They still could have made it looks similar without ruining molds though. I really miss a lot of the weird-alien look to Combined. Even the Shasvastii. They used to looked very alien. Their weapons especially now look like they could be at home in any human faction. Almost all the new Morats in armor could be human inside. I’m afraid there are going to do the same things to the rest of CA.
That's nothing really new with Morats. A helmeted Morat has always looked human as they're red faced monkey men. One thing they really got right with the new range is making them appreciably larger than the average human miniature. Also, consider they might not want to make it look similar to a product that never made a profit. While there's seemingly a lot of people with nostalgia for the Exrah and old remotes people just didn't buy very many of them when they were around.
If they are not shown in comparison to a person that’s never seen Infinity before, they look like any human. We know they are not because we already play the game. I’m thinking more about now than then for molds. They could have done more organic looking. I do like this new one, but it still looks “normal”.
ok, this i did not remember, TY for pointing that out. Still not a fanboy for fancy female fencer forming foremost freaky fireteams. That´s one of my points; Charakters should "never" be overpowered. Never ever. In a perfect world with all units balanced i would like to be charakters be slightly overpriced due to the special combination of Stats/skills/equiptment that you cannot find anywhere else, or even special rules that are reservered for Charakters (Mary problems´ hacking upgrades, Inspiring leadership on joan and will, All the Stats achilles has,...) So a Charakter is something rare to see and find and special to play. I am totally not a fan of Armies that contain half of the VIP´s of a faction like... don´t they have to be somewhere else? Or even worse: they show up on both sides of the battlefield (yes yes, evil clones and stuff, but you get the point.... thats fun once, but the joke runs low pretty fast) *sigh* I like charakters. I also like playing them. But I like it more to have the feeling of "I WANT to play them" and not "i should play them, cause they are way too good for their cost" but thats flower-girl thinking. @TenNoBushi has a great point here, and i think i have the perfect example: Let´s take the Knight Commander: This unit is outstanding, a singular in every army and also not a common sight on the battlefield (haha. cause .. you cannot see him.... get it? Thinking about a John Cena Proxy). So far, so good, everything equal to Joan. BUT The Knight Commander is A Knight Commander, and not THE Knight Commander, meanwhile there is just one Joan at any time (yes yes, clones...). I totally see that, for the game, Chars have to see battle and want to be played. But I am not a fan of Hero-Hammer... the moment you give an humanoid body an armor and a closed helmet, it´s mostly a surprise box what´s inside; unless there are some key features, that distincts it from a human (like knees pointing in opposite direction, extra long arms, weird body forms, and so on) it almost always could be one. That´s imho very sad, cause i love aliens for their alien design (and i am not talking about removing the nose, giving them hooves and painting them blue). I Understand that coming up with a "working" alien body that does not look silly and is easy to execute from a designers and modellers stand can be a tricky challange, and sometimes it ends in "humanoids with extra arms/wings/claws". But first: i liked the shasvastii. They looked un-human enough to me, although i would love seeing stuff with just wierd propotions (starship troopers, E.T., Arrival, Nope, Beyond the Aquila rift, to name a few)
Thats a lot of "f"s I never was a real fan of charcters in Infinity. This is an old habit from 40K I think. Nowadys I use them, if I see it fits in or, in case of Tai, Krit or Bixie because they are good toolboxes and I like them. In Infinty everything dies. And chars like the old dire foes die even faster. So they are nothing else but named tool boxes. But still this urges my a bit. I remember that my old starterbox from the Steel Phalanx (back, when OSS was vanilla) layed around some years untouched because SP is only Characters with some sprinkles that are troops. Now I have a fully painted (some exceptions, intrestingly Achilles and Ajax are among them) SP forces so - I got used to it. CB releases too much characters. I rarely play Achilles (I think one or two times) because I feel that he will not take part of every skirmish here and there. He is there when a main assault vs the CA happens - to act as a light in the darkenes and so on. Same for Joan. I got bored seeing people playing vanilla with her just because every 3 and 5 pts irregular now counts as regular (happily this happend only on some turnaments). And I did not like it, when a character is the only source for some rare skill in a army. Feuerbach with Krit feels not good for me (I like him, since he got a real char after he was more or less a gender error) because such a gun demands a sculpt and he is the only (not real existing) Feuerbach in YJ. Albedo via Lei Gong - not realy mega-important, but still ... Joan is another example. She is such a big character that has to lead a real important assault (or defenese) in a game with 500 or more points and not every backwater spec op in the HS.
The original CA starter pack, drones, and vector operator is part of what sold me on the faction back in 2nd edition. I’ll have to see if I can find the pictures of the Iskallers that I converted with the arms switched around, partly to prove that no one would be able to tell which one was the official version. I think I still want to use my original Caskuda as Avatar proxies, though…
I never loved the Iskaller, it was a very “guy in a rubber bug suit” design. I do like that the Exrah HVT has some Guyver-like design callbacks. Not sure about the human skull, though…
Man, I was wanting to wait to see the full resolution and alternate angles of the Caskuda before I made my decision, but it's really not looking very good to me. It just looks off, both proportionally and in terms of overall aesthetic. It doesn't help that that spindle left arm sticking out there all in siocast is just asking to snap off at the nearest soft breeze.
Let’s see if this works…. Guess which Iskaller was converted. Spoiler Edit: Remembered how to do the spoiler tag.
You know, I genuinely did think the one on the right was the converted one, but the pictures here show that's the normal one. Fine work.
Ok, so the caskuda has a chainrifle instead of a flamer. That's another of my predictions wrong. A single chainrifle is kinda underwhelming. Really hoping the cockroach has +1 burst on its weapons
The weapon choices makes me think they are trying to keep it as cheap as possible. I am looking forward to seeing its cost.
Reinforcement can be deployed in your own half of the table only and share common AVA of an army, so it looks like that either you use combat jump or put Caskuda into the reinforcement group (and possibly do not deploy it until turn 3 if in turn 2 you have not suffered 50 pts loss).