Im just saying, ive been playing tohaa for five years, and the first i heard of this was in this thread. Tohaa are listed as an army, same as any other on the cb website. There have been sectorials announced for tohaa, same as any other army. Nothing in the tohaa fluff says they are effectively a sectorial. Nowhere on the cb website does it say that tohaa are effectively a sectorial. If the designers say they were always a sectorial, they sure didn't do a good job of making that clear
We'll have to agree to disagree. I always found it obvious even before I was an insider, just from how they play and how their units are designed.
As an insider, could you pass it on that they could possibly do a better job advertising that the dont consider tohaa to be a real faction. Im personally pretty disappointed in this, and as a retailer, im disappointed that ill hafta let my players know about it as well.
OK, I think we're talking at cross-purposes. Tohaa are most definitely a 'real faction', they just don't have as a big a range of units (and therefore models) as the other factions, due to the nature of the faction's design. It's an inherent part of a 'vanilla' faction that has Fireteams, especially freely-mixed Fireteams.
Honestly as a new comer there is zero information to this, Tohaa is my first fraction read it here a few days ago for the first time. Sure as a veteran that checks out every FAQ and announcement from CB in the last five years will know it but not newcomers they are like "I got the cool Aliens imma so looking forward what we will get soon" I don't mind too much it safes me money
At this point I'd go with "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck..." approach. But really, it's just semantics. No matter how we call it, things are going to change for reasons unrelated to naming.
That's the thing we're disappointed about, Ian. It might have been obvious to you before you became an insider, but it's not obvious to many people, even those that should probably know it (Warcors). I myself feel misled after this many months of basically only life support for the faction at this point.
Out of curiosity, what would everyone regard as not being 'only life support'? I'm aware that everyone is going to have different opinions on this.
As a relative newcomer trying to find a second faction, Tohaa do seem somehow neglected. I'm a fan of @Magonus' Lonely Artichoke blog, thinking it might be some of the best Infinity writing around; so there's a lot to recommend Tohaa right there. Yet there is still something that doesn't feel quite mainstream about them to me. I'm not sure why that is. It's possible that the style of sculpture is off-putting. The divide between old and new sculpture styles in other factions is pretty clear, and if - regardless of current shortcomings, we know where CB are going with a style, then the faction becomes that much more compelling. Spoiler: Consider the evolution of Morat models Case in point - the vast improvement in the style of Morat sculptures from the Rasyat to the Sogarat Tempest Regiment: From turning away to save anyone any embarrassment (and haunting racks of Gundam Battlesuit accessories looking for some little drop-pack wings I can bodge onto something more modern) To scrabbling for my wallet to buy as many as I can squeeze into an army list (three, and change for a few Gakis! ) But the Tohaa sculptures don't seem as well-finished as newer models in other factions somehow (is it fair to say that the Tohaa sculptures are quite old?) and there isn't a feeling that the models will be improved as seems to be the case with other factions. These are just my rather vague and uneasy feelings about the faction; I'd be pleased have them addressed by players who know more about the faction.
Taken me ages to catch up with all the Tohaa releases. Having painted kilometres of 28mm scale straps already the range feels big. I'm happy for aliens (and Ariadna lol) to be sideshows in INFINITY, they are not what people tend to imagine when having the game and setting described to them for the first time. That said, please give us a HMG Sukeul like really soon, and please make it a man rather than another cut and paste woman with a pistol drawn.
As someone who has dragged a friend into Infinity just recently, with said friend going for Tohaa, what is wrong with this box?
1) The contents of the box can't be used WYSWYG out of the box (No Kerail with both an LSG and a Surda, No Kerail with both Surda and Mutan at all) 2) There will only ever be one Kerail model, and the one they made is of shockingly noncompetitive profile (LSG < SMG, no smoke, Mutan < Surda) 3) Kerail model does not represent the profile well at all, it lacks design elements every other symbiont armour trooper has (like symbiont armour) For me it is way more hurtful than the cut and past Sukeuls and Kauris. It screams not giving AF. There needs to be a Kerail with an LSG and smoke. Or at least one with an LSG and mixed beasts.
I mean, Corvus Belle is a business, not a charity, so I do not blame them for backburning Tohaa if they are selling half of what the next least popular faction sells. But abandoning Tohaa as "done" will create the vicious cycle, where existing Tohaa players lose interest, and new players avoid the ghost town. As for pedantry, hindsight, excuses, apologetics, and general condescension with Tohaa "always" having been a sectorial: no. If that were true, it would be in NA2 with Druze. It's fine if CB has to change their tune on Tohaa, but it's embarrassingly unprofessional if they have to shoo out IJW to break the news in an obscure forum post. For what it may be worth, I see three primary opportunities with the faction to inject new life and attention: 1. Beasties angle. People (new players in particular) are highly attracted to the Kerail and Tohaamon models. There are buyers there who could be further seized with symbiowolves, symbiocrabs, symbiosquids, etc. Such beasties would be totally in line with the Tohaa fluff. 2. Space UN force. For another NA2 faction, a PanO sectorial, or sectorial of the O-12 itself, median-sale Tohaa product could be offered as coalition forces. I'm sure Neoterra would love an AVA1 Kosuil. 3. Competitive options. The big things people love in Tohaa right now is Eclipse, Smoke, Symbionts, Symbiomates, Vis mods, and Viral weapons. Corvus Belli could energize mid- or low-selling models with a couple expanded options. E.g: Gao-Rael White Hacker with 2 Symbiomates Gao-Tarsos with Mimetism (+0.5 | 2 points tax) Ectros with Viral Combi + Eclipse Launcher LSG instead of Combi on White Hacker and LGL Kamaels Kotail with Smoke Grenades Etc. Sorry for any typos, written on my phone at lunch here.
Bostria's stance at LVO wasn't that Tohaa are being abandoned, but rather that they simply take more time to develop and design than other units. Tohaa's releases were awkwardly straddling CB's move to digital scultping... They were the last big hurrah for hand-sculpting... And simply designing things like cool new monsters and weird units just takes longer than the Sphere factions, who can be cobbled and reassembled from existing CADs. So I don't think it's so much that Tohaa are being abandoned, but rather than (like Shas and MRRF) they simply require more time and collective attention, just because of how they've been designed and released.
in one direction we would have the old N2 alien bugs like the caskuda. they had their life support cut due to unpopularity if i'm not mistaken. on the other hand i would say that the factions from the vs boxes (ice storm and red veil) are the least on life support. its obviously a gradient, but of the main factions tohaa has been getting the least support. possibly due to their unpopularity? but is their unpopularity due to poor support? sort of chicken and egg here. my fear, and i think a lot of other players fear, is that cb will continue to make fewer and fewer things for tohaa, leading to a vicious circle that eventually leads to tohaa being dropped the way the bugs were. the fact that CB has done this in the past certainly adds to that sense of trepidation. i think that there arent any tohaa sectorials exacerbates the problem, as the more sectorials a faction has, the more releases it has by default. seeing a merc sectorial released before a tohaa one is also lending to my fears that tohaa might be on the way out, as new sectorials tend to have their releases prioritized.
from a business standpoint i'm not so sure that its great to present misleading information to customers, and it certainly doesn't boost consumer confidence to see any faction abandoned.
