My favorite thing to take in Vanilla right now is not truly YJ! I use Le Muet. He's what Sun Tze with Sniper should be! I use a converted Sun Tze for him as well.
0,19% better than using B2. Counting all the times I’ve rolled between 1-3 or miss, while having a high BS single shot weapon, I think I’ll pass and roll the extra dice.
The Raiden was never a good ARO piece. BS12 HRL with Limited Camo isn't good... It's filler. I know the tendency to regard the Raiden as a good unit, but it's value was never in its quality, but rather in its cheap cost. If you're looking for good ARO pieces, the TR REM is a much better active/reactive turn unit for comparable price point. Losing the Oniwaban is the big hit though, and represents the really irreplaceable gap in Vanilla Yu Jing list building. It's kind of a shame that the Kanren's only AVA1 in Vanilla, because I think taking two of them would give Vanilla the ability to project that Monofilament threat a bit better.
It's value was in the fact that it existed period, just like the Oniwabans. It created an issue of is that camo marker a dude with a fire template that I now have to be very careful about moving this impetuous trooper/fireteam around lest I create a firey group hugs scenario, or is it in fact a Guilang FO/Assault Hacker just hanging back pretending to be a Raiden and I'm wasting order efficiency playing cautiously? The fact that it is now never a Raiden removes that shellgame. You can't do stuff like use a Minelayer Guilang to set up a mine behind him and pretend to be a Raiden, or the reverse, pretend to do that, your opponent's seen that trick before and ignores and surprise, HRL to the face. It takes one bad rocket hit to make your opponent question every marker they see for the rest of their time playing the game.
That wasn’t his point though. His point was Minelayer for your DZ and a template weapon that forced your opponent to move in a certain behaviour when moving his link team because you decided when to ARO or not. The Raiden was long considered expended after his limited camo came off.
You’re the one advocating the usage of the most proven, discussed, buried and universally regarded as one of the worst skills in the entire game. Sure mate, you do you.
Which you could do, and then happily lose him once he was revealed, because he was cheap. He filled the role he filled effectively and his role was "cheap enough to die, somewhat dangerous enough that he's not really allowed to live, doesn't need orders spend on him, leaves behind a vaguely useful little deployable."
I mean Statistically, it is better. Undeniably. You've just said that yourself. You should use it, because it's statistically superior. If you don't, you might feel better... but you're actually statistically less likely to get the ftf result you want. Literally the only person losing out if you don't use it is you.
That's a valid use, but not one with longevity. Speaking personally, I find shellgames in general to be overvalued, especially once your Core of players (or the players at a competitive tournament) have a high enough game IQ not to waste extraneous Orders trying to handle distant Camo Tokens. If a player sees Camo tokens across from them, then allows their own gameplan to be majorly sidelined in order to give credence to your shellgame, it isn't the mark of a good strategy, but rather the mark of an inexperienced player. There's nothing wrong with the Raiden at all, but suggesting that its presence shocks the enemy into analysis paralysis because one of the tokens might be a Heavy Rocket Launcher isn't that realistic. This is, after all, the same game that offers Ariadna, or Nomads, or PanO, all of whom have nastier long-range AROs that need to be played around. On a related note: If you're deploying a Raiden, a Guilang, and 2 mines inside your DZ so that they look like a Raiden occupying 4 different spots, that doesn't worry me... Instead, I accept the gift that you've allocated 2 SWC and a very, very precious AVA (one of your Guilangs) to stop me from attacking a DZ I probably wasn't going to attack anyway, because it's packed full of Chain Rifles. In fact, I probably have an easier time scoring kills and objectives in this situation, because it implies both the Raiden and the Guilang are standing in vulnerable positions to project the illusion of being a heavy weapon that's covering a lane. If I'm worried about them, I use a link HMG to pin them with a Discover + Shoot for point-efficient kills, or use the +6 from a Sensor Bot, or (perhaps most likely) I smoke the lane and get on with the mission. My perspective on the Raiden was that it was always at its best as a pre-Uprising JSA unit, because JSA didn't have Shaolin or Kuang Shi to keep things out of their DZ. There's a reason that the only Raiden profile that carried over was the Minelayer, and there's a reason why the only new Ryuken-9 profile is also a Minelayer: CB perceived a tactical gap in the abilities they feel JSA should have, and they gave them tools to plug that gap. JSA couldn't defend a DZ like Yu Jing could, so it was remedied with a supplemental profile. Yu Jing being the home of the 5-point Chain Rifle, coupled with some really nice perimeter weapons options, means that Yu Jing doesn't really need a Minelayer to protect the home base. If players are struggling to wonder why Yu Jing struggles to project defensive firepower from their DZ, it's because the faction isn't designed to play that way, any more than JSA isn't designed to have HI HMGs, PanO isn't designed to have smoke, or Ariadna isn't designed to have TO Camo. Yu Jing's area denial is meant to be actively projected via warbands, forward-deployed mines and perimeter weapons.
Marksmanship LX is annoying. It depends on the situation when it's better or not. Versus Atalanta or a Guilang at optimal range for both when both is in Cover? Sure, it's a lot better than normal burst for Lunah. Versus a TR HMG at in their -3 when both are in cover? Eh... you'll need Nimbus. I don't know what's exactly has happened, but last I check this the results were... much worse... for using MMSLX, where I'd need to target Lunah (well, Sun Tze V2 back when he didn't have MSV) against something with a massive BS advantage to kinda-sorta equalise it.
It's my understanding that the current ruling is that you can. Why wouldn't you be able to? Nimbus zones already have rules for what happens to B1 weapons.
The second bullet on http://wiki.infinitythegame.com/en/Marksmanship#MARKSMANSHIP_LEVEL_X The user must be using a BS Weapon with a B value of 2 or more after applying Modifiers.
It has been argued for long times, at least on the spanish side the conclusion was that MMLX reduces the burst before nimbus is applied. In the sme way that you can split a burst 2 weapon in two objectives shoting from inside a nimbus zone. Without the JSA troop my vanilla lists suffer more the big guy syndrom, is just i don't trust kuang shsi to fuel my list and with keitosus i felt more safe. But it's true i just changed in most of my lists my old 3 keitosus for new 4 kuang shis or 2 zhansis more, and the expensive HI ( HSien/ Hac Tao) for cheaper ones like Su Jians/ Daofeis. Before someone ask me: yes i was the freak that played half of his infinity life without kuang shis with 3 zhansi + 3 keitosus + 4 shaolins + Madtraps XD ( AND IT WORKED ON TOURNEMENTS)
Seems to be going fine, honestly. I brought vanilla YJ to a tournament and did well and didn't feel underpowered. I think we've still got a lot of tricks and fantastic units. I am angry that CB is saying I can't play with my Japanese models unless I buy more Japanese models. I do miss the oni and the aragoto, and maybe the karakuri, but there are still way more cool things than I can cram into a list and the basics are still covered. I think there are still a lot of answers to the big rambo. Go after the order pool with a tiger or su jian, isolate it with a hacker or e/mitter, glue it, engage it in melee if it's a TAG, or just overpower it with a ton of firepower. One thing I really love about this game is how it's more about your execution on the battlefield than it is about your list.
That's a nice speech and all but this is a strawman. Your so called high "game IQ" will also tell you that you're simply forced to move differently with a link team or lay down smoke screen against a camo marker you suspect is a HRL. That's it. Wasting time. It's not different than wasting 1 or 2 orders from your opponent on a Warcor. This isn't about the Raiden being so scary that it scars your opponent or what ever it is you're suggesting.
