Mostly smokes and that special dodge trait. It's just awfully painful to get when you start the game, and then most of it doesn't makes sense (it's a BS attack that doesn't attack at all and targetless so you can aro smoke totally on another place but it's resolved as an attack). Then Fireteams, too much bonuses that more than compensate for a lower list of troops. If you play vanilla against a secto, most of the time you will have to heavily focus on the Fireteams tout get shit done on your side. Plus they have so many rules that's annoying, and right now they almost Always Come mixed, which makes old ones seem outdated (emphasis on "seem") or just Bland.
The whole of vanilla, just get rid of it and make everything sectorial. No more restrictions to profiles due to the interactions in vanilla, mor designspace for bold and interesting concepts.
For all the hate this is a deliberate design feature to allow CC troops to be effective. The solution is really to just build overlapping firelanes and dont hug corners so hard
Sadly that couldn't work as some units are out way before thé sectorial is UP. But turn vanilla into some kind of sectorial maybe?
Vanilla Aleph, Ariadna and Nomads are way better than any of their sectorials. You just need to play to your strengths of vanilla (flexibility and unique synergies) instead of turning everything into a straight up firefight. You already saw how much people flipped their shit over a single sectorial being removed from its vanilla army, Vanilla players would flip their shit if this happened. And as I said above this, some vanilla factions are stronger and more interesting to play than their sectorials.
Not to start that discussion all over again, but I don't think flipping shit is a valid argument considering how little shit was flipped when the removal was done right a few months later. I just don't think the idea of @Ursun is good since I enjoy vanilla and that I think Infinity is more interesting when it's not played with two tightly clustered groups of models on a 4'x4' each game.
They aren't going anywhere yet. Plenty of head notice. Small compensatory update. Etc. Done right. Nearly no fuss.
I agree it was handled a lot better, but the situation isn't comparable to removing vanilla in the same way that the JSA thing was.
Nor is JSA comparable to removing vanilla with those criteria because JSA was not removed, only disassociated. I would point at Exrah, but I wasn't part of the community when that happened, so I wouldn't know. Removing vanilla is a huge suggestion, however, and it'd uproot both meta and the game's identity at its core.
Agreed. It would be a huge shake up, more than any of those other situations. I like vanilla, I wouldn't be happy if it was scrapped.
I'd like the game better too, if there was no "vanilla" army as they are now. Breaking up the armies into "dedicated" sectorials is the way, in my view. Let's take CA for example. You have Onyx, Morat and Shasvastii up and running. Then you get a new sectorials with the EI Aspect (like we all hope will happen soon) And maybe a thematic force like "Invasion Force" (a second step behind Onyx First Contact Force), with selected elements of the armies. No Avatar leading but the other Aspects, not all the selection of Shasvastii and Morats, making it different from Onyx. Then year by year you can even launch dedicated CBLs to reflect new events and campaigns... This is what i really want to change at the core of the game. And a rationalization of the skills like they did with Aristeia. Picts and clarity. Levelled skills with same effects and not mixed up like now (Martial Arts gives only bonus to you, Guards gives only penalties to your opponent, really great fighters have BOTH at high level and can use both, just to say... And no more things like Fat1 is DMG+1, Fat2 is Critics on 1s, it is even more difficult to memorize than a different named skill!)
@Solar when it is not relevant we can. It's going to be relevant for a long time, but we really should stick to doing it in a mature fashion. @tox leaving the vanilla kill-off aside, I've been of the opinion that Guard is weird for so many reasons more than just the progression. I think martial arts styles should be better. If the asian style focuses on MODs (+1/-1 per level) and the western style focuses on defensive power (+0/-1, +1PH per level) and the more alien style of CA is about aggression (+1/-0, +1 PH per level) we could very roughly keep a progression curve similar to the current (though level 4 would be a reasonable cap for these skills). MA5 would likely be best served broken out to its own skill for Mushashi, and you'd also be able to give flavour to specifically Pan-O units where some wouldn't follow the Knightly "western" style. Alternatively stylize them for aggression, defense or balance and simply have the vampirism of Protheion be all it does.
Critical hits. When you or your opponent get a lot of them it really feels like this game is just about dice luck.
That doesn't explain the consistent win rate of top players and strong players in local meta. Although I do share your frustration of getting critted.
Of course it doesn't, and this is a game where better players will rise to the top fairly consistently. Knowing that doesn't stop our emotional monkey brain from feeling bad when we get critted back to back or stomp someone effortlessly due to lucky rolls. I like crits conceptually, but i'm definitely in the camp of wanting to see them pared back marginally.
