Goonhammer Infinity N5: Faction First Impressions – Yu Jing

The State Empire has long been in a troublesome spot in Infinity. It operates on both the lowest and highest technological levels, the internal gap between the elite power armoured troopers and the terrified political prisoners allowing it to in theory wage war at every point of the spectrum. Through most of N3 and N4 the emphasis was firmly on the most extreme form of that, with small number of hyper-elite profiles supported by masses of discount cheerleaders. This left a sense of a ‘missing middle’, most acutely felt by the Invincible Army whose mid-price heavy infantry never truly found a way to defend themselves against the apex predators of the day.

Significant work has been done in N5 to open up the spectrum, with fascinating twists on numerous old faithful profiles and sectorials. Yu Jing in the early days of N5 stands transformed, and I think even more powerful and dangerous than in the past. It’s a good era for Space China.

Core Yu Jing

Rating: A+

New Capabilities

The Gudan Troops represent a pleasant twist on the existing Yu Jing cheerleader and corner guard role. 12 points gets you a camo token with a zapper and shock mines, guaranteed to give regular orders even if your lieutenant gets assassinated. It’s honestly a delightful set of capabilities.

Reworked Imperial Agent Pheasant Rank comes with Chain of Command and Strategic Deployment baseline, duos with almost anything, and the cheapest option also comes with MadTraps and Minelayer. A phenomenal little package of capabilities to back up an assault lieutenant.

The Silver Snake Sapper profile should be given serious contemplation. If you’ve never played with Sapper you won’t fully appreciate the flexibility it offers especially when paired with a sniper rifle. If you find the right point you can deploy your foxhole on the absolute backline of the table which puts it in the -3 range band of HMGs that might want to come after it. This also gives it the rare distinction of having Albedo and Mimetism meaning that the best case for a HMG trying to dig it out might be a -9 modifier. 

Drop troops in both Tiger Soldier and Liu Xing got a price drop, along with the EVO hacker. The Yu Jing parachutists were already best in class and there’s never been a better time to add one in.

Pitchers are now part of Yu Jing’s arsenal with the Dokkaebi Cyberteam. These profiles finally break the key Yu Jing weakness to hacking and also let it confidently play in the Guided Missile space.

Speaking of guided missiles, Yu Jing can now do better than a mere remote – the Haetae can execute targeted units with volleys of BS 14 base missiles – hitting most targets on 20’s. Hell of a way to follow through on a Spotlight.

The Hac Tao got absolutely lovely glow ups. The discount profile is gone, but what a way to spend 60 points. I can’t over-emphasize what a superstar the Missile Launcher profile is; BS14 Mimetism -6 was already mathematically extremely good at winning long range gunfights, even at burst one. Now it’s a terror to behold.

The Mowang came out a huge winner, adding 6-2 movement and Disco Baller on the Red Fury profile. 

Sun Tze has seen a complete transformation, with Counterintelligence, Decoy 2, Mimetism -3, ECM hacker -3 and a Burst 3 vulkan shotgun. With WIP 17 he’s a hard cookie to Isolate and can put up a serious fight in close combat. He is still only BS12 at the end of the day though.

It doesn’t feel right that you can get a Su Jian for 44 points. Sure it’s lost the template mode but it’s still fantastic. 

Finally, the Feiquan represents the ultimate in sweeper pieces, able to zoom into the midfield, scan down any infiltrating camo markers and clear out their associated skirmishers – just so long as you don’t fly it into any landmines, it hates that.

The Downsides

Despite a huge swathe of profiles being lost, vanilla Yu Jing feels like it has not lost anything of note. It still has the Libertos, still has its drop troops, still has its camouflage skirmishers, still has Hidden Deployment Ninja and Hac Tao, still has essentially its full range of Heavy Infantry. The losses feel like a cleanup of redundant profiles like Jujaks and Wu Ming, or a range of tangentially relevant Invincibles characters. It honestly feels like Vanilla gained far more than it lost. 

Kuang Shi went up in price 20% though, which is literally unplayable. They are always bound by No Cover and lost Dogged so they’re nowhere near as effective as they used to be.

So now it’s time to talk about Sectorials. When discussing if it’s worth taking a Sectorial over vanilla, the questions always are:

• Is there a better fireteam than in vanilla?
• Is there access to more/better/different profiles than in vanilla?

Option 1 is a lot weaker in general these days, with vanilla having fireteams of its own, and fireteams in general being much weaker than they historically were. Option two is also complex – generally, the profiles that make the shift are the cheapest ones. Vanilla has a huge range of expensive elite options, so a slightly dfiferent expensive elite option isn’t worth sacrificing the flexibility of Vanilla. A different range of efficient, cheap profiles can make the difference but it’s hard to beat vanilla.

Imperial Service

Rating: B

New Capabilities

Bao troops having picked up Albedo -3 and wildcard makes them a lovely add to any fireteam, serving the essential role of being able to look directly at the enemy that then blows their heads off. 

Sophotects are juiced now. They’ve always been expensive but now they’ve got a suite of pleasant upgrades and the ability to carry turrets. Take one and you have the ability to do any mission, and that’s something a lot of lists are happy to do.

Adil Mehmut now carries the legendary Disco Baller, adding Eclipse Smoke to the arsenal and letting him reliably close to monofilament katana range. He’s also the complete package, a huge threat at range and close, long with a deep toolkit of different abilities.

Wu Ming got a general points cut but are otherwise the same as they were.

The Kanren got a complete rework, trading their holoprojectors for Decoy (2) and Mimetism -6. It’s an interesting exchange; you can get midfield madtraps for 22 points, which is a good deal, but none of the profiles has a template weapon that’d make them really awkward to approach. I think this is actually a gentle step down for them because being able to drag holoechos through minefields was a unique capability that hasn’t really been replaced, but I’ll give them a try.

The Downsides

As before, the toning down of Kuang Shi has undermined a key asset for the faction. They’re still regular orders at 6 points, but now that’s kind of all they are.

The Longwang is now available as a TAG, but as far as TAG gimmicks go, ‘biometric visor’ is near the bottom of the wishlist. It’s a solid gunfighter, but ISS wasn’t ever hurting for solid gunfighters.

Invincible Army

Rating: C

New Capabilities

AVA 2 Gudan and the Libertos feels like a belated acknowledgement that heavy infantry is incapable of self defense without any sort of board control. I think this is enough to give the Invincibles a little defensive depth.

Quiang Gao is as immune to hacking as it’s possible to be, ignoring Immobilized, Isolated and putting a -3 on I guess the Spotlight that’s left. The only shame is that he’s a HMG guy rather than a close assault piece, meaning it’s hard to get the most out of those abilities.

Hulang Shocktroopers have picked up Disco Baller profiles.

AVA T Duo Fireteams means the Invincibles can form lots of little hitsquads or a couple of bigger fire bases, depending on circumstances. Lots of characters count as Invincibles meaning you can fit a variety of capabilities into a squad while retaining the link purity bonuses.

The Downsides

The key hacking weakness hasn’t really been addressed, putting everything at the mercy of a Pitcher or two. It’s hard to take advantage of the new flexible small fireteams when you need to cluster everything into a big unit to share the tinbot.

White Banner

Rating: D

Why are you booing me? I’m right.

Listen to what I said before. Every sectorial in Infinity must be judged by what you get in exchange for the massive sacrifice of losing access to the range of vanilla. It either needs to present a unique fireteam or unique profiles. White Banner does neither. All of the good White Banner profiles are in vanilla, leaving the remainder a selection of awful neither here nor there dreaded 20 point losers, like the Tian ‘Remember when Jammers were good?’ Gou, the Ye ‘Super Jump and bangbomb+4 is totally worth trading for the Guilang’s Infiltration, Camouflage and shock mines’ Mao, or the Jujak ‘We Have Zuyong At Home’. Vanilla even has the Beasthunter. 

So what about fireteams? Well, you can put shaolin monks in a team with Liang Kai or Jing Qo, even turning them regular in the process. That’s pretty cute and useful. Very reliable smoke under those circumstances, which is relevant now there’s no longer the automatic +3 from range bands. Almost feels like a synergy! You know what would be a better synergy though? Having a MSV2 HMG to take advantage of that smoke. You can also put some guys behind Captain Qiang Gao to give him a decent fireteam bonus, but think carefully about that title for a second. Captain Qiang Gao. Is the captain… also your lieutenant? Your big burly HMG point fight man who has to step around corners and risk taking explosive rounds to the dome in a faction without access to chain of command? Surely not! Our lieutenant is instead the far superior choice of:

• A Dhanshi
• A 50 point Daofei
• Adil Mehmut or a Shang Ji, also point fight explosive round risking dudes
• A Jujak
• A Guijia TAG
• A Guilang that you have to pay 1 SWC for

Which of these is it gonna be? Because by picking White Banner you have sacrificed the core Yu Jing faction strength of phenomenal LT options; gone are multiple +1 order LTs, gone is the Daoying Operative Control Unit, gone is Sun Tze, gone is Chain of Command, gone is the Hsien who gives you free SWC.  

And, to be emphasized, in exchange for some mildly more reliable smoke and a mediocre fireteam you’re giving up:

• Forcing your opponent to deploy expecting a Liu Xing
• The threat of the Hac Tao Missile Launcher, whose profile is inexplicably absent here
• Vanilla fireteams! Did you know you can duo shaolin monks in vanilla now? You can even link up two pairs for two sets of reliable smoke!

Now that I’m through all of that, let’s just take a breath and consider what White Banner would be if Vanilla didn’t exist? Well, in that situation it’d be an easy B+. But as it is, White Banner is a small circle entirely inside the big circle of Vanilla; you can play it and win, but I am yet to see anything that makes the faction more than voluntarily handicapping yourself. 

Conclusion

Observe how vanilla YuJing has retained a lot of its N4 capabilities while also gaining some new tricks, the faction is fundamentally still very competitive and exciting to play. This stable of highly competent profiles, both new and returning, trickles down into the various sectorials meaning that it doesn’t matter which sectorial you play, you’re going to have a blast. As we said at the start of this article: It’s a good era for Space China.

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