Oh my... Lots of tension feels here. I am shocked to see USARF was cut like this. After we saw sectorial lists, after they were in the builder in normal way and no warnings. It was not a good move at all!.. Sadly. I liked them. The other moment mentioned here was a little sad too. And I am sure ariadnans would be not happy, when you call them as people from Old Earth. They value their independence very much. Respect Ariadnans, please! (even if CB doesn't) BUT... But I hope it is like Steel Phalanx discontinuation. Even tohaa survived N5. And use references to nowaday events is a shameful move. Was it a criticism of the game or what?.. There were enough arguments. And if we are criticizing CB, let's do it in a proper way. With normal arguments.
Now, your pseudonyme makes even more sense! On the contrary, I'd say it's one of the most relevant change CB ever made. Sure, it killed some lists. Some lists that were only fun for one player... And Infinity is not adapted to play with 40 or 50 miniatures on the board. I even find that the current 15-cap is a bit too high, when both players are bringing 15 models + TacAw + extra orders (impetuous, LT+1), etc... But anyway, this belongs to the past now.
It's probable that the USA will return as soon as adepticon according to the 2025 news summary. https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/january-april-2025-year-of-the-sucess-story.43287/#post-480472
Nobody is arguing in favor of 40-50. The changes to my USAriadna lists to go from 17 to 15 meant I have to take sub-par expensive units to fill cost, not that the more expensive units were fun or interesting to use, or even worth their points. USARF also lacks all those extra orders you're talking about. The faction was just not designed with the 15 model cap in mind, and they stubbornly refuse to address that.
This is either IS or Onyx, check CB's videos. If that was not enough, why would CB bother to flag USARF as "out of production" if they were gonna rework them in 3 months
We have been through this so many times, a line must be drawn and, according to their preferred gameplay, somebody will see it "arbitrary", "natural" and "not enough". 15 has been selected and the game is balanced around this number of active models.
Having played (and won) a Free Game tournament in the earlier half of this year, the 15-man cap is a good thing. In a perfect world, it'd be achieved through some more organic fashion, but the hard cap does the job just fine and the game is better for it. There are problems in certain factions, mainly those that have seen consistent neglect on CB's part, in acclimating to the cap, but that's a problem with those specific factons not seeing adequete attention. Body spam is just an absolute slog to play against, even when you're beating it down. And honestly, USARF doesn't get much better in that format. The issues within it run deeper than just a few bodies.
Ok but thats the point of the discussion, because clearly it's not well balanced around that number and very little has been done to fix that. Additionally the loss of list variety is just a fact, 10 and 16 model lists were fun and diverse. Lastly if usarf is playing with the same amount of models than aleph or combined army something has gone very wrong, in terms of theme, balance and design, and with less orders on top of that...
The problem that exists is the same that Corregidor, Shock Army, Catachans, and innumerable "<insert specific terrain themed> force" across any game have had: once their specialized terrain type is removed or if it's unused, the concept falls apart. That's, again, why they should have gone with the Ariadnan Expeditionary Force instead. They would have allowed for higher techbase than Ariadna while keeping the "no cubes" bit going.
I think the problem is that SOME of the game has been balanced around it. The core concern of usariadna players and ariadnans more generally, is that new factions are built with it in mind, but ariadnans have to use mediocre expensive units to fill up the points. They don't synergise well and the army list hasn't been modernized in line with wider changes to the game. We've all seen a two tier system develop in infinity where some factions get love and some get left for years with no changes or spit-and-a-lick patches with edition changes that are just about playable. It's annoying, it annoys people.
Just a query out of curiosity- how would you address rebalancing Ariadna for the 15-Trooper environment? Upgrading the mediocre expensive troops to better support Ariadna's existing excellent budget options, or recalibrating the faction to excel more with mid-priced troops to stay true to its old "wide" playstyle? Or even making extensive use of Peripherals to get more models on the board?
Tbh you could make a solid argument for any of those options and there are mechanics and precedents for them as well. If you wanted a "swarm" style list you could encourage more peripherals and antipode pack handler type units, it you wanted them more elite you could lean into vet kazak-style reworks. You could add more elite mobile units to increase flanking power. You could add more elite skirmishing units as scout/spetsnaz templates show are possible. You could lean into vehicles and make something really cool to leverage some additional firepower. There's any number of ways you could improve them, but slapping "OOP but playable" on them does absolutely nothing to help which looks like sheer laziness on CBs part imho. They've redone 95% of the factions for n5 anyway, why not one more?!
Assassination is the right word. My TAK is gone to the shelf and I'm not seeing it getting back on the table in the future. With TAK you were already allways fighting an uphill battle and now every fight will just be a desperate last stand. It's almost laughable that Ariadna is listed as a playable faction. Obviously CB interptetaion of playable differs a lot from my interpretation of this term.
Is it really though? Because it seems like the message hasn't been received, ever, despite people harping upon it for a looooooooong time.
