well... we have seen one army return: shasvastii CB says a lot of things, but also, do "changes" to a lot of the things they said. But in overall, they have maintained the out of production armies in the rules. So I would trust that no army will left out. As a person that has been playing this game since 2005, if my experience has some meaning, here it is: None of the factions will be left out, so all factions and sectorials will remain. But this doesn't mean that they will remain the same exactly. Not all units will remain. Every time a faction gets revised, there is a chance that some units/characters get eliminated or replaced, but usually they get something to compensate. JSA for example lost haramaki, raiden and asuka, but got tanko, ryuken and the kuroshi raider. The factions will not be deleted, but might go out of production. CB just needs store space for new products, so they decided to create a rotation. When factions get OOP, they got a last rules review just waiting for the new launch in some tiem Up until now, there is only one faction that got back, SEF. They went OOP at the same time as merovingia (if I recall correct, it was an ariadnan sectorial for sure), but It have not get its comeback. About the factions you say. Aleph will get most of their steel phalanx dudes OOP. JSA is complete with all resculpts in n3 (not sure about the support pack though), so they have numbers to become OOP mid N4, but I think they will get something new during N4 launch. Ariadna, you got pretty info above (more than what I can bring) Even if I am a person a bit dissapointed with how CB is managing some factions. I can tell you that all miniatures will remain playable one way or another, just with a unit change, or using proxy rules. But also, from those factions you tell, I would only recomend you to pick aleph at this moment. Steel phalanx got new dudes every year, even after they were finished, they will allways found dumb excuses to bring new dudes to aleph (and some other certain factions) while other factions such as ariadna struggle to get new interesting things because reasons. A popularity poll is not a good way to make conclusion. I've been in tournaments with as many or more tohaa than ariadnan or pano players. Tohaa were played, of course. But after 2 years without releases, people stop buying and went other factions that received more love from CB. It was a faction abandoned years before they got OOP, and "the year of tohaa" was one of the most frustrating things CB could do to their fanbase
Sorry, that was badly described on my part. It was a poll of what factions the voter had played in the last year. Not a popularity poll in the way that you appear to be thinking. And you appear to have missed me specifically mentioning the effect of them being discontinued etc...
Don't get me wrong. We have people that have recorded the data of games for each factions, getting the same data that CB can get (only the non-reported ones and people that don't put their list are missing, but that is also a problem for CB). I think that a poll, can be useful if its used to look at the no-tournament scene, or to trying to find the remaining ones. But only with that, it looks as a popularity poll to me, because you are looking at the last year, in FB... tohaa has been in this situation for more than 2 years now. The year I got to meet you at interplanetario, a lot of tohaa players were allready asking for new releases. Me and my friends showed a paper to B asking for "sukeul HMG" and B screamed "nooo, this is still not your time!". That was two years ago, not last year, and they were asking for new releases months before.
It's still a poll of what factions people play, and is therefore directly applicable to someone asking how much Tohaa are played.
One person said that they only retire factions that are not played other says that "tohaa was played" (and it was) now is not so played, ok. Now, after half a year of pandemic and more than 2 years of abandonment... we cannot justify taking OOP tohaa because "it was not played", when in fact, it was not played because they were not worked anymore in the first place. Is not that they take out tohaa because it was not played. CB stoped working on tohaa, then sales went down (players allready got all their minis after so much time, and new players stopped starting it because no new releases and the shadow of the OOP), and lastly, they decided on taking them out because a lot of reasons (sales, dificulty to balance, dificulty to bring new units, whatever) tohaa get OOP not because sales or playing, because they were abandoned by CB more than two years ago. That is what they tryied to explain.
Thank you. That was very informative. . Interesting. Based on what you and some others have posted, that is not the conclusion I would come to. That JSA seems complete makes sense to me. But with SP going OOP, it would seem that the logical choice to going Ariadna because they're getting Kosmoflot. Of course, there's another wrinkle to this. I have been playing the Kaldstrom intoductory missions on TTS and I've started developing a fondness for the Yu Jing...
They're a good choice. Relatively few unit options, but versatile enough that you can get a taste of everything. Not to mention I think CB has caught on to that playerbase really not being fond of having Sectorials removed.
Aleph has a relativelly recent sectorial, the OSS or vedic. They are not going OOP nothing soon, and if we look at how steel phalax was managed, they might get a constant flux of new releases from time to time (not a lot, but not left completelly aside has other factions have gone), and will remain one of the top factions in my opinion. But I think the best advice I can say to you in this matter is this: If you like a faction for its miniatures, ignore the OOP lists. If the miniatures are of your taste, they will remain "of your taste" in my opinion (I still like my N0 interventor, daktari, zero and so...). And the second hand market is not so bad, so you could find any miniature you lack in the future (I am struggling to find certain N0 mobile brigada, but I am not activelly looking for it, almost any n2 miniature is easy to find, and aleph is entirelly n2-n3). If you choose based on playstile, look for friends and ask them for some games, and do proxy until you find what you like, I think this is the best way for it. And if you look for competitive armies... you have to wait for N4 (even if my bet is that aleph will continue as one of the tops, we will see some real status when n4 has some months, and we all might be wrong in our predictions)
Tohaa are the LEAST played Faction, but have been the MOST played singular Faction or Sectorial for 2018 or something. Think they were top 3 in 2019. And since they have 0 Sectorials you should judge them by the second metric not by the first one. Look at IJW's stats, there's 250 PanO Players in between Vanilla and 5 Sectorials, compare that to 110 Toha Players. Tohaa are very very popular. Just not very profitable, they've been "finished" since forever and most people who want to play them simply have everything. Since we know from ITS numbers that CB can fumble a bit when statistics are involved they might have misinterpreted the data (like IJW also just did). BUT for CB it's also entirely possible they had no groundbreaking inspiration on how to do a proper Tohaa Sectorial. Shasvastii had the exact same problem and had been on ice since forever before the very recent overhaul. If I remember correctly they usually start with the artstlye and design and then start writing rules and fluff for the cool stuff they want to implement. To me it's telling that an out of production Sectorial still has 2/3s of the numbers the hype new golden boy Sectorial O-12 has.
Now mate, please. I know you're worried, but what you're saying here is full of statements that are not true or half-true at best, and that's not a good thing to say to a newcomer. There have been some sectorials that are 'OUT OF PRODUCTION' (emphasis mine) which is very different from 'CUT FROM THE GAME'. Sure, that does mean the models aren't being sold and the sectorials will take longer to be updated to N4 (at least a few extra months). Notice that we actually do have information on this. There are several videos and posts from CB staff reiterating all of the statements above. A lot of players are understandably upset about the whole Uprising thing, which was really handled poorly in my opinion. But it is clear CB has learned from their mistakes and they are being as communicative as possible about N4. It's kinda silly to complain a Sectorial hasn't returned yet when it has been what? Three years since the first sectorial was stopped production? Was it Acontecimento the first? it took them about 5 or 6 years to remake Shasvastii. It was a long time, but the end result was very, very good. So relax, take it easy. Focus on your models and the ones you enjoy. Play the game. Nobody is going to take your models away.
While CB is adding Sectorials at a somewhat alarming rate since Uprising, a lot of them are NA2 rehashes of existing troops. And they're going to overhaul existing Factions with new models at some point. The argument "it has a 3d sculpt" only holds up so long, we're near the end of where everything is updated to the new standard and the second generation of 3d sculpted models will see the light of day. The currently benched Factions and Sectorials are a way down the line for CB to release new models and raise some money without bloating the game, maybe even with a cosmetic and gameplay overhaul in the mix.
We don't have everything. For example, we asked for years for a Sakiel Box and all we got was jokes and memes. And we didn't even get the Taqeul or the Symbiobug concepts.
I don't disagree, they need work, it'll be nice to see them when they do come back. But since spiral is apparently being updated on N4 launch all the rules are going to be up to date, so I'm not sure what actually changes within Tohaa to fix things (outside of Sukeuls as much as I love them).
Did I miss something? So far CB has never ever removed support for a faction. Why would they start now? As far as I know they haven’t even removed more than a handfull of profiles or models across the entire game line over the years (the four Exrah models/profiles being the most common example).
In the Interplanetario stream Bostria explicitly stated that people will be able to play Tohaa in N4. This implies that they will receive similar adjustments as the other factions. They might be one of the later factions to receive them, however.
Except Shasvastii. Except Shasvastii. Except... Ok, seriously, Shas were gone except for 3? units that are in OCF. Now they're back after 4 years and they're gorgeous. We can chicken little and say the game is ruined because they're cutting factions, or we can take CB's word that shelved sectorials will return at the appropriate time. The evidence supports the second alternative.
