Yeah, especially as they need too much orders to get them where u want them to be. They need FD or 6-2 MOV... With WIP 14 our best specialist, after all.
@Time Bandit I suggest the Sensor + FO REM as a good Specialist too. Cheaper than a bike, still quite fast, great additional utility thanks to Sensor, and smaller silhouette than a bike.
To add to this sad Saito episode, the addition of a ton of Natural born warrior profiles and the changes to Total Immunity do lower the effectiveness of our CC blades quite a bit.
I'm starting to think the specialist Saito removal and Karakuri buff are linked, especially if they found out just how hard Karakuri are to shift. Also, maybe there's something in the next ITS season to suggest having both is too much?
Seems weird considering they have a new Saito sculpt coming out. Maybe they have a whole crapton of Karakuris in a warehouse somewhere they need to move? /S EDIT: added a note for sarcasm.
They are not plastic models that "need to be moved" metal models can be melted back to their natural state.
But let's face it, it's much better to move stock that you've already produced than to melt it and repurpose it. The material cost is usually the least expensive part of producing physical goods, compared to labor, packaging, shipping, and design.
There are several advantages to metal manufacturing, beyond reuse of resources, speed of production also ensures there is no need for a massive stock to be available for slow moving SKUs. But if it does come to worse unlike plastic, metal can be reused eliminating the need to push product sitting.
Good! Hopefully they melt them down into a more modern sculpt. It's a great profile (even before the changes to Total Immunity), hindered a bit by a mediocre sculpt.
Sculpts are fine for their age, but would benefit greatly from the modern digital sculpting and cutting techniques.
I really disagree, I think they were particularly bad for their era (unlike the old Shas sculpts, which I love, even if I'm also eager for the new ones). And I think that was a big contributor to why you almost never saw them on the table.
As with anything aesthetic, there'll be those for and against. For what it's worth, I love those sculpts - to each their own...
The name and appearance don't match up at all, though. With that name they shouldn't have any exposed machine bits.
With Saito losing his Specialist, Total Immunity nerf for our CC troops and buff for Karakuri I'd say Ikari got a leg up on JSA now. Karakuri are a bit too expensive to run a full Haris and are the full package of gun, DTW and Specialist on their own, Ikari was a bit lacking in the durability department, so this benefits them a lot. Linked Keisotsu FOs being unable to stop dogs is another problem, McMurder and Tohaa with Mates aren't exactly exotic opponents. My usual JSA list has a hard time stomaching the loss of their prime button pusher and being forced to make room for a Ninja to compensate. If the Ninja is a staple anyway, we might as well go with the mercs again. Not to mention that Ikari gets much better use out of Tanko, who get dragged down by their rather terrible link options in JSA. Having access to proper long range gunfighting is pretty high on my list and so are Warbands, which are readily available in Yuan Yuan. As much as I liked my JSA, the recent changes have a lot of mostly negative impact for them in any sort of competetive environment.
Relatively speaking, the model cards and model-specific outer boxes are hopefully inexpensive enough to write off. Although I'm surprised companies haven't started offering "Don't send me the fancy packaging" as a pro-environment way to try to avoid those costs. For the sake of posterity (since I looked at the description for the Karakuri in the books and it didn't look like it had changed, but it didn't match what I remembered for the unit)... Discussion and lots of images on the Karakuri design process and how it ended up with so much exposed paneling https://www.beastsofwar.com/sci-fi-wargaming/creating-karakuri/ Although giving the Karakuri a Dakini Tacbot style "Can now be assembled by human beings" makeover would be so very nice. :) Edit: It's not allowable that 2011 is that long ago.
