Faction switching in campaign rules

You're only allowed to have the one, and you're stuck with it until it gets killed permanently. Which means that the rules on page 204 that say you can change between sectorials of your chosen faction aren't quite as nice as they sound in practice. If your spec op trooper doesn't exist in the sectorial you want to play, you don't get to use it.

NA2 isn't a real faction, it's an administrative grouping.

 

There does seem to be a discrepancy about SpecOps in the Medevac and CubeEvac rules. I don't have it in front of me, but as I read it the result of failing your CubeEvac is not permadeath, but the loss of the SpecOps for a single mission.

 

I read it the same way. You can have only one Spec Op, but you are free to switch between generic and sectorial. NA2 has no generic/vanilla. Each on is a sector of its own.

@DukeofEarl So far as I understand it, the worst thing that can happen to your Spec Op is, that he skip one game - except it is an ariadna one. So medevac and cubeevac made only sense, if you wan´t to keep your SO every game. Not worth from my point of view. I wan´t to play YJ and have to play IA without an SO. I think they have the worsest SO anyway. If you want him in a link, you have to play a Zhanshi link and this is not what I want ;-)

I wonder why the not dare a Zuyong Spec Op. Deva can be already very tough with 2nd wound + NWI and BioImmum.

 

If you have a cube, there's no such thing as permadeath because of the cubevac rules. Not every spec ops has a cube in their profile. If you don't have a cube, you don't use the cubevac rules after you apply medvac.

It's a distinction that I didn't notice the first time I read through those rules.

 

I didn't even think about Cubeless units. That would make sense

 

To get back to the original questions...

What the rules say is:

When playing a Campaign, an Infinity Spec-Ops trooper can be taken with his corresponding faction army (PanOceania, Yu Jing, Ariadna...) even when using a Sectorial Army in Narrative Mode, regardless of its unit of origin.

However, Infinity Spec-Ops troopers cannot be taken with a Sectorial Army which has not listed their unit of origin. For example, a Celestial Guard-based Infinity Spec-Ops trooper cannot be fielded when using an Invincible Army in a scenario of the Campaign.​

So the campaign rules say that you can freely switch between the main faction and the sectorials, but the spec ops rules say that you only get one spec ops which you're stuck with until it gets killed off and you may not be able to use it if you switch to the wrong sectorial.

If someone asked me to start a campaign this week, I would ask for three changes to the campaign rules:

• You have the right to permanently kill your Spec Ops, no reason required, if you want a different one. Discussion concerning Spec Ops XP costs, or XP refunds, subject to further discussion.
• JSA uses the Yu Jing lists. (That's where their Cube option got left.)
• Spiral Corps is a Tohaa sectorial and uses the Tohaa lists. (Three humans show up in a Tohaa list, that's still a Tohaa force.)

 

Solkan

I think your points are valid to most degrees. Not sure about the JSA part, as a proud JSA player I don't want anything from the jingys.
On you retire a spec ops, completely agree but surely all experience and anything like that is lost. Having said that a lot cooler answer is chose the sectorial and spec ops you want and the spec ops can always play in a campaign game even if you change sectorials.

 

I can't help but read these two as mutually exclusive. You can take whatever spec ops you want in Narrative mode except you can't?
Also doesn't Narrative mode dictate which factions are played? I can't play Nomads in Narrative mode in the first scenario since it's MO vs Hassassins... Narrative mode rules are really confusing.

Any word on when Campaign Screens in downloads get updated?

 

Campaign mode is a series of concatenated battles, with some background tying them together, with no requirements of having certain factions. Here, Specops gain experience and improve and you can change between vanilla/sectorials.

Narrative mode is the "replay" of past/current events, like the first Human/Tohaa encounter (hint: Ariadna Vs Tohaa!Spiral "campaign") or the ITS/goodbye mission packs (Guardians of the Gate, Runenberg Besieged, etc... from here, casual game section). Here, Specops are NOT used in Campaign Mode, but as an Extra (if at all), with fixed amount of XP that won't change between battles, and you are limited to 2 lists that must be of the same vanilla or same sectorial.

The ITS/Goodbye missions can be played by any faction, but in the case of ITS Narrative missions (Uprising, Tagline), they have an option to be played with the "historical" factions.

 

That is why we're complaining about them. And both rules give specific examples so neither is just a random minor typo.

Make believe racism and nationalism is irrelevant to this discussion.

When the rules and tables were originally constructed in N2 for the original C:P book, every faction that has a Spec Ops model that doesn't start with a Cube has on its list the option to purchase a Cube. (Even Ariadna has that option.) The JSA Spec Ops doesn't have a Cube, and is the reason why the Yu Jing list has the Cube option.

There's two different components to narrative model.

For the scenario specific narrative mode rules, if you follow those then you pretty much just have to do what they say if you decide to play the scenario's narrative mode. For instance, Mission 0101 is Military Orders vs. Hassassin Bahram ignoring completely what the players chose for their factions. For the sake of sanity, I have to presume that those narrative mode choices don't commit you to spec ops.

For the "ICS - Narrative Rules" on page 205 which also talk about "Narrative Mode", those are a bunch of rules that introduce additional restrictions, eliminating things like the option described on page 204 about being able to switch between sectorials and vanilla.

As far as I can tell, these are independent options.

 

I haven't played any campaigns like this before, but I'm reading that as: "Any SpecOp for a faction is valid for vanilla, but you can only use it in a sectorial if it's the SpecOp for that sectorial."

Is that a misreading?

 

That would make the most sense. But it's unclear to me at least that this is what is written.

 

It currently works by coincidental design.

Pick any sectorial and look at the spec ops. If you look at the corresponding “vanilla” faction, that spec ops is allowed because the corresponding troop profile exists.

In comparison, the Brawler spec ops is shared in common to every NA2 list but JSA (and Spiral Corps doesn’t provide the Spec Ops profile for the Brawler). So there are five NA2 sectorials you can switch between while using the Brawler spec ops.