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 Red Harvest wrote:

 anab0lic wrote:
Is the Steel phalanx stuff really that old? I kinda thought Ajax and co were fairly newish sculpts. I guess I'll pick up some of this about to be discontinued stuff for collection purposes. I'm kind of becoming a bit of a completionist when it comes to infinity. Plus the off chance that the new sculpts might not be as cool, like was the case for old avatar vs new avatar for me.

Ajax is 7+ years old, but the mini has aged very well, IMHO.

I'm curious to see the storyline behind the end of the Steel Phalanx. What sort of blaze of glory send-off does CB have planned.

Part of me wonders if the 'return' of some of these sectorials will be a combination in order to keep the overall number of sectorials down. A merger of MRRF and the Caledonians for example. Ah well, we will see when ( or if) one of the 'on hiatus' sectorials actually returns to production.

I had to look him up as I wasn't familiar with the model. Is he one of the AI created pseudo-humans? I'm not sure that this neck and shoulder position/alignment is possible without a genetic collagen mutation.

Yes, Ajax is one of the Homeridae. The Myrmidons aren't Posthumans but rather Recreations.

What will this mean in terms of using these models/characters/troops going forward?

I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to the rules side of things since CB started binning models/sectorials/etc...

The Aleph ASS rules aren't going away. The models are just being sidelined for the time being until they can get a resculpt.

https://youtu.be/AMIuS6Npzwg?t=126

He specifically states that the army will *not* be discontinued. The specific minis listed are explicitly stated as being sculpted by hand and that they are "dated". Bostria then states the intention is to update *all* miniatures and put them to an N4 standard in terms of 3D Sculpting and proportions. Daysus are then mentioned on how they're part of the non-discontinued OSS Sectorial and will get reculpted as well.

And yet the Myrmidon box is remaining...

Bluntly, nobody but Corvus Belli knows what the plan is with these things. We've only seen one Sectorial return from retirement in the form of the Shasvastii.

The models are just being sidelined for the time being until they can get a resculpt.

For reasons of availability, it means the army is as good as squatted, with only people that already have the models being able to play it for...however many years it takes CB to return to ASS (assuming they don't lose interest and move on to KosmoAleph in the meantime)

Especially when it comes to metal miniatures, the argument of sidelining traditionally-sculpted miniatures actually makes sense. Surely they have some Master molds that everything is based on, but over time everything deteriorates. Forge World especially has witnessed this problem. Additionally, the digital sculpts are likely cut in an optimum manner as to make way for easy casting whereas the traditional sculpts may have a high failure rate or just be more difficult to work with. Nothing on that list is a model that has been digitally sculpted, so there is no reason to doubt Corvus Belli's word in this matter.

Some of the ASS sculpts such as Penthesilea are almost universally beloved and have won Corvus Belli a lot of recognition. They probably just want to 'modernize' and resculpt the line for newcomers, but don't want to turn people off with the oddly scaled models that exist from a long time ago. It'd also be unfeasible to reculpt the entire line all at once at the cost of the other factions.

The ASS, in the fluff, is specifically geared and exists to fight the frontlines against the Combined Army. With the storyline basically going into a Human Sphere vs Combined Army total war direction, it'd be weird to completely squat the sectorial that exists for this purpose.

Then again, I say this as a player and collector that has every Aleph model already.

It's also just their way to deal with SKU bloat. We know they're only supporting a certain number of armies at a time. Unless you're big enough to be your own distributor and be popular enough that game stores area willing to order direct from you due to the money they can make there's no real good way to deal with this. It's the biggest flaw of the hobby, once you've been around too long you have too many models and that brings a host of problems game play wise and SKU wise.

SKU bloat is and always has been their own fault though. They have long refused to release multiple options via their boxed sets. I've asked, repeatedly, for them to start adding alternate arm sets more within their blisters and boxed sets. They don't even need to make the poses different, just key the arms to the same pose and it's a win.

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet the Myrmidon box is remaining...

Bluntly, nobody but Corvus Belli knows what the plan is with these things.

If you have an issue with a company not revealing every aspect of this business plans, I have bad news about the rest of the hobby for you.

 Kanluwen wrote:
SKU bloat is and always has been their own fault though. They have long refused to release multiple options via their boxed sets. I've asked, repeatedly, for them to start adding alternate arm sets more within their blisters and boxed sets. They don't even need to make the poses different, just key the arms to the same pose and it's a win.

There's things they can do to reduce SKUs for sure and slow down the bloat but you can never truly escape it as they have to keep releasing new things to keep people buying and that just keeps adding up. Add that to the new reality of game stores and distributors not wanting to carry anything but the core and newest stuff and the number of SKUs that would count as "bloat" has gone down tremendously. You just can't get people to carry stuff that's 2-3 years old anymore unless your GW or it's a core box.

 .Mikes. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
And yet the Myrmidon box is remaining...

Bluntly, nobody but Corvus Belli knows what the plan is with these things.

If you have an issue with a company not revealing every aspect of this business plans, I have bad news about the rest of the hobby for you.

Cool, so where's the new NCA starter? How about SAA? FRRM?

The point, which should be obvious to you since you edited it out, is that they have been saying for some time that these armies "will not be discontinued". We have quite a few of them "retired" at this point and only Shasvastii have come back.

There's things they can do to reduce SKUs for sure and slow down the bloat but you can never truly escape it

Their only answer to SKU bloat has been to pack some random models into boxes instead of blisters and then make entire sectorials unavailable. Instead of you know, doing the sensible thing and releasing multiple weapon options with the same blister/box. There is zero reason why say, a Fusilier box can't have one of each SWC weapon and a set of rifle arms for each model in it.

Literally every distribution problem CB faces is self-inflicted it seems.

Maybe that sectorial is getting retired because of the acronym - it's got to be a pain in the ASS, surely...

Duh. Wrong thread lol

 Kanluwen wrote:

Cool, so where's the new NCA starter? How about SAA? FRRM?

The point, which should be obvious to you since you edited it out, is that they have been saying for some time that these armies "will not be discontinued". We have quite a few of them "retired" at this point and only Shasvastii have come back.

I'm not sure why "retired" would mean "back in a couple years".

Truthfully, I think what's most likely is seeing more of the "remixed" style of return going forward. A lot of the original sectorals are pretty narrow and redundant in design. Freezing them and taking out some of the more popular elements to mix in with new stuff without committing to revamping everything from the original. I'm still a little surprised they're redoing Wildcats on that note. I totally expected Corregidor to get DC'd and replaced with a new Sectoral that was basically Corregidor 2.0.

Probably shouldn't take CB at their word on some of these sectorials just being sidelined temporarily. MRRF was "sidelined" initially, too. They were supposed to be revamping them with new rules to make them live up to their Rapid Response Force title. But nothing ever came of that. They didn't revamp the sculpts. Only a few profiles got updated sculpts and that was it. I think some units got rolled into other upcoming sectorials, but they definitely did not revamp MRRF like they said they would.

Those Cheerkillers are just the best.

Shame about them being used to lock away another Grenzer profile in a non-Grenzer box.

 LunarSol wrote:
Those Cheerkillers are just the best.

Really IMO one of the ugliest boxes CB ever released and Tunguska is my main sectorial..

 Modock wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Those Cheerkillers are just the best.

Really IMO one of the ugliest boxes CB ever released and Tunguska is my main sectorial..

The Nomads in general have had some of the most polarizing models in general. The Daktari was the posterchild of this.
Supposedly the flavor of the Cheerkillers is that they're spoiled juvenile delinquents going around doing what they want with mob-boss daddy's money. Remember that CB is rather proxy-friendly. Feel free to take other Nomads models like Nox Troopers and whatever other aliens you traitors enjoy.

I dislike the Harley Quinn Cheerkiller. At least that's what it reminds me of. I also dislike this profusion of capes on the minis. What's next, minis wearing speedos over tights?

That said, all of the minis are very well sculpted, if not to my taste. N4 promises to be a very pretty looking edition.

I can wait until late November to see the ASA and QK sectorials in N4. I won't be getting any games in any time soon. For the obvious reason.

Sounds like we all get to be beta testers for the fireteam rules.

Any leaks of the N4 rules yet, hopefully showing that the rules/weapons/skills/etc. repetition and bloat has been trimmed down?

 Red Harvest wrote:
I dislike the Harley Quinn Cheerkiller. At least that's what it reminds me of.

We already have a Harley Quinn model, she's in the Morlocks box.

had repressed that. So now the Nomads have 2 of them. Bah! We'll see how the painted mini looks. I may change my mind.

 Alpharius wrote:
Any leaks of the N4 rules yet, hopefully showing that the rules/weapons/skills/etc. repetition and bloat has been trimmed down?

Between Code One, the troop profiles that have been previewed so far, and the eleven days until release, I'd be surprised if there were any leaks like that.

At the very least, stuff like "This is just an SMG with more shots" has been demonstrated that they're going with SMG(+1B) instead of making up a new weapon.

I guess that's progress, right?

Hopefully there's more of that...

There's a lot of that happening like that. Modified profiles will be pretty common. At least it gives them the design space to mix things up without adding a lot of baggage.

But Baggage is a great rule!