Well, for now they have me satisfied - if a schedule appears as promised. We shall see whether a tohaa transition to n4 will be just a lazy copypasta or something actually playable.
I bet we'll see another points decrease and profiles cleanup/rebalance. If the 5 discontinued armies stay the same but with rules changed to a new format they might as well end up nigh unplayable. Which is what i fear might happen if the statement was made under stress with no actual decision to keep the promise.
If Tohaa was "so OP" in N3, I'm not sure how it'd make it unplayable if stuff costs and works the same?
data from the thread i linked earlier shows that some of the recent sectorials are actually on par or even better than the supposedly op tohaa. If the trend continues into n4 we might become the old shas. Not to mention n4 will probably shift the balance once again and things that make tohaa good now might now be so good afterwards. That said, core tohaa rules such as mates, armour, phero-stuff is all present in Spiral which will be updated, so idk. We'll see.
I think it is worth noting old Shas were still very powerful before their update, and their status had more to do with outdated sculpts than their rules. Tohaa will be fine with ported over profiles.
A lot of great Symbiont profiles are not in Spiral (Ectros, Gao Tarsos, Gao Rael, Sakiel, Sukeul (!!!)), all our MSV2 is not there either (Rael again). our Eclipse / CC specialists are not there (Makaul), our only TAG isn't there (Gorgos), fast moving Holo2 isn't there (Kotail), MSV1 viral sniper isn't there (Nikoul), our perimeter weapon LT/CoC with Regeneration isn't there (Taqeul). That's a huge loss for a faction. The core stuff is gone, what's left is just a shadow of how the original faction plays and what we get instead? Brawlers?
Can confirm. My Shasvastii lists changed less then 10% with the rework and play essentially identically.
Hehe, looks like we have survived to see the light of a new edition! :3 Care to return to our loving artichoke family?
This is encouraging. Since Shasvastii got a resculpt as well we might see Tohaa come out similar if CB does redo them in the future. CB could have drastically changed the Shas so that the older frog-like aliens' lists would seem alien to the current generation's lists but they didn't. Make me think that Tohaa could be done in a similar fashion with just a couple of changes and a few new units & removed units that are in the army right now.
I think that Shas changed so little because the core concept was "elite camo spam" against the "spam camo spam" from Ariadna, so the new shas really rearranged some profiles, and kept the core. With N4!Tohaa I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some attempt at changing the Symbiont armor, and I hope it's in a way that will make the Gorgos and Ectos worth playing, while keeping some options for the other models (the dirtiest and fastest way would be making the symbiont armor give you NWI + total inmunity, instead of a second wound).
The Shas rework actually added alot to the army in that it makes non Camo centric builds viable instead of unviable. Its actually one of the more flexible Sectorials released lately (IMO) which I think is interesting. I suspect that Tohaa would need a much larger rework and my gut instinct is to say that Spiral was an attempt at it that perhaps didn't go as well as expected. I'd argue the easiest way to make it work is just to have Fire Weapons treated as T2 as well vs. Symbionts.
Well, while the non-camo Core is there (and they have a single Core), it shines because of the variety of wildcards Shas have (Sheskiin, Hasht and Messer), and the Gwailo & Haiduk reworks. The problem with Fire & Symbiont is simply that it affects only the multiwound models, and if applied with more strength to all, it gives too much power to that ammo, so those with it get easier matches against Tohaa, while those without don't...thus my thought of removing it entirely, from the rules POW.
This may deserve its own thread to really discuss in full again but I'd argue the biggest issue with the Symbionts is that right now their drawbacks heavily penalize multiwound symbionts and heavily reward single wound symbionts which heavily changes the way list building works in Tohaa. Which is what making it T2 instead would help smooth out. You get a much more interesting curve of power with T2 vs. Single Wound, Dual Wound and Triple Wound symbionts. And more incentive to take super heavy hitters (Which most lists should have some general tools to deal with). Basically my theory is if the Keil Sann, Ectros and Gorgos become more popular players will have a more sustainable game plan vs. them as opposed to having to deal with say 3 Sakiel.
Interesting viewpoint. It wouldn't surprise me if that turned out to be the actual case concerning Spiral's birth.
There's also the overall point system that overvalues ARM and undervalues (slightly) 2W. So Tohaa, having Low-ARM multi-wound models, have an advantage there. Add Symbiomates on top of that and it gets ugly. IMO Symbioarmor doesn't need a drawback, just cost it right.
If you ever want to see how ****y symbiont armor costing is, compare the Ectros HMG and Mobile Brigada HMG. It's almost like the Ectros gets the whole inactive symbiont profile for free.
And the darnedest thing is that Ectros are as unplayable, as MBs. Though MBs at least can link up and be somewhat more useable in Corregidor, where Ectros are crap even in a triad.
i played Ectros with Vulkan Shotgun at 2017-2018 with very good results, always playing it with some Nullifier carrier close to him But, we all know that the good result is for the Vulkan Shotgun in fireteam, not for the Ectros... hehe