I have been thinking of starting combined. I like the idea of playing the bad guys and no one in my meta plays combined. However I really dislike most the model line up. This includes all morats and most shashvasti, (boarding action sheskin, and spec killers being exceptions) The things I do like. The idea of protheion. Pulling a Shang Tsung on some dude to give myself more wounds is awesome flavor win. Corrupt Tohaa? These are super cool models. fraacta are especially cool looking drop troops. The "drons" of all flavors, uni, over, an xeo are all awesome. Heck running 2-3 tags in a list seems very doable. or tags in a haris? and they say pano is the tag faction. Ko dali and gakis gives me awesome "zerg" feelings. But really it seems to me that most the faction relies on the monkeys and the shas which id rather avoid. I have thought about OCF but pretty much everyone ive talked to has said they are just a weaker Vanilla. And even they seem to rely at least a little on the elements I don't like. The only heavy infantry they have for example is monkeys. Is combined worth playing if you simply don't want to include those elements? Or do you just lose too much to make it viable.
The #1 CA list, as described here https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threa...-for-2022-onwards-lists-and-discussion.41862/, has only two Daturazi and a Mentor. You could pretty easily replace the Daturazi with something else (although personally I think their models are way, way nicer than the other Morats). And either replace the Mentor, or proxy it (and it spends the whole game in marker state anyway). As far as models go, I'd say they Anathematic is reason enough to play CA.
I do like the Anathematic. Its a great model and profile. And I like the Charontid too. That list is interesting. Could definitely tweak it to include ko dali and gakis. So it looks like there is enough in Vanilla to get by without using the monkeys. (The smoke grenades on the daturazi look pretty integral to that list at least)
Also, Infinity is really open to proxies. So you could definitely use warbands from other factions (like Morlocks, Shaolin, etc.) as Daturazi and just say they were Sepitorized.
