Fluff question: why do you like Yu Jing?

I like that Yu Jing wears its darkness on its sleeve and embraces it, whereas all the other factions pretend like they're saints even as they're screwing over their own people.

 

So do Sunni and Shia Islam.

 

Hey now, the combine army doesnt hide its darkness either. :P Though I'd say they are also quite a bit more evil as well.

 

Well they are my first love after all, and my largest collection ;)

 

Yep, That's why Yujing doctrine is a Failure and Haqqislams is a succes (plus, the "divine intervention" in the finding of bouraq counts towards ratifiying that believe)

The bombardment of Baijing was a Yujing action, not ISS. So they are some other "questionable" militar milestones during this uprising event.

And regarding the ISS, what's the point of having rabid wolves praying on your flock? what the fuck is ISS doing flooding entire citys? I've would have understood it if it was an accident caused by ISS careless actions in taking the dam... but that statement about mass graves pretty much wastes that narrative line. (Yep that two things are related same city, same ISS unit)

 

The best explanation for all this would be to fold it into B4ckd00r, have CA agents inserted among the rebels and loyalists causing this kind of stuff to destabilize the sphere. But since we know this fluff was cooked (half-baked) before B4ckd00r was finished, that isn't a good rationalization...

 

A lot of posters (@Durandal particularly!) have already expressed much of what made Yu Jing appeal to me, better than I could, but in addition Yu Jing politics has always seemed the most interesting, full of interesting dialectical contradictions.... Old Guard v New Wave, Party v Throne, tradition v modernity, Ming v Qing, Chinese v Japanese, oppression v benevolence. There is room for so many stories, so many characters, so much musing and extrapolation between players about the ideal resolution to those conflicts!

That, and the faction has the best food carts in the Sphere.

 

So excepting the last 500 years, approximately, most of human civilization has been dominated by either India or China as the most powerful "nation" (inasmuch as that idea existed back then). I was hoping that we'd see that India/China conflict play out in Infinity, represented by PanO and Yu Jing, respectively.

While technically Infinity never promised that, its promise of a "diverse" PanO has been shown to be incorrect due to a promotion of the European elements of PanO culture dominating, down to the implication that the millions and millions of Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia saw the light and converted to Christianity.

Meanwhile, Yu Jing is flanderized to the point of caricature. While I'm not a fan of the PRC government, I find Chinese culture, art, history, and mythology fascinating. Infinity's particular bent of mixing mythology with anime-inspired sci fi via ALEPH and its recreations has promise yet to be realized for Yu Jing.

 

PanO is diverse, it's just in the future the average Filipino living in Argentina looks like this:

 

Look on the bright side though, the minis are gorgeous and they are fun to play. So I advise if you don't like the YJ you are reading about here, play a different brand of YJ. Be the Terracotta army, fighting against the wicked Combined Army, defending humanity even while the other factions politic and squabble.

 

Perspective of someone who doesn't play the faction but has frequently eyed it.

My favorite thing about Yu Jing is their HI. Especially since N3 I feel like their HI is just so much more interesting than PanO's. The other factions may have a couple of interesting HI models here and there, but Yu Jing can put a lot more of it on the table and deliver a lot more varied of playstyles than any other single faction.

 

Also, don't let some upset folks on the forum make you feel bad about your purchase - the game is fun, the army is still perfectly fun to play, and the minis are great. I guess I just think the toxicity of the YJ forum shouldn't be indicative to you of your experience on the table - I play vanilla YJ locally and have a great time.

 

Also, a lot of the negativity is about the fluff particularly. While the faction has taken (an actually serious) hit in models/variety, it's still good to play.

It's just, y'know, you did ask about fluff :P

 

I was drawn toward the faction through JSA's playstyle. The aggression backed by the Haramaki pain train was something I didn't have in Nomads. Gameplay options and rad new options, such as the Su Jian revision, is what brought me into vanilla. Having boss Lts was a completely new experience.

That said there were a few fluff spots I enjoyed. First was how such disparate forces such as JSA, ISS, and the State army fell together under one roof while still feeling more cohesive than Nomads.

The Aragoto were fun because they were boxed crooks who had a chance to go legit. The low borne Haramaki were better shots than their reserved Domaru counterparts, the Mugen to their Jin.

I enjoyed the little moments where we one upped Pan O techwise. The Su Jian, with the possible exception of the Hollow Men, are the smallest remote presence TAGs in all but name. The Yan Huo, like the Szalamandra, managed to mount and HMC with far less drama than the Dragoes.

While I certainly don't enjoy the recent depiction of ISS, I do enjoy the fact that Imperial Agents basically walked straight out of a Wuxia tale, bringing the justice of the central government to areas riven with corruption.

It comes from a position of passion. It's hard not to be angry when the thing you enjoyed was done dirty.

 

OK, where to start.

I am what would be called an Orientalist a hundred-odd years ago. I like a lot of the history and cultural pieces of China and Japan. When this game started, it was a flip of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, with China in charge. It was also a very HI-centric force, though that was hard to play in N1 and N2 (points-wise)

It was a darker gray than PanO, sure, but that's because the Chinese (or Japanese, or Koreans, or even the Indians) have never hidden the things necessary for the smooth running of the state. It's always been obvious, bordering on in-your-face.

I liked YJ because they'd managed to put the nastiness of the historical Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere behind them. Until they hadn't. There was this huge, brilliant idea that all the different nations of Asia could work together and be something greater than the sum of their parts.

I'll get to Wu Ming in a second, but I just recently came to see the Kuang Shi as YJ's death row. Sadly, there are some people that are not just incapable of functioning in society, but that are determined to be a direct danger to society, the kinds of people who go shoot up a movie theater to get their 15nanoseconds of fame. There's not much you can do to, or with, those people. About all we can do today is put them down like the mad dog they are. The Kuang Shi process at least gives one use out of them (and hopefully has a deterrent effect with the idea of those monsters getting brainwashed).

Wu Ming are an interesting thing. Believe it or not, the US military has something similar. For personnel that have apparently missed that part of boot camp where they pound military ethics into your head, but have had a lot of expensive training, there's a thing called Correctional Custody Unit. It's 30 days of military prison, times Boot Camp squared. I've sent a guy to CCU once when I was in the Navy. (Training a submariner is not cheap, it's upwards of a million dollars for an admin clerk like me, nevermind the two year school for a nuclear powerplant operator) That guy I sent to CCU had a really rude surprise when he showed up, with a full body cavity search and then some Marine Drill Instructors and some Navy Drill Instructors going off on him like it was "Drill Instructors, Take Charge of Your Platoon" all over again.

Being a Wu Ming is a bit of a backhanded compliment, it says that you're important enough, skilled enough, to try to keep. But boy did you screw the pooch, so you're going to have to re-earn your rights the hardest way.

It's fluff that any back-talk gets your term extended in the Wu Ming Corps. But it is possible to get your name back, all sins washed clean. There has to be at least one survivor who re-earned his name, just to motivate the current Wu Ming. Then again, he might be the current head of the Corps.

I'm pretty sure that's insulting to the Blackshirts. And I played Italians in Flames of War.

Very much this.

But the promise that everyone could work together, regardless of past history between the nations, is gone.

I may have to join you in the RPG, I really don't like the fluff right now.

Yes, the Imperial Service has gotten really way too dark for the setting. Way too freaking stupid, too, but that's a rant for a different time.

Want them rather extremely authoritarian (even more so than their old fluff)? No problem. But please for the love of all that is Wuxia, let them be competent. Let the JSA beat them, but not because the Imperial Service was too blind to see it. Let the ISS try to preserve the Japanese civilians, when the Secessionists are actively making them targets. Let Secessionist plants fake up the news that the Imperial Service is killing civilians.

Very much this.

 

Yu Jing needs some more named characters. This would be a good one.

 

Infinity might end up being like 40k when FFG got the rpg license, to where the fluff is handled better by the rpg crew than the wargame crew.

 

You mean odd behaviour written by a westerner about what is to them an alien culture? Just because they're different doesn't make them in character or even in stereotype and alluding that a westerner wouldn't get it is shooting yourself in the foot type of argument, particularly when the criticism is that the behaviour of the faction is changing in a direction people don't like.

 

What drew me first to Yu Jing were the aesthetics.
But I like their fluff (haven't read Uprising yet, still waiting for my copy ). I like the contrast to western society. I like that they act, not like our politics today, they discuss for years and nothing will ever change. Yu Jings acts may be a bit brute but at least they do something to ensure the well being of their people and the state.
I also like the culture and mythology of china, japan and korea (I don't know much about the others) and the overall idea of a unified Asian nation.
As for the ISS , it sounds like they try to do their job. I am sure the Hexahdron of Pan-O wouldn't be better (nicer) at supressing a Rebellion in their country. So I don't see them as dark as others.
I am still enjoying and playing my Yu Jing, Vanilla and ISS.