Mission 026 Report – Get your N4 On!
If you wanted a collection of excellent N4 battle reports from the first month of its life, look no further than here!
We’ll be announcing the winner of the October Bromad Academy Mission 026 live of Late Night Wargames, 8:30 PM Pacific, November 3rd, 2020!
Mike (Psybilliah)
Nate (natetehagressar)
Eric
Sam
Clint (pseudonymmster)
I have played a few N4 games, in person and on TTS. The army changes are good, many factions that I avoided playing in N3 feel much more viable now. It’ll be interesting to see how the meta shifts (definitely seeing a rise in HI/TAGs in my games, which makes me feel the need for AP/K1 ammo when I’m building lists now).
I’m a fan of nearly all the rules changes: Crits are more intuitive (besides the oddity that is Continous Damage), many rules were aligned to act similarly (Combat Jump/Infiltration), de-nesting rules, and decluttering of “choices” (Martial Arts and Hacking). The biggest changes, rules-wise, are definitely the changes to Dodge, because there is so much Dodging that happens, and it changes your decisions more than you’d expect.
Active turn dodge movement can be used in a variety of ways:
– Can skip across narrow firelanes without provoking an ARO.
– Can move into LoF to set up AROs or an entire order skill like Triangulated Fire or Berserk.
– Can engage while avoiding a direct template weapon
– Some units gain movement by doing this (Domaru comes to mind.)
Reactive turn dodging feels like the bigger change, and losing a lot of the restrictions around Change Facing and Engage.
– Can obtain LoF. (Mine around the corner trick is a little bit trickier now, as you’ve seen.)
– Can Engage *any* model within Dodge range, not only the one activated.
– Can leave an engagement.
N4 Dodge manages to add tactical depth, reduce the number of skills, and keeps the reactive player feeling like they’re making impactful choices. I love it. And I’m sure I’ve missed more ways of using Dodge that others have noticed, and more Dodge tricks will be invented in games to come.
I do have a few minor qualms (“Imm-A”/”Imm-B” should be called “Imm (Reset-3)” and “Imm (Dodge-6)”), and there are definitely gaps in the rules that need to be addressed, but all-in-all, N4 feels like a step in a good direction.