Well, since Kurage Crisis is over, I would like to gather OUR opinions for the crisis. Personally I enjoyed this event sooo much, and I hope everyone feels the same. So I want to hear out fellow Infinity players' thinking about cool faction on the Kurage Crisis. You got TWO votes, so feel free to pick your own faction... And another faction which is worth of your praise :) Good job playing Kurage, see you around!
You might want to hold off on calling anyone the winner at Lafayette Tower, since based on blue on blue, reports with less than 3 pictures and 150 words etc Ariadna will drop about 10-20 points(including the 3 from ownership) there while the tohaa have some extra shenanigans on top of the regular issues and will lose 60-80. That will put both factions at 180ish points with the lowest losses, so it's a lot closer than the 49 points. Regardless of how that turns out, the Tohaa did well, but NA2 was very impressive early on, and YuJing have improved immensely from their performances in previous campaigns. Seems like the whole was less than the sum of the parts.
Gotta be PanO. A frankly inhuman performance, racking up points at a rate which seems almost illegal. The hyperpower truly does have some impressively skilled, TheFit, and dedicated troops. Let's have a round of applause for the Boys in Blue and especially PanO High Command for showing us how it's done!
Honestly, I think every faction (except Combined) really did very well. Combined Players and Pano players were pretty low key this time, but all the other factions really went at it, and each one accomplished something during this campaign. I absolutely love it. I had to give it to Tohaa though. While Ariadna did conquer Pano, Ariadna was the heavy weight here out numbering Pano, so it was not unexpected.
Ariadna were also actively fighting the tohaa until the Last few days, but once all is said and done, it's possible that Ariadna vastly over committed to the op centre which might just allow the tohaa a foot in the door to the control tower...
Haqq did good, a fine and noble faction. Efficient, honourable and good reports. This Nomad salutes you!
In terms of exceeding previous expectations, YuJing. Despite many of their former players going JSA, they did quite well. Seems a cornered dragon is more dangerous than a fox. Haqqislam deserve praise as a Nomad: They came, they saw, they saved our ass long enough for us to get it together.
Aleph was impressive. To be able to threaten and take for a moment both J-5 Kommstat and Kazerne while Nomads received help in the first phase. Sorry Nomads but while you were having so much players on your side, seeing Aleph giving you so much challenge on two locations and not only one was unexpected. Things were easier in the second phase for you and you demonstrated to be very defensive while you could be more on the offense. I don't know where it came but your winrate was pretty low this year. Hope you'll, like us PanO, be in a better shape next year.
Yu Jing did incredibly well, Tohaa had a solid performance, Ariadnan had a good performance despite a poor diplomatic position.
Mid-campaign, I ran the numbers and discovered that an average of 37% of players were actually active in making reports across the nine factions. And also, losses include being defeated in other reports AFAIK (linked reports of course only count a winner and loser each) so given that the starter sets are Nomad+PanO and YuJing+Haqqislam, those factions will suffer a little from new players being opponents to more experienced players. Not everyone links a report or actually fights someone taking part in the campaign, after all. Doesn't change a whole lot from ALEPH doing relatively well, yes, but it is important to remember that "Registered Commanders =/= People Actually Playing". Just over 6 from 10 accounts didn't get a game in by Phase One's end. I'm gonna try run the numbers now the whole thing is over to see what difference Phase Two made, but I don't think it'll really be a massive difference either direction.
Dammit! I gave my votes to Aleph and Tohaa. Two factions with the lowest playerbase that gave their all in the field. But I don't want that to mean that I was not excited for Ariadna's "This is my effing home, you bastards!" stance (no matter what I write as a Haqqislam Commander IC, OOC I just loved it); or Yu Jing's "You will effing respect my authority!" run on the NA2 base. To me this has been a wonderful experience, where I silently rooted for my opponents as well as allies and felt pride in their efforts to make their factions stand out.
You are overlooking, that in the first week many of the Nomad players waited for Tunguska and therefore didn't play. That the release of these sectorial was one week after the start of the campaign was unlucky.
I have to give it to YuJing. Before campaign, many assumed dragon was out of the fight with it's playerbase damaged and likely will fall to assault, do to having a single base and limited playerbase. Boy, were they wrong, as YuJing not only defended properly,. made good on their alliance offer, but also, captured enemy location. When everyone believes you are weakened and out, and you push towards a victory, out performing evidently bigger faction? That was something amazing. Second choice would be Aleph: While Ariadna had amazing firepower and pretty much was the threat to everyone, Phase one performance of Aleph was nothing short of amazing due to strategy and adaptability. If I recall correctly it went like this: 1)Nomads show limited numbers, so location B of Johnny 5 is massively attacked by Aleph, leading to it's capture. 2)Nomad invest reports into defense, Haqqislam allies move in to reinforce. Aleph keeps engaging for a while, and when their lead id down to 15 or so... 3)Aleph switches target. Seeing that nomads and Haqqislam defend location B and heavily invest reports there, Aleph strikes hard at location A... leading to it's capture. At location A only nomads had previously invested points, thus making them only faction capable of defending. Just sheer coordination in order to pull off two successful and threatening quick strikes is something to be commended, as much as I cheered for the anti-AI alliance. My point being Aleph, knowing it doesn't have to defend, took on two players, and it was a glorious fight, worthy of respect. My third choice is my faction: Ariadna. Sins of Wotan caught up with us, so we found both our locations attacked by two different enemies... and yet, we even went on offensive, threatening one of PanO locations. Defending two locations on Lafayette was challenging, and when you add offensive atop of that... and yet we were there. Second phase was much slower for us sadly, but in the end, when PanO activity soared (they went from very low position in points to practically third faction, we moved in to protect our allies and even managed to take the base, albeit, sacrificing our own, We did our best to avoid turtling and keeping campaign stale.. We took big risks and I believe despite disastrous diplomatic start, we proven we can be reliable allies and that our sheer power is force to be reckoned with.
Yu Jing did far better than I was expecting! Well done Yu Jing! They kept their fight and spirit up the whole campaign!
I'm gonna go ahead and say what I said in the Kurage forums about this: Effing Tunguska. Everyone was playing that as if they were some uber badass new army with an Insta Win build like this is Warhammer 40k. And I watched several of my brazilian bromads get heir butts handed to them because they couldn't play the new army properly. I kept telling everyone to play it safe and go Vanilla, but no, Tunguska, Tunguska! Gosh, I hate these russians. Now that the rant is over, I do think that the new (admitedly good, but hard to play) army is one of the many reasons why Nomads lost more than won this year. That being said, we still held the node :D
This was obvious to me. You can't pretend to play a new army as if you had been playing it for 2 years. And the sectorial has clear weaknesses. Playing Vanilla with just adding the Heckler would do enough.
I really admire the way Haqqislam took control of their own narrative, it's definitely something Ariadna needs to emulate going forward. Yu Jing was also a big standout, not only did they take a base without losing any, but they saw an opportunity to ally themselves with the beatstick faction and that way protect themselves from a pretty bad diplomatic position imposed on them by the uprising
