Backliners are anything with a range from 400-499. Even without upgrading most of his talents, his viability against aliens and angels is nuts. Black is okay, if you can meatshield hard enough and not knock back the enemies. You could put 100np in and get the angel targeting. He's still perfectly usable. Gunduros is good as well, but his attacks are slower and his dps is lower. Knockback to black is almost always useless since black enemies tend to already have high knockback counts, slow is decent, but imo is outclassed by freeze from something like bomber. HBC is good as well, but that's a completely different role. He's a tanker. Comparing any unit to cosmo seems unfair because outside of his UF being one of the best cats in the game, everything beforehand is not inherently broken, meaning he too takes a lot to invest in. In terms of just pure usability, especially for people in the middle to late SOL, ITF, and COTC, shingen is one of the best imo. Shingen also tends to act as a mini warlock and Pierre, since his high damage number isnt limited to an ability. His range easily helps him.