USariadna out?

2023, the Year of USARF?

 

Every game that becomes too bloated needs a trim now and then. I will not be shocked, if more obscure sectorials will go the way of the dodo, with one last update and that is all.

MRRF, Caledonia and USARF feel like that, to be honest. It would not shock me, if in the end there will be only TAK and Kosmoflot.

Even more, I will not be sad. I am set with my USARF models, I practically have everything. And a lot of books/rules on them, so even if they are removed from the game, I can still play them.

 

Don't forget the second devil dog that is no more. Along with Rosie and the USARF Spec Ops model.

It will be a shame if it vanishes, the models have a very modern military appeal to them. I like that Ariadna covers several different themes, USARF was the one that drew me in most.

Maybe a big action box would be nice to keep available for mail order?

 

Edit: spelling.

Honestly, a lot of sectorials simply can be "made to order". So you oop them. Then you return each box in a separate listing as "made to order". You can only get them from the site and only by mail and they will take a long time to arrive.

How does it work? Through a period of some time, from month to a quartal, CB collects orders of made to order. Then they make them, ship them and be done with them untill the next month or quartal.

Is it tideous? Yes. Should they do it? No, not realy. Is it better than having all of your models removed? Yes, one hundred percent.

But honestly, I smell the axe coming for a lot of sectorials. Infinity simply became too bloated. Too many models, too many rules. You can not forever expand, and so... A radical shift in narrative, like the making of Human Sphere unraveling, is a great time to trim out the fat. I saw it in a lot of systems. Fantasy Battles, Warmachine, to name the few.

 

We did see some new Minutemen design (the more Kosmoflot like design) with the Joytoy action figure. I'm hoping they will get the new box?
If they were to cancel the range, I would assume they would just get rid of everything like the Tooha.

edit: sorry that was the Marauders not the Minutemen

 

The way the game goes is factions come in and leave like the tide. Talking to Guiter at an event a few years back, CB was running into the problem of SKU bloat with lots of old product clogging up shelves. Infinity does not need a lot of models on the table like 40k does and CB can't produce them at the rate of someone like GW for the same quality vs price. One of the things that apparently surprised CB is how many players ONLY played sectorials. All of this led to what you see now with the Action packs and army boxes being released. Guiter explained they could only really produce a few options at a time so each sub faction has its day in the sun, then as sales start dropping they are put out to pasture. You can't have those boxes just taking up store shelf space if they are not moving. That doesn't mean they won't come back.

At the time, MRRF and CHA were still new. USARF was only a few years old and TAK just launched. The charts he showed said that USARF was almost as popular as standard Ariadna. They were created just before the redesign to digital, but there scuplts were more "modern". Also I guess Americans just like playing space USA . MRRF was basically non-existent in sales. There models weren't significantly older than vanilla or CHA, but that makes sense why they were allowed to fade as they had the smaller unit total and less commonly used profiles. Guiter explained they would just be gone for the time being, but doesn't mean they were getting written out.

Ariadna is a little different than the other factions in that a lot of our options are strikingly different. You can have a Orc Troop in multiple factions for PanO, that doesn't make the same sense in Ariadna. So that probably means less boxes for each sectorial long term. You will notice though that Kosmo is winding down MRRF has comeback to take their place. CHA is probably next in a year or so, but I am sure USARF will have its day in the sun again.

 

You are probably right, But overall I think, playing wide faction is haaaaard. Mainly because availability of certain units outside of sectorials are so limited. Take the Grunt. It has availability of two outside of USARF. And it is immedeately becomes a question of who are those two? And nine times out of ten it will be an infiltration grunt with a flamethrower.

A lot of USARF profiles lack supporting skills so they need link bonuses to compete with others out there. No sence in getting two grunts paramedics and make them cheerleaders all game. Got to get them to use them. Same goes with a lot of models. They are simply better in sectorial, than outside of it.

Curiously, I can not say the same for PanOceania. I have a PanO collection and they can and usually will play no problem in vanilla PanO or in Military Orders. But PanO just has better stats, especially shooting. It is easier to be good if your baseline "grunt" equivalent has a bs of 12.

But yeah... Coming back to playing sectorials, vanilla factions are too broad. There is this sweet spot in game design, where you must give players options and at the same time limit them. More options is better for a degree. But at a certain moment in the game, more options becomes detrimental. That is why sectorials are popular. They have both the theme and artificial limitation of choice via curtailed unit selection.

My honest opinion, CB just needs to bite the bullet model vise. It is tough, but necessary in case of model bloat. The best thing you can do is keep the rules, just discontinue the models. Writing digital rules is easier than continuing to support the massive variety of produced models.

I am all for CB thriving and ptofiteering off of Infinity. I have nearly every Infinity RPG book and most game books from 3d edition and up. I respect CB because they provide free rules and focus on the models. So, in my humble opinion, we as players should be respectfull of CB. If they need to cut production and units, heck, even factions, so be it. Without CB there will be no more Infinity.

 

I think is mostly what you are saying is a hold over from the old design philosophy made worse because Ariadna. At the start of N3, in Ariadna you have say 5 HI profiles. Miniuteman, Mobot, Vet Kazak, Grey, and Mormaer. They all had to be different. Its most clear in the Mob and MM, which where basically given weird profiles to kind of fill in the gaps because you were "supposed" play Ariadna. The sectorials were a side thing, its just that they proved to be very popular.

All the factions had this problem, there were lots of dud profiles where the idea was they fit small niches in your vanilla list. Thematically, Bolts used to be complete trash but you could easily proxy them as something else in PanO even when they were not present in the sectorial. You COULD do grunts as just line kazaks just as easily. Their appearance is hardly more armored. However, I think the appeal of the Ariadna is not to play Ariadna but to play space russia, scotland, france, or USA themed force. Its that Ariadna itself is just that different. That is almost why Kosmoflot exists as a way to thematically play united Ariadna. Ariadna has always been very popular though so if any faction would have that it would be Ariadna.

Vanilla has a bigger problem right now which is non faction bloat. There are 16 merc and character profiles just squatting in vanilla that are universal to all factions with really bonkers profiles. They really negate the need for the niche sub faction units. Same with universal characters there are really just too many.

 

Spoiler: Can't help it, sorry

Well, the point is quite obviouse; Sectorials lack the sheer amount of options vanilla has to fill each role and purpose, whilest the fireteam-options enable mediocre units to lift way over their weightclass. Adding BS, Burst and SixthSense to a unit without increasing thair cost is a huge deal, and we are talking of cheap units having B4 rilfles in active and increasing their value in ARO by 100% most of the time. Plus, whilest in vanilla cheap linetroopers are simple cheerleaders with no one to cheer at, in sectorials they can give the whoohoo-boost to another unit. Again, value increased.
That´s, imho, the whole deal of sectorials. As you said, that impacts some factions more than others (PanO is a good example here). But a simple linetrooper is a rare sight in vanilla if not leutnant-decoy.

 

This is probably a hot take, but I think vanilla should actually go away. Its partly responsible for the profile skew and bloat. Like there should be a vanilla esq faction that lets you combine certain profiles. Like Kosmoflot with a few more options should be vanilla. The idea here is the same, you have a themed army to build around the unification of sectorials and profiles. Each of these non vanilla profiles (and you wouldn't get all of them), would have LESS options than their sectorials. Kosmo would have access to a few special universal ones like they have (bear, patchers etc etc) along with some faction specifics like the dog warriors and antipode pack.

The reason being is that it lets you build more unified fluff armies, while reducing amount of crazy stuff in the wild. Its easier to balance and promotes faction identity better than the hot mess that is vanilla. The special merc profiles should be reduced to only fit where appropriate.

 

This is another can of worms entirely. I remember the moment me and my mentor were discussing Diggers. Well... Mercs be mercs I guess, I just do not get why they should be that good.

You are right, of course. I like my USARF because of looks, aesthetics and lore, not because of the rules. They look cool and sound cool. And no country bias, I am not an american. And I still play Ariadna when I play USARF. Just a smaller slice of Ariadna, with lore implications to boot.

*Slow clap*
To me the deal of sectorials is twofold.
First is, as you said, to leverage units through link bonuses. It is both fun, challenging and looks cool.
Second, and I quote much more elegant explanation:

As such, sectorial is good, vanilla is good, but I like my sectorial more, it lets me field a coherent force, not a hodge-podge of pieces with extremely different everything that somehow works through power of sunshine and rainbows.

But I digress.
I am afraid I derailed yet another topic off course. :P sorry.