I am considering playing Infinity. However, having seen how Yu Jing has been split, I would like to avoid starting collecting an army which will be no more playable at some point (for instance, due to a Sectorial becoming a different faction). So my question is: is any other reorganisation of armies planned for the next couple of years or is it likely to happen? In particular, is it likely that vanilla Aleph and Steel Phalanx will be split in two different factions?
There's been no indication that there will be another faction split. If there were, Aleph/Steel Phalanx would be right down the bottom of the list Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk
Welcome to the forum and hopefully the game! As the other posters have said, there have been no indications at all that any other factions will split. Given the background, it's pretty much impossible - all but two units in ALEPH and Steel Phalanx are effectively subsets of ALEPH itself.
Japan/YJ tension was part of the background from the very beginning. There's no indication that any other sectorials might go the same route as JSA. Maybe CHA might split from Ariadna at some point, as might SEF from CA. PanO might lose a sectorial at some point, mainly to prevent the faction to get too bloated. Aleph is safe, as are Nomads and Haqq. And as others pointed out, moving sectorial between factions doesn't make it unplayable. If anything, JSA is more playable now, than it was before. The only people really affected are vanilla players.
What does happen, and will in all likelihood happen again, is that Sectorials can be rotated out of production. Currently the Shock Army of Acontecimento and Force de Reponse Rapide Merovingienne have had the bulk of their models (but not quite all) withdrawn from production to free up room in the catalogue and production schedule. These Sectorials remain payable though, they are still legal in the Infinity Tournament System, and both got small updates when the model retirements were announced.
By "an army becoming unplayable" I meant "a specific set of miniatures no more being a valid army according to the rules" rather than "a faction in the game." My question might seem somewhat provocative, but this was not my intention. I was just genuinly concerned whether the game is currently stable enough to join it or is it better to waint until it undergoes some major changes. More specifically, I saw that Aleph starter pack is a discontinued product so I was just wondering whether the game is in the middle of essential rewriting.
Aleph Starter pack is discontinued because it has been replaced by Operation: Coldfront, the Aleph half of which will most likely be released in the next few months as a standalone starter without the Naga sniper. There are a few models that are no longer usable, the Exrah disappeared in the trasition from N2>N3 due to the models selling poorly and wrecking moulds, the Azra'il also increased in size dramatically in N3 making the old models a little hard to use as there's no obvious proxy. We've not seen any entire armies disappear though, in fact it's the opposite where SAA and FRRM are still playable even though the models are no longer being made.
Its valid given the changes happening. I'd say we're at the end of the upheaval onto the last major release for the year. As has been mentioned, there's been a split and a couple of factions discontinued (production wise) temporarily as part of a rotation. Its probably a great time to get into with the release of 3rd offensive and the rules for 2 new sectorials and a bunch of tweaks!
There are no other potential faction-split causes in the fluff right now. The Helot terrorists/freedom fighters are not a large enough organization to effectively secede from PanO. The uprising made sense from an 'evolving storyline' point of view (as mentioned by @Stiopa , it had been in the game since the beginning), but it was poorly executed. I cannot see any way for Aleph or Steel Phalanx to get split, so that one is safe. The various starter boxes go out of production permanently when a new box is released, that doesn't happen often. You may prefer the models in the old box, but there still should be some old ones in the supply chain for a bit.
This has never happened except in just a couple cases where individual units were removed from the game -- and in every one of those cases except the Caskuda and Vector Operators, they were removed and replaced with a reworked version. There has never been an instance where an army has been outright removed, regardless of what the YJ forums might tell you.
You're deliberately misreading. What happened to a new player who had about 200 points of YJ and 100 points of JSA models, because those were the models he liked? He no longer had a playable army after the Uprising, he had to spend another hundred bucks to get either up to a 300pt list. And THAT is what @Lanic was asking about.
Except he did still have a playable army, because at the exact same time as the split, the ITS proxy rules were expanded so that all of those minis remained usable. Further investment was only needed if a player had an aversion to proxying.
Aleph and SP are are safe bet for stability. Their models being discontinued in production are simply being replaced by new updated sculpts. This is probably the best time to pick up Aleph as they've just received a brand new set of stuff so they're at the bottom of the pile for being looked at for any major changes anyway. We all know you love to defend CB to the death, but tell me, what do I proxy my Aragoto as again?
Maybe Aleph develops multiple personalities, going into civil war. *har* *har* Or the Morat rebel. *har* Or Nomads go with CA (how do you explain the TAG look?). *har* *har* Or playing place has proxying restrictions. I kid you not. https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/torneo-en-quimera-buenillos-choice-4-de-noviembre.25594/ In this case it would depend in how the 40% limit counts (points? miniatures?), and what miniatures were bought pre split. I can't quote examples of 0%, but I can imagine such places.
Though keeping in mind, Bostria has promised an event (which I think is autumn or so next year) that'll make Uprising "seem like nothing"
That's so weak you might as well not even bother playing with models at that point and just use cardboard cutouts.