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My 2019 Conspiracy Theory

Discussion in 'Tohaa' started by Vanderbane, Sep 27, 2018.

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Is this right?

  1. Yeah, sounds like where we are headed

    28 vote(s)
    32.2%
  2. Jeez, I hope not.

    20 vote(s)
    23.0%
  3. This has no bearing on reality.

    39 vote(s)
    44.8%
  1. Vanderbane

    Vanderbane Well-Known Member

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    This is going to be long, so I’ll begin with my thesis/prediction:

    Tohaa is going to cease to exist as a faction at or around Adepticon 2019. It will be folded into CA as part of a new/updated Shasvastii sectorial which includes Tohaa sepsitorized units. In joining CA, Tohaa profiles that are viewed as extraneous or unbalanced will be rebalanced or retired, and new Tohaa units (and sculpts) will be made to fill out both CA armies and the new NA2 Triumvariate sectorial. This slims the product line while increasing the number of buyers per SKU.

    If you’re interested, here’s my reasoning (like a good Tohaa, I have 3 sections):

    1. Statements from CB representatives

    Starting at Adepticon 2018, it became clear during Q & A that Tohaa was getting no model support for 2018. At Gencon 2018, Tohaa is against told to wait until 2019. In the prerecorded video, Bostria links the releases for Tohaa along with releases for new CA stuff. I and others took this to be a reference to a Tohaa vs. CA box (which I think is still in the works, but not quite like I originally thought). He states that next year “big alien things are going to happen, big cosmical events… and the Tohaa are heavily involved as well as the Shasvastii.” Later in the video (around min 33:40 on the video), Bostria indicates that the cosmical things that happen at Adepticon will be more controversial than the Uprising events, stating, “that was NOTHING compared to what is going to happen in 2019.”[his emphasis]

    For the Comic Con Africa ’18 video, Bostria discusses (starting around 14:40) the salt associated with the JSA departure, and notes that while there was some negative feedback, they are not backing away from evolving the brand. Specifically, he notes that the numbers (read: sales and play stats) were good for the JSA following their shift from Yu Jing. He then notes that the big question he receives is what will be the next Uprising-like event. To address this future, he describes that “the JSA uprising is going to look like a schoolyard fight compared to what is coming… get ready, we have a plan and the whole human sphere will be evolving.” He goes on to add, “be excited, it’s a very exciting way of reassigning the whole range.” At 18 minutes he discusses the the potential for upgraded sepsitor devices in the future.

    Last week, on the White Noise podcast (episode #50) Hell Lois was interviewed. He comments on the play stats being strong for CA, behind only nomads and PanO. He follows this statement by pointing out that NA2 is outpacing Tohaa. At 57:30, he’s asked about whether Tohaa players should be excited about what’s coming next year. He responds ominously, “Silence.” After some pressing, he adds, “maybe yes, maybe not.”

    In various places (for instance the Facebook coverage of Interplanetero) it has been announced that Triumvirate, the expected Tohaa first sectorial would actually be part of NA2. This is not consistent with previous plans to have it be a Tohaa sectorial directly. Various sources have suggested this is a story-driven decision, because in the lore the Triumvirate is separate entity from the Tohaa and will involve mercs.

    I’m sure there’s more of this out there; this is what I could locate on short notice, but I think there's a pattern: Tohaa is going to get shaken up at Adepticon; it's going to involve a JSA Uprising level reassignment, and the Shasvastii.

    2. Precedent

    There has been the huge success of splitting off of the JSA to anchor the NA2. Remember that JSA units in general were weakly played in Yu Jing vanilla beyond a ninja or whatnot; JSA players (under Yu Jing) were pretty independent. Similarly, Tohaa models run only in Tohaa, and don’t work well as proxies for the other factions. The JSA split was also seemingly lucrative; the idea of bolstering Tohaa model sales by linking it with a good selling army list (NA2 and CA) would map well with the strategy piloted by JSA.

    We are also seeing an effort to condense lists in a few different ways. First, we’ve had two sectorials closed out in the past few months, the french and shock army. Reducing the number of playable armies relative to the number of SKUs seems to be a design feature, first with Mercs playable across armies, then with NA2 blending units available to other armies.

    Another benefit is they can address the performance concerns of certain Tohaa units, either by removing them, or re-speccing them, consistent with their reassignment to new sectorial. We’ve see that happen with the French and Raicho re-specs of late, as well as the expected re-spec a few weeks from now. We can also see the other option, with the haramaki and Asuka both getting remade as Tanko and The Kitty Cat Rider. I’d expect the kaeltar will be seeing a similar treatment.

    3. Practicality

    Reducing SKUs has some practical benefits as well. Retailers will like it, b/c it takes up less shelf inventory, and is more likely to move because more players are interested in purchasing the unit. By condensing it into CA, and allowing it to also be run in a NA2 faction, it does double duty for players, too (more potential value per model). Plus, proxying with Tohaa has been an issue for awhile (this is where I say Taquel and Sakiel box. You knew it was coming); this way a each new release is closer together, because there is just less things to be released, and more potential customers.

    This is even more clear in a typical two-army box design. If, for instance, if your two army starter (lets call it Triumvirate vs. Shasvastii) comes with 3 Mercs, 3 Shas units, and 6 Tohaa, it means you can buy it and play both armies better. If I buy this with a friend, we can split the Tohaa units; if I buy this to play Triumvirate, I get 9 units that are playable, and an option to also run Shasvastii with 9 playable units. This puts me much closer to a 300 point list, lowering barrier to entry.

    You also get to address rule creep. Fewer models to manage means a lower chance of weird interactions; Tohaa is seen as a rule violating army (it doesn’t deal with a lot of the common issues of other armies). They essentially ignore hacking and engineering, the constant complaints about the 'Mates, they are hugely order efficient, and they have layered profiles on almost every commonly fielded model. This makes them hard to balance at a rules level, and perhaps more importantly hard to plan for at a player level; if you are a Nomad player, you’re bringing a few hackers in both your lists to the tourney. They will be almost always be wasted points against Tohaa as it stands now. By blending in the CA or Merc elements, those hackers will probably have something to do.



    I figure that’s enough of my thoughts for now. I don’t really know how I feel about this as a Tohaa player - from a lore perspective I can still play the resistance army (Triumvirate) if I want with Mercs I have on hand anyway, or I can play the new CA sectorial and get access to some cool units which will probably feel pretty different than the current Tohaa. It will refresh the feeling of playing Tohaa either way after a couple of pretty static years. But it kinda sucks from a player engagement perspective if I’m right, and after almost 2 years of unit drought (minus a great Neema) and a great showing in Kurage we get rewarded with “Oh, you guys lost the war with the EI.” What do you guys think, am I full of crap?
     
  2. Abrilete

    Abrilete Well-Known Member

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    I hope this doesn't happen, but considering how things are going this wouldn't surprise me at all.
     
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  3. Aisriyth

    Aisriyth Forum Lurker

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    Ehhh....i could see it happening and tbh i hate it but the sygmaa color scheme on a full tohaa army would look sexxyyy and gives Combined army a Sygmaa sectorial.

    Tbh, i am a bit bitter about the treatment of tohaa, i picked them up way back when they first came out but sold them off to a buddy to get them into the game. However, with the news of Triumvirate being NA2 i am reluctant to buy into them again until i see how the dust settles.
     
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  4. theradrussian

    theradrussian Well-Known Member

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    To be honest i'd be up for this, but practically speaking it'd be an issue to integrate "CA tohaa" units into the vanilla CA faction. I feel pheroware and symbiont armour is a bit too unique to simply get folded in with "the other aliens"

    I could see some NA2 connections, though.
     
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  5. Aisriyth

    Aisriyth Forum Lurker

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    Devil's advocate stance, maybe that is the point? Maybe pheroware and symbiont are causing issues so when Tohaa gets wrapped in all symbiont stuff just gets transmutation instead and pheroware goes the way of the dodo :(

    If I am not mistaken the Fraacta does use transmutation already, perhaps it was a test bed but for the symbiont profiles it goes from armored to unarmored as opposed to the Fraactas jump to survival?
     
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  6. Ursun

    Ursun Tough as Nails, Grim as Old Boots

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    Yeah no, tohaa have a big war going on on the other side of the universe against the CA... and that for a long time now, I don´t think they will just falter down, especially now that they have humanity to throw under the CA bus as a speedbump and the CA diverting it´s recources.

    More likely for me:

    Step one:
    Maybe after a botched (or succesfull) heist on the Black Box storage, humanity finally see the Tohaa for who they really are and start to push them out of their systems.
    With the ever growing escalation the CA is driving (from small scale scout units to full on invasion of paradiso to infiltration of Neoterra and open warfare on Dawn), it would be best for the Tohaa to stabilize the Paradiso wormhole to allow the CA to get more troops through to bind recourses on the Human front, maybe even redirecting it to another system (Triumvirate being asshats and targeting earth anyone?).

    Step two:
    Tohaa have to pull back (to push on their homefront, humans are to stupid and stubborn so they follow (also they got some sweet infos from the Black box and now want more), BAM, two front war for everyone (or basically a nice war-triangle between Ca - Tohaa - Humanity).

    Step three:
    Full escalation, CA blows up some Planets (and armies), Humans nuke Tohaa Planets (introducing triumvirate and settler ship sectorials), Tohaa fuck around with wormholes for miximum casualtys during traveling, leading to isolation of some planets.

    Or, you know, what you said :D
     
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  7. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    I don't think this will be the case for us.

    First off, we're not that unique. Haqqislam has Ghazi's, Nomads have Intruder, we have our Symbiont Armour and those broken SymbioMates. But we're definitely not unhackable. If there is an unhackable army, that's Ariadna -- they are the low-tech guys, we're the Universe's best biotechs. I don't see a lot of hacking in my meta, even though each faction is represented by just one player, meaning there's no Tohaa or Ariadna majority. And I also see this trend on a bigger scale too. Almost no one brings any other Hacking Device than KHD or EVO HD to the table any more (this might be an exaggeraction, though).

    Second, there were numerous confirmations from CB staff that they're not doing the 'Aliens vs Aliens' 2-player box, it's just not popular enough. So that's not happening either. Shasvastii are definitely getting resculpted, this was hinted more than once and 2019 will be probably the year they will return.

    Third, and the biggest reason I think this is not what awaits us in 2019, is that 'Acontecimento EXPLODES!' writing on the Interruptor's Master Plan (R) (www.youtube.com/watch?v=c82VuYM_5eI&t=8m22s, it's really blurry, but you can guess-read that). We already know that ASA minis are getting discontinued for a while, and CB is known to put passion before logic in their design priorities, so I see this ASA discontinuation as a perfect way to cover the explosion of Acontecimento. After all, MRRF received about the same treatment when they were discontinued (remember that MRRF Last Stand == The Battle of The De Hell Group?), so I would expect some another 'last stand' event happening on Acontecimento. Maybe Tohaa will even be the cause that explosion, who knows?
     
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  8. tox

    tox SorriBarai
    Warcor

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    What about CA nukes Tohaa planet and the only surviving are the rouge one around the Human Sphere? Hence the "transformation" in the NA2 Triumvirate
     
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  9. Cothel

    Cothel Well-Known Member

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    It's either going to be the Tohaa getting ripped apart and becoming sectorials split between CA and some other Human faction, or CB will be giving Tohaa even more broken stuff to piss off all the other factions and cause them to drive Tohaa players from tournaments with torches and pitchforks. No matter what my hopes are not high for Tohaa anymore. We get hate all the time from the other faction players and nothing from CB. Everyone wants us to die and/or go away.
     
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  10. theradrussian

    theradrussian Well-Known Member

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    I'd say one nuke wasn't enough if any of the artichoke heads survived :P
     
  11. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    True, we can just shrug it off with a lone SymbioMate.
     
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  12. Abrilete

    Abrilete Well-Known Member

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    You're gonna need a lot of nukes to destroy all Tohaa planets.
    I mean, CA's been at war against the Tohaa for a long time and haven't succeeded yet.
     
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  13. tox

    tox SorriBarai
    Warcor

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  14. Cothel

    Cothel Well-Known Member

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    Keep in mind that The Combined Army now have allies in the Tohaa haters on the forums and CB themselves. Tohaa will be losing soon.
     
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  15. Golem2God

    Golem2God Just a Kooky Kumotail serving others.

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    I for one don't want that to happen. Hearing things like this make me want to play Tohaa and help you guys and gals out.
     
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  16. Zsolt

    Zsolt Well-Known Member

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    Cutting off all the unpopular armies sends a really bad message, fucks up diversity, and in the extreme, everyone will be ultrasmurfs.
     
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  17. Del S

    Del S Tunguskaball

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    Going that way is madness because it just kills off interest - Why get invested in a game where your time and effort will be waved away because the story says that you'll never win? Even for the CA players "You win hooray!" will not be much motivation.

    What would make way more sense in actually raising the bar and adding some kind of motivation to everyone is the CA having troubles. Think about it, everyone's wondering how the big invincible EI will crush us as the only possible outcome already, but what if the Tohaa simply manage to trick Humanity into a counterattack, and are shocked when it actually works. Possibly due to Nemesis popping up again to mess with the Ur-Hegemony, but the bottom line is, for the first time in a long time, possibly ever, the Combined Army is the one on defence, the one falling back.

    It expands the number of planets to play with. It can let us see elements of the Tohaa-CA front. It can let us see what the Tohaa and CA worlds are actually like. It's the shakeup they speak of and it opens up many more paths other than railroading into "rocks fall everyone dies". It makes wider chances for a larger battle game in 15mm or whatever, it means more space combat for an X-Wing/Armada/Bigglesfleet Goatherd type game, and back in the human sphere, well, propaganda machines to distract from the war ramp up. More Remote Racing, more Asristeia, more Dogbowl, more bread, more circuses. You have more room to expand and more to draw people in, rather than a bottleneck that only leads to apathy.
     
  18. Golem2God

    Golem2God Just a Kooky Kumotail serving others.

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    @Del S I would love for all of that to happen. Having more planets in the future would be a great idea. We could have Flamia/Wotan events based around finding a new planet then having the armies of Infinity fight to see who will claim it. If two or more factions did well & are close in points to each other then we will have a Svalarheima type of scenario or have a remnant of the Combined forces remain on the planet.
     
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  19. Vanderbane

    Vanderbane Well-Known Member

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    Thanks to everyone for their wonderful feedback; I’m both enheartened by the lively responses in such a short time and worried that my theory was not rejected outright. I won’t address everything because 1) there’s a lot of great ideas here that I think are just as believable/more believable than my theory - many of which I think would be awesome directions to go - and 2) I’m at the office eating lunch and can’t indulge too long. A few things in general response to what I’m reading:

    The major pushback I’m reading is that in the lore, the CA/Tohaa conflict has been going on a long time. Sure, but it’s also true that the Tohaa entry into the human sphere was a desperation move as we understand it. Concluding that war with a CA victory and corruption of the Tohaa is a huge potential story beat. It puts the focus/pressure on the human sphere armies at the cost of the smallest faction (and least pain to the player base at large). Thematically, you can spin the HS finally needing to work together against the CA. I like the suggestion of a Tohaa diaspora, with some troops in alternative profile form in the CA, vs. more traditional Tohaa troops in NA2 armies. If you spread Tohaa units out this way, you improve their ability to sell as models (as we’ve seen with Mercs and NA2 in general) and you give better options for proxying, which remains a problem for the more unique models which make up Tohaa.

    The other pushback is that an Alien vs. Alien box would sell poorly. But I’d disagree if they follow the outline I have in my OP. I’d point out that CA is selling/playing well (3rd most played in ITS9), and that if you link that to a Shas vs. Triumvirate box where the Tohaa units are playable across both halves, and the box includes some nice NA2/merc models playable in a host of other armies, it’ll sell just fine. If they combine this idea with the above paragraph and the Tohaa units are dispersed into other NA2 army lists (perhaps a model or two each), you can shore up sales in general and put Tohaa units into play for almost everyone; think of it as making Tohaa a new kind of Merc unit, with the Triumvirate being the Tohaa Merc sectorial.

    To me, the most compelling ‘evidence’ (I use the term loosely) for my theory is really structural. CB cannot support an ever-expanding group of armies and units with infinite complexity at both a SKU and rules level. We see clear evidence for that as they close out the french and shock army. There have been active discussions (like the recent Mayacast episode) about streamlining the rules a bit, and shared units do that. We also have all complained for the better part of 2 years about the lack of releases for our Tohaa armies. One way to address that from being a problem is to make sure that when they put out a new mini, it is used by more than one army. That’s less of an issue for things like Joan, b/c PanO has such a big player base. But for Tohaa units to get regular releases, I’d argue they have to expand the players for which the models are relevant, or it just doesn’t make financial sense.
     
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  20. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    I would disagree. Someone from CB once stated that after Morats received new models in 2015(?), they went up in popularity. Hell, if they just released the Sacred Box, they'd got zounds of new Tohaa players, a zillion euro in profits and probably cause the Second Coming.
     
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