So now that the dust (seems to) have settled after the Uprising, how are people getting used to Vanilla YJ and how does it seem to have affected your power level? First of all, this isn't at all relevant to ISS, as they were entirely unaffected by the changes and I regard them as one of the best armies in the game for ITS missions. However, I recently played at a friendly ITS tournament and decided to play Vanilla YJ and I must admit that feel like their powerlevel is on the underside of mediocre. Since we no longer have any options for shaving off points with JSA line troops + engineer/medics, it feels like we lost, on average, 1-2 orders while gaining nothing in return. Also, for destruction missions we actually lost really decent datatrackers, like the Shikami as our datatracker options are either TO camo (which you don't want to sacrifice), Remote Presence (Su Jian) or no antimaterial options, except for our Crane Rank. Also, there's no denying that the loss of the Raiden HRL profile hurt like hell. The thing I struggle with the most though is the type of lists that Vanilla YJ seems to produce now. Either we have brickloads of orders but 2 attack pieces and when/if they die, the rest of your army is garbage. Or everything is attempting to be "elite" in LI but we don't actually have perfect trimmed profiles to operate under LI, which usually ends up with 2-3 attack pieces, while the rest is, again, garbage (ISS offsets this issue by having Aleph/Mercs + killer link options). Finally there's the option of "sorta' " elite army, where you have many individual models with decents stats, like Zuyong and the likes but they always seem to run out of steam and not provide nearly enough punch to be worth the spread (unlike, say MO, where you can make lists with almost everything being a lethal threat). So enough about my experiences with Vanilla YJ, how about guys? Am I the only one with the blues? :) Kind regards
I dislike the fact that I am stuck spamming WBs now. Without the constant threat of Oniwabans trading up anything that plays too agressively and a decided lack of ARO options in Vanilla (even worse now with the Raiden leaving) the only real alternative to prevent your opponent from getting in your face is to choke them with bodies. The flow on effect from this is with WBs I am also pressured into taking first turn more often as well, as WBs prefer to go first to both unclutter your DZ and to prevent opponents from lining up too many AROs on them. This is a distinct issue when many missions favour going second. It's definitely been a distinct downgrade in value and list diversity. I wouldn't recommend Vanilla for ITS at all, they're not particularly good at all.
Now, first off, before I say anything, I started playing like a month before Uprising, so I had no time to even lose any of the JSA stuff, and am really new to this game, so take what I say with a Hsiens points worth of salt. Honestly, I don't feel like we lost much beyond variety. Like, some of the JSA profiles we lost could really add some interesting variety to various lists ( Oniwabans and Domaru come to mind. ). Strength-wise, I still think we have a really good selection of stuff to use, but again, it's a smaller selection than it was pre-Uprising. So yeah, I wouldn't say we dropped to the bottom of the barrel, but there's certainly some room for improvement here, and lots of room for CB to ( Soon™ ) add new stuff. And I'd prefer we don't have to wait several ITS Seasons AFTER Uprising to get anything.
Variety is the strength of Vanilla. You lose variety, you take a shit on Vanilla. Not having decent AROs is one of the biggest problems Vanilla YJ has and it only got worse when we lost the Raiden. The traditional threat to keep people honest was your list might contain an Oniwaban. If they get aggressive, shove their Avatar/Joan/Kriza/Tarik whatever in your face up the field and kill all your crap you could potentially respond by stabbing them with a Kitsune out of nowhere. This would slow them down on their first turn while they tried to figure out if you've got one or not and buy you time to get set up. You don't have this threat anymore. There is nothing like that to punish the hell out of something big and nasty getting in your face and then sitting in the middle of the table. You also don't have the threat of an Oniwaban stabbing anymore on turn one. People don't need to deploy anywhere near as defensively anymore. They can deploy and behave alot more aggressively against Vanilla than they had to before which is a direct and significant nerf. Going second? Well I guess I don't need to turtle a bunch of shit around my expensive TAG because I know with 100% certainty I can't get monofilamented anymore, so I can spread out deployment and position to control alot more of the table instead. There is a large degree of mindgames and second guessing YJ no longer inflicts on their opponents. It's a big nerf with nothing gained in the meantime.
Fair point, fair point. Granted, I've yet to experience what TAG aggression really feels like beyond losing most of my army to a Sphinx turn 1 or having my order pool gutted by a Squalos, so I may not have had the time yet to pick up on the idea that a random AHD Tiger Soldier might not be enough to neuter enemy TAGs. ( And ofcourse, I should also add in I've yet to really branch out beyond Beyond Operation: Red Veil and Operation: Red Veil beyond weapon profile proxying. ( The beyonds were intentional. ) ).
When you get further into the game you will find your opponents count your list. They memorise your costs and try to figure out what's missing. I have straight up won a game because my opponent diverted a bunch of his resources to combat and protect against getting flanked by Tiger Soldiers because he looked at the table and came to the conclusion I was missing a bit over 50 pts worth of stuff and didn't seem to have much in the way of direct combat power. The truth was there were no Tiger Soldiers and I had actually forgotten to deploy my Dao Fei, and had he realised that he could've just powered into the center of the table and taken the game from there because I was a huge chunk of points and SWC down right off the bat. The more potential hidden information a faction has the harder it is for your opponent to play around it while they figure out exactly what's in the list, it directly impacts and reduces their order efficiency, especially on the first turn. The less hidden information it has access to, the more predictable it becomes and subsequently easier to play against. Losing that potential variety for a Vanilla army is a huge nerf. That variety and flexibility is what you're trading for in Vanilla against superior firepower and order efficiency in a sectorial. You can't just nerf it and expect the faction not to suffer badly for it.
I'm struggling to make lists. Most of our heavily-geared units tend to miss out on survival or have stuff that's... Skornergy. I'm missing several key units from JSA (and at the same time, I've completely lost interest in JSA and haven't unpacked them since I moved house)
I’m going through the exact same thing. I’ve bought every new release so far but my will to assemble it is just dead... now that Tunguska is on the horizon (the army I’ve been waiting for since I literally started the game) I don’t see myself assembling my JSA any time soon.
I've actually given up on Vanilla for a while. I just can seem to get them to work like I can with ISS. I decided to jus to wait until they come out with some new troops.
Every list I make seems to have the same backbone: 4 Kuang Shi and some Zhanshi fuelling 1 or 2 premium HI, usually the Ninja KHD, and some Monks. Then either Rui Shi supportware/Hsien smoke shooting. I also honestly don't understand what we have for efficient ARO's; the Yan Huo and Hac Tao missile launchers are cool but so expensive to just leave standing and trading shots.
Yu Jing are still pretty strong IMO, just not as varied. They have fantastically capable troops like the Guilang, Shaolin Monks, Tiger Soldiers, Rui Shi, Su-Jian, Crane and so on, and also ISS are a really strong and flexible Sectoral with bags of character and options, which is at least half the appeal of a Sectoral for me. I'd say that they are absolutely primed for another Sectoral or two, and could maybe do with getting some non-Chinese cultural theme back, but still, they mechanically haven't lost that much. Oniwiban and Raidens basically are all Vanilla YJ really truly misses.
Major Lunah isn't terrible, doubles as TR bot removal too. Otherwise yeah we've got Husongs and that's about it. Yan Huo isn't viable outside of lists built to contain him specifically. I spam the board with Kuang Shi, Monks, and Mad Traps in the mid field. Getting through them chews up orders pretty quickly. This combat group or minor variations of it is showing up in alot of my vanilla lists: Yu Jing ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 5 8 KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5) KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5) CELESTIAL GUARD (Kuang Shi Control Device) Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 13) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3) 0.5 SWC | 56 Points Open in Infinity Army
The problem is also that we usually only have 1-2 decent attack pieces and if we bring a decent ARO, we have to trade it for 1 of our few attack pieces, which tends to cripple the lists. Perhaps I should look more into Lunah or LeMuet.
The fact that her selling point is that she's "not terrible" is kind of a bummer, especially considering she's a generic (non Yu Jing) merc. I've also got no doubt that tactic works well, but I chose vanilla Yu Jing to avoid spam lists.
Major Lunah is pretty good IMO. Viral is very good, and with surprise shot, mimetism and such she can strike effectively from a loooong way away. Also B1 with MMLX is statistically better than B 2 shooting regularly, just fyi, if you use that she's around BS 12.5 I believe. Not like she's even that expensive for 29pts either, cheaper than the Ghost Wolf Sniper!
