USARF Blackjacks and the Unknown Ranger - First Thoughts

With the upcoming Human Sphere N3 book, Corvus Belli started to gives us a taste of what is coming. For the first time recently they gave us profiles of the long awaited USAriadna units, the Blackjacks and The Unknown Ranger.

The profiles are quite interesting and I wanted to get my thoughts down before we get the books.

Blackjacks

I seen people calling this the first true Ariadna Heavy Infantry (HI), but I don't really see it that way. To me "normal" HI in Infinity has 2 Wounds, Blackjacks have 1 Wound per profile. Which is pretty interesting on its own! Not many units in Infinity have two profiles, unless you play Tohaa. At first glance this reminds of the Yu Jing unit that can transform but this seems more like Tohaa Symbiont, it gets worse after taking damage.

V: Courage is not new, but Lo-Tech A and Heavyweight is. I am guessing the Lo-Tech A is the rule that makes it downgrade after taking a wound because it is not in the second profile and Bostria said something along those lines in the Beasts of War video. It would be nice if this rule always kicked in, even if you go straight to dead, so you could never be taken out too quick but I doubt it would be that badass. Harder to guess what Heavyweight could do, no mechanics comes to mind where being heavy would affect it. Maybe you can jump on people and cause damage?

I do like the statline though, BS13 is always nice to see and it has ARM 5, after taking a wound it goes to BS12 and ARM 4 which isn't too shabby either. It is a slow HI unit, which was kinda expected but I am guessing it will be more of a sit back and deal gunishment unit. With AP HMG or T2 Sniper Rifle, you are not going to be charging forward, but they do have Chest Mines and SMG or DEP, which are pretty good at keeping people from getting too close.

Sadly it is Hackable though, which I am not fan of as Ariadna was always famous for not being Hackable but we can't have everything I suppose.

Both weapon options are 36pts, with only SWC being different. Personally I think I'd see myself going for the HMG option because I have enough Snipers in my USA but the 2 SWC cost might be bit high so it'll depend on the rest of the army, but I'd be happy with either to be honest. There is a potential for both, or more, since in USARF sectorial I expect the AVA to be higher.

As far as the model, I am expecting it to be a suit of armour rather than a robot-style. The current Ariadna HI do not actually have that many armour plates so would be cool to see this being either armoured from head to toe, or like a battle-mech suit. With Silhouette 5, its gonna be big either way. If it was S6 I would guess it might be a Dog Warrior with lots of armour, which would be epic. I hope they make two models box set so you have a full power version and a damaged version, it has lots of potential to look awesome.

The Unknown Ranger

The Unknown Ranger is definitely either Chuck Norris or Rambo, or mix of both! Will see when the model comes out who was the inspiration. It is a quite costly unit at 41pts or 47pts +1.5 SWC but it does seem worth it and most of things in USARF is cheap. If I am honest I was expecting more of a Camo+Infiltration loner unit with close range weapons, D-charges and such but this profile seems to be more of elite commander.

The Ranger looks very beasty in CC, not only he has Natural Born Warrior to negate enemy Martial Arms but he also has CC22, Kinematica and T2 CCW, thats insane! Though because of the price tag, he might not be in CC that often. It tends to be safer to shoot people still.

Scavenger and NWI are also pretty useful. I think this makes the Rifle option much more appealing than the Molotok. You get Chain of Command so you don't have to worry about your Lt as much and after you kill someone, you can take their weapon most of the time so you can easily grab yourself a HMG or Sniper Rifle and go on a killing spree from long range.

The Chain of Command also has some decent combo potential in both vanilla and USARF. In vanilla the new Lt unit is coming out with Strategos Lv2 which is fun and you wont have to worry about obvious Lt.

In USARF though, you can get your first Lt killed, this guy becomes Lt, then drop in Van Zant with Executive Orders so he becomes the Lt and has the Lt Order for use and when he dies, the Ranger is Lt again! Fun times.

I think I will often try to find a place in my army for this guy. Hopefully the mini will look as badass as the profile is.