It's only not true as far as we know the current situation. Perhaps there will be a way to use the discontinued armies in N5, perhaps like Shasvasti they will return with a redesign in the future.
It’s happened in my game community too. Out of the 9 of us who played I’m the only one currently who has bought sandtrap and is interested in N5. A few have done as @Darvain friends did and have sold their armies. It’s quite upsetting and I doubt I’ll currently be able to get them to come back. I can only give the reason that humans are fickle stupid beings with a deep rooted need to be self destructive. That self destructive nature takes many forms and in the cases of my group and @Darvain friends (and the person who burned their dark elf army on YouTube) it’s led to them spiting CB in their minds by removing themselves from the game entirely. It’s strange, it’s odd and it’s upsetting and their decision has likely meant that my interaction with N5 will mostly be done painting new miniatures and not gaming with them.
He is extremely emotional person and prone to impulsive actions. But at the same time he is quick to move on from a problem to a solution. To him, Infinity is already over for him and he enjoyed his time. People like that exist and I envy them because they can look forward without being weighted down by past regrets. Myself, I did not order Sandtrap and I am not planning to. The set has zero that interest me, I will wait for new Desperadoes for my USARF and a Crux team that will likely be in MO. As far as I am concerned, I will spend N5 not buying models if those models will not appeal to me. And that is not because I will do it in spite, I just like my current armies and already own AVA of every USARF except Desperadoes, whom I have none, and I own nearly all of MO, except corner cases like Santiago Spitfire or Konstantinos, or Curator, for whom I need to buy the whole box of three for one miniature I want.
As the owner of Japan and Pano, I was very happy with the contents of the new starter. Good thing I didn't have time to pre-order! After the news about the deletion of 40% of my collection, I stopped all current painting and all purchases of Infinity. At least until the situation is completely clarified. It is clear that everything will be resolved on the 18th, but for now I plan to sell all the armies valid in H5, and carefully put the ones, that have become useless, into the depths of the closet. In case KB comes to their senses.
Oh, I have stopped purchases until the November 18th - that is, until I know which models will remain useful in my 7 armies (one of which - StarCo - won't be around anymore). Though I guess I might be in for a Triphammer, vanilla Haqq is getting these. As for painitng - I had a few models on backlog, so I'm slowly catching up with these. But I have found that painting is psycholigcally advantageous for me - I can concentrate and de-stress this way. Still, that's just me. Now, every single one of us can make their own decisions. Play the game, put it on hiatus, abandon it. Put our money where our mouth is / vote with our legs. Someone wants to change their hobby from miniature wargaming to, say, custom cars? Fine by me. Someone wants to change the wargame they play for one or another greener pasture? Go get it, tiger...
Selling is exactly that - adaptation to the new circumstances. Wargames are entertainment, if he can't find pleasure in the game for the foreseeable future, the most reasonable approach is to bail out. However, what I'd advice other people in this situation to just keep on playing with N4 rules, or house-rule the armies. With small and isolated communities, which seems the norm for Infinity, nothing stops you from changing the rules to accommodate the interests of the members of the community. CB does not bind you to use their official rules in any way and if they don't provide rules for some of the armies, I'm sure robust fan projects would provide.
Deep-green-x,, first of all, i want to say, that I 100% understand where you are coming from when you ask why a deeply invested player would "go against their own interests" or why that same player might not be willing to give CB lee way, that they might do something positive . And I want to give you my perspective as a veteran player who is deeply invested in Infinity. And I'll start by getting a few things out of the way: -- I like infinity a ton and have a ton of factions and models -- I take breaks from infinity from time to time, but coming back to infinity always feels like 'coming home' -- Before I became a father, I basically played infinity Weekly, and while that schedule will never fully come back, I ready for it -- I was extremely hype for N5 -- I honestly have no idea why anyone has any complaints about rules or profiles we have seen in N5, they all at worst, the same as N4 and mostly and improvement -- I have no complaints what so ever about 'power creep' or whatever in JSA or Kestrel -- I 100% want my favorite game every to succeed and grow Some time around end of summer, begging of fall, my long time infinity buddy asked if we should start getting back into infinity, what with N5 on the horizon. I said hell yeah, and let me take this opportunity to get back into hobbying in general and pulled out all the unbuilt models I had still in boxes for assembly. I said, i think I'll finish out N5 with Spiral Corps by assembling the two terrible things I had bought but never played with: The Anaconda and the Longarms. Figured it'd be fun to N4 by playing the stuff that never really made it rules wise. We talked about restarting the blog, talked about what armies we might start N5 with, whether we should maybe record for Youtube and got ready for our first game in long while. I think it was a weak later had been binging the great Robert Shephard's infinity youtube channel that I heard that Bostria had given some interview some where that they were cancelling Spiral Corps do to incredibly middling sales. You know what, I got that. I always knew there was a risk is buying Spiral, as the was probably a reason Tohaa did not get the comeback the fans demanded. But i bought Sprial because I loved infinity that much and I was desperate to play Tohaa. I was willing to take the bet alongside CB, that Spiral Corps might prove popular enough to one day warrant a return to Tohaa. While disappointing, learning they would not be in N5 even in rules form was something I could give CB the benefit on. They are not a Charity that needs models that will only sell to me, and I can respect that. But part of the unspoken deal here, is that I am not a charity that exists to invest time and money into CB without return. When I heard they needed to drastically cut down the models and rules for N5, I was a little more alarmed but again, because to me the promise that they would support factions in at least the rules even if not catalog was a pretty big reason I stuck with the game going into N4. That said if it will improve the tabletop game in the long run, I was willing to give CB the benefit here. The community has frequently bemoaned the crazy amount of cruft dumped into the game for clearly monetary reason. I specifically proxied everything that came in from Tag Raid and basically any widely available merc. They clearly were not added to infinity the game for any balancing reason. Why would every major professional special forces and blackops organization for every faction in the Human Sphere suddenly employ random untrained miners? Probably because they wanted to make money off of Tag Raid, but it certainly didn't do anything for the game lore, and definitely did not make the tabletop game more deep and engaging. My buddy and I were a little anxious about buying models pre-N5 then, should we buy so much when it's all up in the air? Well, let's just go with the safe picks, stuff that we know will stick around. I decided to catch up on all the White Banner release since I had only lost interest in them originally because of CB bizarrely long release schedule for them, and he picked up all the Varuna that had been stolen from him last year. We briefly talked about whether Varuna would be on the chopping block, as CB had them in the PANO/JSA sale on the main CB store, so clearly even with Kestrel, they would be getting the special treatment CB gave them in N4 when despite saying the idea was 3 sectorials a faction. CB had been more than happy to keep 3 of them in catalog and Varuna was not out of catalog going into N4. I honestly think he is less bothered by this than me. Certainly wants to move on and get to playing the game he loves. I'm also going to play n5 and I'm going to be playing N4 tonight. But you know what I won't be doing, is buying new models. Because frankly, I have been foolish with my buying of Infinity. That's the message I get from CB anyway. I am foolish for buying so heavily into infinity in general, when honestly you can 'just proxy anyway' out of love and passion for the game. I have been foolish for buying models for terrible profiles, just because I like them and want to collect a 'complete' faction. Kestrel was the breaking point for me. A clear sign that CB has no real intention of keeping bloat down, and rather than provide balance to their existing line of models, and add value to them by actively balancing them, they will simply move forward with bloating the game as they always have, but providing less and less value for those models long term. I was passionate about infinity and more that willing to spend lots of money,etc. on infinity because I believed CB were providing a strong product that they stood behind. Now I just kind of like it. It's a great game all things said in done, but I am worried about it's future. That is because I think it is extremely unhealthy for a game to lose it's veterans. As a new player, I wanted to get into infinity, because people who were clearly lovers of tabletop miniatures. The N5 seems like it was almost explicitly designed to discourage you from buying anything current "todays surprise reveal is, which of your models are still in Ariadna". If CB is wiling to be so disrespectful of veterans players, and see to have so little regard for what provides value to their models that they sell, I need to seriously consider if I should move on from infinity and find a new favorite. I don't want to pour more money into infinity if its in danger of failing. And by not spending money or feeling passionate about the game I'm also contributing to that down fall. Hopefully this helps you understand my perspective at least, if not maybe others. We are in fact looking out for a our best interest, but it can be hard to see what someone feels that is from a distance, but for each of the people upset about infinity right now, it's very complex and not just . For me, i feel its in my best interest to step back from buying and take a wait and see approach on whether CB will impress me enough to earn back trust to spend money on them again. I also would rather continue to play, enjoy and spend money on infinity than not, so I definitely want to let CB know that I see a serious problem with their current tact, and they have drastically decreased the value of what they sell for many players. That they might not realize they are risking the long term health of the game I wanted to address this quick. It's fine if you trust CB enough that they might do something cool like that. But I'll explain why I do not. 1) it's generally served me well to only expect what businesses and people say they are going to do until I hear from them otherwise. 2) CB was quick during N4 to call and emergency meeting and then communicate in the forums that the leaks were not correct. I even @ Koni myself a while ago about the issue of discontinuing sectorials. I would say that complete silence from CB officials on the forums this time around is pretty good Indication that what we have heard from other channels is what we can expect.
Thanks for thr lengthy and detailed reply, you've outlined your points well and I'm just sorry that for reasons I'll outline below I can't give you a longer and more detailed response. To address one if your points, I don't see the long term health of the game being in any risk right now. In fact the game and IP might be in the strongest position that it's ever been in. Some of this is down how how many fires CB has in the oven for the Infinity IP; with the animated show, the new Aristeia video game, the novels and graphic novels, the Acherons Fall game and now the new N5 edition getting much more marketing than when previous editions were released. There's also some stuff related to the IP that I can't talk about having signed NDA's the equivalent of blood oaths. That's not much use to anyone currently nervous about the state of the game so I'm not going to say "trust me bro" but just say that things are fairly secure for the near and moderate future of the IP as a whole. On another point, as you acknowledge yourself the game is suffering from a bloat of units and profiles now at the end of N4. Going into a new edition a cleanup was needed as there were still profiles and units who hadn't been gameplay relevant for years and not even available to purchase from stores for longer. IMHO CB have been wildly generous in keeping these units in the game and supported with rules for long after their traditional shelf life. Their competitors have been far less generous even those with smaller back catalogues of minis. As for why TAGRAID minis were added to armies, well what if they hadn't been? What if the TAGRAID minis weren't usable in Infinity, would people have been more upset then? The RemRacers minis aren't usable in Infinity after all, does this make you more or less inclined to pick up that game? Even the upcoming cuts of profiles are comparatively small compared to what they could have been. For example CB could just have dropped Tohaa entirely as a faction and written them out of the game. As much as I love my Artichoke headed children, they never sold well, have rules different to most other factions that need to be balanced and are only popular with a small set of passionate fans of which I count as one. Any other company would have dropped Tohaa as a loss, we're lucky that CB didn't and that they're still getting supported in the game and in new lore. As another example with PanO having 3 whole sectorials mothballed its surprising just how few units will not transition to N5. While I can't go into specifics for NDA reasons I can say that only about 10 Units, not minis but Units, won't make the transition to N5. And of these Units nearly each one has an equivalent unit it can be directly proxied as. Feel free to speculate on what those 10 are, I unfortunately can't tell you for the above mentioned reasons. I disagree with your opinion as Kestral being bloat, in my opinion it's an amalgamation of SAA, Varuna and NCA in a new sectorial for the new edition. With the stated goal of getting the game down to a more manageable number of sectorials and units it's probably the best solution as what would be the alternative, revamp one of the 3 sectorials at the expense of the entirety of the other two? While some are not happy with the suggestion to "just proxy" as a way to use the discontinued units, (with one person on the IGC FB board recently calling anyone who was willing to do this a "bootlicker") its probably the most generous solution for people to keep using the minis they've bought and painted. Again the alternative is that they just aren't usable in the game at all, they could be written off entirety and only of use in other miniture agnostic systems like Stargrave. Finally as to the point of mothballed sectorials making a return one day. There is precedence in this with Shasvasti returning to the game after they were given a significant redesign and revamp. We still don't know the specifics of what form the PDF's of the mothballed sectorisls will take, it could just be a record of the sectorials as they stood in N5 or they could be like the "closed battle lists" of a few years ago where they were usable in casual games but not in ITS Tournaments. In closing for the TL:DR, think the IP and game are in the best position they've ever been in, stuff had to be cut and this is the least worst solution since much, much more could be gone, you're stuff will still be usable in some form depending on how you feel about proxies and maybe don't write off stuff coming back in the future since it's happend before.
Good, we returned to the long posts, which actually contain arguments. I'll agree that the IP seems to be at its best position ever, at least from an outside point of view, but I'd like to address one (or one and a half) of your arguments. The claim that cuts could have been worse. Surely, this is a trivial statement. They can always be worse, as there is nothing stopping CB from making worse cuts. They could have also easily been better (i.e. by having KFC as an Acon rework, as many suggest), but this is also a trivial statement. Wargames are, for most people, at least partially narrative, and people can easily consider as different units that are different in lore and looks, even if their profiles are practically the same. Plus different subsets of units play vastly different anyways. You see that a whole lot in 40k, for example. There is a reason they have MEQ (marine equivalent), TEQ (terminator equivalent) and GEQ (guard equivalent) as standards for types of units. So claims that the unit bloat is a reason for poor balance really don't hold water. The probably easiest solution is to bring useless profiles closer to useful profiles in stats. And CB does that already anyways - we regularly speak as a missile bot without specifying which one. The second is writing off the problem, because few units are getting mothballed. The issue is that factions are getting mothballed. The fact that Achilles still exists in the game is not a consolation for Aleph players, to give an example. Or if you wish a PanO example - Quinn being in KFC only, while bolts being in vanilla only isn't helping NCA players.
First off- really good to see these long argumentative essays. Top form for forum discussions, everyone's English teachers should be proud. As one of the affected players, I'm watching the Kestrel situation very closely. I know my Infinity well enough to spot the issues N4 PanO and many of its Sectorials had, and consolidating some of these into a new form is an efficient way to deal with many of those problems. It's still a gamble, and both my reaction and that of the community will come down to specifics of unit and Fireteam design in the new Sectorial. Should CB have used this opportunity to cut down bloat while giving beloved old profiles and archetypes a fresh coat of paint and modern rules, I'll be able to get over the proxy issue with some grumbling. If it's a bunch of totally new or repeated stuff with no modernisation thrown together for the new situation alone, I'll be livid. I suspect the real outcome will be somewhere in the middle, as honestly KCF leans too heavily into mixed-linked Heavy Infantry and kitted-out MI to replicate the older Sectorials- it'll probably wind up playing like a strictly better SWF- but still has rough approximates of some old favourites. The people I feel really bad for are CHA players. Kosmoflot is a strictly different beast, and unless it sees substantial changes their playstyle is just gone. Even my MRRF lists came out better, and I use an Anaconda and an Alguacile in those! I wouldn't hold my breath, and don't hold SEF up as an example of CB's record keeping promises- that's one OOP army returned to the catalog out of six promised, and none of them lost rules support until now. MRRF could have passed high school in the time it's been "waiting for a rework", that's long past due for a reasonable design cycle. From the amount of hedging in the release videos, I'll be gobsmacked if we get anything more than PDF prints from N4 Army for the old Sectorials, or if we ever see any of them relaunching within three years. It certainly wouldn't be an unpleasant surprise, but historical precedent is working against CB here. This is definitely a thing- back when we had people more interested in the game's lore hanging out on the forum, the flavour of Kuang Shi and the name of the Kempeitai was a very controversial topic. I'm pretty much never touching Croc Men myself after watching the outright ranting on here from a prominent Warcor at the time about the unit's decorative tattoos. I like the profile, but don't think it's worth getting into a shouting match should someone disagree with my paint scheme. Hell, half the reason most people like MO is because "space knight Catholics", certainly not because of their infamously-awful historical gameplay options.
Well thought out arguments tend to get well thought out reply, the opposite is also true. As I've said in my previous post, KFC is an Acon rework. It's also a Varuna rework and NCA (non reinforcement) rework. It's the best bits and ideas from those three sectorials made into one, with units being compatible enough that easy proxyig is possible. As before, we don't know in what format the N4 legacy lists for lack of a better term will be in. A playable Steel Phalanx list featuring Achilles might be possible, just not as an ITS list. I'd hold off on any judgement about where certain units are showing up until all the sectorial lists are available.
Thank you so much for taking your time and posting this! You have described in great detail all the things that are worrying me personally. I’ve being playing Infinity for 7 years. I own almost a complete range of miniatures for: - Haqqislam - Military Orders - Morat Agression Force - Tohaa - Shasvastii On top of that I have enough miniatures to field an army of nomads and Imperial Service. All painted by commissioned artists too. Now I’m collecting USAriadna. Got all the miniatures (including ridiculously expensive limited Unknown Ranger and Van Zant from TAG raid), but not all of them painted yet. I literally invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time into Infinity hobby. I’m also a hardcore fan of CB. I won’t be affected by these changes but I’m really worried about the future of the game. Hardcore fans are hard to drive away, but once they are gone it’s REALLY hard to earn their trust and bring them back again. In my local community a lot of people don’t really care about armies being cancelled. Many of them still belief they will be present in N5. I’ve noticed that majority of guys who understand that there will be no support for the deleted armies in the foreseeable future and still don’t care play a lot of TTS. For them the game is more of game/tournament system, they don’t really care for the miniatures. They are not a majority of the community in any way, but they are vocal. For the people who don’t care about the removal of the armies: I just want to highlight that your argument highlights to CB the fact that such approach is fine and no support is needed for the removed armies AT ALL. It’s your point of view and decision of course, I just want to make sure that you fully understand the situation: the cancelled armies are gone and no form of roadmap for their return in N5 is provided for the moment by CB. Unlike at the beginning of N4 CB completely ignores this questions which leads to the logical conclusion that no support is planned.
This is something extremely rare to see. We are observing stuff like "We don't know, maybe the situation with missing units is not that bad" and "NDA is getting in the way of calming people down" one week before the drop of a major version. It signifies a total failure of the promo campaign. Absolutely scary, when you think about it, and I'm really not happy to have to say that. At this point, however, we have a direct quote by CB, claiming that those three sectorial are out of the roster. Not reworked. We can, of course, discuss the direct parallels between units and that a rework and joining of the sectorials would have worked in a very similar manner and so on. It is an interesting conversation, which needs the full N5 landscape, so I'd be glad to do it in a month. However, at this point, as per CB's own words in the PanO preview, Acon, Varuna and NCA are not reworked, they are "gone from the playable roster". The fluff also clearly distinguishes the sectorials. And while I just called the N5 promo campaign major failure, I still think that we can at least take its words at face value. This said, KFC seems a really well-designed sectorial (again the same caveat that we need full N5 landscape to confirm).
Or there is an NDA because if people tell what they know, players will riot. I was yesterday in a tournament and by chance, a tester was playing (and won the tournament hahaha, we punny mortals cant beat him). He was to afraid of telling anything during the lunch time
Do you think if there was something I could say that would drive you into a frothing rage, I wouldn't say it NDA or not? There's nothing that dramatic ahead and another week of videos to come as well.
Thanks for the responses everyone. I want to apologize for how typo filled my long posts can be, maybe I have some kind of undiagnosed dyslexia or something, because English is my first and only language lol.
Don't worry about it! It's still perfectly readable and the information and emotive tone can be parsed without any pain for me at least. One of my friends is six years deep into writing a TTRPG system for a hobby, and he still has more typos and errors than you do- and he certainly isn't dyslexic. You're fine.
