Since riotstopperhas poped out i imagine a crowed of more than 1000 protesters glued in the street by police riotstopper. Must be pain in the ass for engineers to clear the place :D
I love the design space that O-12 is taking. It seems great as a starter faction with simple solid units. It feels like it fits a niche that people tried to force Pano into. And it allows other factions to still have their focuses. And the Zeta seems like a cool unit. I don't think people appreciate how great Climbing + and Burst 5 is on Arm 8 platform. And a large template glue gun on such a mobile unit will have fun.
Army special rules and individual unit unique rules are part of why 40k is such a nightmare to play IMO. Part of what was so appealing to me about infinity before I got into it was the extensive use of Universal special rules and weapons. Having one-off or army unique rules create huge imbalances and are just generally a book-keeping hassle.
At this point, the next big things might be three sectorials; the only missing ones I am aware of are Haqq Khanate (maybe), YJ White Banner and PanO Svalarheima. O-12 doesn't seem laid out for sectorial armies, and neither does Tohaa. Perhaps their plan is to finish all the rules for each faction, then go back to make missed sculpts and fix rules. Or just break Army's formatting with more NA2, that could also happen. In any case, it seems like they're close to completing all factions for the wargame without inventing something new, so I suspect that's when we will get rules passes, discontinued armies brought up to modern standard and more focus on the non-army aspects of the game.
I suspect Sygmaa and Ur got folded into Onyx, and I don't think the EI will let the Exrah back into the war with humanity after the smuggling incident. However, that empire spans the galaxy, so they could easily just invent something- though they could do the same for the Human Sphere as well; the US and Russia are supposed to have some really frightening illegal nanotech weapons lying around that they'd probably be happy to use again on the Combined Army, or if it gave them a chance at setting relevance again.
I think Onyx is a "grab bag" sectorial that they put all the new CA releases (up until new Shas) into. But you'll notice that none of the Ur aspects are in it. That fluff justification was justified by irl considerations; if those irl considerations were circumnavigated, so could the fluff reason. I think the Ur Hegemony doesn't span the galaxy - rather, it controls the outer reaches of the galaxy in a sort of halo and has trouble getting near the core. Even opening wormholes to the Human Sphere means they lose like 85% of the ships they send through. In any case, rather than "grumpy nanotech war criminal US or Russia" I'd rather see them split the difference and go "grumpy nanotech war criminal Canadians."
The balance part wouldn't be an issue imo, giving some armies special rules and not giving them the same profiles than all the others is the same, asimetrical warfare after all. The sectorial specific rules would give CB more room to give a sectorial more identity without buffing the units of every single faction by touching skills and gear; and if that is restricted to 2 or 3 short rules extra per sectorial, it wouldn't need so many extra rules. However the extra rules point is a fair one... I don't mind a few extra rules, but I can understand not everyone would be happy about that.
Agreed. Crazy how those sectorials have been teased (been known) for so long and wanted by the fanbase for even longer. I expect some a couple more reshuffles are due still before or right after N4 release.
Initial thoughts: Little unsure about the Beta but I'll wait to see more, everything else looks good. EDIT: Posted this as the video came up so I didn't see everything. Soldiers of Fortune are incredible, easily some of the coolest sculpts CB has put out; The Echo Bravo and Mowang I like, although the weapons on the Mowang look a bit wierd; Nahabs are kinda boring and Carmen is alright aside from the silly "wet boob" that others have mentioned; I can't decide whether I think the Hulang is goofy as fuck or rad as hell.
FB WGC Infinity says N4 in 2020! Sheepskin looks cool. The Nahab female is a joke. Carmen and Batard are very generic.
Yeah, I got a better resolution look and Carmen isn't as bland as she seemed though the "wet boob" is a bit much. The SOF are insanely good. The Oni 8-Ball is excellent. The female Nahab is as tragic as the Guija pilot.