Hey all, I wanted to try to wrap my head around how I feel about the new stuff and spiral. I love Tohaa and it was my main faction since it came out originally. I was really excited for the new stuff, like most people, but since the rules came out, I feel very uninspired. I try to make lists and craft ideas but I can't seem to get anything I like out of spiral besides dude spam. I then tried to make lists in normal Tohaa but once again, uninspired. All of the profiles either are stripped of anything interesting in Tohaa or have much better pre-existing options. I know I may come off negative, but I wanted to check myself and see if anyone else was feeling this?
Not me, I'm super keen. Even small changes, like swapping out a few models from an old list, have produced some really interesting changes. But that doesn't mean you're not having a valid response. Not everything we got is super useful, either. Have you checked out the Post-Daedelus list thread? It might have some inspiration.
I'm mostly with you, it's not like I'm entirely displeased with the releases I love the Draal, Kriigel, and Taagma. The problem for me I think is that the reex and long arms are soo disappointing, the Kiel-san as well really. But you're definitely not alone, when OSS dropped i was messing with lists for hours, but Spiral really hasn't been that inspiring.
I feel your pain. I am excited that we get some proper phenoware though, but I am not wowed by anything else. Aesthetically the models are different enough I feel the need to repaint my original tohaa just so they at least look like they are the same race
it is disappointing that half the new stuff is just plain bad. if they had just released the draal, kriigel, and taagma im pretty sure tohaa spirits would be flying pretty high right now
I'll admit I'm trying to just not think about Longarms and focus on the stuff that's actually pretty damn cool.
I think its fair to compare Spiral to Ramah or Shas. Comparatively they don't have much that excites. I can see some utility in Vanilla though spiral design choices seem more like a gimmick compared to Ramah and Shas which seem like strong/complete forces with clearly complementary pieces. It's hard for me to see the same level of synergy/utility out of some of the spiral choices.
I also think that on top of that unit wise, not profile, the only thing in spiral that interests me is the Helots. Anaconda is maybe even a downstep from the Gorgos for me, and I'm doing my best to ignore Brawlers for the moment, monstruckers don't really appeal to me(outside of the persons idea to attach servants to him and use them to annoy people) and the war driver is fine
mebbe the goal was to make a bad tohaa faction so that people would complain about tohaa less. like, they get all kinds of wins against spiral and then they don't mind tohaa so much anymore, especially since mates got that hella nerf
It's interesting how similar Spiral can be to Varuna in some ways. Obviously helots are a unit from there directly, but I built and played a bullet hell ARO list yesterday that an Ariadnan player just ground their face to dust trying to overcome. Even after the Taagma MSV went down, he just couldn't push through all the mines (bigods so many mines), the helots under camo, chaksas who could either discover on WIP19 or fire B2 heavy flamethrowers, the kaurii, clipsos and greif in suppressive, and the kriigel ready to eraser something who got close enough to threaten. It was a thing of dark and terrible beauty.
I am both excited and sad at the same time. We got some good stuff and we got some stuff that I'll use despite knowing that it's just not that good. Overall this feels like the end of the Tohaa disguised as new toys. It's going to be hard to judge until the end of this "Year of Tohaa". There might still be something else to make it feel like Tohaa is still a thing, or we might not see anything else the rest of the year and know Tohaa is on the shelf.
Tohaa went for a very long time without releases and persevered as a very strong faction the entire time. Even with the change to mates, they're still wonderfully well-rounded and able to do a lot of almost everything in the game in very interesting and unique ways. That's not to say you're wrong, and I'm not mad enough to try to predict the future, but I'd encourage a little optimism. And hey, absolute worst case scenario, it'll be a fun year. :)
They got some cool units, they got some dud units. But more importantly why are there filthy humans in my alien faction. Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
Of all the factions I'm interested in, the Tohaa Spiral updates were the least exciting. Really though, I chalk that up to being super excited (and mildly aghast) at Shasvastii. And Dashat. Dashat feels like Bostria paid Saito Togan to sneak into my game room and catalog all the Haqq, merc and Yu Jing models I bought just because I liked them and had Interruptor make a faction around it. I'm pretty hyped about Dashat. So yeah. Spiral is cool, it's just not my main squeeze right now.
I was out of the meta and off-forum for a long time pre-spiral, so its interesting to see my opinions mirrored perfectly here. They're not interesting. They're fine as a Merc faction given the mandatory "gotta combine em all" ethos for making mercs, but not as "The future of Tohaa is Spiral Corps" or whatever it was Bostria said. Their list construction is very restrictive and not all that great, and perhaps most of all doesn't feel like Tohaa given that their only decent and iconic Tohaa triad unit is Neema, and many of their new units seem very uninteresting or unimpressive. I agree with the notion of the "death of Tohaa disguised as new toys". If Tohaa was doing fine, then I would argue that 1) we would not see the Makaul box discontinued - that is literally the last thing in Tohaa that would get the chop. And 2) we wouldn't get so many units that are so damn similar to existing Tohaa stuff. One thing I have really mixed feelings of is the Tohaa-ification of all the other factions. Mixed links and multi-links are the norm rather than the exception. This removes a lot of Tohaa's identity and reason for existance, but also makes a lot of other factions play in ways that scratch the same itch that Tohaa always has for me.
I was really looking forward to getting back into Tohaa, and also super excited for Spiral. Now that I've had a chance to try list building for Spiral I am just disappointed. Spiral really feels like a very clever faction, but when you actually get down to it and start building lists, nothing seems to make any sense. I can't find any synergy between the units, and the limitations feel to me like CB is being too conservative with what they are offering lest they accidentally create powerful combos. Maybe I'm just missing something. I was also surprised and a little bit disappointed that there were no changes at all to any vanilla units, but right now it definitely looks like I'm not going to worry Spiral too much and I'll be playing vanilla.
So I am really looking forward to trying Kriigel and Draal out in vanilla Tohaa, To a lesser extent the kiiutan and the kiel I will try Kriigel with smart rocket launcher next week. The mate change was needed but done in a bad way I think...
Oh and I really hoped for some more symbiobeasts or something similiar still would love a symbiobeast rider ;)