c'mon, if one desires black-and-white villains reaching out and choking people. I believe there is in fact a setting and accompanying miniatures game(s) to get just that. This is Infinity, this is the Emperor of Yu Jing. If he's going to do a 'force-choke', he's not applying magic techniques learned at the Jedi Academy, but the litigative ones he learned in his decade-long stint at law school.
Unfortunately, my gaming group can't stand the random unit activation mechanic. "Oh, damn, I drew a heavy support activation, my heavy support can't see anything right now." And I really think the Emperor of Yu Jing should invoke Babylon 5's "Cotto Protocol" instead of Vader's force-choke on psychoCrane.
This is precisely what I love the most about this current Narrative. The whole setup paints Yu Jing in a weakened state. Everyone is seeing it, especially PanO. But we KNOW Yu Jing won't just disapear as a Faction. So basically, what we're looking at is the Catalyst to the "Awakening of the Dragon"; which gets me pretty excited to see what and how the Invincible Army and the White Banner will play into cementing Yu Jing's strength.
That's because 80% of the Asturian "youth" (as in, younger than 50's) is in Madrid... Else we would be there too XD (fun fact: the most profitable bus routes ALSA has go from Asturias to Madrid and from Bilbao to Madrid... and the Madrid-Bilbao route is done on buses that are like first class planes on the inside... that is because lot of people use that route for business, the Asturias-Madrid is just for holidays -.-U) Damn you. I already have the Dragon Lady, now I want the traditionally attired Yu Jing Emperor as HVT!!!!
It could veer into a discussion of the merits of Asturian cider versus Norman cider versus Anglo-Saxon cider. The most famous Asturian in the USA, Chef Jose Andres, assures us that Asturian cider is the best. Biased much, Jose? Euskara is a language isolate. Atlantis is based on events that befell the Minoan civilization (current thinking) and the Minoans were a Persian peoples. No connection between Euskara and Farsi. Interestingly, Korean is also a language isolate. Not at all related to Chinese or Japanese or any other language. Hangul is an alphabet too, not a character set. Not used as the Roman or Cyrillic alphabets are used, but still.... Would not Madrileños want to go south for Holidays? Well, I suppose anywhere is more exciting than Madrid, the dullest city in Europe. (Y recordaos que Berlin está en Europa.)
My friends favorite model when we started Infinity last year was Scarface but it was the end of a ITS session and could understand changing things up even if he did wish he knew Scarface was going to get shuffled around beforehand. He straight out quite after Backdoor.
Well, in that case, I think it's worth it. There was an Uprising. In the worst possible way. I lost a third of my army (I'm a player for Yu Jing, I liked the background, I had my thoughts about the situation with the Japanese in the society of Yu Jing, etc.), and do not tell me that I can play now for two armies. I wanted to play for Yu Jing, and when collected all of it completely - start to collect the army that I would prefer, and not the one to which I was forced. For some reason unknown to me, the СB decided that it was a great idea to take part of the faction from me and the other players for Yu Jing with an idiotic justification. Do not leave us a loyal Japanese profiles, which we already have bought, reducing the damage from their actions, but simply cut/paste. With all this, there is simply no reason to take all the Japanese profiles from Yu Jing. The stories about all the Japanese decided to join the Uprising and the dissenters were killed - leave it to kids, I'm old enough and I like good narrative. The whole background of Uprising seems so implausible that it remains to be surprised. Whom CB tried to please with this event is a mystery for me. Yu Jing after all these events with mass graves and the killing of civilians - looks completely different faction which for you want to play. The Uprising happened in the worst way, from the point of view of the Game, and from the point of fluff view. And most importantly - do you know what is the worst thing? If the next book comes out, and there Yu Jing will be shown normal or even great faction - it will mean paintrain into the universe of shit and Codexes, where your faction is the best and one of your soldiers will heroically kill a thousands of enemies. Good-bye, old CB, hello, new GW. And if someone thinks that what happened is bad only for old Yu Jing players - he is mistaken. With all this disappointment from what and how Uprising happened, because of the reaction of the CB itself and no respond where its necessary - will I advise my friends to join this particular wargame? Will I tell about the beautiful background without a black and white range and full of thoughtful interesting details? Will I advise to collect any army, knowing what happened with mine? I do not know have you an analogue of the story about the builder of bridges and the sheep - but this is it.
That's... meta, basically. And honestly it's possible that Yu Jing becomes a "diminished" faction since the JSA has developer/weeb appeal, and time and energy spent towards developing new aspects of it gets allocated to JSA instead.
Painting a faction in a weakened state would be one thing. I mean sure, "Oooh this month Yu Jing gets trash talked down in the fluff, feel the pain, feed the conflict, encourage petty factional posturing from players who are far too into that sort of thing to be anything but creepy!". I personally wouldn't be impressed, I'd think it was petty, juvenile and a waste of my time. But then, my expectations for the fluff are low already and I'd ignore it. But that is not what we got. What we got was offensive warcrimes and genocide fluff for an existing faction and a "new" one. That's not cool. That's not so easy to ignore. And what we also got was an actual measurable and in game terms REAL weakening of a faction by losing a vast swathe of its models (and in some respects the "new" faction also mirrors that loss of a vast swathe of options from the other side too). A loss in measurable terms that precedent tells us will take YEARS of real time releases to repair IF that is even done. That is not the same thing as some "exciting" trash talk fluff to rile up the fluff obsessed looking for an excuse for pretend time factional disputes. It would be great if people stopped trying to down play the loss of a vast swathe of useful and interesting options from the faction as just an exciting little twist in a totally not offensive story. It's a real and crushing surprise rules change surrounded with excuses made of actual fictional genocide.
I dont even like "unofficially" shooting at people who can't shoot back, much less ones with nukes. I'm absolutely anti-war both morally and out of our safety. But Russia might be a bad example there are a lot of people who would be happy at the prospect.
That's probably a joke and that's cool, but actually... part of the problem with this is that it actually does encourage a conflict between players like me, who don't give a damn about the worthless fluff until it offensively gets in our faces, and players who are obsessed with it and think its awesome super writing. For me the role of fluff in a game like this is that when the game needs a model for a faction the fluff gives us a cool look for it, a name, and maybe between a sentence to a paragraph of hacky background fiction I don't bother reading stapled to the bottom of the thing. Sure there are little short stories for fluff fans in the books... that I don't buy because the rules exist in a more convenient digital form that is also free and also not packed with annoying fluff, but who cares the self titled "lore fans" can go enjoy it, apparently, as long as the fluff fulfills it's one game relevant role of post facto provision of unit names and excuses for their existence AFTER the demands of the game play require them. In my view I should never ever walk into a game and have a conversation with a "lore fan" that goes anything like this... Lore Fan : "Oh yeah, so anyway, as it turns out fluffy lore has now required you to lose a massive part of your faction list." Me : "What?' Lore Fan : "Well it was inevitable really what with all the child murdering." Me : "Child Murdering??!" Lore Fan : "Oh yeah, the rate of child murdering has been WAY up lately so your faction had to split due to disputes over whose children to murder more! The infinitely flexible fiction that could have been literally anything else made it INEVITABLE!" Me : "You fluff guys went and inserted increasing amounts of child murdering in the fluff, which could have been literally anything else, and now you are focusing on child murder fiction and messing with the actual game over it?" Lore Fan : "Yes our favorite fluff author is behind it! Its an exciting development that has long been clumsily foreshadowed! Child murder is the new focus of what's left of your faction on the gaming table! Aren't you excited about the developments and the conflict!" Me : "That's it, you don't get to even HAVE fluff anymore, you can't be trusted with it." Because that situation basically pits the interests of game fans and lore fans (or at least those who manage to remain lore fans) against each other. What an exciting conflicting development! Or alternatively, what a horrible idea since the fluff could have been literally anything else that didn't result in that conflict. And yeah, substitute "offensive rehashing of historical genocides" instead of child murder, though reports suggest we do actually have child murder fiction too (yay), and you basically have the situation we are in right now.
Considering the story has ALWAYS been one of CB’s driving forces, you might be well served to buckle up, buttercup...
Yeah, I'm with you on this bit. I was just REALLY hoping that we'd see some of that "Awakening of the Dragon" sooner rather than later. Right, so I am one of those people who play Infinity less for the game and rules (which are ok, and have some strong and some very weak aspects) and more for the setting and background (which has generally been excellent and engaging). Anyone claiming that the background DIDN'T set up an eventual split between Yu Jing and Japan clearly didn't bother reading any of it, and given that all of the conflict in the game is driven by the setting and background it's disingenuous at best to claim that it has no relevance to gameplay (or impact on that gameplay). Now you may have noticed that I have been one of those who has been critical of Uprising, not for what it did specifically but for HOW it was done, and for the more unfortunate aspects of the background for this event. This is because I see the negative impact of Uprising on the setting as a whole and am equally dismayed. So it's neither helpful, nor true, to make this into some kind of "game people" vs "setting people" conflict. It just pisses us off for no good reason and reduces the number of people who support your arguments. This, while true, is also unhelpful.
I'm sorry I'm hungry and I've had a lot of things start with "this can be for us too it doesn't take it away from you" and end up dropping what I like about it to cater to the new, bigger group.
