Rumor is that Bostria wept when he saw what had been done to his beloved 112. Hopefully, at least for Yu Jing players, the crew at CB gives the IA oodles of really nice shinies to cheer him up. A wardriver mini would have made much more sense in the support box, given that the unit is available to all the sectorials and the vanilla.
Speaking for someone who wanted to run a Grenzer core, I don't mind the mixed box from that angle. What I do mind is that this is coming from a company whose representatives continually act like petulant children when discussing the contents of boxed sets and what they could be doing better. As it stands? There are now several more Grenzer profiles that will either only be blisters or just not see a release. And that's another issue entirely. If CB are seeing this as a "resculpt box"? It's not. It's the first time Ariadna has gotten a Support Pack, and given the number of potential things that could have been in there it's a bit silly that "112 on Bike and Kazak Doctor" took up some of those slots.
Its comments like these that I really think are unwarranted in a discussion like this. I understand that you have your opinions about the way CB is handling their business, and I respect that you hold those opinions and have the right to voice them, even if I may disagree (more on this later). But it is seriously uncalled for to attribute fanboyism to someone who voices a different view than yours. And if @Pen-dragon really is taking potshots for likes (which I don’t think he is, from what I can tell), then why not ignore the comment and avoid raising the temperature with a personal attack and start an argument? I think that would be more conducive to having a productive discussion than outright accusing anyone of being a fanboy. @Balewolf wrote a response to the split box comment, so I won’t touch on it, but I will say that I think the design choice for adding the Kazak Doktor was a bit odd for the reasons you mentioned; the Doktor is only usable in TAK and vanilla Ariadna and I would have made it a blister separate from the support pack for this reason. Perhaps CB did it for SKU? On the 112 getting a bike, I also don’t think that we strictly needed another motorcycle in Ariadna and would still do fine without it, but I’m not upset that we got it because it gives Ariadna a fast specialist option and helps alleviate our inherent issue of how to close the distance between our docs and their patients. Whether or not you think this is actually going to be useful, I leave up to you; this is my two cents coming from an Ariadna player. It wouldn’t have ruined my day if it had planned out either way. About the idea floating around that the Wardriver would have been a better option than the Doktor: isn’t the Wardriver also available for other vanilla factions? So wouldn’t that mean that if someone who doesn’t play Ariadna wants a Wardriver (assuming the only ones that would exist would be the LE OP:CF and Ariadna support pack), then suddenly he or she would be stuck with a bunch of Ariadna models that they don’t play? Or maybe the Wardriver isn’t available to all vanilla factions and I never noticed because I don’t pay much attention to Wardrivers.
That's entirely your opinion and you are welcome to it. Without going into it? I've got history with a few posters here and I'll call them out when I see them selectively editing things. If they did a Kazak Doctor simply for SKU, then they would have been better served by not doing it period. The Line Kazaks box has a model who can serve just fine as a Kazak Doctor. They would have been better served by adding the 112 on foot and/or a revised Dozer with Akrylat-Kanone. Skimpy Shorts Girl with Rocket hasn't really been a popular model from what I've ever seen and could have been served quite well with a resculpt. It genuinely seems like the intention was to: a) Continue the "split" trend of Traktor Muls and their required Controller(now you'll have to buy two separate boxed sets to get that done rather than the current box and blister) b) Continue the trend of "We need more motorcycles!" (for whatever reason) c) Continue the trend of claiming to need to tone down SKUs while inflating the need for them at the same time. Honestly? I don't see a huge use for doctors with Ariadnan units just because of the way our stuff plays. That's my experience and yours might vary. Wardrivers are available to: A) Ariadna(Vanilla and Sectorials) B) Ikari Company, a Non-Aligned Army. Currently? Nobody else has access to them. You might be thinking of the WarCor, which now has two blisters (for some reason) and an exclusive sculpt for WarCors themselves.
Fair enough. For the relatively short amount of time that I’ve been on the forums, I haven’t been particularly active, and I don’t know anyone’s history very well. So it may have been called for, and I simply wasn’t aware of what led up to it. I get what you’re saying with the SKUs, and I think that you’re probably accurate with your assessment. I was throwing out the SKU suggestion as a starting point for discussing the design choices made. I was thinking about the Wardriver; I just assumed that it was a Merc that was available to everyone and didn’t check Army before I posted.
The issue with the SKU decision is that you can pretty clearly shoot it down when one looks at the history of products. For every time they claim SKUs are driving their reasoning, we can point to another situation where it hasn't but should have. Look at the TAG pilots on foot for an example: the Gecko Pilot, O-Yoroi Pilot, etc all could be repackaged with their respective TAG at this point. The Szalamandra, Geckos, and Raicho could have shipped with its pilot in the box like the Iguana and Anaconda did. Then we have situations like the Kamau Hacker blister, the weird boxes we're seeing for some factions, etc. It's fairly (IMO) clear they're planning to milk the purchases for all it is worth. Fair enough, I figured I'd give the benefit of the doubt in case you were thinking of the WarCor.
The way I see it, IA starter is made mostly out of very situational loadouts (everyone who isn't zuyong; daoyung sniper is probably going to be most useful out of those), and even Zuyong BSG is questionable. Same goes to Ariadna pack contents, but it was discussed just recently. Basically, you'll be buying these boxes for 2-3 out of 6 and for 1-2 out of 3 models respectively and then buy blisters unless you proxy/convert. Somebody said CB products "are about passion and aren't designed by a committee"? I think I have a bridge to sell you. Well, at least there isn't a problem for those who are in for the models themselves.
I will agree I was disheartened to see the Grenzer w/ Combi-rifle in the Securitate box. I'm with most people in believing it should have been the Securtitate w/ Feuerbach. However, if it had to be a Grenzer, why couldn't it be a SWC loadout? I really hope this won't be the only way to obtain a Grenzer with a combi-rifle loadout, especially since there are more profiles that would use such a weapon than just one.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the manned TAGs aren't getting shipped with their pilots now, though that would do interesting things to some other SKUs (TechBee, for the least-likely example, because I really hate the model but have to buy one to get a Crabbot. Though I suppose you could stuff the Techbee into a new PanO Support Pack). Yeah, I'm looking at wanting 2x IA starters to do armswaps. And I think I need a Wu Ming box to the the SMG.
Kinda wish they would let us see how the models are put together in the orange 3d renders. Cause it's getting harder and harder to do arm swaps on their new releases. They keep making new models with arms and weapons fused to torsos rather than full seperate arms. I'm still extremely annoyed the line kazaks didn't have fully seperate arms so I could swap them with each other and the new swc box, like I did with usariadna grunts. (To which I now have 10 completely unique grunts) I wouldn't have high hope's the yu jing starter will be much better :( but maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.
I can take a guess at it: they haven't re-released these TAGs as "repacked with a Pilot". Not to mention, the Szalmandra Pilot is not up-to-date, being IIRC about HS 2ed. era (she's tiny!). Keep in mind they were released (mostly) when there were hardly any Pilot models (Iguana and Anaconda being an exception with their Operators), and hardly a reason to dismount a pilot (I mean, except for some last-ditch handgun shenanigans...) before TAGline hit and made them all into Specialists. Having heard about CB's "garage mentality" from a good source, I guess nobody got the idea of re-releasing TAGs with pilots when the moment was right (or didn't considered the moment to be right!) and they didn't wanted to touch that pile of problems again since then. Conspiracy theory explaination: they keep these as to-be-repacked for the month they get short on ideas / models ot release ;) Uh... what's wrong with the current one? Apart form the mini being old & tiny?
Because of the announcement..Please enlighten me! Which are the less played sectorials? Qapu? Bakunin? Corregidor? I think one oft them will leave. What do you think?
Well, both QK and Corregidor are more or less complete (though not necessarily with up-to-date models. Currently CB is redoing Odalisques after all). So either of these could take a sabbatical (especially given the beating QK took in 3rd Offensive). On the other hand, there are 3 Nomad and just 2 Haqq Sectorials available at the moment. For both ariadna and PanO, withdrawal of a Sectorial happened when they hit the 4th Sectorial mark. Which may or may not mean a thing.
Hmmmm. I find myself wondering not only which sectorial(s) will be shelved but also which products are going to be discontinued & what that may mean. Corregidor: what happens to Intruders? Bakunin: Morlocks? Just a couple of possible examples, but (& forgive any assumptions on my part) they seem to me at least to be fairly important & popular choices in vanilla nomads (one of my favourite factions). Similarly for other factions what's likely to go or stay? Odalisques if QK goes? How often are they used elsewhere?
Hmm. Svalarheima is a possibility, though not a particularly likely one, since we just got VIRD. Unless it'd be a part of Operation box with White Banner as the other force inside. But my bet is on Shasvastii vs. new Tohaa sectorial. Other things... Article clearly describes IA as the January blue N, but it's released already - so either they'll tweak it further, or the article was written quite some time ago, when the timeline was a bit different. New book might get released at Adepticon - it's a short time between releases, but since the book will focus on different armies... my bets would be Ramah (duh), Tunguska (they didn't go into 3O for some reason), a Tohaa sectorial (either for Tohaa proper or NA2), and new Shasvastii. White Banner and Svalarheima might find their way into the mix, but I'm not prepared to discuss how likely is that.
I'm missing Alguacil, Tomcat, Jaguar, Bandit, Moran and Mobile Brigada (for Starco) Her is missing Taskmaster, Bran de Castro and Zeros
