If there's any wound here, it's self-inflicted. There is a substantial bias amongst players against expensive units, but while I understand where you're coming from I simply disagree. But hey, playstyles are a subjective thing.
This looks like fun. My main question is if there will be a deva SWC box (or a new blister) and/or a Yadu blister (or box).
It's the nature of Aleph. And why Posthumans are costed appropriately in my opinion. I strongly disagree, at least here in Aleph forums. I think there's a bias against expensive units which cannot live up to their potential without circumstances which are completely out of player control. Remember in vanilla, Marut is generally considered among playable TAGs since before Fatality L1 and REM Pilot days.
I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine in OSS as well. But in the end it's really about different metas and playstyles. We don't have to agree on the subject.
Frankly I also find the Marut not viable in OSS. The MSV is ALWAYS useful but the Smoke+MSV trick is very important to justify those 120 points + 3 SWC. However I also believe that some units SHOULD belong to Vanilla lists and Marut is apparently one of those, so I'm quite satisfied.
To me, saying a unit has its only place in Vanilla is like saying it is not interesting enough to fit anywhere else, so it goes back to vanilla. The Marut leaves me scratching my head, it is expensive sure, as is to be expected from a TAG. But I don't see what it brings over a Cutter for 20 points, or even a Szallamandra for a whole 30 points.
When you eat 3 consecutive crits in your active turn to your Spitfire Asura (three orders wasted into getting critted by a Morat Vanguard unlinked wirh combi rifle), then your Achiles V2 Lt fails 2 light flamethrower rolls (one after the other), you might understand our "let's not place all eggs on the same basket". Did I mention that I also got my Marut AND my Szalamander posessed THREE times in a single game?
The main problem i see with the Marut not having smoke, is not because it needs the smoke in active turn, it is because it needs it in reactive. As a sort of ablative armor. You can't be sure to hide your TAG. Even if you hide it, you can't be sure the opponent won't get a line of sight. Well, that's true for all TAGs. Except the Marut is probably Lt (and the opponent will know it from the deployment) AND it cost about 30 pts more than your average MBT in a faction where anything is expensive. Meaning the opponent knows he can cripple you (and probably beyond any recovery) because you will be short on backup. Since we have some powerful toys, roughly about the same price (ie: deva+dakini link with support, why not an MSV-2 deva if we want the MSV) which will bring far more orders, tools, efficiency, and reliability, i see little point in taking the Marut.
Yup, the Battle Report in which they link a Thorakitai engineer with a Yudbot. They tried to defend that in the comments section. Mind you, it's an argument in favour of re-writing the rulebook, when people has such different metas as to play the game with different rules, there is a problem.
Maybe I am crazy, but I see that as an opportunity. The Marut is big juicy bait. If you know where your opponent is heading, it is so much easier to lay a trap for him. Dasyu or Posthuman MKII? Or better yet both? Not that you use the Marut just for bait, use its MSV3 to clear out the enemy trouble troops, just make sure you end your turn with your traps set. If only OSS had some options to mine the hell out of the table . . .
So many hackers, so few Repeaters... And seriously, wtf is up with Arjuna? What's its point? Why even mention he is an archer in the video?
Shame there's no smoke but it's not the end of the world, probably won't ever take the Maruts in oss. She is a tag that requires a list be built around her and I feel that's more viable in vanilla. Arjuna are kind of weird, I was hoping for a unit with some more range behind it but the e/m template bots can also be fun. They can only join Yadu teams can they not?
Can't speak to the rest of it, but myth-Arjuna is an archer because damn-near every hero in the Mahapuranas are archers. It was the weapon of that mythology. Heroes could often do some awe-inspiring stuff with them, like collapsing fortifications with a single arrow, or firing one arrow that split into hundreds to slay an army, things like that. So any Vedic unit that takes its name from a hero, rather than a class of supernatural being, or a god, or something, will be taking its name from an archer. Now admittedly, Arjuna was considered the best archer of his time, but that is true of many of the archer-heroes - that doesn't mean others weren't equally as good/better at other times. So the assumption that the then-unknown Arjuna was going to be a sniper because their mythological counterpart was an archer was maybe a bit much. As for why he was named as an archer in the video, that was still legitimately one of myth-Arjuna's defining traits, and perhaps one of the more relevant ones for a wargame like Infinity - Bostria likely wasn't going to mention that he was the favoured student of Drona, or that he was beloved by Lord Krishna and one of the deity's closest and most trusted friends, or that he was considered 'the most sincere person', or other things like that - this is a wargame, and Arjuna's relevant skill to combat was his preternatural ability with a bow. As for why his namesake didn't get a similar long-range focus, well - every unit named after a Vedic hero has a good argument for being a sniper, so CB is likely focusing on each hero's other traits, and interpreting them in such a way that we get a varied lineup of AI soldiers, rather than a one-note all-snipers-all-the-time faction.
