Well, the book is, first, about "heroes" (in the greek sense), and plays to the expectation that they are above equals. And they have to sweat for what they get, you see it (heck, Uahu is almost killed while dance-hacking with a Druze because of another Druze, and was saved by Emily). It also plays to the excellencies of an attacker group that work together to keep the enemy out of balance, and has a sense of urgency that can be feel as "if the druze manage to regroup, the crew is done for". To be fair, Jethro was another "greek hero" in the book, and an expert in ambushes with sniper rifles, while the Bagh Mari were a patrol... I'd say that Jethro was a little more optimized to shooting than Knauf, and had camo instead of mimetism... now play that in the game: first move, shoot the bagh-mari sniper and move a litte (now you have absolute range advantage), second move, move a little and kill another Bagh Mari... now it's a matter of Surprise Shot them to death. The funny thing is how "the revelation" is something that happens in the third Takeshi Kovacs book (hinted from the first one!). And the consequences of breaking that law in Infinity are harsher because of Aleph, for one thing, and because of an organization being caught doing it is something much much bigger than an individual...
Yeah, I didn't find that scene particularly jarring. I wouldn't find it jarring if it would have been Guilang on the wrong end of Jethro, that's exactly what snipers are supposed to be able to do! The setup was "sniper massacres patrol of good soldiers". You could even play it out on the table, if Jethro has enough orders. Sequence would be along the lines of, starting from Camo Marker with LOS, spend first order to shoot and then move behind cover; spend a second order to re-camo. Third order is to Lean Out to kill the one model looking my direction, then fourth order is to re-camo. From there, cautious move to next shooting point. Then start the process all over again in the next turn.
One of the problems in a lot of the unit fluff is they are often portrayed as da bestest ever and often have blurbs about killing someone else's bestest guy.
I'll be getting rid of the brawler figure that comes with the book. I just don't like the design of it (it's just not high-techy enough. If I wanted to play less-than-hi-tech I'd lobotomise myself, put on a kilt and belt out "Sweet home, St Petersburg" :D ). It'll either be sold, given away or melted down in my crucible. I did that for gogo marlene, the bounty hunter from N3 but I sold the condescension prize (wooden spoon) from a tourney (Aleph's fatboy) because I really hated that model and other people seemed to actually want it. To this point, only miniature leftovers have gone into the crucible, but there's always a first time. I only want the book for the non-fluff parts because I prefer to look at them in dead-tree format than as pdfs and the army builder is dependent upon a decent net connection which can't be guaranteed where I play. Not that I'll even be fielding the JSA before 2019 anyway.
Well then, the book will go on the shelf inside the cupboard of shame and stay there until he heat death of the universe. It will keep paradiso and the other 2nd ed vintage books company.
Well, in this case it works even better. We know the Bagh Mari are supposed to be really good soldiers from fluff, and we know they should be pretty good at find-the-sniper in-game due to MSV. Jethro still smoked a whole squad of them, which means he is exceptionally dangerous game to be hunting. Y'all should talk to some old Vietnam veterans sometime. There were some seriously sneaky bastards there, mostly on the Vietnamese side. Get thee behind me, Matt Ward! XP
Minor point, but I'd be a bit miffed if Jethro (or similar) picked off a whole squad of Guilang, mostly because Guilang strikes me as the lone wolf sniper themselves so there shouldn't ever be more than one to ambush. Wouldn't bother me the same way if stuff like Bao or Zhanying ate it during an ambush by a competent sniper. Another minor point, aside from Celestial Guard (who really, really, don't match their unit blurb), I can't really recall many Yu Jing who gets the bestest of the bestest story in their blurbs. Shang-Ji gets an excerpt that's literally propaganda while most ISS units gets a description of what they do (though I never quite felt like Bao had the gear to act like thugs). Most of the YJ stuff that gets the bestest blurb treatment can actually live up to it. *HSSSSSSSS* BOOOO!
I like the addition of lower tech units because it makes a contrast. My Corregidor is feeling pretty techy these days when they didn't at all before.
They might be ripping 40k there, CS Goto? I'd checked out of GW by that point, was his thing awkward sentence structure and incongruities equivalent to Zhanshi armed with Sepistors?. White Wolf is entirely on topic, however. It was/is Vampire and Exalted both for me... wonderful settings, and then you hit something awful that you either have to pretend was never written, or read between the lines upside-down by the light of the full moon to make it work. If you've been through WoD:Gypsies or Return of the Scarlet Empress, coping with Uprising is a walk in the park, really.
I gave up on WoD just before they did their whole "universe ends" thing - before they brought in NWoD. M R*H was as pretentious irl as he seemed on the page. Kept a couple of books (I know the artists from S*C*A*R studios) but sold or gave away a large chunk of the rest of my stuff.
We're on page 50, well off topic by now. C.S. Goto was probably a thing when you played, though I don't know when in GW's fairly long history you checked out. Goto is infamous for writing a Black Library book that consisted of a female Eldar Farseer being tortured for half the book. Goto in general seemed to carry a lot of hate or loathing towards both Eldar and women, but luckily I don't think he ever got to write game material even if the Black Library stuff was considered canon (yes, that includes how Tau have humanoid feet AND hooves at the same time as well as Eldar being reptilian while being able to father offspring with humans.) Think WoD and GW's couple of universes suffer from the fact that they're fairly vast and built on predefined tropes. It's inevitable the larger the material gets that you'll run into bad stuff.
On topic, I started to get opinions from people who have read the book. "the Uprising feels like something is off" or strange... I'll try and see if I can extort the book for a few days to peruse. And even WoD had the good sense to dissociate Vampires with 100% of what happend in humanity's history, here it seems like all the Dire Foes' stories were orbiting around Uprising (like it was the ONLY event going on in the whole setting). Tried that, sadly to Spain only the first edition arrived, second was "crunch till the end" and paranoia combos, and third... I'm too lazy to start now on another iteration of the same thing :/ Funny thing is how I fell in line with almost everybody regarding the Infernals splatbook: ignore chapters 1 & 2. Something I discovered literally yesterday... (reading suggestion, incidentally, Earthscorpion's "A Green Sun Iluminates the Void" is a great lecture for a lot of points, and the only thing it has in common with Familiar of Zero is the characters and some events). Infernals... Or in oWoD, we were playing the Transilvania Chronicles... and the last adventure was literally impossible (my character had the whole region more controlled than Fonçada's Cathedral in Madrid...). https://1d4chan.org/wiki/C.S._Goto Multilasers. Everywhere. *shudder* Their biggest success was to go into "spray & pray" with the piecemeal licensing in the PC industry. Sure, DoW3 tanked hard (strategy turned hero tactis turned MOBA...), Inquisitor looks a slow Diablo clone, etc..., but some games hit hard, and bring more people to the 'verse, which means they will buy the miniatures sooner or later. Free publicity.
Ah. That creature. I think I've read ONE of the books, and promptly refused to ever even pick up another book by it.
That's a good choice. Both for your sanity, and as a way to discourage further writing from such an awful author!
