@Solar I am not misssing the point. I was stating exactly what you were, that when designing for a game like this the designers have to be aware of emergent degenerate combinations. There's nothing we've seen so far that would be problematic when combined with the Oniwaban/Kitsune. And even if there was, it's just a matter of getting access to those models instead of the Oniwaban - why invalidate players' purchases just to change things for the sake of change?
JSA is better off outside YJ and YJ will become better off without JSA. IA will be cooler and more interesting to play for Sectoral and Vanilla than JSA were.
What shown so far for IA has degenerate interactions with the removed superior infiltrators? If you can't show that, you're just blowing smoke.
I don't know a mini caskuda followed up by an Oniwaban could work extremely well. Thinking about what generic YJ would be able to put down as a faction if JSA were still there, I can't put my finger on an area where they couldn't excel especially with the newer JSA units like the section 9, cheap tag level BS 14 firepower, daofei+guilang+Zencha+Hualong+Section 9+Ninjas+Oniwaban+kanren in mid field, two of the best drop troops in the game, cheap HI, Expensive HI, two flavours bargain basement LI, Bikes, top tier CC, tippity top tier TO, KHDs + AHD, in marker or not, command and control troops, you can look at every zone on the board outside your opponents DZ and you have a method, build or tactic that vanilla YJ can just completely own it with when compared to other factions
Or I just don't want to sink my time into arguing the point with you, because anything I raise you'll disagree with, at length, and therefore it is literally a waste of my finite experience in this frail mortal coil.
That's vanilla factions for you. The same is true for Ariadna (minus TO and HI, but plus "everything is at least 1 camo marker"), CA (everything including opponent DZ), and basically everyone else. You just can't do it at the same time. So the question is, what fills the gap? What units needed the space? We still haven't had an answer to that. I dare say that considering the number of side-grades revealed so far in IA, we'll be waiting for an answer until White Banner. P.s. this might be heresy, but I don't consider bikes to be a particular niche because they are too unreliable. They fall into the category of LI for me. Fast LI, but still LI.
You see I play vanilla in all three of the mentioned factions and the other two don't: CA have the speculo for your opponents DZ yes and no shortage of tech or flashy TAGS, but in terms of board placement and role they lack: the cheap line troops, (vanguard and unidron are both kinda fantstic in different ways but 14pts basic) sup infiltration, anything in Mid field above armour 1 shock vulnerable (I've been preaching to anyone who'll listen that I want a Shas dao fei), low end budget HI like the Wuming or the zhuyong, they only have super premium HI (A charontid is fantastic but a Hsien is cheaper and does the same jobs for less, when paired with the cheaper options throughout YJ it also makes it a far more feasible choice) never had bikes. never had CoC, (G:nem is compensation but comes on pricey chassis which steer your entire army selection and makes morat a bit of a waste) granted IMO they have the best AD units in the game but none are as verstile as the Tiger for points, monks and kuang shi cover pretty much everything hungries can do but in a better way (with smoke+ma3 or regular orders). CC wise CA are entirely outclassed by what YJ has left before you put JSA into the equation. Has 1 great battle REM which is also the TR bot with AVA 1 and lacks a repeater (and therefore autonomy and synergy) a pairing of really expensive trick units and a lack of holoprojector, (CA tricks and traps are often painfully obvious, want to hide a hac tao ML suprise in YJ, bait your trap with a Kanren pretending to be a Hsien, want that Oniwaban, speculo or fiday to kill the wrong obvious LT then do much the same) As for Ariadna: Cheap line troops in spades, midfield camo in spades, bikes everywhere in a variety of flavours (dynamos are I think a potential game changer), inferior infiltration nightmares but then: zero actual AD, strategos capped at 1, highest BTS in the faction is 3, no firebase HI like the yan huo, hsien, hac tao, no MSV2, no assisted fire rems (which coincidentally do have MSV2), no fast moving armoured fist like a TAG or Su Jian. Have literally 1 BS 14 model with one profile, with a dog warrior tax (if you can call poor old Duroc that) which has been discontinued. The TL:DR My argument remains that with JSA stuff left in then YJ would have the capability to do straight up everything better than everyone in practically every position, you're never going to do it all in one list but the sheer range of options is the advantage in itself. If you're playing against vanilla Ariadna you're probably not going to take your hacking focussed list, If you're playing vs vanilla CA then they probably don't have more than 12-14 orders, if you are playing against vanilla YJ then what can you afford to ignore, even with their currently reduced roster?
Impersonation is Superior Infiltration without a roll required and I seriously dispute that Yu Jing had the capability to do everything in every position better than anyone else. For one there's no Akbar Doctor There was no Doctor with higher WIP than 13 There were no Engineer with higher WIP than 13 There were no HI Doctors There were no HI Engineers The highest WIP specialist is 14 There were no Pitchers There were no Fast Pandas etc. You get my point. Arguably Yu Jing were capable of doing nearly everything at mediocre skill and melee at superior skill. Currently Yu Jing has been stymmied in terms of range of options and has been stymmied in terms of what was the area of mastery. Now that's about as far as I'm willing to take this topic because it's going to inevitably lure out comments like "unit X is perfectly playable" on the merest hint that a particular unit might be a tiny bit overpriced, and those comments are the worst. But the point is that I don't think your assessment is complete and that it's exaggerated, and maybe just maybe you're downplaying other factions' strengths. As to the question regarding playing vanilla Yu Jing. There's no Jammers (yet) to ignore LOF rules, there's no hidden threats to heavy units, and there's going to be no stuff messing around in your DZ. Yu Jing will be playing one of the most honest games of any vanilla factions so while you can't ignore most cardinal threats while building lists you will be able to have a chance of countering them in game to an extent that you can't rely on against most factions.
That's fair (esp the impersonation point) however I don't feel you've addressed my actual point that YJ would have more options and the granularity to bring about those options than basically every other faction, specifically listing there the two factions you'd previously held up as examples as being able to do the same or better. You're now holding up Haqq as a straw man and there are considerably more things YJ would be able to do and still are able to do even without JSA that Haqq (good as they are) can't. Go into the pano forum and you'll see plenty of complaints about how being the best BS isn't a fix, you don't need to be the master of a trick you just need to have access to it to be in the game. I'm repeatedly on record in these forums saying that I play Yu-jing for their range of options and that's what makes them interesting and good in terms of playability. Equally the last tournament I was in was won by Generic YJ, another generic YJ player was also the only opponent I felt compelled to take my "I don't actually have any idea what I'm facing defensive list"
I agree that this way madness lies (however That list right there would be my go to along with the Guilang FO dep rep) I'm going to stop at this point anyway as I feel I've made my point about why factions get split, and that going further down the path is only going to derail it and turn it into probably another flame war thread about the event I will not name, however I think a general comparison of vanilla is threadworthy in it's own right, I'm just not going to do it here
Against YJ you used to have to deal with the possibility that they had an Oniwaban or a Hac Tao or a Su-Jian etc, or even all of these backed with max AVA Kuang Shi. They could do pretty much anything, and ram loads of orders into it. They were the most flexible faction. They lost the JSA part and are more balanced for it, opening them for a clearer focus on HI to resolve gameplay questions going forward. There was a narrative that YJ were merely fine before uprising and were cruelly hobbled. This is not true. Ultimately I think it comes down to "we used to have an Oniwaban and now we don't." Everything else in JSA was barely used outside of JSA and hey, you can still use it! Play JSA!
I wouldn't hold up Haqq as a straw man as much as being the faction with the highest level of mastery in the most number of areas. But, and I think this is important, I wouldn't bring up "same or better". I would say that all vanilla factions are capable of bringing sufficient variety to the table in subtly different ways such that "capable of doing nearly everything" isn't a good argument to be made for faction strength. It's like a Hac Tao, it's not the best TO HI gunner, but it's close enough that it doesn't really matter all that much that the Swiss is technically better. That being said, I think the "best" vanilla faction isn't the one that is capable of bringing the most different potential things to the table, but rather the faction that's capable of doing specific things best. As much as I describe Haqq as a kind of cake-and-eat-it above, they are kind of expensive for it, so I consider Ariadna to be possibly the best vanilla faction, providing excellent bang-for-buck in terms of competence and skew possibility. Even if they are arguably the most limited in variety. It's simply put, much more complicated a puzzle than simply ticking boxes on a sheet of paper. I do enjoy Yu Jing and find it hard to justify branching out because of the completeness of the faction, but I do argue that there is a point when variety no longer is a transferable quality. Sectorials are supposedly designed so that they are on the other side of that point due to lacking variety, but already some sectorials are skirting close enough to the point where they have enough variety to... saturate (?)... this quality. TBH, there is so much riding in the Guilang. That profile alone makes up almost as much of Yu Jing's variety as any given sectorial (ISS, IA or JSA) do/did/will do. I wouldn't pick Guilang or Ninja Assault Hacker, though.
Comic Sans much? JSA works outside YJ quite well. I didn't really notice any difference in my JSA lists after uprising. The problem is that vanilla Yu Jing flat lost a couple really useful profiles. Probably the biggest one was the Oniwaban (and Shinobu). Before Uprising, you always had to deploy as if there was a hidden-deployed TAG/HI killer out there. Always. Just like how you always had to deploy assuming an Impersonator against Haqq and Shas/Combined. Except now you don't. Facing YJ, you never have to worry about an Oniwaban anymore. Gotta worry about Tigers and Liu Xing, but you're never going to see more than two total, and they're a different threat than an Oniwaban. Imagine how much Haqq players would scream if you told them that they "didn't use the Fiday enough in vanilla, so the entire Hassassin sectorial is going to split off and do it's own thing."
I play Haqq and I wouldn't really be that bothered, personally. Especially if it resulted in a rejuvenated Hassassins and more design space in Haqq going forward. I don't think that Hassassins in the background or the Haqq gameplay feel are too distinct from the rest of the faction so I would think "why?" but I think I'd probably find myself enjoying Hassassins more ad they are expanded, and they're my favourite part of that faction so not a huge deal. Although I doubt that vanilla Haqq is so sparing in it's use of Hassassin troops as YJ was of JSA options.
I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but the only other "split/secession" topic I can think of that holds water is USAriadna declaring MURICA and kicking off a new civil war. The fluff in the RPG line makes no bones about how the USAri Congress has a lot of openly secessionist leanings and is really sore over the banning of the office of President by the Rodina gov't, plus they seem like one of the stronger forces militarily in terms of proliferation of armaments, technology level and organization. Additionally, the Rodinans can't really isolate the other Ariadnan states as well as they could during the first conflict just because of the galactic implications.
