are bunch of missions with "push the most buttons" which a TO specialist who appears on Turn 3 and pushes the button can win you the game. The fact yu jing as the cheapest profile that does it, so the lowest opportunity cost is good. The fact it also a KHD, which can mess up an opponent who has a key hacker, eg. they're using a rambo that is a supportwared repeater bot. Is gravy. The ninja also doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has guilang, kanren and krakots to combo with. Are we really going to argue that ninja need a deployable to be a decent skirmisher/midfield unit? Like, would you take a ninja with AP mines in the same list as guilang? Do I use mines that much less than other people? Is it a bit sucky that the other ninja profiles in comparison are a bit rubbish? yes. Thats a long way from the unit being the worst though. I don't disagree, and that would be totally valid if we were just comparing profiles in a vacuum. Ninja complement guilang in toolsets. The main ninja profile you will brings either a KHD or a sniper rifle. and I think stabbing people in the neck is utility. Because its as reliable as it gets on a TO unit. It comes on one of the cheapest TO specialist profiles, who also has a KHD. I don't really know what more utility you would want? As above, the fact that ninja only have like 2 useful profiles is a bummer. But that doesn't automatically make a unit trash. I definitely think the other profiles could use some love. Mines are great tools. But I don't find myself wishing every single infiltrated unit has them. If I need mines i put them down with a guilang. Maybe I'm not as good with mines, but where we play, mines are useful tools in certain situations. Because they don't actually secure an area against rambos - which is really what started this all off. A PH multiwound model just doesn't care about a mine, if its the only thing between it and your juicy underbelly. A good player will understand when its worth risking a mine hit. Or will just take the extra order to dodge it. Given you've probably spent 1 order dropping it, and I've spent 1 order dodging it, you're not actually up by much. Well hey, I'm OK if you want to make that case. You got the response you did because you went so far as to say its absolute trash, and one of the worst. My wording could have been better as guilang + ninja is a top class skirmisher combo. Because ninja are going to be with guilang. With the exception of nomads, most other factions' TO skirmishers will be complemented by camo skirmishers who have similar equipment but cost less. So its bottom TO skirmisher because it doesn't have mines. Its a bit dismissive when we derive peoples thoughts into a single sentence. Really? A majority of missions have all if not more than half the objectives within your half of the table. So for all of the push the button missions, all you might need is the cheapest possible TO specialist who can just appear and switch a button on turn 3. Do you have an example of a TO skirmisher who can secure an objective massively better than a ninja? Last time I checked a TO combi 1 W model in the reactive turn is going to get pasted by just about anything that isn't a line trooper with a combi. Why would you think that? Because you have a list that has guilang but you're dropping out of TO hidden deployment to put down a mine. Thats an objectively terrible idea except in the most nichest of scenarios. Mines are useful, but not ubiquitous. Its not always worth spending orders putting down mines. So yes, having mines on a profile whose strength is being hidden can be a trap for players who think mines are always worth the orders. If leaving the model off the table means I can do a turn 3 grab for objectives and win the game. Yes thats worth it. The fact it can counter attack a rambo when it needs to is just a bonus. I'm not really sure where you're going with order efficiency. You've just been advocating for placing mines, which is not much less order intensive for far worse odds of killing something versus CC. Thats a decision to be made, the order expenditure of getting a ninja into CC is at least rewarded with reliability in the upper quartile for FtF actions in infinity. A tool relatively accessible to yu jing. So, yeah, the point you're making here is the ninja is just another tool. But you're not boned if its not in the right place? Yeah I can agree with that. OK? Is PH 12 unusually low for skirmishers? Hmmm. no. I agree with your point the ninja is more reliant on PH than other skirmishers. But I don't quite see how it contributes to your overarching point that they are trash compared to other skirmishers? It might be my own anecdotal experience, but I've actually never seen a desperate reveal by a TO skirmisher actually achieve anything in blunting an attack sufficiently to justify doing it. I suspect because my deployment normally has the TO unit in the perfect location to do the mission, and the rest of my force therefore out of position to do that aspect of the mission when the TO unit is dead. Kanren are so close to being perfect. I feel like holo2 is massively overpriced on S2 models for the kind of utility I can get from it. Particularly one that has forward deployment, so much of the shenanigans are void.
Fine. It's just that I try to keep my tone above the droning complaint level and with the realisation that if I really had a grudge worth complaining constantly because of, I would've left the game by now. Still not going to dress the current state of the faction up as something good. 1st Q: No, but we are arguing it doesn't do even remotely the same job as a Guilang or Kanren :) (You know, similar to how a Su-Jian isn't going to do a good job trying to behave like a Yan Huo, even if it is an S5 HI) 2nd Q: Yes, I'd take a Ninja with AP mines in the same list, who wouldn't? It's a great tool for rounding corners on large groups of enemies. However, I'm missing a skirmisher that isn't a Ninja atm, either a relative to Guilang or higher AVA on Guilang. The Daofei complements the Guilang well, but at an extreme cost, so what I'm missing is something that would complement the Guilang at a cost that didn't have to make the list revolve around the combo. And the Guilang complements itself very well. 3rd Q: While many profiles need purging, particularly among the older units pre-dating Human Sphere, in the Ninja's case I also think the ubiquitous combi rifle is a particularly bad fit thematically (just like it's particularly bad fit on the Shaolin).
You misunderstand me. I think it's a bad fit because it's not a main line G.I Joe. You'd think this unit would request something lighter and more suited for close range. This has nothing to do with their BS value.
The combi rifle ninja that Yu Jing has is outclass by the KHD ninja because it also counts as a specialists and is cheaper. People often just save the Ninja KHD for last minute grabs of objectives in which case the combi is entirely not needed. For general skirmishing I think the Guilang is much better, the minelayer option is especially useful. Heck, if you take two Minelayers then you'll have 4 camo markers in the mid field which is pretty decent. Despite the skills bloat, the Ninja Sniper is still decent. Hitting enemies out of cover with a surprise BS 14 ARO is still pretty good.
It's opportunity cost. Guilang is a solid gunfighter for its cost, particularly in a SK vs SK fight. It's not going to be something you turn to to remove high-quality attack pieces, but it's great fighting peers. Whereas Ninjas are weak TO gunfighters and their high CC means that they have an alternative to 'shooting them in the face'.The Combi Rifle Ninjas aren't awful in a fight: they're just a worse way to use the Ninja's AVA than any of the other profiles. Compare the Combi armed Spektrs: you're making a good use of the profile by using it to shoot things (although the BSG is usually preferred as a seak out and shoot things profile). @banthafodder is right that I'm overstating things when I say that the 'less optimal' SK profiles are 'garbage'. They're just a poor use of the AVA / pts given other options. Honestly though you're mostly still just complaining about what you've lost: and even then you're not considering like for like. YJ didn't lose any of its midfield speedbumps: what it lost was a cheap long-range ARO (Raiden), the ability to remove a single enemy Trooper with ease (Oni) and the ability to rapidly and cheaply punish a turtling enemy (Arogato). These are big losses and I'm not trying to minimise them , but the question really isn't 'do we need a Jammer on X or Y profile to fill this hole' but 'how do we use existing options to mitigate these loses'. Re: Jammers. Part of the reason that Jammers work in Vanilla Nomads is because they already had superlative midfield board control. It's the 'yet another Merc sniper' solution to balance. (I'm not saying that they're not good or that they don't provide a different layer, but that they don't fundamentally change how the faction plays). Re: Mines on SK. Look at the Bandit. The most popular profile is the KHD and the FO. Nomad players happily forgo Mines/EMaulers for points and a specialist. Deployables aren't the be all and end all of SK.
As a baseline weapon, the combirifle is pretty good up close and personal (+3 from 0-8"). The YJ design is compact and pretty handy. I used to own an airsoft FAMAS, it's pretty close to the YJ combi in proportions (see also British L85 and FN P90), and I really wish I could have a real one, even semi-auto only. A combirifle uses standard ammo. Logistics really matter in a military. The US uses 1 pistol caliber (9mm), 1 rifle caliber (5.56x45mm, also used by Squad Automatic Weapons), 1 GPMG caliber (7.62x51, shared with some marksman/sniper rifles), two sniper-only calibers (.300 WinMag and .338 Lapua), and one HMG caliber (.50BMG). Oops, forgot the one shotgun caliber (12ga 2.75"). And we're looking at re-combining the rifle and GPMG calibers. Infinity already explicitly uses more weapon calibers. Spitfires don't use combi ammo. Pistols don't use Assault Pistol or SMG ammo. Multirifles probably don't use combi ammo. Mk12 doesn't use HMG ammo. Also, on a more pointed note, all the TO SKs were created back in 2006, long before other short-ranged weapons were an option.
The US uses 2 pistol calibres* and 3 rifle calibres (apparently SO just acquired an intermediate round; and I'm distinguishing between the 7.62mm used in marksmen *rifles* and that used in GPMGs because they're quite different albeit technically interchangeable). They're busy trying to unfuck the decision to acquire 5.56mm after refusing to move away from 7.62mm after WWII. As much as logistics matters, effectiveness matters as well. * Until 2015, the final consolidation on 9mm is actually quite recent. Didn't realise that the Marines had finally managed it. Edit: link to story. http://soldiersystems.net/2018/03/23/ussocom-adopts-6-5-cm/
