Check the Army, just half of the entries have Symbiont Armour. I love Tohaa, they were my "first love" and "love at first sight" within Infinity. But 8 months in a row without releases... well, somehow I'm getting used to it.
May I say, I would like a "I love Tohaa, but I agree they're imbalanced." That has been my opinion strongly since the new Human Sphere.
Well to flip the script, do Tohaa players feel the general complaints about mates and armor have merit, or do you guys think we over-exaggerate their effectiveness? I know as primarily a Nomads player, I totally get some of the hate surrounding the Kriza.
I understand a lot of it, local players all hate them, and I get it for the most part. What gets me is winning a game where they have not even hit a symbiomate and then go on about how broken they are just to channel the anger at something. Unavoidable road blocks are sort of lame, but without them I feel Tohaa loses a lot, probably too much. Though I'd probably trade mates for a proper smell hacker.
This poll is missing the obvious and valid Symbiomate complaint. Change Symbiomates so that they don't break the game and invalidate half the rules, and nobody will have a problem with them.
I don't really get the mate-hate. The ARO game is the most interesting aspect of the rules IMO, and most tech that makes that more achievable is fine in my book. "Oh no, your ARO piece didn't die the first time I shot at it" isn't a particularly convincing argument for me. I can agree that the way they are implemented (fail the F2F, then decide to use them is having your cake and eating it too) but the concept is solid in my book. What is a bit pushed IMO is slapping them on the CoC Kaeltar. This both gives us a super optimised profile and relegates the biobomb profile to the dustbin. Even with this however, I feel the Sukuel is the most eggregious case of "Tohaa OP". Enough of a gap filler and sufficiently optimised to put me in the Tohaa as somewhat overpowered category. The second most could quite possibly be the Clipsos, but we've had that thing since the beginning of the faction and didn't really get called OP back then...
You could fix several problems with Tohaa balance and choice gaps with these rerules: • Symbiomates block a hit, not all hits, in a single order. Thus, a Tohaa player could still feel like a badass, swallowing a Missile or Flamethrower, but not an entire HMG volley. • Flip the Symbiont Fire vulnerability: 1 Symbiont Wound, dies to Fire. 2+ Symbiont Wounds, takes Fire damage normally. The sore thumb with Symbionts was that Gorgos and Ectros, and to a lesser degree Rasail, would easily and regularly die to a stray Rocket or Auxbot. Sakiels were cheap, and didn't need help. Flipping the Fire vulnerability in this way would make it more like "fair" for the Gao-Rael costing more or less the same as a Yaogat. • Triads can't reduce to Duo. I'm not sure why they can. Previously, the best way to handle Tohaa was to pick off 1 Triad member, then pick off the easier Impetuous taret. Bizarrely, they gained the ability to retain a Duo off of Triads, and two Impetuous models levelled up to Frenzy, but got cheaper. • Give Kaeltars the Specialist rule. It's in their name. ITS needs specialists. It would make Symbiomate + Chain of Command Kaeltars a not-autoinclude. • Give a new S2 troop that isn't a Triad troop or Camo troop or Symbiobugs troop. Kotails are great, and everyone but Tohaa players love them. There's just nothing a Tohaa player would reasonably play without a Triad or Sync buddy, so Kotails are more of a liability than a fun toy. • Make Regeneration (and AutoMediKit) an "automatic" skill like Holoprojector. Taqeuls are a cool new unit that a minority of Tohaa players take, because Regeneration is an obscene tax on every Infinity model plagued with it. That's why you see SAKIEL B0X NAO!! every month, but little Taqeul demand. There's no reason that Regeneration (and AutoMediKit) shouldn't be "automatic", and it would be healthy for every faction with such skills. • A new release. Because otherwise we will be angry and keep pubstomping you with Makauls and Symbiomated Sukeuls.
I like the fluff for Tohaa quite a bit, but their internal balance is terrible. Makauls are too good, because stacking i-kohl and MA is undervalued, and flamethrowers are scarier than chain rifles. Sukeuls are too good, and there's no point in making new Tohaa models when everyone is just going to run Sukeuls, Kaeltars, and Makauls anyway. Tohaa come off like the faction redesign that came with HSN3 was made by someone on the design team who really liked Tohaa and managed to slip overpowered stuff past the rest of the team. It's like a faction made up of Riot Grrls. Symbiomate mechanic should just be deleted. Pheroware is interesting and cool but nobody uses it because CoC is a godlike ability on top of Symbiomates.
I don't mind Tohaa. I'm a bit annoyed though that CB gave them in-built strengths and weaknesses, then decided to retract the weaknesses while leaving all the strengths. CB's initial design preimise to was build a force that focuses entirely around medium and short-range combat, with mediocre BS and high Burst. Okay, sounds reasonable. Give them abundant Eclipse Smoke so they're guaranteed to close the distance, and cheap 2nd Wound so they have some staying power. Give that 2nd Wound some thematic weakness vs fire that can be exploited by a canny opponent. Done. That seemed to run okay for a while. Oh, okay, we're not going with the short-range combat thing anymore. We want to give the HMGs and missile launchers... Alright, well that's cool. Oh, we're getting rid of the Fire weakness? Um alright, I guess it wasn't that relevant to most games. Oh we're also letting them ignore hits? Sounds good, we just need to up the cost on the 2nd Wound that many units have. Wait they're keeping both? Also, noone seems to realize how good Bombs are. I've only run across them a handful of times, because everyone leans on Mates like a crutch, but Bombs are soooo good. Had a game last week where Neema with Bombs run around a corner to see one of my minis. I realized she could shoot Spitfire, shoot a template, Dodge, walk into CC, or use one of a huge pile of Bomb abilities, and I basically had no ARO choice that would cover me versus all of those possibilities. I had no viable ARO that could prevent my model taking unopposed damage. My opponent basically said "uh yeah, I basically have about 11 different options here for what I can do." As a competitive player, you acknowledge that Tohaa are out there, and you roll with it. But if I were a new player, I'd be massively intimidated by the mechanics at work.
I think there's also a section of people who aren't necessarily new but actively refuse to learn how to deal with things. Iv'e seen local players who complain makaul are broken every tournament despite never (from what I can tell) changing their strategy and they've been playing for awhile. I think that's the hardest group of people to judge advice from/give advice too because they are experienced enough to think they are right, but don't really have the best mindset. If you want to play anything competitively, I feel like your first instinct has to be how to adapt rather than just take yourself out of the game.
Pretty sure Tohaa are comfortably in the top 2 Factions/Sectorials of the game regarding internal balance, managing Active vs Reactive Turn and versatility. Then there are the Tohaa players and the constant outcry for a Sakiel box no one would buy because we all know real AVA for them is 1 in listbuilding. If you stopped the Sakiel nonsense and started asking for a Sukeul box people might feel more sympathetic..... (then again probably not, you might as well ask people to support more Mutt releases).
I personally think, that this is the biggest point for the Tohaa hate. People don't like it, when their usually tactic doesn't work. You can't beat Tohaa only by shooting them. Play the mission, score your point's. The advantage on tournaments on the other hand is undeniable
They have Eclipse Smoke and specialists in the same fireteam, they can play the noninteractive button pushing game better. And what if the mission has killing enemy units as a primary objective? The fact of the matter is that if you have *one* faction with an intensely tilting playstyle and power level, like Cryx in Mk 2 Warmachine, it's bad for the game.
It is literally the only thing in the game that simultaneously stops every attack from every angle and of every type. A Gorgos can walk in front of every model on the enemy team, within hacking range, and shrug off every single attack that isn't a crit. Templates, Hacking, normal Shooting. Doesn't even need to roll a dice.
This is an exciting topic. I collect Tohaa and play very rarely. And when I played, I guess I didn't use many of the "nasty" stuff (e.g. I don't like the models of Makauls and Sakiels, so I don't even own them). And so of course I'm looking forward to new Tohaa releases, also to have more models that I like. So I found it all the more irritating how many comments actually seem to rant against Tohaa releases. That makes sense now, when I read how badly balanced the faction seems to be. But this atmosphere is absolutely toxic for a "relatively innocent casual player" like me. I find it wrong and harmful to create a bad atmosphere within a hobby. We are all on the same side who want a good game and new toys. So we should all hope that CorvusBelli will take time for the faction again. So that playing against Tohaa isn't annoying anymore and so that I get some new stuff.
Wut? Two-wound, BS12, linkable specialist able to carry interesting weapons at a starting price of 18 points... fucking awesome, you can build a list around 6 of them and still have tons of points left. I always use one, sometimes two, and would use them a lot more if I had more of them available. But I don't want to end with 5 clones from the same blister. If you look at the Tohaa forums (not only here, also in other forums like the Kurage one), it is a box that most Tohaa players would instantly buy without second thoughts. Also... why would we want a Sukeul box? That's plain stupid, it's an AVA 4 trooper and we already have two models, we just need the HMG one.
