As a vanilla player who'd like to try the Yuandun lists, I'd have to buy almost every single ISS unit to field them. They're not accessible lists for vanilla YJ players, they're supplementary lists for ISS players.
A) Those lists suck. We have a thread on that already. B) ISS wasn't touched by Uprising. They didn't need help. The affected players were Vanilla players, they have not been compensated at all for being screwed over. ISS and ISS players have no reason to get involved in this discussion.
Please trust me that I'm not. I've played regularly against nomads for a long time and the new units offer up new options but even something as stand-out on paper as the Kriza has not shaken up the list design that much. They still like their TAGs and remotes and whilst perhaps not as popular they always had options that could be up the field from the start of the game with infiltrating units like the Maasai, Prowler and Tomcats. The new stuff is cool but it's competing in a saturated environment. I can't deny that my Yu jing will miss the bikes, however since N3 dropped it was very rare for me to include one. If you wanted to field all of them I might agree with you but anyone who played a bit of ISS ought to own a Sophotect, Bao I admit I don't own and you can quite realistically use a Karakuri to proxy as a Dakini. I've played more vanilla Yu Jing than I have any other faction/sub-faction and whilst I don't own all the models needed to field all of the Yuandun lists I can field some of them without proxying (save the aforementioned karakuri=dakini). Only real issue about them are the multiple Kanren in a couple of the lists. I saw the thread, my experience is not the same as yours. I like them and enjoyed the games with them. If you think they suck then that's your assessment of them. Mine found the duo team of rui shi and weibing to be really powerful, as was the core fire-team in that list. No engineer was annoying but that didn't really impact the overall effectiveness of the list for me. Similar story for the list with a Su jian + weibing duo backed up by a core link with a Bao as well as a duo of Zuyong. The lists are not what I would write myself but I couldn't field the links offered in these lists normally so I take that as the price paid to use these new fire-team options.
That is why they suck. You may still enjoy them, but they still objectively suck. Bringing important attack pieces as part of links in a 10 order list that can be bricked by Emily bombing them with EM nades from across the table and they can't dodge worth a damn is unforgiveable when building a list like that. And that's only 1 of the reasons why they're awful. I'm sorry if the truth hurts but it is what it is.
Objectively they don't suck enough to stop me being able to win a game. If in your games with them they got E/M grenade'd into total isolation then my commiserations, that does indeed suck. I assume you have put them on the table at least once for the sake of evidence?
While I do put junk like the Guijia on the table on a regular basis just for laughs and because goddammit I took the time to paint it, I do so in lists where it can actively be unbricked and actually has enough orders to support it properly. The fact is the Yuandun lists are functionally even worse than non competitive soft lists I already play. When they're that shitty they're not something you should be trying to argue makes up for having important and popular pieces like the Oniwabans taken away from players, as well as the fact that they don't even function for the affected players either, belonging to a sectorial they possibly have never touched at all. Someone who focuses on Vanilla quite probably does not have Bao, Cranes, Pheasants, Dakinis, Sophotects, or Wu Ming. If they mostly use Guilangs and Ninjas they may not even have a Kanren, let alone multiple copies of them. Telling them you should be happy to play these badly constructed lists made by some random siesta deprived spaniard on the rear end of a cocaine bender with models you don't own, in lieu of models you used to be able to use and liked enough to buy, paint and assemble, is tone deaf to say the least.
Yes, the links and LT options in the Yuandun CBLs are actively interesting. Their fluff, however, makes me want to eat my .45 (which is still safely in it's case, guys, you're not getting rid of me that easily). And for fuck's sake, I play Germans, Italians, Soviets, and Japanese in WW2 games. The Infinity setting was supposed to be beyond this! Yes and no. Yes, "I main Bakunin and I don't seem to have suffered from Uprising" makes about as much sense as mentioning the Imperial Service as being unaffected in game play. No, the Imperial Service was NOT untouched. Their fluff went to pure fucking SS atrocities and the Rape of Nanking. I'd much rather leave that nasty shit in the history books or the news in the Middle East, not in my leisure activities, thank you fucking much. This too. I could play the Yuandun lists, I have almost every YJ model ever released. Cypherkk doesn't have the Imperial Service models, though he does have a few vanilla YJ models (I'm the major vanilla YJ player in the group). Even our dedicated Imperial Service player needed a few new models to be able to play Yuandun CBLs.
Yeah, I was so sure CB would be more nuance about Yu Jing vs Japan and that everybody was overreacting. Then CB came out with Yuandun, basiclly the Yu Jing SS. I'm so sorry I argued so much with you guys. I feel so ashamed that I must commit Sudoku.
@Section9 the fluff is terrible, but people commenting on viability of ISS isn't commenting on fluff, for some reason they seem to think the gameplay viability of ISS makes Uprising not have actual impact on Yu Jing as a faction - or at least that's the only thing I can take away from their argument
That's why I agreed with you on that point. The Imperial Service's only impact from Uprising was to fluff, no damage to gameplay.
