Yeah, you'd have to actually present an argument for me to agree with you. And "your criticisms are wrong because CB has a perfect plan, trust them" isn't good enough. The Oniwaban, Raiden, Keisotsu, and Tokusetsu all saw plenty of play at the competitive level, and claiming that it's only the Oniwaban is disingenuous at best.
No, hassassins get one new model, maybe 2. Everything else works the same way it does now. Because that's the extent of changes to JSA. One whole new unit (Daiyokai), one unit that is half new (Ryuken HRL is a Raiden, SMG is new), and you lose a named character (that everyone had bought!) for a new one. My vanilla YJ lists almost always used Keisotsu and Tokusetsu doc/engineer. That was 5 points I lost.
Maybe. They might be counting on me buying whatever units fill the void in a fit of blind brand loyalty, egged on by appeals to "design space."
I do think there are serious design space issues in Combined Army, and both the Shasvastii and Morat sectorials suffer for it. In the original Combined Army army list, all the "vanilla" troops were Morats, all the infiltration units were Shasvastii, and the other MI and HI unit slots were mostly filled by Exrah and Aspects. As a result, the Morat army ended up with a lot of fairly plain units, and all the Shasvastii ones are fairly fragile with questionable gimmicks. They are each lacking what the other offers; Shasvastii need some simple beatsticks to back up the stealth tricks, and Morats need some marker states and alternative attack vectors. But either of them getting units like that would tend to step on each other's toes in vanilla CA. Onyx isn't really a sectorial I enjoy playing, but its combined nature means that it's much better designed than either of the preexisting ones. If you look purely at design space, I think it's pretty obvious that both MAF and SEF would benefit from not being in Combined Army. On that note, I'm very curious to see what the newly redesigned SEF looks like in 2019. You still see this in other armies as well, with many vanilla armies having highly redundant selections for certain army slots, or units that are bad in vanilla but good in their sectorial's fireteam. It's just unfortunate that in CA they linked certain battlefield roles to certain races, and then made those races be the initial sectorials. It would be like if they had decided Bakunin couldn't have Custodiers because Interventors already existed, or that Neoterra couldn't have any HI because that was Military Orders's gimmick.
Quite possibly, but you won't solve it by removing options from MAF, rather the opposite - give her a unique profile for MAF since they're the ones who rescued her and are limited mechanically. What you're talking about is starting to become a real issue, but is going to have to be solved by changing the vanilla/sectorial paradigm, not just playing the "What model that you paid for will you not be able to run next!" roulette.
If you are not playing your best, you are doing a disservice to your opponents. You can play to win and not be a dick about it. Or at least I can, I'm not sure if you can based on your tone in that comment.
While I've been disagreeing a lot with you lately, I absolutely agree with those two sentences. You should be playing your best at a tournament. Your opponents should also vote you the person they want to play against again, even if you beat them like a red-headed stepchild in the game. If you lose to them, well, it's not like lives were really at stake, so no reason to be a poor loser (I usually have to tell people that I am very frustrated about my lack of skill, not that I lost per se). WAAC assholes suck all the fun out of playing anything, and should get stuffed back under the bridges they crawled out from, never to bother reasonable human beings again. I've told this story before: Probably 12 years ago now, I was playing a dude in Flames of War. He had a beautiful 101st Airborne army, he'd even hand-painted the 'puking buzzard' patches. I knew he was a good player, he usually won any game he played. Not too surprisingly, he wiped the floor with me, not on rules, on tactics. I was just flat outplayed. I'm not sure I had any models left at the end of the game, it was that kind of asswhupping! But at the end of the game, I asked him what I did wrong, because I wanted to play better and give him a better game - My best just was not even a challenge for him. He said, "your first mistake was playing me." I never played him again after that day.
While I agree with the sentiment about playing your best, your original point was that people should not have been using JSA units in tournaments as that is apparently equivalent to an insult for you. You went on to clarify that using favoured units regardless of competitiveness was what you actually meant. The thing is, some people are better at using units and strategies that are sub-optimal on paper, but work well for them. I myself have far more success with TAGs than I do with Warbands, so I use my Szalamandra when playing seriously and leave most of the Morlocks in the box. I know somewhere out there someone must have been skilled with Aragotos or the O-Yoroi or something else they can no longer use in their Yu Jing lists, which now means that they cannot play at their best regardless of environment as the game does not support their top choices anymore. Again, none of this excuses the swearing and personal insult against you, please can we keep at least one thread tangentially related to Uprising free of personal insults?
The new Shas fluff reads like they are writing in an option to split them off in the future if they so choose without it coming out the blue. That said I don't think they'll be splitting them any time soon, especially with a revamped SEF on the horizon.
If both players don't set out trying to win the game doesn't work, now does it? That's not the point though. The point is that you don't get to tell people which mini's they're allowed to bring (or buy/not buy) or how they're allowed to enjoy the game. If someone likes a particular theme or bit of fluff and want that on the table it's up to them. If someone approaches a tournament as a game day because they can't or don't want to compete at the top that's up to them too. EVERYONE at a tournament should enjoy it whether they are a top table player or not. You do you too btw, but I'm not going to be polite about it if you don't afford others the same. Also, collect 10 ad hominem points from the non sequitur bank.
You know, right now I would sign up for MAF splitting from Combined. We would lose the drons, but it would also open space for some sneaky stuff. Because no way a Rag Tag band of guerrila monkeys isn't going to employ underhanded tactics. However, what I would really enjoy seeing is some sort of "Alien Resistance Army" composed of Morats, Tohaa and maybe some Shas units that seceeded from the CA when they saw how badly it got trounced in Wotan (because that was a ridiculous showing, even if the lore softened the blow a little).
I don't really want to see MAF split off (I don't want to see anything else split off right now). But I do get what you're saying. I found the Krakot Renegades to be a very interesting take on a Morat unit, and I liked how they worked out a way for the background to allow generic (non-character) mercenary Morats into human armies.
It's interesting, reading the new material on the Shasvastii, how much they have doubled down on the "the Shas are super dubious about the EI and think their alliance with it might be a mistake" while at the same time affirming just how much the Human Sphere is fuxxored by the Shas. But while it could be setting up a split, I think it's more likely that we'll see another independent group of Shasvastii contact the Human Sphere. That would be a very interesting dynamic, playing up the doubt within the CA Shas as they now have to face their own kind as well. At the same time, the new material really sets up for the first time just how much the Human Sphere is just dancing to the tune of the EI and all of their best strategies are only slowing down the inevitable advance of the Combined Army. All our "victories" are meaningless as they were 100% feints to draw our attention away from what the EI was really working to achieve.
Aida Swanson is going to fall in love with fusilier Angus. Bipandra will be relieved at first but slowly start to miss him and realize she had feelings for him and turn into jealousy. Then through a series of zany and wacky adventures following Angus and his harem of women suitors that now also include major lunah, yuriko oda, reverend kusanagi, uxia McNeil, Leila shareef, and of course ko Dali we will see the shasvastii split from the combined army and Angus settle down with Aida and live happily ever after.
I'm not sure I read the same fluff as you? Theres stuff in there about there being two major factions within Shasvastii society who have different ideas about the direction they should take, but both of them are mostly pro-EI as far as I could see, especially in the short term. There's also that whole section about the human sphere wiping out a Shas colony and gaining an enemy for life.
I mean, what the hell did the Shasvastii think they were doing? Dropping a seed ship in the middle of a war zone. Has that literally never gone wrong ever before?!?
