For me yes. The background made it out to be a lot more than this. I was expecting something that brought some command ability. I guess it's nice to have something other than as an HVT. I get that, it's nice. The Bayara, for me, is just not great. Looks great but not for rules. It's an overly expensive backfield guard. The Jinyao is cool but it's mainly just a side-grade replacement of Garuda. The Koga is the one I like a lot though. I was all set to get the new box but now it's just not exciting enough. I've got many Celestial Guard, I have Cranes, Wu Ming, Ninjas, etc. The Bayara is very cool but is that enough to spend nearly $150? The Long Wang too is a bit boring and the figure looks boring too.
A warcor that is also a specialist and that your enemy don't want to get too close to, for two extra points? Sounds useful enough to me. Fluffwise, I think it is fair enough that ISS also have weedy bureaucrats that are sometimes caught out in the field even if they have no business being there.
He is the Yujing equivalent of a Tohaa diplomat. He rather not be on the battlefield, but can defend himself as necessary. It is also not like Yujing needs any more command and control models: they already have the biggest suite of them. At 5 points, he is a warcor upgrade.
New army update, with the new ISS and some candies for other factios as well https://infinityuniverse.com/blog/army-update-march-2025
Wow. What a thorough and well thought through balance pass for ariadna. Really happy to see that one singular and inconsequential update. Bet that took days to work through /sarcasm
New English podcast from Arachnet. Episode 41: Podcast Updates and New ISS Sculptures https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2257b2bf-664a-498e-9ffb-e4b31676d9de/
I'm looking at the patch notes under Ariadna, but all I'm seeing is a picture of a middle finger. Is anybody else getting the same bug?
Genuine question: Why is so little effort made toward balance? Ariadna is in dire need of help. N5 has been a catastrophic era for Ariadna. The faction lost two of its most thematic sectorials in Infinity, and one is on life support. The changes and nerfs haven’t helped either. The new profiles feel like copy-pastes from other sectorials. You don’t need ten people to make some meaningful changes. I always get the feeling that balance is being handled by half a person.
Can agree with the catastrophic era part. My entire player group dropped the game and are unlikely to pick it back up anytime soon leaving me to only pick up the odd mini I want to paint now and again. Some are even going out of their way to tell prospective new players NOT to play Infinity. I have told them this is a pretty harsh reaction but they’re unlikely to change. It’s a shame as the game in general is still enjoyable but the changes that N5 introduced, especially in the sectorials had such a polarising effect. *sigh*. I would like to have at least got in a game. Oh well. Guess I’ll just go paint.
I'm in a similar boat (except the paint part, I hate painting); the core is still the same fun game it always was, but the army design and business approach has driven everyone close to me away. And even I'm not too keen on putting together a list for a game because of the high Character and Fireteam reliance of the game these days giving it a different feel to when I picked it up in N3.
Sorry to hear that... Our group of five has yet to play a game since N5 arrived. Our enthusiasm has dropped almost to zero.
Man, I feel so bad for all of you. At the same time, I don't understand any of those reactions of your player groups. Over where I am, people love the game, and pretty much everyone agrees that it's better than it has ever been, me included. I'm having tons of fun with it, and while there's still stuff to fix (there probably always will be) I wouldn't want to go back to any previous state of the game. The play experience is smoother than ever, so many more units and builds are viable now compared to before, and unless I go up against CA or Ariadna, I never feel unfairly disadvantaged (CA) or advantaged (Ariadna). Long story short: I love the current edition, and the people around me do too.
I hate to tell you this, but they have AI doing the voiceovers for 90 second videos. They can't get a random guy in the office to spend 15 minutes on that task and they can't scrounge up the pennies it would cost to pay someone to voice them on Fiver. I'm not convinced they even have 10 people in the office at this point.
Yes, something doesn't feel right, it stinks to high heaven. I can't pinpoint exactly where, but it doesn't bode well.
