Creating a splinter thread from the main one to better focus a particular topic and to prevent it from clogging up the other thread. I don't think it's any secret most people feel that NA2 factions were hard done by with the reinforcements update and feel like they received more or less a half baked patch job with the game update. I think it's reasonable to say that nobody expected a fully unique release for every NA2 sectorial, but at the same time I think it's reasonable to expect more than the generic one size fits all response they got. What I think CB should have done here is taken the time to add just one unique option to each NA2 sectorial's reinforcement options. Advantages of this are twofold: It improves faction flavour and helps make them distinct from one another, which makes them interesting. That helps everyone involved. It makes them more interesting to play with and against, which makes all the players happier, and by making them distinct and interesting there is a greater attraction to players collecting more models which helps CB's sales. Secondly it's a good opportunity to revisit and buff some under performing units. To illustrate these points lets look at it from a JSA perspective. Right now reinforcements isn't particularly attractive to my JSA collection. Why would I want to play it? I have to just stick a bunch of non themed Brawlers and other mercenaries on the table that have very little to do with my faction identity. There's very little in this update for me the JSA player and I certainly don't feel compelled to buy Brawlers or Diggers to add to my collection. Now what you could do is take an under performing unit set. Kuroshi Rider has largely fallen behind other LT options as a viable pick, and Aragoto were given a Haris option which sounds ultra cool on paper but in practice it's ridiculously hard to use because trying to deploy three 55mm bases who can't prone, climb, or jump to then advance and move together takes a ludicrous amount of real estate and is generally so hard to do it's just not worth trying and these units generally get out competed as viable picks by the rest of their sectorial. Consider if you add the following to JSA's reinforcement options: 5 5 KUROSHI RIDER (NCO) Combi Rifle, Light Shotgun, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 29) ARAGOTO Spitfire / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 21) ARAGOTO Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) ARAGOTO (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Light Shotgun ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 22) ARAGOTO (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Light Shotgun ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 20) The pseudo mechanised deployment helps fix the Aragoto's issues by alleviating deployment problems, and bringing in an NCO option gives more reason for Kuroshi Rider to find table time again. It's also on theme, the bikes fit the concept of rapid reaction reinforcements. By buffing the under performing units you help me, the JSA player, want to buy into playing reinforcements. I like my bikes, I want to play my bikes but they don't normally feel good. Making a game mode where they're good helps me want to buy into it. Now I'm playing reinforcement, hey, why not buy some Brawlers and other options to go with my Bikes because my Bikes need friends and options. People are more likely to be happy with this game mode and buy into it if you give them a reason to get invested in it. Look at the eternal salt mine over in the Yu Jing forum. They're fucking happy in there. Why? Because Haetae, Hwarang, Dokkaebi and all the other shit are cool. They want to play with these units. There is a clear reason to be invested in the game mode. It's not a big ask. Just add a single flavour option for each of the NA2 sectorials and it will do alot of heavy lifting here. Let FoCo bring Hannibal and Friends as reinforcements, give Dahshat a stripped down AP Spitfire Maggie. Give people reasons to get invested and they will do just that. There's so much low hanging fruit you could go for here to make it attractive to NA2 players and I'm sure there's plenty of ideas and suggestions to go around, it really would not take much to improve the current situation for them.
I won't be playing my JSA in the Reinforcements format, they're shelved for now. The NA2 reinforcement roster actually looks very strong for JSA, and allows you to add pieces that address a lot of their traditional weaknesses, but it's not JSA. In order to play JSA right now with Reinforcements, once you factor Samsa and the commlink tax, only 53% of my JSA army is allowed to be JSA. That's not what I signed on for with them. A lot of the options available look like they'd be great fun to play, even. But it's a sharp departure from the JSA faction identity I do want to play, so I won't be playing them. On the other hand, holy crap, I can't wait to mess around with my White Banner and vanilla YJ.
I pretty much feel the same. I'll be bringing druze to my 1st reinforcements game on Sunday. Sadly there is not to much excitement in creating that reinforcement group. I mean, its not bad, but everyone else in my meta is on about the cool new profiles they get to add. Meanwhile while I'm adding more Diggers, and brawlers. Sforza and Ashcroft are cool though. It also seems like a missed opportunity by CB to maybe maintain skew bloat, and increase sales by just adjusting the NA2 reinforcement lists bit to each sectoral. Minor adjustments. Why doesn't Druze get 1 or 2 of the new haqq reinforcements in place of a digger or brawler? Or Dashat get a haqq profile and a new yu jing one? I would scoop up that haqq box for a few new guys for my druze. And why didn't any of the NA2 reinforcements get some kind of remote?! Looking forward to that 1st game, but Pano, and Bakunin reinforcements look like more fun for the foreseeable future.
Fluff wise JSA using a lot of mercenaries is fine, if anything it's a bit strange that they haven't been able to do so until now. I do like that idea of 1 unique unit per NA2 sectorial.
I like armies that tell a story, too, so I can see how being forced to include some rough Gaijin in the army is distasteful. I think it is possible to keep the flavor by inventing and painting suitable proxies. Bounty hunters + CSUs can be (armed) salarymen, Brawlers can be Ashigari or Ronin, Anaconda is a flawed protype Mech, Diggers are weaponized exoskeletons. It can all be made to look very Japanese, I think. Personally, I'll field reinforcements as generic highly expendable mercenaries, but I can see the appeal in having a JSA flavor in the reinforcements too.
It would be good to give Anaconda some castomise details in JSA style. Even in the description of this TAGs was mentioned, that pilots are castomising their machines. May be some bosozoku style things and same kind of symbols. Plus to find or print somewhere small japanese amulets or something like this for luck and such a small details.
Fluff wise, NA2 reinforcements make sense for all NA2 sectorials, setting aside JSA that is an actual nation with army and a, however limited and diminished, naval presence, all other are "simple" mercenary companies and most of them do not even own a space capable ship let alone combat dropships. The two standing out that could have their own "reinforcements of shorts" are JSA and StarCo, former been an actual nation with an actual navy and the latter been literally a reserve force of Nomads having disproportionate naval presence for their size. Both of them have serious issues though, JSA is strategically split all over the human sphere that the only place that would make sense for them to have reinforcements from their own army is Earth and StarCo is still small, but more importantly they cannot use Nomads reserves as it would break the façade that they are "independent" and not a Nomads reserve force placed throughout the human sphere. What does NA2 reinforcements provide fluff wise to all NA2 armies, except a justification to have a reinforcements service, is the plausible deniability. Aesthetics wise I agree it would look better if the reinforcements were self contained, but makes little sense lore wise.
While I have built some JSA lists that I am somewhat happy with but I will NOT be playing with them primarily for the reason that, just as @Weathercock had said, it is not JSA its only 53-60% JSA. How to fix this for JSA in particular would be getting rid of the wardriver commlink and putting it onto a keisotsu. The wardriver is not synergistic with anything that JSA wants to do and is not fluffy in the slightest. For the reinforcements I would love to have the option to bring shikami, ryuken-9, and aragoto. Don't need to invent anything new just let JSA play as JSA.
Just as a counterpoint, as a spiral player, I'm really happy with hem. They patch some serious holes in terms of midfield shooters whilst fitting mostly in the right theme. Totally understand your point re:jsa though and it would be nice for spiral to have an option of a reinf igao or rasail
Too bad CB doesn't have the ability to write new lore to justify it. I wish they had more control over the lore, instead of the other people that apparently do.
What? I really do not understand what you are saying, NA2 reinforcements lore is in the book and CB has the control of their lore.
Then why didn't they write it differently in order to make them more interesting? Edit: To clarify, You said that NA2 reinforcements are the way they are (which is boring, as established elsewhere) because of lore, as though CB is powerless to make them more interesting. What you probably meant to say is that CB made the NA2 reinforcements boring because they wanted to and that you don't want to speculate on why that is because the simplest answer is that they didn't want to or didn't have the resources to put any effort into them.
I've been making my own fun out of the NA2 Reinforcements. I agree they aren't exciting, but I think it's mostly because there isn't anything new (duh). That said, it has been giving me the opportunity to think of these units in new ways... Brawlers are still fairly run of the mill, but a midfield, linked MULTI marksman with MSV2 is pretty hot, and most NA2 factions have decent smoke access as well. I've started thinking Diggers as Tanko equivalents, and it's been working out well, fast by virtue of starting in the midfield, they're delete buttons. Being regular changes Monstruckers quite a bit, letting you add a cheap specialist to the link, with some decent utility. Sforza with Albedo is extremely good as well, since it gets around the usual problem of Albedo only working on the first game turn. When you start to look at the mechanical changes to the units, and not just thinking of them as the old ones from before, there is actually a lot to like.
Well, as I said most mercenary companies do not even have means to travel independently, to have a specialized on call airdropped reserves I do not think the reinforcement reserves need to be more interesting and by interesting I mean been tailored to each mercenary company, that would be out of character and against the established fluff. CB could change the lore and make each mercenary company a minor nation with its own navy huge amounts of mercenary troops and their own dedicated rapid reserves, which would be over the top and at best weird, or they could deepen the fluff of the mercenary support network that has been hinted many times in the fluff to provide such localized support services. The only NA2 factions that could theoretically have their own dedicated services at their detriment would be StarCO, who would not utilize the Nomads reinforcements network because they have a façade to maintain, JSA who is too stretched and with little navy support to have something of their on outside of specific locations, I would hazard only on earth that would be possible, and maybe spiral, but I doubt they would endanger the wider Tohaa population by making them associated with the proper military.
Like, lore justifications for all this is great and all, but it doesn't change the fact that when I want to play JSA, I want to play JSA.
I understand the feeling. But, isn't it the same for other sectorials? I mean, I play Morat but I have to use squishy capitalist insects instead of stubborn military monkeys. A Kazak player will have to use Merovingians, a Varuna player will have to use Neoterra's troops, a Imperial Service player will have to use Koreans and so on. JSA is a sectorial of NA2 and so received the same reinforcements as other sectorials from the same "Faction" (like all other sectorials from a faction are sharing the same reinforcements). Difference is NA2 reinforcement are not "new toys" like other sectorial. But even other reinforcements are not entirely made of new things (Bolts,Prowlers almost all Merovingians and Haqqislam...), even if they have new miniatures (at least angry armored sole traders will have miniatures soon). As I said, I understand the feeling. I love JSA, I would love to see more things for it. But I try to put things in perspective.
The key difference being that most NA2s are patchwork armies put together with the spare parts of starter sets and leftovers from other factions, while JSA is one of the most conceptually and aesthetically tight armies that CB has ever designed. Yes, there are some aesthetic and thematic inconsistencies with other factions and their reinforcements, but at least they all fall under the same overall faction umbrella and the difference is less pronounced, and even then they're not forced to dilute themselves as much. So if we're going to talk about 'putting things in perspective,' mine is that the faction has been aesthetically compromised beyond any point where I have any interest in playing it as 'JSA.'
