Looking at current and historical politics, that is pretty much how all governments and countries seem to behave during times of crisis/stress. The only reason we ever think of "glorious" moments in history is because of obscene cherrypicking and selective memory. I was so irritated and upset about what I heard that I daren't buy the book because I don't need the background to play the game but if I do then it sure as hell will colour how I play it from there on out. However it's relevant to know that most of the guys writing the background for this game are very interested and pretty well informed on history. We can make excuses trying to apply common sense and reason to situations and scenarios written within the background but in all likelihood these events will be inspired/plagiarised from history books and despite all the AI improvements of the human sphere the humanity depicted in there is still very much the same humanity fucking up the Earth right now. Focus on the game and try to enjoy that. Back on topic... I've played my tournament with JSA, enjoyed it immensely but am already happy to go back to playing Yu Jing. My games on the day were all fun and I'm back to appreciating some of the things our faction can do. Yu Jing can do the same things as JSA but what they can do can be just as powerful and I'm not at all bothered by the gaps between play styles. It helps keeps the factions different and provide non-aesthetic reasons for faction choice. Now tournament games are all fine and dandy for a day out but regular local games certainly don't have to all about designing the most optimised list. I really like putting different models into lists just to give them some table time. The mad trap profiles for pheasant and zahying are really quite good and my experience with them was highly entertaining. Not many people are used to dealing with non-lethal perimeter weapons and that sometimes affects their judgement. The shang ji may be lacklustre on paper and a bit uninspiring even on the table but it's still a fair piece to put on the table. With dirt cheap order options from the likes of kuang shi with smoke provided by their celestial handler there is really little to no reason why you can't make some sub-optimal (on paper) points choices for the sake of playing something different. The Zuyong HMG with auto-medikit is a really great profile and I've had a number of great games with it as Lt, often with a hac tao executive backing them up and maybe chain of command as well because, why not? The little pangguling total reaction remote with madtraps makes for a really quite solid short range ARO block that can stymie enemy advances and if you took a Lu duan as well you can probably also physically block access to you most important models. I don't see other factions with those kinds of options and that makes me want to make use of them. If only to see if/how they work.
The best intelligence agency in the Human sphere failing to notice 3 sovereign states, several mercenary companies, and their own military mobilising their combined forces to declare open war on them and wind up getting pearl harboured across every planet they own, and planets they don't own goes a long way beyond reasonable belief of human error and straight into the author needed them to hold an idiot ball to move his plot forward. There's an argument for human error, unfortunately Gutier's writing requires you to totally suspend disbelief and not ask questions otherwise it falls right over. It wasn't a particularly well written story arc despite the theme being interesting.
Certainly jarred with the misadventures of Angus the hapless fusilier - the light touch is appreciated in the rules wiki, not the complex and darker themes of uprising.
I feel very much the same way reading history, particularly on the build up to war. Pearl harbour is in itself quite the example of what we're lamenting about here. If it weren't for the fact that such things happened, it would be difficult to accept how people could be so destructively stupid.
Pretty much this. Also the fact that the whole setting is based on this delicate balance of power in the human sphere, and then somehow the #2 faction gets ganked. What about the complexities of multiplanetary political and economic systems? One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, so it's shockingly naive for the entire human sphere to unify against The Jade Throne because of their poor treatment of their citizens. I maintain that stories such as Yuriko Oda's murderous takeover of Kurage would have been enough to gain some sympathy for Yu Jing. Don't even get me started on PanO conducting military action within YJ airspace.
That bit felt to me to be pretty close to the portrayal of say, Syria, in recent times, and wasn't that unbelievable. It felt, to me, that part of Gautier's artistic aim was to reflect current events. How successful is a matter of taste, but I feel the human sphere will see more self defeating short term opportunism...
That only works because Syria was a regional power at best. They certainly didn't have enough nukes to end the world. The events of Crimea is a way more apt comparison considering the powers involved. An outside existential threat exists. It's not a secret. They even made an extremely popular Mayanet show about. Not to mention the inciting incident was a friendly fire incident...as a retcon to an event that players were directly involved in. The only way you make that a bigger slap to the face is you stage the next multifactional event right in the heart of Yu Jing space, just a few months after the ceasefire. Because that makes total sense.
I was comparing contemporary media portrayals of the factions in Syria (good guys vs bad guys), in response to the comment about facile and niave Mayacast coverage. Which isn't the same as a geopolitical analysis.
I mean we can speculate how good or bad explode is, and that largely depends on ones mindset. I don't think it will be until the rule is out and everyone has tried it that we can truely appreciate whether it is trash or not. I agree it won't be universally good. But neither is an oniwaban against certain lists. the real question is will it be good against more lists than its bad against.
I think the key thing about the Oniwaban comparison is that it had a decent role regardless of whether it had a big, juicy target to go after. With a BSG, Superior Infiltration and TO Camo it could happily whittle away at an opponent's order pool, or it could go ham and cut a TAG or key unit in half with its Mono CCW. ELX will almost certainly not have the same kind of effect, and that's ok, I just hope it's reasonably scary rather than being a "cool, but not actually particularly worth using" kind of rule.
If you look in the "Get started with Infinity" booklet, there's nothing about this in the faction description. Or in the faction overview on the website. It seems like a bait-and-switch - Oh, you wanted to play this faction? Well too bad, they're absolute civilian-killing monsters, and not only that, but they're *stupid* and want to kill civilians even if it means compromising their ability to win against an insurgency. Right now China is doing some pretty horrible shit to the Uyghurs but for a number of reasons nobody can or wants to stop them - weird that in Infinity stomping over into their territory and attacking them is somehow ok.
What happened at Pearl Harbor was an order of magnitude less worrying than what happened in the Uprising. More analogous would be Japan taking Hawaii itself, with the aid of every other powerful nation in the world.
Well, it fails, because it needs that geopolitical analysis. There's a reason you don't see non-stop railing about the atrocities China is committing irl against the Uyghurs in the media. It's not a matter of taste, the analysis fundamentally fails because China/Yu Jing is a nuclear power and was invaded.
Exactly. That's why Explode LX is a gimmick at best, and the rest of the Liu Xing profile is a Tiger Soldier that traded Mimetism for NWI. Yup. The problem is that after Pearl Harbor, the entire US military went on War Alert, quickly enough that the Philippines and the various island bases had time to prepare defenses against the incoming invasions. Yet somehow the Imperial Service got hit repeatedly by the JSA, despite these not being perfectly sync'd simultaneous attacks. And while the Imperial Service nominally has FTL comms through Aleph and the EVO hacker/Repeater systems. Again, the problem is that we're talking about the other Great Power in the Sphere getting invaded. It'd be like California declaring independence from the US and having Russian planes flying air support overhead. I worked in the Nuclear Deterrence field, and that scenario scares the everliving hell out of me. That way lies Mutual Assured Destruction, it's why nobody was willing to step up militarily when the Russians invaded Ukraine. I do agree with that. especially the last.
This is a pretty shallow comparison to then conclude explode was a gimmick. The Liu xing brings weapons which utilise the close range bands like The caskuda, brings the ability to ignore typical DZ guards, like the caskuda. But isn't quite as durable but is also 1/3 the points. The caskuda was broken op. While occasionally being shafted by a lucky hacking or em aro. To conclude the Liu xing will be bad because its not as broken as the caskuda is a bit of a leap. A lot of explodes usefulness will come from how it interacts with the order sequence I think. But it doesn't change the Liu xing still brings the ability to ignore a chain rifle and packs bs13 on good close in weaponry.
So a Liu Xing with boarding shotgun is actually fairly similar to an oniwaban at killing line troops (~42% kill to 12% get wound (oni is 8%)) in the 8-16" range. The multi-rifle is obviously slightly better for outside 8", and the advantage goes slightly to the oni within 8". I'm definitely not saying the liu xing fills the hole left by an oniwaban. But tactically it has applications which it is as good at or better than the oniwaban or the tiger. One of particular note is being able to eat a chain rifle hit and keep going. This can totally open a flank in some deployments as players might have a flashpulse +/- chain rifle to cover a certain avenues.
That's fair @Alphz, and AD4 (well, AD3) has similar reliability in deployment (AD3 can walk on from most board edges; SI can deploy up to halfway without a roll/has Hidden Deployment), so it's not bad in that regard. I still feel like the Liu Xing is a little bit more vulnerable overall (TO Camo vs ARM3 but Hackable, essentially), but the extra 0.99W will certainly be a key factor in the Liu Xing being decent. I think I just wish it had a bit more variety in its loadouts than just BSG/MR/Spitfire - maybe the full IA profile will have some more interesting options.
Another notable trait of the Liu Xing is that it has fair odds to survive a deviation, as three stacked AROs within the drop zone, which is about what you'd need to bring one straight to dead with guard-quality weapons, are not common in several factions. This makes it a bit more usable then the Tiger for when you actually want to use Combat Jump without hacking superiority, such as when you need an objective done or an ARO piece killed fast, since it can still fight its way out of a bad landing. I am actually worried about what happens if it lands on a Civilian, though, since Explode seems to lack safeguards so far. I am very much hyped for the arrival of IA because, if the Command and Order efficiency rules are up to snuff, it will actually be cheap to buy into. An 8-model list with about 12 orders seems competetive enough, as long as all the pieces are active, and it could make buying into the hobby a fair bit cheaper for newcomers if you only need the Zuyong box and five blisters of whatever looks cool to make up a 300pt casual list. I can take or leave Oniwaban, but I can't play without an opponent, so anything that makes good play cheaper is a nice move in my book.
Im a little bit jealous! Many people (including me) pointed out @Alphz 's opinion, and his opinion only is shining. :p
