Also, I don't think you are so naive to think CB didn't have a vision for IA one single year ago when the Tiger dossier was released. If they didn't then they really really have a serious problem. To me it just stinks of "guys, the Liu Xing kinda sucks, nobody will use it over Tigers"
Really? I did not realize the Imperial Army sectorial had been released before and included the Tiger Soldier and Dao Fei. What else was in the sectorial? Has anything else changed?
Everything and anything. Not a single troop still remains from the lamented non-released 1st OR 2nd Edition Invincible Army. In seriousness, it was long held Tigers and Daofei would be part of IA, but they’re not and now never will be.
They were stated in the fluff and in Infinity's documentation to exist in that sectorial/force. At some point during development that changed, obviously.
Oh, so it was a background based reason that they would be in IA. Maybe they did not want to make more background based decisions concerning Yu Jing considering what happened the last time they did that.
Maybe. I doubt it. More likely there's no one on the design team to advocate for YJ now that JSA is its own thing and the design for them is spectacularly uninspired. I saw this happen with Skorne in Warmahordes.
So, instead of making a good background-based decision (*1), they made a bad background-based decision (*2) which is actually more reminiscent of Uprising (*3) than if they'd simply used the background that they already had... Makes total sense (*1) If they maintain the Tigers and Daofei as IA units, as everyone expected, there'd have been no backlash for removing them without any apparent cause, or for releasing a dossier that said Tigers were in. (*2) They made the decision without regard for their own background, which is arguably worse than Uprising. Don't get me wrong, the way they handled Uprising was a dumpster fire, but at least the general story (ie, the Japanese secede) had been seeded for a long time: in this instance, their latest background had Daofei as, specifically the recon arm of IA. (*3) It more reminiscent of Uprising, because it's utterly tone deaf.
I'm pretty sure Bostria was being sarcastic. Not sure why people would believe they made decisions on what units to include based on face mask paint. lol I do think CB could do a better job with communicating future plans. If Yu Jing is not going to be the CC dominate faction then they should be rebalanced and get rid of that +1 CC that is largely useless on so many units. But that would probably be a major rework for the faction. How about Yu Jing gets ava 1 Oniwaban? Why are they excluded but regular Ninjas are included?????
Or the most likely answer is was done for balance reasons after internal testing. I'd rather a balanced army than some slavish adherence to fluff (or people's expectations). I'd like the fluff to be updated in a good way, but ii think most would priortise balance. I can't blame bostria for not bothering to engage further with people who have made their very strong opinions of design decisions based mostly on scraps of information. That road leads to insanity.
@Death it almost feels like YJ is defined by what it's not. Isn't as good at shooting as PanO, isn't as good at CC as JSA, isn't as durable as Tohaa...
While Tiger Soldiers are powerful, they aren't as game-deforming as Posthumans, so given Posthumans' presence in OSS, it seems unlikely they would keep Posthumans in OSS but remove Tiger Soldiers from IA.
Given how little we know about IA i find your conclusion a stretch already. But while posthumans are extremely optimised, I don't exactly prescribe to "game deforming", whatever meaning you ascribe to that. They none the less seem to fit into OSS relatively well as they lack much in the way of ARO and midfield presence. Edit: having 2 AD troops in a sectorial also seems very rare. So possibly the design of the liu xing did push out tigers.
Err, my Nagas, Dasyu, Posthuman Mk2, Posthuman Mk5, Dart, and Andromeda would like to disagree with this lack of midfield presence in OSS. Posthumans just enhance an already strong midfield game that OSS can do (I've been doing it with vanilla for a long time).
whoops my bad. I totally glazed over them in army. Our local OSS player doesn't max out midfield, the posthumans allow him to focus on other areas without totally giving up midfield and provides a good ARO source.
