Thanks, I always think the Scindron is the thing with the Avatar and the Stahldron is the thing for the Sphinx. But yeah. Stahldron is the ideal way to have done things: it comes with the thing that can deploy it. Scindron should have been with the Sphinx.
I reckon you could excuse pilots coming separately if you basically said that, like, all of the TAGs in your faction have the same pilot mini. So to save you buying a Szalamandra (with Pilot), a Lizard (with Pilot) etc etc etc instead you buy 1 pilot mini and use them for all your TAGs. Thing is, some of them are rather different and ideally you would want different sculpts anyway, especially for nerds like me. Honestly I wouldn't mind if Pilots came separately from TAGs if they released more Pilots. There are some great Pilot minis, I want more!
For what it's worth, all Manned TAGs have a Pilot model available. Some are positively ancient and could do with a resculpt (looking at you Szalamandra Pilot!), but they do all exist.
You’re being overly literal, Mahtamori. I understand anatomy, and art. Not only is it possible to make multiple arms that are anatomically accurate, a 30mm miniature does not have perfect anatomy anyway. Neither do Infinity minis. Many infinity minis have ‘unnatural’ poses. But even if you are sticking to perfect anatomy, models aren’t naked. Most infinity models aren’t even ‘just’ wearing clothing. They’re wearing armor. These articles conceal a great deal, and allow perfectly convincing variations in multipose models. I’m not talking about ‘GW’ minis, whose joins have more to do with the constraints of plastic production. You can absolutely make beautiful multipose models without getting the kinds of problems you are imagining, especially if you are only talking about two or maybe three different arm sets per body. Try this: put on two shirts, a jacket, and body armor with trauma plates. Now hold your arm out like a traffic cop. Notice how nobody can tell your breast is squishing? Now pick up a rifle and aim it. Aim it somewhere else. Drop the muzzle. Now shrink yourself down to 1” tall. Can anyone really notice the differences in the musculature of your arm in slightly different positions.
That even (especially) if you're ripped like Dwayne Johnson, your pecs get in the damn way. ===== I think we should probably look at dropping the 6-model starter boxes for all sectorials, and go for a bigger army pack like USARF/JSA (and now MO?). Put the AVA1 'cool model(s)' into that 10-model army pack (for JSA that's the Daiyokai and Celty), and only available in that army pack. (JSA looks to be the model for this, so there's the Army Pack, Domaru box, Tanko Box, Keisotsu SWC, Aragoto box, Karakuri box, O-Yoroi box (plus pilot), 2x Shikami blisters, Ninja blister, Oniwaban, Shinobu, Neko Oyama, and 3x REM boxes. 15 or so SKUs). Should probably stick the TAG pilot (or bot) into the TAG boxes. Scarface would have TAG, dismounted Joe, and Cordelia. Modeling wise, I'd be OK with 4 basic body poses. Male and female, and mirrored. Then you can have some variety in which model gets which weapon. NO TACTICAL ROCKS! I really wish CB would stick to one size of combirifle for both men and women, but that damn boat has sailed. Some 'universal profile' models wouldn't be bad, like a Domaru/Knight with blade(s) only. A swappable head in the set would be nice, too, so you can make a hacker or not.
Army Packs do have the advantage of a decent playable force out the box, better than the 6 man ones. It also mitigates the waste of thinks like ASA and Varuna, where the SWC is too bloated for six minis in a "starter" but bumped to 10 it seems more reasonable. They do, however, have a bit of a resource bottleneck in making them, as right now, an army pack is usually the whole month's releases in mini terms. Ideally, not having any vanilla starters at all per se would be a good target. That cuts down SKUs by one and it's not exactly difficult to assemble a vanilla force either way. The alternative would be making the two players the "vanilla" army pack after tabbing on the Beyond box, but Coldfront's a mild combo breaker right now (Red Veil is meant to be stuff available to Ramah and White Banner, after all... but they ain't got their rules out yet) so unless Sval gets Icestorm's contents available to them, and Black Hand pops up to be all "Oh look they've got grenzers, alguacils, rev healers, brigadas, spektrs, boracs, hellcats, intruders, and Bob" it isn't gonna work that way.
I think the original 6-man starters were built around the idea of starter box, TAG box, REM box, and hacker blister making your table force. But that was clear back in 2006. Very broadly, something like this: Yu Jing ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 9 1 1 HSIEN Lieutenant MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, AP CCW. (+1 | 57) SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 5) NINJA Combi Rifle / Pistol, Shock CCW, Knife. (0 | 34) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) GŪIJIĂ MULTI HMG, Heavy Flamethrower / AP CCW. (2 | 88) GŪIJIĂ PILOT Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife. () GŬILÁNG Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 31) WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16) HÙSÒNG Yaókòng HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 25) 3.5 SWC | 289 Points Open in Infinity Army Note that there was a slight points decrease when N3 rolled out for models on the upper end, basically enough to add one more basic LI. And yes, the original YJ starter box was Hsien, 3x Zanshi combis, Ninja, and Shaolin: Man, I'm so glad the Hsein changed, those rods were all separate pieces! [ edit ] That army list is Starter box, TAG box, REM box, and Guilang Blister. All of that was out by January 2007, IIRC. And that's kinda what I've always thought an Infinity army should look like.
I'd take the "Support Pack" concept and run with it, bundling 3 or 6 similarly themed troopers from the back catalogue into "Assault Pack" and "CQB Pack" and "Espionage Pack" etc, just to cut down on the bloat. For example... 2x Zeros and 2x Prowlers. Or 2x Kanren and 1x Ninja. Or Myrmidon + Myrmidon Officer + Ajax + Patroclus (i dunno im just spitballing here) I think pretty much anything after the initial production run of blisters should end up consolidated like that. So, like... after 12-18 months of being on sale as a single figure, it goes into a bundle, and the single figure is pulled.
I think there's a middle ground and 2 figure blisters are it. But I'm also for 5 Trooper "link team" boxes (ie. add WM HRL to the WM Box). That being said, simple combos do make a. For instance: Moira Box, BSG Healer + Custodier Combi, Kusanagi let's you go from 5 SKU to 3 without losing anything significant (out if date Custodier BSG sculpt is all you drop). It also allows you to build multiple Observance links: it benefits players (3 purchases for all key female-Observance options) and CB (reduced SKU, increased incentive for people to purchase BSG Healer). I think getting rid of 'vanilla' starters is a good idea. The Nomad one is particularly notable: dropping Icestorm (and B:IS) allows you to repackage the Nomad and Corregidor starters as a single Corregidor starter of 3 x Algs, Spitfire Hellcat, Intruder MSR, MB Multi (-2 SKU), repack Intruder Combi with Intruder HMG (SKU neutral), repack Spektr Combi with Spektr BSG (retire old Spektr, SKU neutral), repack MSR Genzer in with a Securitate or Grenzer model (SKU neutral, after a gap in production), repack Mk12 Kriza with a Hollowman Hacker + Tinbot (SKU neutral after a gap in production). Admittedly the PanO starter is harder. But that's mainly because of how ubiquitous Fusiliers and Orcs are across factions.
Dual blisters and five man boxes would up the average individual SKU cost though, which may dissuade players from getting into the game. Although otherwise I absolutely agree.
An alternative, is keep the basic starters exclusive to the Operation Name Here sets, disrupted a little by the sectorial nature of Coldfront, but not too much. The basic ALEPH and Ariadna starters pretty much were starters for those sectorials anyway bar the Grey and Chasseur of the old Ariadna starter (both replaced elsewhere). The Red Veil starters may also be the starters for Ramah/IA/White Banner or whatever. Phasing out the current Nomad and PanO starters loose for a Corrigedor following your plan or one like mine, and PanO, well... I guess a new Neoterra one. Bolts (new, of course, because I'm sure "more bolts" will delight PanO players), Swiss guard, new Aquilla, new Hexa.
We've argued that one before, and not very successfully, there are very few models with even spare arms. But I'd also be willing to pay a little extra to have an alternate head and/or weapons options in the box.
The last single shikami blister release was a good one. 2 heads, 2 sets of left arms (contender or sword). Gave me a spare weapon option for my kaizoku spec-ops conversion (since the new one is exclusive to the JSA box) when I did my zhanshi-keisotsu conversions.
One of the things that really should have had extra weapon options or the like in the box was the Uhlan/Tikbalang box. I'd have bought one by now if I could have built two Uhlans out of it without having to kitbash/heavily convert.
Nothing would help more than providing swap-able weapons in SWC and Starter boxes. The N2 Kuang Shi box and the support remote boxes come to mind. These are perfectly done, and generate multiple sales of these boxes to a single player. This change would allow players to generate multiple troop profiles from a single SKU and makes for easier conversions to fill-in missing troops elsewhere in their faction. It also eliminates the terrible taste in your mouth when you buy a whole box that has only one unit possessing a loadout that is actually fielded by anyone. (I'm looking at you Yu Jing half of Beyond Red Veil!) Multiple sales per box, less SKUs, less missing profiles, less confusion on the table. Seriously, what's not to love? About to post this, then saw @kanluwen's post. So yes, +1 from me!
Units that are linkable need to come in boxes that can be used to create a full unit, with multiple configurations from a single purchase. At this stage, popular units can often have 2-4 SKUs just to get a limited sub-set of options. As it is, splitting services, proxies, and conversion are basically required to get a fire team to a workable stage. CB are still releasing minis like a Rackham-style boutique operation, but they have long since stopped being that. Poses are no longer overly dynamic, repeated sculpts and assets are rampant, and in general the models are a lot less fiddly and much simpler to build. But for some reason LI still need a release in the starter and/or a core box, an SWC box, and then assorted blisters to fill their profiles out. This could be accomplished in one SKU if they simply packed more in to that box. More weapon bits and options, alternate heads and bits to represent different equipment. Folks shouldn't have to wait years just to get all the equipment options for a unit, especially if that SKU bloat is actively inconvenient for all parties involved (the LGS, players, and CB themselves). The game, as it is played these days, doesn't jive with CB's old release model, and they have been too slow to change. Unit boxes should be released with an eye toward being playable out of the box. This benefits everyone (even if it ends up meaning pricier individual boxes simply due to extra shipping weight). Also, it wouldn't hurt if starters were actually made to be an introductory product instead of being some kind of intermediate step with no rhyme or reason paid to what things are included in it. Starters that are 100% unplayable out of the box are terrible for getting folks in to the game. I'd personally move to making 10-order starters (because this better represents how the game is actually played) and push these harder as the way to get in to the game over the more specialized 2-player boxes they've been rolling out (which then get a Beyond * box and a Dire Foes for yet more SKU bloat). At this stage, Infinity is pretty terrible to get in to unless you have an old grog guiding you through the byzantine process. CB need to fix that, and they need to fix it fast.
I mostly agree with you, but I think this is a bit off. I'd argue that the products currently labeled as "starters" are now just a hold over from simpler times, and the real starters are the 300 point boxes, or the various operation boxes with two factions in them. They tend to have enough stuff to get people "started", including things omitted from the original starters like rules, tokens, templates, basic terrain, and introductory scenarios. The Operation boxes generally are pretty close to completely stand alone, giving people a chance to play the game, for a price comparable to some higher end board games, or a nice AAA video game. If I was CB I'd give serious thought to a repackage of the "starters" to another name, though it might not be worth the effort to transition.
