I'm really curious whose bright idea was making biker ABH THAT cheap. Unless you have shelfs full of them just lying around - then I understand completely.
8 points for a worse Desperado does not strike me as "cheap". Sure, she can BS 12 suppressive Fire, but no Smoke, -2B in active turn, can't dodge to save her life... Trying to get her out of your DZ is going to be a challenge. Heck, compare her to a Kum Biker: 2 less points gives you a LSG, Dogged, Smoke-throwing Bike with a DA CCW. She's a great little attack piece, but you're going to need to give her a lot of help to get in range to do anything.
My two cents after the video: 1. Fast cheap bikers for all vanilla armies and some sectorials like Tunguska might definitely change the meta a bit. But I'm not opposed, at least until we see that this breaks stuff. 2. Demo game for TAG Raid and TTS demo - definitely a very good move. I'd gladly check both even if, to be honest, I'm not sold on TAG Raid for now. The designs are not my thing and CB could have gone with something more original than the totally-not-sandworm. May His passage cleanse the world. But if the gameplay is cool, then I'd definitely reconsider. 3. New plastic. Being honest about the reasons (metal prices) is really good and I appreciate it. I'm sick of the non-answers that some other companies (khem, GW) give when asked about sudden changes in their products. The plastic Stephen Rao looked awesome too. But one has to wonder what went wrong with the Vostok, which, even if not abysmal, as some people claim, definitely has some issues. Also - way too little was said and shown about cleaning the miniature and assembling it. A few seconds of sanding, one glue type... 4. Continuing with metal and so on. We could have used a more straightforward "depends on prices" again. Also, the fact that CB will not do metal alternatives, while somewhat understandable is disappointing. From what I've seen (admittedly not statistically representative) people like the idea for metal skins in Aristeia. And I know at least a few that hoped for the practice to come to Infinity.
I don't think it will be correct to compare her to these cheap Kums or Desperados directly, she won't be in these armies/sectorials. And for 8 point you can squeeze her in most lists.
Of course you can squeeze her in lists; the question is whether or not she's a good use of those 8 points vs. something like a Flash Bot or Libertos. My point was that she's not even close to "broken." She's a dedicated assault piece with no delivery system, which forces the rest of your list to compensate. Fail to cover her properly and you're playing a 292 point, 14-order list. She's not like most bikes, which are fairly "set-and-forget" unless you run into MSV; she needs help, and quite a bit of it, in order to do anything useful. And for 8 points (and 1 of your 15 models), that seems pretty fair to me.
What's the deal with Rao, are they selling the plastic model or is it just a demo? And is he getting a new profile? Inquiring Acontecimentonians want to know.
I think it's just the miniature they chose for demonstrations, presumably due to his wonderful, lustrous hair, and his ranking as #1 Hot Dad of the Human Sphere.
They use him as a test model. It's easier and better to have standardized testing and this model was picked for one reason or another.
He's got a good level of detail and different bits and bobs that lend to being able to extrapolate from him to other minis.
Plenty of useful information and I hope the plastics live up to expectations. Decoupling the Vostok's head from the body seems like a smart move which should help with those hexagon details on the neck. The TAGs look bigger than the average we have now, maybe in plastics the size of certain models will increase. TAGs slowly grew on me and the Ariadna one is really something special, It's more like a Mecha than a TAG...can't wait to see the profile for Infinity N4.
Agreed. I kinda want to buy that Ariadna TAG, put some guns on it and use it as a proxy for my NA2 TAGs.
I think it's logical to expect a general release since it's getting a N4 profile, probably a different sculpt but samish design.
Something to note too on the MBH is that it will be able to duo in sectorals but it's Irregular and Impetuous. It looses both of those orders if it does duo. I found this out the hard way trying to duo Shaolin with Jing Qo.
Looks like the metal master for the Vostok had production issues? The Irregular orders are not lost. You use regular orders to catapult the bikes up the field together (regaining order economy from lost Impetuous there by moving 2 for the price of 1) then use their individual irregular orders to break the duo when they move to engage/trade for something. This is a strictly better version of the Jing/Monk duo (which kinda sucks ass). Unlike those two a pair of ABHBs are cheap, disposable, and extremely fast. You will not need the link past turn 1. The issue it will run into is varying value in different sectorials. It will be at its worst in say ISS, because the sectorial does not have a good long range solution to punch an opening for the bikes to go screaming into an opponent's DZ to cause havoc. Meanwhile Tunguska could well benefit from this by using a Grenzer MSR to punch a point of entry with a BS19 MSR for the bikes to move into and exploit.
