Introduction
Well, what a surprise! Corvus Belli recently dropped the rules for ITS Season 16 into everyone’s hot little laps. Some of you are going to be keen to just get in there and read them, so here you go: You can download the ITS 16 document here. For everyone else, Goonhammer is going to drop the TLDR on you and save you some time: There’s not much different…yet. Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?
What’s New (Pussycat)?
CB has provided a statement that ITS Season 16 will be one season broken up into two parts, with the first period using the N4 rules and a similar ITS configuration to Season 15, while the second half of the season will use N5 rules and will be adapted to fit. The language they’re using here sounds like an ITS Season 16.5 document will be released after N5 is released and that events will need to use that moving forwards. This explains why Season 16 Part I seems to be very similar to ITS 15.
So, to answer the question of ‘what’s new?’ I feel like the answer is currently: Not much.
What’s Still Here?
Border Skirmishes remains, so your AD troops still have an option to drop (or walk) onto the edge of Exclusion Zones. Resilience Operations and Direct Action missions are also still here, which is nice. Reinforcements remains an optional Extra for the time being, which isn’t terribly surprising but here we are, I guess.
What’s Gone
O-12 Prestige has gone and left us. Which is good. It was far too optimal a usage of Command Tokens.
Also, we’ve lost a few scenarios…
B-Pong: I’m not surprised this scenario got pulled. It felt like it was an all-or-Nothing mission. Additionally, as a scenario where the players could influence the scenario state (ie. where Beacons were, it was heavily table dependent. At events where you might play a few different missions on a table, it would be entirely possible for a table to be heavily skewed towards one player. I’m going to miss yelling ‘Beer Pong!’ like a Frat Boy but, honestly, that’s probably for the best.
Evacuation: Absolutely needed to either be changed or removed. First of all, it was insanely order-intensive as a mission. Secondly, gating scoring behind passing two WIP rolls (one for CivEvac and the other for Extracting civilians) was just a painful experience as soon as you fail 2+ of those rolls in a turn. Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of the mission…I just want CB to tweak it a but before bringing it back.
Last Launch: Another complex scenario involving moving elements from one part of the table to another. In my experience, this was a scenario where the winner was the person who got one model off the table (and only in their last turn) while their opponent got none. That said, this is another scenario I want to see come back after an adjustment. The tension between scoring points by moving your big pieces off the table and maintaining a coherent enough force to continue to contest the battle space is something I really love as a concept and would hate to see abandoned by CB.Â
Looting and Sabotage: I don’t hate LnS anywhere near as much as some other people do. It does feel like a scenario that favors the player that gets a better dice result when stage diving the AC2 with their Infiltrator or Impersonator but overall I really enjoyed my games of Looting and Sabotage. I don’t have terribly strong feelings on this one being retired and don’t see an obvious reason for CB’s choice to remove it from rotation.
Power Pack: I think the only reason Power Pack has been pulled is due to the unconventional deployment zones. Which is a mild shame, I enjoy my games of Power Pack. That said, part of the scenario decisions for ITS 16 might simply be map rotation. Could be CB is pulling Power pack because it’s been in rotation for a few seasons.
What Does This Mean for the Game?
Honestly? Not a huge amount, just yet.Â
Which Factions Are Going to Do Well in Season 16?
Checking recent tournament results we haven’t seen any severe bias in factions taking the podium. I think we’ll continue to see people playing whatever sparks joy for them rather than chasing any perceived meta. While CB has suggested that N4 rules will apply for the first half of ITS 16, I think we’ll still see some of the proposed N5 adjustments impact the way people play, which is to say I wouldn’t be surprised if the supposed ‘GML factions’ take a small hit in player numbers but nothing terribly significant.
With PanO and JSA in the starter box, I think we’ll see a lot of representation for both factions at events, which means that players looking to get ahead of the curve will want to take factions that can play against PanO’s High BS Big Guns (so, warbands, marker state infiltrators, and Rapid Offensive Units) and JSA’s perceived melee focus (Hacking networks to fork melee HI when they break Stealth during attack runs and disposable trading pieces for tossing templates at 30+ point Ninja). That said, the beauty of this game is that it’s the player that wins games, not their faction, so I don’t think the names on trophies, nor their preferred factions, will be changing significantly.
Conclusion
What’s there to say? ITS 16 is going to be a soft-launch for N5, with a handover point halfway through the season. We’ll just keep trucking on until ITS 16.5 comes out and maybe we’ll see CB shake up the tournament scene then.
I approve of this method, better for CB to migrate us over to the new rules, make some observations and then course correct for ITS 16.5 rather than throw everyone under the bus with a new ruleset and new event rules and scenarios at the same time.
While we wait for the Final Form of ITS 16 to come out, I suggest we all just enjoy playing N4 as well as coming to grips with the new rules for N5 when they come out.
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