Well, what a day. N5 has dropped, and while some kinks are being worked out, this is what it looks like we'll have to work with for the forseeable future. Anyway, I finally, after much deliberating and procrastination, got my Ariadna project off the ground early this year, using Kosmo as a foothold to eventually make my way into vanilla. I had originally wanted to jump in whenever the French would have gotten a rerelease, but that ultimately would never happen. And while Kosmo had some issues with fairly one-dimensional list building, a lot of the strong elements were fun to use (namely M5 and Wally). I'd go as far as to say that M5 is pretty much my favourite set of troopers in the game. With the announcement and increasingly steady dribble of information of N5 leading up to its release, I grew from cautiously optimistic to increasingly cynical the more we saw. That said, I'm aware of my own penchant for critical and analytical behaviour, and the cynisism and (partially justifiably) perceived negativity that can come with that. I attempted to gird the worst of my concerns with disclaimer that there was a significant amount of unknowns that would come with each snippet that was released to us. While my position shifted from optimistic to cautious as time went on, I'd like to think much of that is rooted in the fact that N4 was overall really good. And now it's out, and I wish I'd been less justified in my concerns. Ariadna and especially its only relevant sectorial, Kosmoflot, suffered from issues where they were overall strong factions, but mostly due to relying on a few overtuned elements acting as crutches to hold up an otherwise mediocre base. This was an ultimately unhealthy arrangement, as it stifled a lot of list design variety and lead to a vocal disdain for the biggest offenders to the problem. A hope that I think I held in common with others would be that a balance shift in Ariadna and Kosmoflot would see the more notable problem players brought into a more reasonable position, with the lesser elements languishing in mediocrity and redundancy brought to a healthier level. WIth the exception of a few polarizing matchups, Ariadna and Kosmoflot were actually at pretty good power levels, the curve within just needed a bit of flattening. Instead, with this transition to N5, it feels like an absolute mess. A lot of the problem pieces feel completely over-nerfed, and it's not like things stopped there. Troopers that were already in sorry states would see themselves ground further into the ground, and nothing was given at all to make up for what was taken in an update that saw enormous gains in power for everyone else. Ariadna already felt like it was a faction that was falling behind, and now it absolutely has been left in the dust. It's like every mechanical shift was targeted to hurt Ariadnan troopers. USARF and TAK are essentially non-factions at this point. And of the Reinforcements sets that were released, the Ariadnans are the only ones that have not a single model available for use in any sectorial (the only other troopers unfortunate to share that distinction are Bolts, every other one has a home). Even Moblots got nerfed. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ariadna feels so lacking in vision at this point. I was under the impression that the trimming of Vanilla was supposed to represent a more curated, planned out roster of troopers. Instead, it feels less focused than before. Why the hell is Wallace, a trooper who pays massively (and now more than ever) for a Lt-exclusive skill he can't even use, in Vanilla, for example? I could write a more specific and pointed analysis of where these failings lie later on, but it's so broadly encompassing and feels like so many of these tweeks were made with a sense of unfocused malice. I have a satellite that I'd been wanting to prepare for coming in a month and a half, and Ariadna seems like such a chore at this point. I'd been excited up until now; but seeing what we have to work with, seeing what I'll have to go up against, I'm deflated. Anyway, that's my vent. I hope that I'm shown to be wrong, that I'm missing something here or that my perspective is lacking. But the more I look, the worse it gets.
I can not call it assassination, but it is a significant nerf to the overall faction. More on that later. A lot of things here baffles me. I play Infinity since late N3 and I split my focus between Military Orders and USARF. I am an extremely casual player, but even I have some of the games and understanding under my belt that I can see the problems. And throughout the N4, the problem was always the Kosmoflot. It became so bad that at a casual level in my local meta, people outright refused to play against two bears, mainly because that was extremely unfun experience for the non-Ariadna player. On the shore, they negotiated for one or no bear or the game just was not going to happen some of the time. The same problem can be attributed to the Kosmon on a wider scale. Kosmo took some of the best profiles from all over the Ariadna, shoved them together, gave them fireteams and increased ava, if able. De facto, in my local meta, Kosmo became the new gAriadna. No one played gAriadna, because why should you when Kosmo could bring you the same experience but with bears and fireteams? When N5 was announced, I was cautiously optimistic for the new edition. I really hoped that they will axe one of my sectorials (USARF, which lacked any new releases since march of 2018 back in N3) and reign in the Kosmo problem children, while bringing MRRF or Caledonia back. I was content to be axed and relegate my models to the shelves to be a display pieces. I was looking for second hand Caledonians in case they bring them back. Instead, we have what we have. They axed Caledonia and MRRF, despite several profiles from Caledonia re-released anew. They kept anemic USARF and did not give it enough juice to punch up to the big boys. They severely curtailed profiles across the board and changes to weaponry hit Ariadna hard, because more often than not Ariadna relied on cheap template to trade, circumventing lower BS and worse overall punching power. Okay, that can be solved with cheapness. Ariadna always lagged behind the curve in power levels but they are cheap and have tricks or templates aplenty. Ariadna has smoke! But smoke got nerfed a little. Okay we have shotguns! Except they lost templates. Okay we have camo! Except MSV3 can now target camo anyway. Okay we are cheap so we can overwhelm them with superior numbers! Except everybody got cheaper and they still kept 15 troopers limit at the list creation. I can go in-depth for every USARF exclusive trooper, but should I? I am not familiar with anything aside from USARF but now I look at my lists and I have no idea how to solve anything. How to solve BS-3? How to solve Mimetism-6? How to solve smoke or eclipse or discoballer? Where are my dogs? Everything got cheaper but for what reason? Why should I care for Minutemen when they will most likely than not lose FtF in my active turn due to my lackluster BS, while being priced like the HI of other factions. Even to Zuyong. Zuyongs are not great. But they have Tac. Awareness and TinBot to give you more activations and shore up their defences in the hacking game. What do Minutemen have? One less wound, zero BTS and t2 or ap weaponry. Yes when Minutemen hit they will hit like trucks. The problem is hitting. Because more often than not in a pure Minutemen core link I will be hitting on 11s (before range). Which is fine, but it is only fine unless you start introducing BS-3 or Mimetism-3, for which they have no answer whatsoever. So we are yet again saddled with crutches of Unknown Ranger msv1 and Marauders msv1 to do some heavy lifting. So basically nothing changed except everybody else got way better. Also, we have zero answer for BS-3, because there is no Warhorse in the sectorial at all. And then the cherry on top. Playable but out of catalogue - USARF. On release. Why? If you knew that you will not develop it further, cut it. Just rip the band aid now and be done with it. I own all of the USARF, and I am telling you to cut it. Begging you. Why CB spent time and effort on the mediocre sectorial with no new models or profiles since 2018 and probably for five more years. before they will be cut in N6? I am not sad. Just disappointed. I will play my steppe rangers. But I can not be excited about them, like I am excited about my MO.
Not an Ariadna player, only amateur Merovingian... Don't understand why you said even Moblots got nerfed, they were level up with reinforcements and keep it that way. Even Margot is now a real Moblot. They are a good MI. Yes, they have HI, but they are more like a MI. Ariadna lost a lot, nobody can deny that, but it has still a really good, almost extreme, camouflage deployment with a lot of "nothing" but mines or decoys. Yes, now MVL3 can shoot you without to do discover, but it will have to apply the -3 for mime, best shooter in range will shoot you on 12s, that means to have LoF, to waste an order, in the end, the opportunity/cost will be similar to N4, what it will be a little different is that MVL3 can be with someone else to do some work, since they are cheaper, but cost order will be pretty similar to N4 for the visor, plus it will be really dependent of the table. Only 3 MVL3 on the whole game and aren't cheap, one profile can't be anywhere, and you will have issues only if you cross paths with those 3 factions and they have that profile, and even, terrain distribution will have a lot to say. About the lack of shotguns, you still have access to profiles with direct templates with deployments skills. and camo... So they will be more relevant, since not everyone have one direct template. Worse is on the haqqiss side regarding the shotguns. Camo play should be way better in N5 since Six Sense didn't aovid anymore surprise attack, and not every profile has now the Combat Instinc, so you can move, ignore that one then to kill some friends. Yes, maybe Ariadna is now more focused on "camo" and if you want to go for big guys you will need to align some heavy pieces like TAG or Raknis... But pretty much is the same now for others factions. Wallace I don't think will be paying for the I.Leadership, truly is a thing it happens for a few profiles which have 2 profiles, one with Lt option, and both with a skill only used by the Lt. I want to believe in this case is "almost free" About USARF... Truly I can't share another point of view, sorry @Darvain
More people - more opinions. If everybody had the same idea and agreed upon everything, life would be extremely boring. I feel that Ariadna now has to do camo. If it does not, it is at a disadvantage. USARF have three camo pieces. Foxtrot. Hardcase. Beasthunter. Two of them irregular with no way of making them regular. Do not misunderstand me. USARF is playable. It is just not the "it basically writes itself" case. You really need to consider the possible opposition, your game plan can not be "just dodge bs-3 and mim-6 and you have a chance". You need not only a plan for mission, but a plan for your enemy. And that is way harder, than to just build to play the mission.
It's not an assassination, it's a Ruzzification. I truly had no idea CB were such vatniks, but here we are, the only two remaining sectorials in Ariadna are explicitly Russian, and USARF are slated to go the same way as FRRM and Caledonians. I get that it's a fictional setting, but holy shit, what tone deafness.
First, chill with russophobia, I know it is popular right now, but it doesn't make you one of the cool kids. Second, if you look at the Army, there are a lot more non-russian units in Kosmo than Russian ones. So you are both hateful and wrong in your above statement. As for what OP said, I agree with you. I bought bunch of TAK in preparation for N5 because they said TAK will be in focus. I fully expected them to fix TAKs many unuable units and profiles and make the faction more competitive. Hell, with timeline advancing I expected more hackers in the faction, like maybe Frontoviks could be trained to carry hacking device or something. Didn't expect repeaters and pitchers but at least 1 decent Hacker for hacking centric missions. Instead we got obliterating nerf to Kosmo, and TAK stuck in the hole they were in. Really sad.
Saying things like "More non-Russian units in Kosmo than Russian units" is just a deflection of the problem? Rokots, Zenit-7, Kosmosoldats, Volkolak Assaults, the Polaris Team, "Pavel Alexei MacMannus" were all NEW Russian units thrown out with Kosmoflot. Compare the elements that aren't TAK in origin to the TAK. Kosmoflot is overwhelmingly Russian, with the "NEW!NEW!NEW!" elements having been and continuing to be Russian. For a sectorial that was said to be a multinational entity, it really didn't feel that way. Kosmoflot would have been better served as a NA2/Mercenary Company themed around TAK elements than to be portrayed as a multinational Ariadnan entity.
Guys, what all of that bullcrap has to do with anything related to mishandling of Ariadna at the launch of N5? Can we not drag real life politics in our game of imaginery toy soldiers?
IMO entire Komsoflot was a mistake, I think I mentioned that before. Would've preferred they updated any of the existing Ariadna sectorials than making Kosmo. Kosmo is just better vanilla with fireteams and new units that are just more of what TAK had just better. But calling it a Russian faction is just wrong.
What would you call it then? Way back in the before times, I referred to it as "TAK 2.0". I stick with that moniker.
ok, my 2 cents: Axing USARF would be the most stupid and suicidal movement from CB ever, considering they are really focused on inserting themselves in the american market. Assuming they are not absolutely bonkers and living in an isolated basement, they will re-release USARiadna soon, hopefully in february/march. Incidentally, USAR units still in production are still available in the CB store, but will be OOP in January or so. Kosmoflot is a mistake on several levels. Personally, I would have made vanilla heavily reliant on MRRF, Caledonia, and mercs, with a touch of USAR and TAK, so it can be a different experience. In that regard, my only complaint is that many rus/am forces are still present, anyways. As for the TAK roots, the problem I think is not based on the number of entries in the Army, but the specific troops reaching the lists, which in the case of fireteams means all but the varangian fireteams have TAK units (or rotoks) in them... That means people often consider the russian elements as the core of Kosmoflot, with the rest of the units being associates or auxiliaries. I cannot, however, understand the limited amount of USARiadna troops in vanilla, unless CB plans to rotate the vanilla lineups with the release of new sectorials.
Please cut down on the current politics, there are other forums, redits and many many other options to go and have your conversations about the current state of the world, this forum is not it. As far as USArf if they wanted to cut it they would like the Caledonians and the Merovingians, clearly they did not for some reason other than to cut them immediately after release.
They didnt cut USARF because there were 2 older sectorials to cut, simple as that. PS: When we complain about Ariadna become too russian and we dont like it, is simply because game reasons. Nothing to do with real russian people. Yes, we have russianphobia, but game russians, not real ones (at least this is how it works for me) USARF has been in the market for years. And never was a popular faction. Icestorm opened the USA market doors. Releasing USARF maybe helped, but by a really marginal percent
Kosmoflot was a great idea with a terrible execution. Current tech astronauts in a sci fi setting sells itself, thick astronaut suits, bright reflective colors, solar panels, rober remotes, models with 0g poses, all types of weird profiles. Instead we got thematic copy pasted units, zenits are scouts, volkolaks are wulvers, bears are dogs but much much better (the personification of powercreep) etc Only 2 arguably 3 profiles (if you count the paracomando) are space themed, on top of that you get lots of caledonians with 0 theme, the unknown ranger the only usable USARF profile since the beginning of N4 and the cherry on top the mirage team just because it had a remake scheduled and it wouldn't sell if it was a MRRF exclusive. I think kosmoflot was a caledonian rework that shifted gears after the success of the wotan online campaign, again it was probably a great idea, that campaign was fun and it made sense, but in the end it had too much recycled and rushed stuff. 15 model cap was a mistake. Let's get this straight, the 2019 stats are published in this forum, CA, Aleph and Tohaa were consolidated as the top competitive factions. The 20 model list meta is a myth. This was a decision focused on player experience, the game is difficult to learn an master it rquires commitment and you will loose 10 to 20 games until you are able to stand by yourself. Facing 16 to 18 models on a 120x120 table full of terrain is hard for a new player, it's also hard to face a tag or a visor3 or a mim-6 or a hacker list for the first time, it's trial and error but I understand their intention. All good up until now BUT during N3 all armies got access to cheap models and skills to get additional orders. This was not reverted when the 15 model cut was made. And cheap armies were not redesigned to work with 15 models apart from a couple of strange bufs. Since then everyone plays with 15 models no matter the faction, and usarf or mrrf had to compete with overpowered armies with the same amount of models and less activations... I mean it's not rocket science. The sad part of this is the loss of list variety, the limited insertion lists or the 8+8 lists are gone, no more elite vs horde and everything in between. Everyone must play 15 now, some are clearly better at it and it's boring. If at least the super elite factions were reduced to 10 models there would be room and diversity from 10 to 15. The MRRF case has been my most frustrating experience in 19 years of hobby. I started playing them at the beginning of N2 and they have never been good on the table. Years and years waiting for a balance fix a gameplay boost, we just got a couple of useless bandaids, mercenary profiles and the worst tag ever made, now it's not even playable. USARF has followed that path since the end of N3 but at least it was super fun to play back then, not super strong but actually well designed all the army but minutmen and the UR made sense, everything had a place and was a good choice you had to combine your simple profiles to achieve what others could do with a single expensive troop. Now reaching the swc cap with a list that makes sense can be a struggle. Fire not burning mimetism was a mistake, let's face it, for years mimetism and visors have been the base for a great toop profile, reducing the ways to play around that was not a good idea. Having ariadna, a faction defined by it's 4 very distinct nations with just TAK and kosmoflot it's just sad, a failure, makes no sense and has no point. I loved infinity so much, I had so much fun with this game and it's so sad to see it degrade in this way. I can't avoid to check the news or this new edition with the hopes for a change, a new strong direction, a clear improvement, but it never happens.
They could have just rolled Kosmo into vanilla, and then let everyone know that USARF and either CHA or MRRF were in unfinished states but there were plans for that to be rectified in the future. Even just a level of transparency here would have helped so much. As far as Vanilla presently goes, at least just aesthetically, it's a bit frustrating to see 66% of the faction being represented by TAK, when Ariadna as a whole represents so much diversity. In any case, just going over my thoughts on troopers in vAriadna in greater depth, to hopefully better explain my thoughts or concerns; but also for myself as a tool to digest those thoughts. The Good No, I'm not going to be all cynical here. There were some good changes. •Mirage 5 - Margot and Duroc got some significant buffs. outside of a badly needed point cut on Margot, I don't know if they were necessary, but I won't say 'no.' Mimetism helps make her less likely to absolutely flub rolls, and NCO lets them work harder. These guys are going to have to carry vAriadna and Kosmo hard, because not a lot will anymore. As I'd mentioned in my initial post, I adore this pair, and while I look forward to taking them every single opportunity I'm allowed to, I lament that it may begin to feel more like a necessity than a choice. •Scouts - Scouts still suffer from being tethered to the ridiculously overpriced Ohotnik. I was actually surprised that it wasn't just turned into a thunderbolt, because it's mostly just an overpriced one of those in the first place. The change to T2 ammo does help a bit though, and will allow them to put the fear of god into enemies crossing lateral firelanes thinking they can go unchecked. The only profile that actually interests me, however, is the EM Minelayer. The sacred cow of no-fun-allowed minelayers being 'semi-known' has now been killed, and this is Ariadna's rendition. Most other factions are getting better or cheaper (or better and cheaper, the Shujae looks absolutely insane now) renditions of this, but this one's ours. •Apaches - They go super fast and they can hit decently hard. Kind of awkward without smoke access or an impetuous order to spend, but they might find some decent use attached to duos. Berserk is kind of garbage now, so it might be worth saving your points on those unless you want the double chain rifle, which might be a bit of an ask at +4 points. I'm not expecting miracles from these, but I'm optimistic and want to try to make them work. •Knauf - While not strictly an Ariadna unit, he's in here, so I'll count him. He's pretty much the same Knauf that we all know and love to watch die to a single bad dice roll, but Decoy now makes him harder to assassinate or to predict his angle of attack. With Ariadna losing access to its most important MSV, he takes up a potentially important position, and can be very scary when things do go well. Just make sure you have a plan B. •Barsuks - They're just Grunts that write their nametag in Cyrillic. However, the 11-point (no mimetism) camo model should at least provide some solid DZ template coverage. They're about as uninspired in design as you can get on CB's part, but functionally they should fill some holes. The Weird Some of the changes that were made are questionable in their implementation. In these instances, I'm not expecting much, but I'm not ruling them out and I'd be happy to be surprised. Most of these I'd like to at least give a shot. •Kibervolk Patrol - Interesting kit on the dog and its handler. My main concern is that for a trooper that wants to move into the midfield and eat away at the enemy skirmishers that might otherwise try to hide themselves away, he has a crucial lack of mobility skill combined with a large silhouette that can make him cumbersome to move around and limits his paths of attack. If he weren't completely shafted by a stairwell, I think I'd be totally on board with everything he brings to the table. •Tankhunters - Even with the point-cut that they received, I still don't know where they'll find a place to fit in most army lists. Those big guns are still prohibitively expensive, and the rifle profiles are all still dogwater. What's of curious note here is the new FD8 profile. The positioning and two sets of mines is at the very least interesting, but I don't know if he's really all that impressive outside of that with just his little SMG, and the lack of minelayer means he'll need to spend orders to set those toys up. •Veteran Kazaks - Minor point cut, 6-2 MOV, and the improved utility of Warhorse is a step up for this guy. His main competition also got hit really hard. I'm actually a bit disappointed that we lost the X-visor, as the utility of a suppressive fire piece with his refurbished skillset could actually be pretty interesting. For what they've gained, however, I think they're behind the curve of what a lot of similarly priced or functioning troopers in other factions got, which stops them from excelling as much as I'd like them too. The lack of good fireteam options in vanilla also greatly limits their access to the coveted +1SD bonus. •Vystrel - Defensive coverage is going to be more necessary than ever in N5's era of extremely efficient hyper offense, but I'm not sure if this is going to have the consistency for the job. The PAC is a scary gun, and there's a bit of cooked in durability between the second point of Structure and REMpres, but it doesn't come all too cheap and the stats aren't that massively impressive, even if it is inside a foxhole. The Bad And now it's my list of greviances. Now, I'm going to make a point here of saying that this does not necessarily cover every trooper that I think is poor or underpowered in vAriadna. There's a lot of mediocre to trash level troopers here that got little-to-no attention where it was needed. I'm only going to focus on the most egregious or nonsensical cases of over-nerfing or neglect. •Jacques Bruant - He gained surprise attack, which is nice, but he only gets to use it once per game and he went up a full three points for the privilege. I don't think he needed an increase at all, it's not like he was a unit anyone really complained about even. Just odd to strike out at an otherwise solid trooper that I felt was doing fine in his own lane. •Spetsnaz - Again, random price increase, this time with no added skills. He's stood to gain a bit with the change to Sixth Sense and won't be quite as easy to explode with a single bad dice roll, but I once more fail to see good reason for his price to go up even further when 38 is already demanding a lot. •Dynamo - They lost what was, in my mind, their best profile. The FO/Rifle/Assault Pistol got work done for me. Another competent unit that wasn't really doing much to break the game, and yet they had to get kicked in the kidneys for it. •Polaris Team/Bearpode - N4 Bearpode was an absolute mistake, and CB should not have introduced it into the game in that state. Let alone with the ability to take two. It was overpowered, and encouraged uninteractive gameplay strategies that were unhealthy for its constituent factions, and Infinity as a whole. The bears became a crutch that, along with UKR, lifted Ariadna and Kosmoflot into higher positions of viability than the rest of their stock would otherwise dictate, and listbuilding and gameplay strategies for these factions relied far more on them than was reasonable. In every way, Bears absolutely deserved readjusting. However, CB went way too far on this one here. What's more, with the crippling of this crutch, Ariadna has already been knocked down several pegs before they even have to deal with all the other unnecessary nerfs thrown their way (and all the buffs that everyone else received). •Unknown Ranger - Simlar to the Bearpode, UKR's competence and potency forced the entirety of Ariadna to revolve itself around him. He was extremely strong, and his ubiquity was made even more apparent by the fact that Ariadna was flooded with a bunch of significantly worse profiles that were completely redundant to his own kit. However, a lot of new troopers that have entered his cost bracket are well within similar performance to his own, and it's clear that they were now designed around the standard that he had set. So seeing him nerfed so heavily (I know his MSV profile exists in USARF, but USARF doesn't exist) was quite a surprise after seeing previews for stuff like Adil and Tarik, who are very much contemporaries of his old self. What's worse, and what makes these nerfs all the more painful, is that nothing was done, again, to fill in the gap that was left behind by UKR's loss of power. I'd like to emphasize, I'd be otherwise okay with this adjustment if the rest of Ariadna had been given some teeth to compensate. •Moblots - Cool models, and it's not like they were ever actually good, even with some of the improvements they'd recieved post-Reinforcements. And now they lost all their infiltrating profiles. Makes no sense as to why, they weren't hurting anything. The limited availability and fireteam accessibility also hurts them. Just confusing to see them lose what they lost here, although that's a constantly reoccuring trend. •Uxia - So far, I can't think of a single trooper that got it worse than she did. More than any other trooper in the game, it feels like the changes going into N5 were almost pin-point targeted to absolutely savage her. Uxia lost significant CC potency through the nerf to D-charges and the removal of her pistols' CC profile; her access to smoke was worsened, and she lost the DTW that would allow her to make important trades. Every aspect of her offensive kit has become significantly worse, as they all worked off of one another. Infiltration rolls were already unreliable as it is, but now she'll have an even harder time doing a reliable job if she doesn't get killed in deployment. Comparing her to other deep infiltrators or Impersonators, and she's just in such a sad state now. The worst part though, is that with Ariadna's comparatively limited apex gunfighting solutionss, I still feel that she'll be necessary to crack open holes needed for Ariadna and Kosmo to even play the game. She's just worse and far less reliable at it now. •Antipode Assault Pack - These guys were cumbersome, order and planning intensive, and not even all that good for when they finally did deliver. And now they lost the ability to get cover for no reason. Here I was, hoping that they'd be receiving a buff of some sort (I was really hoping for trench hammers), and we got this. Holy hell. •Cadin Donn - He's got a few nifty bits, but Berserk is useless now and he costs twice as much as an Apache while not bringing a whole lot more to the table. I really want to like him, but I need to be realistic, he's just not going to cut it when there's so little room for compromise with what we actually can use. •William Wallace - This one really frustrates me. He went up in cost, all his abilites got worse, and he became easier to kill. He lost his LFT going from N3 to N4 with it being mostly redundant to his shotgun, and now that the shotgun change was reversed, he still didn't get his template weapon back, making it easier for assassins to push into him. He also, obviously, can't invite opponents to the thunderdome as effectively with the general nerf to smoke. But what's most egregious is that, in spite of CB's implication of turning vanilla factions into smaller, more easily managed and curated forces that should be as cohesive as their sectorial contemporaries (and more than any other faction right now, Ariadna needs its vanilla to make sense, because the sectorials are all dogwater)... they put this guy into vanilla, paying huge prices for his leadership abilities, and won't even allow him to be Lieutenant. Why? With the trimming down of selections (and the increasing ease of high mobility turn one assassination runs), it's not even like Inspiring Leadership would even be problematic in vAriadna. His inclusion and state of being in vanilla flies completely in the face of everything that CB had advertised their concept for vanilla factions to be. And that sucks, because I think that he's otherwise actually a very fun trooper, but he's just completely unusable in his present state. Finally, I think the following troopers just didn't receive enough care, and are still either overcosted or underperforming (or both): •Loup-Garou •Van Zant •Zenit-7 •Briscards •Vassily Plushenko
Maybe where you live, but they were easily the most popular Ariadna for quite a while at events in the US when they launched. Strong agree! I was very excited with their release, until they got to the game table. The Kosmosoldat and Patchers are such great designs, but the army is not interesting to play for the reasons you mentioned. I couldn't agree more, and this is the root of a major issue with USARF, list building. The model cap works better when you have a variety of units at different costs... USARF has a problem where so few of their units are over 25-30 points a model that it actually becomes a burden to take their better, inexpensive tools. This is an issues I've pointed out for ages with the Ohio, they needed a buff not just to be better for their cost, but to drive up their cost to help with list construction. Make them as good as Vet Kazaks, and cost as much as Vet Kazaks. T2 and Combat Instinct aren't the solution, giving them NWI (boring), Regeneration (interesting), X-visors (or some sort of visor, they all have them on the minis), 6-2 move (which they got), etc., would make them more expensive, and worth taking for their cost. Right now people don't take Blackjacks in USARF because they're good, they're taken because we don't have better things to fill the points in our list. So much this. This is what was so damn fun about USARF, and why I loved playing them. ...especially with the current state of vanilla. MRRF and CHA have more representation in vanilla than USARF. Kosmo even looks like a vanilla faction on the table. I think like many people, I'm pretty disappointed with Ariadna. I have everything for the line, including CHA and MRRF. I played Kosmo out of obligation to collect everything for the faction, but now the factions feel like three slight variations on Kosmo/TAK, and then some Diet USARF.
Another problem is that CB never ever balance their stuffs so I feel that we might be stuck with these underwhelming profiles until N6 whenever it comes out at this point maybe they should have said the wormhole to Dawn has closed and delete Ariadna. edit: my bad, I was a bit too emotional when writing this msg initially
