A solid breakdown! I agree that there is rarely focus on how to counter tactics/units when these conversations come up, and this was a refreshing video to see. I think much of the power of Guided attacks comes from the psychological aspect, where the receiving player feels like they have little recourse. As you've pointed out, that is certainly not the case. Like with most strategies, it comes down to magnifying the weakness of the enemy plan (in this case, Order expenditure). A return of U-Turn might make the situation *feel* less uninteractive. I could see it showing up as a Supportware that can be activated in ARO (like Controlled Jump) that gives your Troopers ECM: Guided (-3). A lot of that stems from me enjoying EVO Hackers having more utility (Zero Pain would be a nice addition to them, while we're at it!). It wouldn't be a necessary change, but if Guided does see a change, that would be my preference.
I was just talking with my friend earlier today about how it would be nice if there were more defensive hacking options in the game. We toyed with the idea of "Assisted Reset" where a hacker could attempt to help other units to Reset from comms attacks and I really like the idea of this U-Turn. You could easily bring back Defensive Hacking Devices in some capacity, they could be decked out with this U-Turn, Assisted Reset, Zero Pain and Fairy Dust. EVOs could be their own distinct thing for boosting REMs. I think they could use this to differentiate the hacking capabilities of different factions a bit more from each other and bring some extra depth to the hacking game.
@@Kizunaut I generally agree in terms of more defensive uses for Hacking, though the previous interaction (from N3 and earlier) of Defensive and White Hacking Devices were not as successful as I would have hoped. There's also the general trimming/consolidation of Hacking Devices and Programs moving to N4, it feels more likely to add to existing Devices (not that I would be opposed to a more useful return of DHDs).
Excellent points! I think I agree with pretty much everything you said in this video. To preface, I feel Guided is good pretty much only for deleting enemy attack pieces that you managed to Target in your reactive turn, anything else, like catching a link in the blast etc. is a bonus and a clear mistake from the player that knowingly clumped their units when facing a GML. The "problem" lies not in this mechanic being too good, but just not fun, being non-interactive. Also only when the enemy has a robust net of repeaters that Guided Missiles become a menace, otherwise the combo is stupidly order-inefficient. So the "problem" is not GM itself, but a combination of the two. I wonder if simply getting rid of the +6 would solve the problem, maybe allowing the +3 to hit from the Spotlight itself, as the ability to shoot without LoS in a cover-based game feels like a bonus enough.
I'd be generally on board with reducing the bonus for guided down to +3 to be consistent with the standard targeted bonus, which would leave the capability largely intact but act as a sort of 'developer signal' to push players away from it a little (purely because of the psychology of nerfs). But, I've also tried to communicate in the above video that part of the reason we perceive guided missile attacks as non-interactive is that we're often choosing not to interact with them defensively by null deploying and leaving the midfield uncontested. This can be a bit of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation - not every faction can easily contest the midfield without being exposed to straightforward, direct attacks, but equally a player heavily invested in guided missiles might not have as many strong conventional rampart-sweepers.
Awesome video! Would love to see more of Infinity 101 series btw. Why did you say that Saladin has a decent chance of surviving a missile strike? He has NWI so it seems that he's guaranteed to survive one missle?
@@garoque2447 it doesn't need to choose blast mode, it becomes blast mode automatically. Any guided attack gains the blast property - for example, if you hypothetically had a Guided Pistol, it would be a circulate template attack. This means guided missiles should always choose the AP+EXP mode, since there's no reason not to.
Finally got around to watch this one, for some reason it completely skipped my attention (8 months late to the party, good job me). Excellent video though! I enjoy how you approach a rather flammable topic with a clear head and reasonable solutions. As always, one question. When we speak about "deployment depth" as a missile prevention tactic, how would you handle models which are valuable but have Forward Deployment? Like Draals for instance. Of course it depends on the situation, but would you consider it better to deep-deploy the Draal and keep it safe or push it forward during deployment, put down a mine and then make peace that it will likely die?
There are a few things you can do in this case. In the specific case of Draal, given how their profiles degrade I'd generally argue that symbiomates are essential, which makes going after them with missiles a challenging prospect (among other things it lets the Draal reset against the first missile strike). Otherwise, you can position troops like that on the extreme flanks. Lateral distance can be just as useful as depth in defending against pitchers, and a pitcher placed to catch a draal on an extreme flank is less likely to significantly inconvenience the rest of your army as much.
A big issue with guided is that it also enables long range hacking so if you are using models that can survive an explosive hit, then you are also probably using models that are hackable and they'll just oblivion you instead.
The comment about concentrating value within range of one repeater/pitcher is worth a ton of consideration If you're running a link with multiple valuable models, then necessarily those valuable models are gonna be within the same repeater range I think this hits folks like SP especially hard, where you'd really like to be concentrating multiple heroes next to each other
OTOH, in SP, you normally get a tonne of efficiency by being able to put multiple highly effective heroes at one critical point on the battlefield. So there's a bunch of trade off going on.
Ahh, I see the issue - the wiki isn't up to date. It still has the 'if you have a valid ARO' trigger, but in the FAQ it's been errata'd to only be valid to dodge if; ● They are the Active Trooper; or ● In the Reactive Turn, the Active Trooper is within LoF or ZoC, or they are affected by a Template Weapon. Cheers for the catch. I wasn't sure about this one but a quick look at the wiki didn't give me the lead I needed.
So long as we're being pedantic, I should point out that Morans are absolutely not able to Spotlight. They're able to Forward Observe, which does impose the targeted state, but under very different conditions :P Nomads do have some highly effective forward observers, though. Pi-Well especially this season has marksmanship forward observer natively, and puppetbots have B3 forward observer (which can also gain marksmanship). Neither can get you through a wall, but both offer fascinatingly viable F2F options.
@@R0bertShepherd Alright, not Spotlight. I meant the FO thing. Which for the end result is the same. I wans't being pedantic, I was pointing out something people usually forgets about them. XD
That depends entirely on how you discuss terrain with your opponent - which is is why it's always important to do so! My personal rule is that anything that's physically lower in height than an SX (S0 in old money) can be safely ignored, e.g. the 3mm MDF that buildings rest on at my local club. But I've heard of some players that argue that point, so always discuss - never assume that e.g. a curbstone isn't terrain especially if it's a chunky one.
Are you sure you can Guts away from a repeater zone? You already have total cover from both the hacker and the missile-bot. Ok, I've just looked it up on the wiki. You're allowed to Guts to leave "The danger zone or Area of Effect of Attacks that did not require LoF." The area of effect of the template is not something you can get out of, and "danger zone" doesn't seem to have any rules definition. So... ambiguous.
You've found the right line of text. The danger zone of a hacking attack is the hacker's hacking area, so in the attack that you get targeted by spotlit, you're eligible for a guts roll, and if 2" of movement gets you out of the repeater area, you can do so. This doesn't change that you've been targeted, but if you subsequently reset against a missile hit it means you're totally safe until they land another pitcher. It's also useful generally, because spotlight isn't the only attack they might be making through a repeater.
@@R0bertShepherd Assuming this interpretation is correct, it's a VERY significant trick to have. I frequent use Joan and irregulars, so being able to Guts out of repeaters which are near the edge of their range will make it harder for nomads to just turn off my list.
@@R0bertShepherd the rules are rather confusing. In the wiki, as a requirement, it says a guts roll is allowed if you have survived an attack. Then in “effects” (first bullet) it says you have had to have performed a saving roll. A spotlight doesn’t give you a saving roll.. 🧐
@@andreasjohansson9798 make sure to separate the requirements vs the effects. The *requirements* for making a guts roll are: 1. The Trooper is not in an Engaged, Null or IMM State. 2. The Trooper had suffered one or more successful Attacks-even if all the attackers are in a Null State Spotlight is a successful attack which inflicts a state if it succeeds. So it meets the requirements for causing a guts roll. We then go on to resolving the effects of the guts roll, which tell us to make the roll at the very end of the order after resolving any saving rolls. This isn't a requirement, just telling us how the timing works.
@@R0bertShepherd that is correct. Thanks for clarifying! I’m playing nomads so I’m really trying to get me head around this, to play it correctly and be aware of what might happen in these situations. Appreciate your videos, great stuff! :-)
Love this, would love to see more tactical breakdown articles like this
A solid breakdown! I agree that there is rarely focus on how to counter tactics/units when these conversations come up, and this was a refreshing video to see.
I think much of the power of Guided attacks comes from the psychological aspect, where the receiving player feels like they have little recourse. As you've pointed out, that is certainly not the case. Like with most strategies, it comes down to magnifying the weakness of the enemy plan (in this case, Order expenditure).
A return of U-Turn might make the situation *feel* less uninteractive. I could see it showing up as a Supportware that can be activated in ARO (like Controlled Jump) that gives your Troopers ECM: Guided (-3). A lot of that stems from me enjoying EVO Hackers having more utility (Zero Pain would be a nice addition to them, while we're at it!). It wouldn't be a necessary change, but if Guided does see a change, that would be my preference.
I was just talking with my friend earlier today about how it would be nice if there were more defensive hacking options in the game. We toyed with the idea of "Assisted Reset" where a hacker could attempt to help other units to Reset from comms attacks and I really like the idea of this U-Turn. You could easily bring back Defensive Hacking Devices in some capacity, they could be decked out with this U-Turn, Assisted Reset, Zero Pain and Fairy Dust. EVOs could be their own distinct thing for boosting REMs. I think they could use this to differentiate the hacking capabilities of different factions a bit more from each other and bring some extra depth to the hacking game.
@@Kizunaut I generally agree in terms of more defensive uses for Hacking, though the previous interaction (from N3 and earlier) of Defensive and White Hacking Devices were not as successful as I would have hoped.
There's also the general trimming/consolidation of Hacking Devices and Programs moving to N4, it feels more likely to add to existing Devices (not that I would be opposed to a more useful return of DHDs).
Solid advice, great video. Thank you for the consistent content.
Excellent points! I think I agree with pretty much everything you said in this video. To preface, I feel Guided is good pretty much only for deleting enemy attack pieces that you managed to Target in your reactive turn, anything else, like catching a link in the blast etc. is a bonus and a clear mistake from the player that knowingly clumped their units when facing a GML. The "problem" lies not in this mechanic being too good, but just not fun, being non-interactive. Also only when the enemy has a robust net of repeaters that Guided Missiles become a menace, otherwise the combo is stupidly order-inefficient. So the "problem" is not GM itself, but a combination of the two. I wonder if simply getting rid of the +6 would solve the problem, maybe allowing the +3 to hit from the Spotlight itself, as the ability to shoot without LoS in a cover-based game feels like a bonus enough.
I'd be generally on board with reducing the bonus for guided down to +3 to be consistent with the standard targeted bonus, which would leave the capability largely intact but act as a sort of 'developer signal' to push players away from it a little (purely because of the psychology of nerfs).
But, I've also tried to communicate in the above video that part of the reason we perceive guided missile attacks as non-interactive is that we're often choosing not to interact with them defensively by null deploying and leaving the midfield uncontested.
This can be a bit of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation - not every faction can easily contest the midfield without being exposed to straightforward, direct attacks, but equally a player heavily invested in guided missiles might not have as many strong conventional rampart-sweepers.
Great content as always. Very clear and easy to follow.
Great Video, thx for taking the time to record it and hopefully futher ones.
Awesome video! Would love to see more of Infinity 101 series btw. Why did you say that Saladin has a decent chance of surviving a missile strike? He has NWI so it seems that he's guaranteed to survive one missle?
Remember the missile deals EXP+AP, so you need to pass two of the three saves if it hits Saladin for him to survive (in NWI).
Thank you, I thought that guide missile model always has to choose blast mode attack and thta it doesn't have EXP ammo
@@garoque2447 it doesn't need to choose blast mode, it becomes blast mode automatically. Any guided attack gains the blast property - for example, if you hypothetically had a Guided Pistol, it would be a circulate template attack.
This means guided missiles should always choose the AP+EXP mode, since there's no reason not to.
wow that's kinds nonsense. It doesn't even have to shoot it's slightly less dangerous attack?@@R0bertShepherd
@EAfirstlast nope, it becomes a template for free so always chooses the most dangerous ammo mode.
Good, useful advice!
Finally got around to watch this one, for some reason it completely skipped my attention (8 months late to the party, good job me).
Excellent video though! I enjoy how you approach a rather flammable topic with a clear head and reasonable solutions.
As always, one question. When we speak about "deployment depth" as a missile prevention tactic, how would you handle models which are valuable but have Forward Deployment? Like Draals for instance. Of course it depends on the situation, but would you consider it better to deep-deploy the Draal and keep it safe or push it forward during deployment, put down a mine and then make peace that it will likely die?
There are a few things you can do in this case. In the specific case of Draal, given how their profiles degrade I'd generally argue that symbiomates are essential, which makes going after them with missiles a challenging prospect (among other things it lets the Draal reset against the first missile strike).
Otherwise, you can position troops like that on the extreme flanks. Lateral distance can be just as useful as depth in defending against pitchers, and a pitcher placed to catch a draal on an extreme flank is less likely to significantly inconvenience the rest of your army as much.
A big issue with guided is that it also enables long range hacking so if you are using models that can survive an explosive hit, then you are also probably using models that are hackable and they'll just oblivion you instead.
The comment about concentrating value within range of one repeater/pitcher is worth a ton of consideration
If you're running a link with multiple valuable models, then necessarily those valuable models are gonna be within the same repeater range
I think this hits folks like SP especially hard, where you'd really like to be concentrating multiple heroes next to each other
OTOH, in SP, you normally get a tonne of efficiency by being able to put multiple highly effective heroes at one critical point on the battlefield. So there's a bunch of trade off going on.
the tradeoff being that nomad GM just win against SP @@inaneimp4314
You can't Dodge in response to a Hacking Attack by a Hacker that is out of LOF or ZOC.
Ahh, I see the issue - the wiki isn't up to date. It still has the 'if you have a valid ARO' trigger, but in the FAQ it's been errata'd to only be valid to dodge if;
● They are the Active Trooper; or
● In the Reactive Turn, the Active Trooper is within LoF or ZoC, or they are affected by a Template Weapon.
Cheers for the catch. I wasn't sure about this one but a quick look at the wiki didn't give me the lead I needed.
What about a reset ?
@@jacobdjurhuus300 a reset can still be done any time you have any valid ARO.
for some reason this video is not playing for me, other videos on youtube are working fine
I don't know how to troubleshoot, but that's very weird. Thanks for letting me know.
@@R0bertShepherd It's working now 🤷♂
don't forget Morans are also able to spotlight on their own, so killing only the hackers won't completely solve the issue ;)
So long as we're being pedantic, I should point out that Morans are absolutely not able to Spotlight. They're able to Forward Observe, which does impose the targeted state, but under very different conditions :P
Nomads do have some highly effective forward observers, though. Pi-Well especially this season has marksmanship forward observer natively, and puppetbots have B3 forward observer (which can also gain marksmanship). Neither can get you through a wall, but both offer fascinatingly viable F2F options.
@@R0bertShepherd Alright, not Spotlight. I meant the FO thing. Which for the end result is the same. I wans't being pedantic, I was pointing out something people usually forgets about them. XD
Curbstones aren't elevated terrain. A level above ground is, like a superior floor, the roof, etc.
That depends entirely on how you discuss terrain with your opponent - which is is why it's always important to do so!
My personal rule is that anything that's physically lower in height than an SX (S0 in old money) can be safely ignored, e.g. the 3mm MDF that buildings rest on at my local club. But I've heard of some players that argue that point, so always discuss - never assume that e.g. a curbstone isn't terrain especially if it's a chunky one.
Are you sure you can Guts away from a repeater zone? You already have total cover from both the hacker and the missile-bot.
Ok, I've just looked it up on the wiki. You're allowed to Guts to leave "The danger zone or Area of Effect of Attacks that did not require LoF." The area of effect of the template is not something you can get out of, and "danger zone" doesn't seem to have any rules definition.
So... ambiguous.
You've found the right line of text. The danger zone of a hacking attack is the hacker's hacking area, so in the attack that you get targeted by spotlit, you're eligible for a guts roll, and if 2" of movement gets you out of the repeater area, you can do so.
This doesn't change that you've been targeted, but if you subsequently reset against a missile hit it means you're totally safe until they land another pitcher. It's also useful generally, because spotlight isn't the only attack they might be making through a repeater.
@@R0bertShepherd Assuming this interpretation is correct, it's a VERY significant trick to have. I frequent use Joan and irregulars, so being able to Guts out of repeaters which are near the edge of their range will make it harder for nomads to just turn off my list.
@@R0bertShepherd the rules are rather confusing. In the wiki, as a requirement, it says a guts roll is allowed if you have survived an attack. Then in “effects” (first bullet) it says you have had to have performed a saving roll. A spotlight doesn’t give you a saving roll.. 🧐
@@andreasjohansson9798 make sure to separate the requirements vs the effects.
The *requirements* for making a guts roll are:
1. The Trooper is not in an Engaged, Null or IMM State.
2. The Trooper had suffered one or more successful Attacks-even if all the attackers are in a Null State
Spotlight is a successful attack which inflicts a state if it succeeds. So it meets the requirements for causing a guts roll. We then go on to resolving the effects of the guts roll, which tell us to make the roll at the very end of the order after resolving any saving rolls. This isn't a requirement, just telling us how the timing works.
@@R0bertShepherd that is correct. Thanks for clarifying! I’m playing nomads so I’m really trying to get me head around this, to play it correctly and be aware of what might happen in these situations. Appreciate your videos, great stuff! :-)
How dare you walk in here as the voice of reason! Disgusting
Disgusteng!