Are you new? It used to be a sometime thing, and now it's gotten out of hand and has lent itself to the exact opposite of interesting sculpts. CB could absolutely release models sans tactical garbage and people could do what they want with the negative space. I'd like that a whole lot more than having to cut it away, convert into my basing theme, anything really.
I like the Haidao a lot. He's a sniper that's posed as moving(!) and he's a support troop that will blend in with the unit he's supporting without stealing the show from Tai Sheng, a Yan Huo or even the Zuyong HMG. I also like the utter blandness of the Brawler sculpts combined with the myriad of details I will completely fail to paint properly. These are order mooks, they're sculpted like order mooks, but you can still lavish love on them if you want them to stand out a bit. They're also well unified with Druze, which is a plus. It's like Combat Heels and other stuff that I think some people would dump in a cesspit labelled "memes". If you do it too often (Frontoviks) or too much (Perseus), it stops being cool and starts being repetitive. It's not Bling™ if everyone has it. Specifically with tactical rocks, it also breaks the bases for people who don't want CB's standard plain bases. I am in the slow process of rebasing my army with all ISS going on urban bases, all White Banner going on snow bases and all Invincible Army going on jungle/vegetation bases. If suddenly I get a massive huge metal scrap-heap for a key Invincible model or a log for an ISS to stand on, that'll break the immersion of unified bases I'm going for.
I don't see anything wrong with repeating poses as long as it's not "4 identical poses in the same box". And CB proved that they can take sets of bodies/legs and make 4 different, interesting, and playable poses, without resorting to tactical debris. Just look at the Khawarij box for the latest example. Second reason is I like some realism in my game with hacker holowizards, combat heels and space vampire aliens ;) and a jumping model connected to the base by the calf looks to me like they're either about to trip and fall on their head, or get their leg carved open by the debris and then fall over on their head. Third reason is a fanmade comic strip I don't have on hand, depicting a mine camouflaged under a rock as the best weapon against AD units, because when they see a single rock on an otherwise empty field they're gonna land on it. It was made at least 7 years ago. Tactical rocks were a mocked meme even then, and if anything it's gotten worse. Someone remind me when we've seen the last Combat Jump unit without a Random Tactical Base Item?
So that year was probably the last time then. Thanks. I thought it might be the Akal at first but misremembered when Icestorm came out.
The shortly post Icestorm Akal Spitfire is also rockless :( Thankfully they fixed it for the hacker in the SAA box.
Re: New subfaction speculation: I'll be the crazy person that suggest it: Concordat as an NA2 army. Think about it: it's the year of the aliens. CA is already getting an NA2 army. Explode X would definitely fit for the Caskuda... ;)
Considering every single punch that could be pulled was pulled with the Liu Xing, I doubt we'll see a Caskuda with Combat Jump. Airborne Infiltration and Explode 1 or 2 maybe...
By the way, with this year being "the tohaa year", there is one thing we didn't think about, with shasvasti rework comes a new (IE) tohaa sectorial : Sygmaa Trihedron I think it would result in tohaa mobing CB HQ
New Zulu Cobra is cracking and the big pony tail is good times. Anime single soccer mothers in the special forces need love too my friends
The Foreign company is the mercenary group Hannibal works for, so that would be a cool faction to see.
The Caskuda was also part of the reason CA never got EVO in 2nd Edition. With PH 17, +3 to jump meant guaranteed successful placement of your model and explosion template. An AD TAG would need to have lower PH and/or Inferior Combat Jump before we can even talk about Exrah aesthetic redesign issues.
Mate, you must've repressed the memory of the Hospitaller box. Double up on rocks and surf them. An excellent box otherwise and no complaints as one can simply just cut them off, and provides some nice contra posto.
I didn't know that. Guess we'll get to have him as a playable unit on the tabletop someday. I cut mine off and they turned out just fine.
