I'm fairly certain the characters that will be 'exculded' if their faction doesn't do well enough will be all of the spec ops characters since they are fairly widespread and all 'roughly' the same in power/value their absence will be felt but won't be hugely detrimental like the loss of characters like Wallace, Saladin, Kitsune, or the many steel phalanx characters.
That's what I'm thinking too, possibly and hopefully a new JSA starter coming. Also with the Al Hawwa repack, I'm expecting a new Qapu Khalqi starter in the foreseeable future.
The main reason I want the JSA starter to hit so badly is so I know if they are still going to be white and red or not. Bit worried after the first Shikami.
Hassassin suddenly loses his 5th component for the Ghulam fireteam... Then again, Yasbir is a second specops character no one uses there... Aleph would lose Thrasimedes, meaning the greek players will need to field Alké (suboptimal, too much SWC consumption) or Hector (70 odd points...) to link thorakitai, since there is no non-character Thorakitai subofficer... I don't think PanO would cry for Bipandra, but Konstantinos might upset some players. Then again, PanO is the most likely faction to pull off the numbers to avoid losing the specops. YJ can lose Yuriko Oda (seriously? JSA cover kempei, AND suspected of being a CA simpatyzer? That would mean a deep investigation and being outed for the other part, so she would have no chance to be cleared and come back if we go lore-wise...) or IS can lose the new Xi Zheng most buy for the perimetrals so they can place'em with the kanren, so... Nomads can lose Lupe Balboa (not a great loss, since she is seldom used, two Jaguars cover what she offers nicely), Ariadna can shrug Isobel McGregor's loss (mostly), and that's it... The druze have no specops character, however, so... :S
Something something we've got a list of possible CA collaborators, one of them is to be outed and found to be coerced to cooperate in some way. Offer a solution for his issue EI's agents were getting a leverage from in exchange for assistance in capturing his contact - who will be some CA character who will be captured for the duration of the event, then escape or something. Would be still pretty stupid, considering who those CA personalities are, but... Tbh I'm not sure if non-Caledonia players would notice if Wallace disappears. Even some Caledoinans will probably be more upset over Uxia, although that depends on how people build their lists. Not sure about Slaladin, but my perspective is skewed because I collect HB and I will absolutely notice disappearance of Leila while Saladin isn't even available to me. Yasbir is largely irrelevant, at least gameplay-wise.
I must say, I'm not entirely sure what the up side is meant to be for banning certain characters. I can see lots of negatives, but not the positive.
Some of us have 3 Achilles miniatures, regardless of the amount of table they see (hint: in my case, very few), but to suddenly say people "you cannot use this mini because your faction is not the most played" is... kinda like saying "we wanna piss you off, client, because we don't care about you". Never a smart move, and it might end with everybody playing only PanO because the other players just won't play ITS.
I pulled a few named non-spec ops characters off of the top of my head. I'm at work and just needed some examples. I thought the spec ops was just the way I'd imagine they could get the most "fair" temporary removal across the board. Though some would hurt to lose more than others. I completely agree with you here. Though I would love to see this is a way they could revamp a bunch of characters stat lines and gear options. So when we all get our falsely accused characters back they get to come back with some new toys, skills, stats. Maybe a new model for a few of them.
It's not an idea I'm a fan of but it's also a restrictinn I don't remotely intend to follow if it affects me as I don't really go to ITS tournaments. So nbd.
Also if we get cool new characters at the same time I'll see all the benefits with none of the drawbacks!
Aelis Keesan has a Defensive Hacking Device. A White Hacking Device would be an upgrade. I agree with you that losing either of the two characters we Tohaa players have would do little to hurt us. I may be one of the few who actually use Aelis and I haven't used her in over a year (cause kids ate my play time). Neema on the other hand has been getting a little more action lately, but she is hardly a required unit. Any way you look at it this rule wouldn't be a burden for Tohaa. Honestly I don't have a problem with an event like this. It provides change and story for the Infinity Universe and that's a good thing. No one is requiring people to play with these time limited events. Most people can ignore the ban. The real problem is that if one character is so good that it's a must have to do something in an army, then that army has a problem and needs to be fixed. Then again, not all armies are supposed to do all the things. If they are then where the hell is my Tohaa Killer Hacker? (Tohaa don't need hackers)
Except on ITS events. And as I said, remove Thrasímedes from Stell Phalanx and you effectively removed the Thorakitai as a linked unit from 60% of the lists, which won't have enough points to field much in the way of effective fireteams, thus turning Enomotarchos from a "just run 2 fireteams" (someting almost ALL factions can do now with Haris) to "haha, your fireteams are capped at 4".
Welcome to Aleph's Steel Phalanx, where the "character population" IS the shtick, while "Vedic" Aleph has none.
Yeah but even if it were a white one, she wouldnt seen much playtime. I took her also sometimes, but compared to the Kosuil K1, she is 3 points more for not having symbiont Armour
While I don't think Cothel meant Aleph when mentioning armies that rely too much on a single character, Steel Phalanx does come pretty damned close to leaning way too heavily on a few of its characters. Let's just say that some of them are a bit too optimized and really abuses the hell out of the non-existant drawbacks that Frenzy brings. Less schtick, more ischue. I do agree that there are some sectorials that aren't Steel Phalanx that are a bit too defined by a single or a couple of characters.
Steel Phalanx absolutely relies on characters. Outside of characters it has precisely one LT option, the Myrmidon Officer. In order to make two out of three of it's fireteam types, you need characters. Pretty much every fireteam you'll be seeing on the table will have one and maybe two (rarely even three!) characters in it. The Sectoral runs on characters. And I don't mind that, characters are cool. The difference between a character and a non-character with AVA 1 is non-existent.
