The books showed up at my local store on Monday, but they were all missing the pre-order miniatures. I got an email today from them saying the distributor has found the miniatures and will be sending them by the end of the week. Not really happy with how the pre-order miniatures are so easy to separate from the books. I liked how it was handled with the Manga.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the jerks who bought a book at Adepticon. Technically, as a Combined Army player the biggest benefit to me is pages 114 and 115 "Morat Rank Insignias: Reference Tutorial." :). I think it's new material, or at least updated, since it also mentions Onyx Contact Force in one of the notes, but I can't find my old copies of the Dire Foes PDFs to compare.
I pre-ordered through GameNerdz for $32.47 total including shipping. I received my book, and the mini 30 April. I stopped ordering from Warstore years ago. I'll never order from Warstore again. The book is physically very nice. Like Campaign:Paradiso nice. The illustrations are good. It does contain Interruptor's prose though. He's done an excellent job at synthesizing the Infinity milieu. He's a great worldsmith, however, he is a mediocre wordsmith. CB, hire him a good editor who can punch up his writings. Por Favor. I do not regret getting it. It does encourage to purchase the next book too, so long as the next book tidies up the mess this one created. Or contains Ramah Task Force.
I'm in the same boat for preordering without much thought, as I trusted CB to make quality products. I like the NA 2 parts of the book: I think the fluff for the profiles and the sections on the new armies are up to standard-infinity quality. Having stories of each of the mercenary companies really helps, and they also go into the history of each company and how they were formed. They also go into the operating procedures of StarCo and Druze. Whoever wrote these sections really understood Infinity and how it works. I think the whole Uprising section about the JSA rebellion was phoned in. This section took a diversion from the usual "shades of grey, black ops stuff" and "this is very colored which faction is speaking", and just decided to have it ALL be from the neutral/JSA side of things. As to the actual content: it seemed very unimaginative. JSA freely breaks free in 6 months, all their troops are superheroes, and YJ acts like a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain who gets dunked on by the rest of humanity. The sections tying all the Dire Foes into this was very hamfisted. It seemed like they had these separate fluff pieces (which were the original Dire Foes texts) and then they decided to put a couple paragraphs at the end of each mission that had things like "oh yeah, this prison where your Pan O people fought the CA spec ops? Its run by a JSA General, so she's going to get demoted from this so she can be relevant for this book." I get whiplash trying to read this since these interjections are not referenced in the actual story as its being told. As to new rules? Well, its just one section: they have the rules for the Multi Marksman rifle on the last page. Don't really know why they have that one weapon there, but don't have new skills like "full auto".
Yeah, they're in a separate box that comes with the books, some stores put the books into baggies with the miniature packaging, some will cellotape the model to the cover if the book is wrapped up just to keep them together.
This does not sound good, but to be honest, I have to agree with you in all aspects. Especially, I would have liked to see the new skills in print as well.
I'm kinda surprised that there is only the one weapon, but Campaign Paradiso didn't introduce a whole lot of rules, either. It expanded the Fireteam rules to include the Tohaa, and added CasEvac and Hostile Environment. Then it added Journalist, Number 2, and Specialist Troop skills. Added Dual Weapons, changed Shock and Stun ammo types, and added Swarm ammo. Added the Chain-Colt, changed E/Marat, added Flammenspeer, Hedgehog weapon, Jammer, Marksman Rifle, Molotok, Rocket launchers, Stun Pistols, SMGs, Swarm Grenades, and Vulkan shotguns. Added the Defensive Hacking Device, Hungries Control Device, Nullifier, Spotter, and Symbiont Armor. Total, about 10 pages, and that's largely because of about 3 pages of examples.
Because those rules are previews from Paradiso N3, and no unit in Uprising has them. The MULTI Marksman Rifle is used in JSA.
Uprising is Paradiso N3. It is the third book of the release, with an all new, all different story. Since we just received a book, the next one is about 3-4 years out based on company history. The new skills are in models CURRENTLY IN PRINT with rules that are not. If there is a plan to diverge from historical practice, they need to communicate it. I think we can all agree that CB's communication skills aren't as good as their miniature design skills.
No, it isn't. CB just decided to split content instead of releasing a 600 hundred pages book. A whiles ago Bostria told (don't remember exactly when/where) that CB had realized that time between book releases was very long, and releasing smaller books could speed up the process.
Kinda the same here. The offical story is the distributor lost the e-mail from my FLGS ordering it for me, and are now scrambling to get me a full kit with the mini. The unoffical story - the store owner, despite getting a written note from me "order me that stuff, preorder if from this to that day" and later a mail to remind about it, somehow forgotten about it, and did not order it at all, and now is trying to make it happen. Which actually happened before (that's why I lack the Fat Yuan Yuan). I wanted to support my FLGS, but that kinda breaks it: I could've ordered it on-line (directly at the distributor), and know they aren't going to botch it (and if they do - "we made a deal, and you've taken my money on that. Now do not explain yourselves, but make it happen")...
No it isn't. Uprising is some bullshit that they've made which has thrown the entire schedule into disarray. The contents of Paradiso N3 are well established, and none of them is in Uprising, unlike its release date, which is somewhere around next year and the one after.
I didn't realise we had so many experts on CB release schedule. Seriously though, the tired cynicism is getting old.
I finally got my copy and gave it a quick read. I'm pretty happy. I think they could have done a better job of advertising the contents of the book (mostly background and missions), but that's fine for me.
Just received my copy. After reading, this is my first take. The Good: - Fluff for Druze is pretty sweet - Raoul Spector has a cool story - Dire Foes lore all in one place The Meh: - Brawler model is cool, but not up to par (imo) with the Druze KHD - Page layout overall is cluttered - Focus is almost entirely on JSA; more new/opposing views surround the uprising would have been greatly enjoyed The Bad: - Overall editing is extremely poor - Major lack of new art (I was hoping for more) - Most of the fluff lacks true depth and fails to intrigue me - Arguments in favor of JSA aren’t convincing and never manage to make me choose a side - Too much fluff is driven to very unconvincing outcomes Overall: I won’t ever recommend this book to a friend. I may just be burned out on the current arc form all the forum discussions surrounding the Uprising. Maybe I’ve been influenced by the Yu Jing dissenters. More likely, it’s the poor writing and lack of (new) cool art. EDIT: I want to be clear. I do not particularly care which direction the fluff takes, so long as the game is fun. I play Haqqislam and DBS. I was very excited to read the Druze lore. Their fluff was cool mostly because I love the sectorial, but overall lackluster in regards to depth and quality of writing. I am not complaining about the way uprising was handled or intentially supporting the complaints of anyone else. These are just my opinions.
I can't say I'm unhappy with what I got from uprising. The book offered exactly what I wanted, the new na2 army fluff, the dire foes in paper form and few new art pieces. Yes I did expected something different more like a campaign setting book with new and unique missions, but there is hope we'll get that with whatever the next book is. PS: the brawler preorder mini is awesome
I do love that the book is hard cover. Though it makes me sad that the rest of the N3 books are not. :( Now that I finally have an English copy, I haven't had any time to read it...
