I have not purchased any of the books in this 3 book series. I guess I always prioritize more minis over game fluff books. In your experience is there good value in these books (Uprising, Daedalus, etc)? What do they provide to justify the asking price? Bostria's Daedalus' Fall preview video did an amazing job of showing none of the book and providing little insight for a first time buyer like me. Thanks!
The fluff is...okay, at best. Truthfully? The books are where I feel like I have never gotten my money's worth. The art is all over the place(sometimes it's exceedingly cartoony, sometimes it's the really nice 'fauxto realism') and it's still clear that they are having issues with translating sentence structure and the like. Basically if you want the preorder minis, get the books. It's cheaper than sourcing the preorder minis later on feeBay.
Uprising also had updates for all the Dire Foes missions, and Daddy's Fall has a revamp of the Campaign and Spec-Ops rules, but the majority of the books are background.
Besides the preorder miniature (the 3rd off fish is more than superb) Uprising: see who's the most idiot in the human sphere. Only real value: the mercenary companies (about 10 pages). Third offensive: repetitive algorithm to duplicate the book: almost all paragraphs can be summarized into "X rocks, it's the best thing/hero, everything was going to plan. But Y was there/X did not suspect Y was doing/it was not enough". All the damn time. For example, in this book it "reveals" that the CA takes the Teuton's relic, which we all thought was the T'Zechi digestor... only it was not, it was in fact a gizmo to locate the digestor, and the whole Xenotech mess of ITS10 is "the gizmo is still on Paradiso, look for it!" It gets depressing after a while. Only real value: better found in the RPG books. Daedalus' fall: TBA, but real value, besides the 5th Brawler (hacker) of a preorder miniature, would be the new Campaign mode... assuming it's something truly new, and not a reskin of the old... Bottom line: get the books if you want the mini, ask for a loaned book and read it before deciding if it's a good idea for you to buy them or not.
Thanks all! I am one of the rare people who do not care about Brawlers. I will say that the hacker is the best Brawler sculpt yet in my opinion, but just not needed for my collection.
The books have alot of fluff which you may or may not care about. Uprising does have the dire foes missions which can be a fun break from normal its missions. DF will have spec ops and campaign rules.
The only time I’ve received the book+mini was when Third Offensive was a prize at a tournament. I can say I probably wouldn’t have ever bought the book unless I really wanted the exclusive mini, and the libertos is a nice one. The fluff and art are fun if you’re into it, but I only really thumbed through the bits on the factions that are relevant to me and I haven’t taken it off my shelf since. As has been said before, both can be hit or miss in terms of quality
This is where I am at now, and I used to be one of those "Pre-order everything the day it is announced" people.
I’m pretty excited to see the new campaign rules, I think it’s going to be fun to play through with my local group. I’ve overall found that the Uprising and 3rd Offensive books just sit on my shelf after a single quick read through. I’m less excited about the new background material than I was in the 2nd edition books; there’s a lot of recycled old content, even as recently as 3rd Offensive, and I’m on the fence about the overall current story direction. Right now things are set up such that the humans can’t possibly win an all out war against the CA and every time human factions fight each other they are just digging the hole deeper. Something needs to happen to bring the focus back to deniable asset black ops missions. Full scale open warfare is not where Infinity shines.
The translation is probably great, at least based in examples I checked. But then you will reply the sentences are complex or just weird... so yes, perfect translation, unless you want a translator that does not "pass" the style too and instead "fixes" it.
I have all of them, read partly the N3 fluff book and it's a slog... quite boring descriptions of units and historical events I really have no investment in. I was secretly hoping this trilogy was maybe somehow better... I get them for the minis.
I bought Uprising, and I swore to myself I will never buy any book from Corvus again, it's a mess sadly.
I liked the dire foes with story in uprising. Third offensive was partly a slog (Kazak chapter, 3rd Offensive War history) The shasvastii stuff was great, Invicible was good and OS Fluff was supperb!
CA was a mistake. More specifically, a unified, all powerful, multispecies hegemony, controlled by an AI, created by a presumably now extinct species, cruising around the galaxy trying to transcend was a mistake. If it was simply an alien empire Humanity encountered and began trading with (a la Tohaa, kinda), black ops would make more sense. The story is great for an RPG setting, not so much for what Infinity: The Game is meant to be. I think the game would be better off without any aliens, personally.
Hey now, there are still a small number of Ur Rationalists hanging around. They didn’t all get eaten by Nemesis. But yes, for a game about black ops and infighting, having an external enemy that poses an existential threat, not to just one faction, but the entirety of humanity, is a bit awkward.
I know I've seen some of the fluff blurbs being quotes from the Ur, but is it stated anywhere they still exist as a living species? That would make for an interesting addition to the CA roster. Extinct is probably too strong of a word anyway. Technically, the EI will preserve the species' identity until it transcends or breaks. There might not be a word to describe the situation.
As far as I recall, they are very few in number and use their servant/tool species to do most of the real work.
I think that depends on what you mean by “living”. What’s a Posthuman? Because there are lines like “Citizens of [the most restrictive levels] are subject to wetware implants that merge individual consciousness with the El, in a similar manner to the Ur Rationalists or the mysterious Umbra.” I don’t think there’s a meaningful distinction between the Ur and the El at this point unless you’re discussing cybernetic engineering and biology of system components. They all got plugged in, and when the Nemesis schism/psychosis/civil war happened, they were system components in each. But, more importantly open up the N3 Core book to page 122: “The Ur is one of the oldest races still extant in the universe.”
