Not so much to release for JSA. Doc and engineer on the way already. O-Yoroi won’t get a resculpt in 2018 and 2019, I just asked CB. Keisotsu Blister may be... but then why there wasn’t CG box after Red Veil? May be Aragoto. I hope for Karakuris. The rest was already resculpted or in the case of ninjas - rerelesed. They won’t replace Oniwabans in YJ for sure, but we will get more Camo/TO SKs in White Banner one day. I doubt YJ will get a biker squad too. The rest of the major losses are HIs, and ours will continue to develop. On a side note: I finally got the book, and apart from the English version being too much of an obvious translation, what it described wasn’t illogical, especially the extreme reaction from YJ. I’ve always perceived them as somehow more totalitarian Chinese, and now they got the image much closer to USSR instead of modern China, and the Soviet’s NKVD and their offsprings acted with extreme prejudice for quite some time. Seems more like history repeated rather than unexpected development from a faction based on totalitarian rulership. IMO people that have troubles accepting what YJ did and calling them nazis just don’t know much about communist era oppression.
@geniusloci No, mate, they/we signed up for a faction that was looking beyond the soviet era tropes, but now Komrade Flanders appears to be Yu Jingese. Karakuri were confirmed to be current generation models, weren't they? Basically the question about when they'd get resculpt got asked and got a clear "no" as answer.
The problem is that YJ has no reason one can logically think for not presenting its side of the situation. Sure, it can be "drowned" in-universe, but I don't live inside the Infinity universe, as it was said time and again, Uprising has a smell to something called "Codex", which is less than flattering to those of us who saw CB as opposite to GW as a deciding factor to invest in Infinity (and no one should think I used "invest" wrongly: we have poured time, money and effort into the game, expecting to get enjoyment). Had the Uprising book presented the YJ side of the situation, and were that side not a "and you more" collection of atrocities committed by the JSA (because that would be a zero sum game too similar to how politicians act in Spain, reducing their role to throw mud to the opponent) then the book would have gotten a better reception. As it stands, had I maintained my preorder, I would have lost 40 bucks for something I would not want to even keep, nor would I have much options to get a refund. Should the Japanese get Kuraimori, I WILL. Not because I think they don't deserve it, but simply because I am literally unable to reconcile the facts that YJ is the #2 most powerful faction on the Human Sphere,with the smallest faction, drown in debt and without any military chance unless all the other factions came to their aid, were to win against YJ in their home system, on their second home planet. Call me odd, but frankly, no gaming system seem to me good enough to cover for "we will do with the game whatever we want to justify more sales". If I wanted to pour money to play with non-outdated/forgotten rules I would choose to do so with a hobby that doesn't demand me to mount the miniatures and paint them. The problem is that those 49 pages are just a collection of how the brave Japanese, whose main strategy seems to be "throw peasants (Haramaki/Tanko) as cannon fodder while the real troops assault behind them (Domaru), circle around (Aragoto) or ambush the enemy from magically reached positions (Ryuken, Ninja, Oniwaban, etc...)". That means attrition, by the way, done by a faction who doesn't have the population to take those casualties. Also, there is no real effort involved if the setting magically freezes after the Uprising, since any cost involved gets waived: the Japanese nation has to repay a lot of favors, have no economy whatsoever (well, they could work kinda like Praxis, selling I+D time), and its only use to other nations is "to be used to trip YJ safely". That is, a PAWN. Simply put, Uprising sells a lot of lies, and tries to hide them by not talking about the price of everything involved. Please don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain, and enjoy your audience with the great Wizard of Oz! Well, they are useful pawns against YJ and... I suppose that's it, until we go into humanitarian concerns, that is. And they have all the usefulness for the CA as a tool to disturb the Human Sphere... and for the Tohaa as a means to get inside uncontrolled... strange how O-12 does not regulate dealings with alien races, at least those who are either allies or enemies of the species (well, with the CA I can think they do, since Bureau Toth oversees Aleph, and it's a part of O-12). It's just that I find "homogenization" contrary to "all Asian cultures allied and together!". Sure, it's possible with a federal kind of organization... but that seems contrary to "State-Empire" and "The Party". Or overcomplicated at the very least. I want nothing to do with a company whose sales policy is "let's milk people for whatever we can, then go for new victims". Sure, it makes sense (on the short, expansive term, until they exhaust the "young blood" pool) for the company, but not for me as a customer. If I want to throw money away, I will find myself better if I do so to charity instead of to a company who are in it just for the money. FULLY implemented. There is a distinction: as written, it implies that the first implementations happened at the beginning of the October, and finished about 20 days later or so. The problem is that a) O-12 is not mentioned until it recognizes Japan as an independent state (from JY territories, with no compensation mentioned anywhere), and b) if O-12 can say to everyone "ok stop. NOW!" the fact that it didn't do so and PanO deployed its wall points to unilateral war. Then we read the publicly available YanDun document in the Downloads section of CB, and THERE is where you see the "ethnic cleansing". It was discussed in previous posts. All of the Dire Foes background fluff was included in the Uprising book (with the NA2 mercenaries). However, it was "reoriented" to be all related to Uprising... so yeah, you might be taking that from either Yasbir or Leyla's fluff. That's a "soft retcon", btw. 'Course not. Because they will stop there, and not choose another "very, very tiny fraction", something that for some reason you are okay with... I assume that as long as you are not part of that very very tiny fraction. As the old saying goes, they went after my neighbors and I did nothing, because it was not me. Then against my other neighbors. Then the others. And when they came for me, I cried for help like they did... but no one listened. Since no one remained. Not applicable here. YJ was the top 3 faction pre-Uprising, at least in participation on Flamestrike and Wotan. The new web campaign will have "normalized numbers" to compensate for the difference on population between factions, so we won't be able to know the real numbers. However, by CB's presentation of % of use and presence of units... Red Veil sold like hot pancakes, meaning that YJ was in a good position. That's because CB's target audience at the moment was... Oh, noes, USA! And the RusAriadna part will sell well because they are capitalizing on: a) something the community wanted for a long time, b) the polar opposite of USAriadna (so you can have USA Vs Russia!), and c) the extra sales from people that buys Ariadna "real" troops for their games. Merovingia, on the other hand, had few new players (and their refusal to give them some Haris to place them at the level of the other sectorials impacts that too), and is filled with older sculpts, meaning that they look small when placed side by side with the new models on Vanilla. Because the Japanese have such a record of keeping their promises! Or, because the Japanese are so big they are a great ally to all, but to YJ they are a small, barely noticeable dent in their hegemony! (Kinda makes you wonder WHAT loses could take PanO then...). NA2 has a single seat on the security council, and I think about 5 seats on the "real table", while the Senate is... kinda like the Star Wars' one: a big place with as many seats as are needed that can actually sign nothing, the "real table" (petit assemblee => PA) have to ratify their decisions. The Japanese would have changed, in that regard, a seat on YJ's side of the PA to the NA2... assuming they can displace one of the current ones, that is. Nice... because getting FTL comms from a rival means Gentlemen won't read each others mail XD
I doubt it. JSA should be close to complete by GenCon, honestly. I mean, Domaru and Karakuri boxes already exist, the O-Yoroi already exists, Starter box is part of the Army set (and may not actually ever get released as a starter, since the Army set is ~250 points, not 300), and the Tanko box already exists. We're basically only short a resculpted JSA Support Pack, Keisotsu Heavy Weapons, and resculpted Aragoto. That's 3 new boxes, maybe a resculpted Oyama blister considering how small he is compared to the new Domaru. That can literally be wrapped up by GenCon, though it assumes that JSA gets one of the Box release slots for the next 3 months. Now, back to what YJ no longer has: No sneaky high-value model killer (what the Oniwaban used to do). This could be partially covered by giving a Cike (Chinese replacement word for Ninja, spoken "chee-KAY" IIRC) an EM or EXP CCW. This would further allow Yu Jing to kick the last of the traitorous Japanese out of their military. No high-CC heavy infantry aside from the Crane (what the Domaru and Haramaki used to do). Not sure what to do for this one, to tell you the truth. No more bikes (Aragoto). While the Su Jian is almost as fast, it's twice the price. I'd have to ask a native Chinese if there are biker groups in China like there are in Japan and the US. No more Raiden. This is probably the most narrowly-focused role we lost, a Limited Camo heavy weapon. A Guilang is not the same, not least because the Raiden didn't take up Guilang AVA, you could field a Daofei, 2 Guilang, and a raiden in vanilla back in the day, and have 6 camo markers within 8" of each other. So, I guess the question is, what would you add to YJ to fill those roles, and what sectorial would you put them in? You'd think that the Japanese would have learned their lesson about picking a fight with a nation with more people and resources than them in 1945... Not even the US has been stupid enough to pick an attrition fight with the Chinese! Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to expand on the price paid to get Japan out of Yu Jing with my book. I honestly assumed a rather federal style government for Yu Jing, since that's the lowest-conflict method to bring multiple formerly-sovereign countries together (see also European Union). Sure, at the local level all the politicians get replaced by members of The Party, and I think the local law enforcement may get replaced by the Imperial Service, but they're still ethnic Mongolian citizens of Yu Jing.
We already have confirmation that JSA is not taking YJ's release slots. June's releases include both a JSA Keisotsu SWC box and the new YJ Support Pack
If CB has relayed the information regarding what NA2 actually is correctly, then we are looking at 2018 being JSA's Year of Tohaa (i.e. a few releases and then likely mostly nothing for about 3 years). I know this isn't a popular opinion on the NA2 boards where the expectations are more releases than Tohaa (an actual main faction) is expected. Hell, expectations there is that JSA is now a main faction... (Edits: spelling and added "correctly")
AND that, once JSA "retakes" Kuraimori, the JSA will get more profiles and miniatures and new tech! Because they had to leave so much behind, they only need to go back and it will be there, waiting for them, it is even hinted in the Uprising book!!!!! Because, obviously, YJ would have not taken apart EVERY piece of tech to forensically reconstruct whatever the Japanese industries were working on that they were unable to take with them nor destroy to avoid falling on YJ's hands... Well, considering they believe right for JSA to take Kuraimori from YJ, and that "ALL of the international community" wants the JSA to succeed... Either everybody wants to welcome the new PanO Overlords, or the CA Overlords, or they hope PanO Vs CA will keep PanO busy while they downgrade YJ to the same level of "potency" that Nomads or Ariadna are at... *shrug* I suppose my trench prevents me from seeing the real aim there. Which is to make a quick buck at the expense of a lot of good faith CB had accumulated over a decade, but still...
Well, that may also depend on how exactly the FTL comms works. If we're talking quantum-entangled pairs, you have to drag one of a paired comms box out to where you're working, kinda like the classic tin-can telephone, they can only talk to any box already entangled. You cannot add new boxes with that system, unless you make a bajillion entangled atoms and stick a few into each box (in theory, you only need one entangled atom per box, but there's a cross-entanglement problem that means you need to replace the magic atoms every so often). Even if you're buying FTL comms from a foreign power, you plug your data-encryption unit into a connector on the FTL box, so even if the people who sold you the tech have a built-in backdoor tap, they still only get an encrypted message. Same way you send any important radio messages. Anyone with the right antenna can listen in, but all they will get is the scramble (though this does somewhat lead to lazy comms practices when all your comms are encrypted: US Army always has troubles with people talking plainly in wargames where some faction has split off, instead of continuing to use code-phrases). That's about what I'm expecting. A big splash this year and then nothing. But I'm hoping that we will have either enough "generic models" (ie, blades/pistols only) or all the necessary models done. Oops, I guess there is one more JSA release that I'm expecting (besides the Keisotsu SWC box, the Aragoto box and maybe a new Oyama sculpt since he's so short), the MSV2 Kempeitai. But that could still have everything released by GenCon in August. Don't know what the Secessionists are smoking in the NA2 boards, but I wish they'd share it!
No one is going to stop Yu Jing from shelling the entire valley to smithereens on Yu Jing's home planet, should Yu Jing lose that one
If we were to get optimistic, the Dayokai fluff (we had to leave the actual project behind so all we have are scraps), combined with Bostria saying that Yu Jing will get a second S5 makes for a rather obvious conclussion.
I got my Uprising book on the weekend, read most of the JSA stuff and now I am even more confused. The whole Uprising wasn't handled as bad as I dreaded and not as well as I hoped.... bugger! Considering releases beyond the already confirmed ones for JSA I'd bet on a new Neko sculpt and the MSV2 Kempei. Possibly a second sculpt of the Daiyokai, because those big HI seem to draw people in. So could be done rather quickly. Now where is my Invincible Army???
I think the new JSA is fishing for major faction status and a matching new release schedule. If it isn't then this move isn't just cynical it's just plain commercially masochistic. But fishing is only fishing. They haven't promised anything, it isn't listed as a major faction. They will look at their figures on the new big JSA box. They will look at their figures on the JSA support sculpts, other "recent" or "current gen" JSA models to try an guage what sort of ongoing interest they have... then they will either jump in and exploit it with new releases (at some cost to SOMEONE'S release schedule, could be anyone... I'm gonna randomly say Tohaa and CA just because)... ...or they will drop it like a sack of hot Tohaatatoes and say "hey, it's just a nobody merc sectorial, and people only fielded models from it like less than %15 of the time, which as far as we can (apparently) tell means no one at all will be effected!" But I tell you now. If they decide the figures are going well, you god damn bet they will get all the tech (and more again) and fluff WILL bend however ridiculously to excuse it. Well, again, that or these guys have actively abandoned all commercial self interest as a business, including the long term destructive greedy variety.
OTOH, it's a universal sculpt for an AVA 1 unit. The chances of a resculpt (that's not some limited promo repose) are slim to none.
You're looking at this through the wrong lense. The conflict is much more akin to the Israeli/Arab conflicts or Israeli/Lebanese conflicts. The attrition is acceptable because the JSA doesn't have to sustain it for a long period of time: their strategy is to use international pressure to bring the StateEmpire to a cease fire. To achieve this they force YJ to fight an intense, extremely vicious and extremely bloody conflict in urban centres. Even a highly disciplined force deliberately trying to minimize casualties will struggle in that sort of conflict. Add to this the fact (Uprising pg 19) that Japanese civilians entered into 'armed hostility' the distinction between civilians and combatant would be blurred. This is a recipe for generating moral outrage against the evil-State Empire as they 'open and obviously massacre... civilians'. The Kuge set their own people up to be killed en masse (and then televised it) to ensure that international pressure ended the conflict quickly and in their favour.
The State empire catches on before the Uprising starts: a few hundred midnight raids won't make the news. But realistically, the most likely failure mode for the Kuge is that they flee to PanO and set up a government in exile. It's clear that they don't care about the Japanese people's lives.
Oh, I can understand that. It doesn't change, however, the focus of those pages, nor my complaint that Yj's side is never truly shown. While until this century has been true that history gets written by the victor, we are talking about a society where everyone outside of PanO's Atek communities, Ariadna in general, and some other marginal groups have a Comlog, which is kinda like a smartphone with internet access implanted on and connected to your brain (call me crazy, but anything that is able to dump data directly on my brain sounds very bad to me, and a much logical entry point that the cubes, but that's beyond the point). So simply put, everyone and their cousin have liveblogs, youtube channels, twitter... And they all can write. Now tell me it's logical and understandable that YJ's version of Uprising is nowhere to be found, while the Japanese-as-white knights is "THE" history. With no dissenting voices. So either YJ is TRULY and TOTALLY alone in the Human Sphere, or Uprising is just one version of the conflict, and the real history is missing. Sadly, the addition of all Dire Foes fluff as "converging on the Uprising", and I have little reason to suspect anyone runs contrary to JSA interests/success (even tangentially, they either support or are unrelated... or fail). So logic points hard to YJ as alienated from the Human Sphere... yet for some reason bleeding to defend it, instead of doing the "smart" thing all the other factions but PanO are doing: leverage the CA against YJ's enemies...
