When did Shikami get a new profile last year? They seem the same as they were back when HSN3 got released. My own assumption had been the 4 Beyond factions would get a new sectorial, which was obviously a bit off.
I've kept my silence on this from the beginning. I've been patient, i've waited for all the information to drop before i drew my conclusion. Now i'm fine with the split personally, JSA have new and improved profiles and cool looking resculpts. And if the fluff is good. Then that is also an important factor. As something happened cause wizards is facepalm worthy. Now i'm not saying that's whats happened here as i'm still in the dark to the complete fluff. As a side note. My friend got me into this game and Yu Jing back in 2008 with the line. "Hey this game has ninja's that can go invisible like Predator." However, i was one of those few players worst hit. I am that Yu Jing player..... And i mean Yu Jing not sectorials with vanilla. I have a large collection of Japanese models with my Chinese. But i must of been part of that 15% cause i tell everyone now, i did use a large contingent of my JSA models in various roles in vanilla. And i don't mean i used mostly Japanese models in my lists but i used at least three to four per list. And yes i do have enough to use a fully fledged JSA army, but that's not the point i'm about to make. I recognised the roles those models performed in a generic setting and i developed tactics to use them effectively with those of my forces. A prime example was i actually found a way to make the Tiger Sniper work, using his AD:4. I had him drop inside or just to edge of the opponent's DZ. Where he would threaten enemy model's back arcs while they thought they were in total cover. So i'd be shooting with a cover bound, mimetic, BS 13 MSR into the coverless back arcs of expensive troopers. But the reason i was able to make such a play work so well was because i paired him with an Oniwaban to clear a landing zone and to guard the Tiger's back in that dangerous 8" zone. Did they die? Sometimes. But mostly the opponent would waste at least six to eight orders to remove two models well after the MSR had nuked the first wave. And the Oniwaban had killed some close, threatening models too. Well worth the investment. I have lost unique tools for my stratagems. And that is also fine...... If we had some replacements. This i feel to be one of the main reasons for my disappointment. (The other is in the next paragraph.) I'm happy for the design space to be opened up. I'm even happy that they did open up the space. But until the space is filled, it's just a gaping wound. And to continue the analogy, until that wound is closed with IA or something, it's just going to get infected. Now, despite all this. I'll adapt. As my father once said. "Adapt or perish." It's what i've always done and will continue to do. As i won't look at what once was. But figure out how to make what i have work. People may remember on the old forums my thoughts on how to use the niches of certain units. And how to engineer the correct triggers for said niches to be put into effect. Hell, my handle is ninja sniper. It's cause i love using infiltrating, TO snipers. Something most people would scoff at as ineffective. But it is however very unfortunate that right now, my solution on how to adapt* is to not continue to play Infinity at the current time. As i put down Infinity back in September because i had decided to play my Circle Orboros for a change of pace until May this year. However, after the disastrous PR and marketing by CB. (The other reason.) Despite all the great things about the Uprising event. I just don't feel motivated to get back into Infinity. Instead i'm going to CID playtest the new Crucible Guard army. The truly sad part about this last part, is that i'm also a Nomad player. Primarily vanilla but with Bakunin too. Now i love Tunguska and that was the sectorial i always wanted to play as Nomads. This debacle has demoralised me so much that even the fact that Tunguska is coming out in a few months is not enough to make me stop playing Warmahordes and play Tunguska instead of Yu Jing or JSA. And i would of played JSA too. As i have no issue with the army lists and roster itself. This is just the thoughts of one of the silent 15%. *Not saying Vanilla is unplayable. It's still very strong mechanically. It's just lost unique tools to get jobs done on units that i loved using.
"Hell, my handle is ninja sniper. It's cause i love using infiltrating, TO snipers. Something most people would scoff at as ineffective." TO snipers are quite effective, its more that the ninja sniper is inefficient, paying for MA skills not being used while sniping.
I think the context of Yu Jing specifically not having a particularly effective or liked roster of MSR units was unneeded to be explained.
I'm sorry. :( But thats not true with Major Lunah, Guilang snipers, Tiger snipers all being quite good. Its just the ninja sniper thats wasting points on MA.
I wasn't trolling. Those are good snipers, aren't they? I guess I am explaining stuff that doesn't need explaining......... Well, thats my cue I need to go to bed. Good night.
@Death Fair enough. But notice how i said, Infiltrating, TO snipers. Emphasis on Infiltrating. I believe that Ninja snipers are amazing and that MA works wonders on them. Cause with that CC value and MA3 not many people are getting within 8" of a ninja sniper. The same 8" zone where snipers tend to suck due to range bands. Also. If you are too close to use your MSR, then you can easily switch to CC to do the job. Just takes outside of the box thinking. I have multiple posts and some topics in the old forum about the merits of using the infiltrating part of a snipers skills to harass and kill hard to reach targets from atypical attack zones. I tried to cover the benefits from each factions specific infiltrating, TO sniper platform. @Section9 will back me up as he has read some of those posts and even gotten me pinged in on other forum users asking about this stuff.
So you can be condescending and make no sense but i can't call you on it because you are a mod? Ok. Very nice. Also, it's hard for me to take your arguments seriously with things like "a Ninja does the same an Oniwaban does" Two points: 1) the point all the pissed YJ players, including me, are making, is not we are angry because they cut the JSA profiles: the point is how they made it and the utter contempt shown to YJ players. 2) JY used to be the CC faction, when CC was utterly useless; now that CC is half usable, we have worse CC than PanO. Again, less variety for lists = more boring play experience, and that's a fact no matter how you spin those "statistics". It's like that blatant joke Bostria told us about us having "space for a sectorial" now.
Bah, turns out I need to get a little drunk to fall asleep tonight. So while I drink.... Yeah, I remember those posts on the actual effectiveness of the Ninja sniper by actually infiltrating into the middle of the board and sniper across the table rather than down its length. I blame by lazy Pano mentality that all units must have one role and one role only for my shortsightedness. @Benkei I'm sure psychoticstorm isn't trying to be condescending to you. Hes just trying to remain optimistic because hes always been optimistic. I understand this really sucks for Yu Jing players who liked using JSA units in Generic Yu JIng. I don't think there is any easy solution for CB to make. Honestly, the invinicble army is unlikely to have units that have the same role as the units lost to JSA. Its certainly your right to take a break from infinity if you want. Maybe a latter release by CB will get you to comeback.
Guilang Snipers: Don't get touched because it competes with the FO, Hacking, and Minelayer options and loses badly when it's AVA2. If CB took the forum suggestions for filling the JSA gap and upped the AVA it'd be a different story Major Lunah: Hey, we've got stats for this. She'll get played more than that Raiden you were so adamant was underused and deletable at 15%. How much is Major Lunah played? 2%? Oh.... Well at least she's played more than that dumpster fire Sun Tze V2 sniper ohwaitshitsuntzegetsusedmore (3%). Oh dear. Tiger Soldier: I'm actually with the minority that this is a decent profile and even own my own mini for this, but even then he's corner case and not something I put on the table with any great frequency.
Well, for what it's worth, in my small meta we have players more interested in Yu Jing now than ever, and that is good for us. So far our Yu Jing representation has been a staggering 0. Also the only JSA player is jumping on one foot because he had been a Sessecionist from the start.
@Death, as i said, I'm not pissed so much about the missing profiles but about CB's management. Nevertheless, i appreciate your positive approach to this.
We're allowed to disagree and even argue with the mods, as long as we can do it politely, which generally doesn't include the seven words you can't say on TV... I think that one was lost in translation. He could have meant "YuJing had too many sectorials" but it seems unlikely. Consider that in the fluff YuJing and the JSA were both one improper use of the words Gwailo or Gaijin away from murdering each other en mass for decades. YuJing had to spend significant propaganda effort keeping the JSA at arms length and no further, so there couldn't really be any cooperation between Japanese and Chinese units in any new sectorial without a sea change. Now when new units are introduced they have the freedom to use them in whatever sectorial they hail from but also draft them into any sectorial that needs them... Lets say that one of the invincible units is a retro engineered version of Joan's mobility armour, a 6-2 arm3 heavy infantry paramedic with close range weapons and the one thing missing from white banner is a fast specialist. In it goes, no questions asked. JSA units would always be distrusted in the fluff, so they would want to keep them separate, but now(well not 'now' now but you get what I mean) any YuJing unit can be multi sectorial as and when it's required, just like the other big faction in the fluff does. CB could totally have left the JSA as YuJing until IA were ready, but then the new JSA sculpts would have had to wait. Ariadna currently has the absolute worst vanilla starter, not for profiles, but for the old small models. Personally it annoys the hell out of me that there is the possibility of having to wait to Gencon or even November for the new vanilla starter, and the blood boiling rage that will consume me should 5 new sectorials drop before CB can be bothered to put Ushankas on the grunt models from USARF does not bear thinking about, and that's before I've even started the rant about TAGs that only exist in a sketch in the 1st edition rulebook, or paying points for mobility rules when ITS has practically abandoned terrain rules or limited insertion when the only 30 point units are AVA 5... CB want YuJing to have a "feeling of pride and accomplishment" moment when IA hits and that may be a mistake, but unfortunately they can't throw the switch and unlock Chewbacca for everyone as a quick fix...
No, statistics are worse than damned lies when they are used to justify inadvisable actions, such as using statistics to show that a certain medicine accounts for the lowest sales of all of a company's production and thus dropping the sales on the basis that it won't affect many people at all while in reality you have several hundred of people who's life depends on this drug. Using statistics to justify previous poor communication efforts and removals without remunerations is also a very good example of this damnedest of lies. Particularly when those statistics don't quite show the picture they need for such justification.
I put them together specifically because they competed, they pretty much did the same thing in a very similar way. Kitsune just cost a bit more and came with smoke, along with some other little differences. If only one of the two was lost I wouldn't mind, because the other half of that 19-20% could fairly easily switch to the other unit and still have the role filled adequately. But with both gone there's nothing left in that role at all, it's just a capability and important mindgame that has been removed. Ninjas are incapable of doing an Oniwaban's job at all competently. Superior infiltration turning a 45% infiltration rate into 75-80% means that they can start in hidden deployment already breathing down the opponent's neck, and the combination of mono CCWs and MA4 makes them much scarier while they're there. Ninjas are a totally different type of unit, closer to Kanren than Oniwaban. When it comes to CC they're opportunists in the midfield rather than dedicated hunters.
I'd like to disagree with that assessment. Statistics are the backbone of informed desicions, precisely because they paint the actual picture, independently of subjective appreciations. In terms of a Company like Corvus Belli making desicions, there has never been an indication that screwing the player base is an actual goal. I submit the example of the old Combined Army that was showing poor sales and had to be redesigned (and the discontinuation of the Exrahs was part of the process). Now the Combined shows stronger numbers and things look good for the Alien Faction. There is an Invincible Army and a White Banner in the works. Aleph players have been waiting for Vedic as long or longer than everyone else. It will come, but they have to keep a steady flow of new releases precisely to have a steady flow of income. That is good business practice and it has worked well for them so far.
I think you are misinterpreting my meaning. I mean that using the statistics CB presented to show that the change has very limited effect on Yu Jing players is a damned lie. Using the same statistics to form an opionion or come to the conclusion that this change was merited is valid, but it is not a justification for how poorly it has been handled nor for ignoring and not handling the issues this causes. With something approaching one fifth of all lists invalidated due to a single unit and it's character being removed, and the effect this has on the value of the second list in the tournament, ignoring that this is an issue and explaining it away with statistics makes for the lie. Now, I don't know how this was presented by CB at AdeptiCon, so the only one I can call out on it is psychoticstorm who is trying to use the statistics in this manner.
Bostria mostly glossed over it, but it boiled down to "we don't think YJ players use JSA enough to be bothered by us deleting everything except the ninja." Which as I've pointed out was an utterly moronic stance to take given the supplied data. If about 1/6 lists pack a Raiden, then on average 1 in every 3 Vanilla players at any given event is using one. Handwaving them out as a statistical anomaly is probably going to piss off a third of a faction's player base at an event.
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why this move stuck in my craw so badly. I have enough jsa models to stand on its own but I did frequently use the karakuri, aragoto, a lone domaru or a Raiden in my vanilla lists. I’ve finally realized is rubbing me wrong. When I choose to play a new faction, I want it to be my choice. If a new merc list comes out and I happen to have a lot of models from it, that’s just icing. But to just force me into a new separate faction? I’m not going to love it. I never played the jsa on their own before because I just didn’t feel it, now I have to put all my daydreams about onyx or maybe hassassins on the back burner because CB broke into my house and swapped half my vanilla models for a faction I never chose.
