Data Sphere

Okay, I just read the new ITS scenarios. Does anyone else think this could be the year of the Shavastii? Between the Shavastii rule, Hidden Deployment Malignos forward observers, Shrouded Minelayers, Speculo Killers, and infiltrating PITA Caliban disruptors, I've gotta think the Shavastii have a pretty big edge in these scenarios. I mean infiltrating Caliban alone, with their automedikits and Shavastii rule ccould really mess up an opponent's plans in Frontline, especially if supported with a Speculo Killer and Shrouded Minelayers.

I'm not really an expert on all the factions...Ariadna obviously have the camo and infiltrators and minelayers to be PITA's, but to my knowledge they don't have the forward observers to dominate the objectives? Or maybe I'm just not aware of them? Haqqislam has the Hunzakut, which is super cheap for what he offers, plus I could see the Halqa getting some play and the Taureg. But Haqq doesn't have any minelayers. Nomads have those air deployed Tomcat engineers but, again, I'm just not aware of any strong minelaying ability. Also, one of the Nomad strengths is hacking, but to my knowledge their strongest hackers aren't infiltrators, they're marker-shooters. And by my reading of the scenarios you can't fulfil an objective through a repeater (apart from the Hacking secret objective). I guess Yu Jing can both plant mines and infiltrate forward observors, but I still think Shavastii has the edge just because of their spawn embryos. Pan O, Aleph and Tohaa I pretty much know nothing about.

Am I forgetting about or unaware of something obvious?

I think that spamming infiltrators only take you that far. Those skills aren't free and outside of those, most of them, at least the cheaper ones, have pretty medicoree profiles. And if you buy those to only act as cheer leaders...Ariadna has Forward observers, btw. I think the point is to make the table open enough to get some Lofs between depoyment zones and objectives, so the starting infiltration heavy army wouldn't automaticly win against more straightforward army. That doesn't mean that shasvastiis aren't good, especially when they get so much benefit in that one scenario.

SgtHulka, since you're our best buddy and big toe, I'm going to drop some knowledge on you. A quick visit to http://infinity.virgule.net/ tells us that:

Every faction has forward observers, and most have infiltrating camo forward observers. Ariadna leads the pack with a whopping 8 forward observer options, nomads follow with 7. The Combined army is in the middle of the pack with 5 forward observer options, but one of those is a Morat, leaving Shasvastii with only 4. If we limit our search to only infiltrating forward observer, the gulf narrows, but Ariadna still leads the pack with 4 options, followed by Nomads with 3. SEF has 2.

Nomads strongest hacker is the interventor with wip15 and HD+, who does not have infiltration, it's true. Nomads also get an infiltrating TO hacker with wip 14, no slouch, or an infiltrating zero hacker for a measly 30pts.

Each faction gets a minelayer. Haqq gets a viral minelayer for zero SWC. Pano gets 4 different minelayers. Ariadna and nomads get minelayers for 20 and 19 pts. Aleph gets a minelayer that's nearly identical to the shrouded, but has Dogged instead of Automedikit. In my book, Dogged is vastly better than Automedkit, since neither works if you get reduced to dead, and Dogged works without rolling dice. I'll always take the limited automatic effect over the open-ended trick that might never work. (If you're ever dying to hear a rant, ask me about monofilament CCW's sometime. But pack a lunch, I'll be at it for a while)

"We're soldiers, but we're american soldiers. We've been kicking ass for 200 years! We're 10 and 1!"

I guess it's time to retire and open that Hulkaburger franchise.

The Shasvaasti make me happy about my upcoming Neoterran Army. Unlike my usual JSA, the Neoterrans have a thing or two to say to camo and TO markers
The Japanese however get their arses kicked on a regular basis