You may want to re-read carefully my messages as I said none of this :) Still better than being a clock which is late and is thus never right :)
You can have your own version of reality, that does not make it either right or true. I am surprised you have your own copy of N5 fluff book before I do, astonished really. Thanks for proving my point so thoroughly, you have already judged the quality and execution of an unreleased product and reached a point before anybody outside of CB has seen it. While an interesting idea, I personally fear it might make the units have an "official" guidance and not be used as something else. The only time in the past I have seen an official suggestion was for Father Knights that was "use them as Knights of Justice they are the same unit". Well somebody had the numbers of sales and the actual data of usage and list compositions and that somebody made the call that Yu Jing and JSA needed to be separated, the numbers we have access to right now suggest JSA is far more popular from Yu Jing and the statement from CB that they sell so good the need to be developed as a main power made business sense. I think you need to chill out and calm down. Because people do not share your view does not mean they are trolling.
@SpectralOwl made some good points and I think it would be best for both sides to stop antagonizing each other. One can believe that these changes are better for the game as a whole without asserting that all that don't are wrong. I am just glad we now have a set date (November 18th) for when we will know the extent of the changes to the rules and the lore.
That's the most baffling part of all for me... five actual CA profiles got cut to keep that army size. Did they really need Drakios badly enough to ditch Fractaa from Vanilla? Maybe Vanilla ALEPH needed them cut to get the roster onto one piece of A4, but still, why not just make Maakrep a little more appealing rather than ripping an eighth of a Sectorial out of another faction?
All I can say is that whatever model/character CB releases to fill up the gap for ALEPH/SP, in my game sit will be represented by a miniature that looks suspiciously like my old Achilles model but with Groucho glasses+mustache lazily painted on.
I am not sure she would be played with Rasyat in the list, then again Speculo and Greif are in the same list, what I gather is units removed from Generic might get an extensive rework as they are now decoupled from the generic list and do not need to be balanced for it too.
Yeah, I feel (and I hope) they designed the new Vanilla lists keeping in mind to remove some "duplicates" (like Fractaa VS Rasyat), but keeping most of the diversity that was the strenght of Vanilla. P.S : Rasyat is great indeed but the 2 Wounds-ish of the Fractaa is an incredible thing on a non-hackable drop troop. I would not say it's vastly inferior, more like different.
From the latest Carlos interview, Ilike that Achilles will be a Combined Army Goodwill Ambassador. That is so insidious.
well if infinity gets revived at my store, i don't think I'll be running my SP for a while lol so CA now can run two sheskiins XD
I'd rathe say, that Sheskiin and Achilles would be a good couple. In a new TV-show on Maya on Combined Channel "I love Shassy". (with famous phrase "Shassy, I am home!") But to be serious I dont like to loose units without options to use them. With Achilles it could be solved. At least I can see some options. But it is hard to see your famous champion be taken. Lets take Avatar from CA then. (and give it to Bakunin. Ha! That would be really shock content.)
The Tournament Official Proxy nature of Infinity makes characters getting killed or changing in the ongoing fluff more tolerable. If N5 has good profiles to represent TAG That's HI sized, MI Feurbach, and so on, then that's peachy. Steel Legion really emphasized being the Named Character Without Generic Equivalent faction though, which makes this more anguishing without knowing if N5 brings new models to replace them, or even just let's older timeline stuff continue to exist for the sake of playing.
Once again we have proof that cb does absolutely no playtesting. In the previews it is said that this new edition is necessary above all for a balance of the game and the factions; well if the start is to give Achilles to the combined army, I'd say we're not there. As for the rest, considering that most Aleph players (and especially Steel Phalanx) started this faction especially for Achilles; I think we'll see a serious negative hanging for this faction. Cb does everything it can to attract future players, but by thus shocking things it risks having outgoing players more than incoming ones.
And what is that "proof"? You know nothing about N5 future balance. Rules, profiles, sectorial composition, fireteams, future releases (for Aleph or others), etc... Nothing. Wait.
“Hi, I have only fragments of fragments of information, but since it’s the Interwebz, I’m going to make sweeping and categorical statements and accuse a company whose product I theoretically enjoy of cupidity and stupidity.” C’mon, son! Could CB be wrong and making a catastrophic error? The possibility does exist. However, their record of building and maintaining a vibrant game makes that possibility very small indeed. Does the drip drip drip of info lend itself to these overwrought overreactions? Perhaps, but only if we chose to spit the bit.
We could add that people were already predicting CB's doom after the Ko-Dali thing... And then again after the Uprising... And then again with Achilles. CB seems fine though... :)
Obviously my opinion is based only on what little is known. What is certain is that the combined army has always been one of the strongest factions (indeed we can say the strongest, together with the nomads). From the preview we saw that, speaking of vanilla, it did not lose any of the competitive units, and instead gained what is actually the strongest hero in the game (let's also add Pandora, which supports bit&kiss, even if it absolutely didn't need it ). Obviously I hope to be wrong and to see the much hoped for balance of the factions, but the factions that needed a serious ''strengthening'' were others, not the combined army. However, we look forward to it.
So for you, removing Ko Dali from Yu Jing is strictly comparable to removing Achilles from Aleph or worse from the Steel Phalanx?