Hello Everyone!

As all of you by now most likely know there has been an Uprising in the Infinity World, and it’s been a tough one for people like me who played JSA, then switched to ISS, and eventually branched into Vanilla Yu Jing, utilizing almost all units at some point for the awesome variety and fun.

And for those of you who actually read my stories and stuff, you’ll know that this also hits me pretty hard on a storyline side, as my main character (and in fact quite a few of the other cast) are from japanese descent, which basically forces me to choose sides now that the Uprising has happened….

But before I talk about the storyline impact of this event, I want to say a few words about my thoughts on the Event as a whole and the way it was handled.

Let’s begin by throwing the obvious negatives into the room, as I really want to focus on the postive effects in the end:

The way the story of the Uprising was presented was in an extremely negative way for Yu Jing, making them look stupid, incompetent, and most of all like comic book villains, but not the awesome ones you learn to love in the end, but more like Team Rocket or the Coyote from Road Runner…

If you are a Yu Jing player that bought (or wants to buy) the Uprising book to find out what happened during its events, you’ll most likely end up frustrated/angry or even infuriated, depending on your level of involvement in the fluff and the Yu Jing faction.

They failed to notice the uprising even though it was a massive preparation with basically all other nations involved, they failed to supress it almost everywhere that mattered, and even as I write this the current ITS season works to steal the last area that they managed to supress away from Yu Jing (Kuraimori), every single nation betrayed Yu Jing in one way or another, which displays a HORRIBLE level of diplomatic abilities on Yu Jing’s side, and to make it even worse, Yu Jing horribly failed to dominate the media during this conflict, even though it’s a damn police state….AND then even decided to show horrible warcrimes in the media during the conflict….cause why care about your image when everyone already considers you a villain I guess?

Frankly I think this part of the story’s depiction was a disgrace to Corvus Bellis usual style of describing every faction in shades of grey rather than black or white.

The only redeeming factor I saw was that they made it exceedingly clear that without the help of O-12 and the other nation, the Uprising would still have failed, as Yu Jing simply has WAY more army at its disposal than JSA, and they would have simply crushed JSA if they had the time…but that was about it. Every attempt to make JSA look “Just as evil as Yu Jing” was ruined by statements along the lines of “Even though the Kuge are selfish brain washing aristocrats that want to spit on equality and re establish their dominance…in the end things are no worse than before during Yu Jing times, and at least now JSA fights for their own country and people…” which for me means that JSA are at least Yu Jing -1 on the evil scale…and since I don’t see any Kuang Shi on the Tabletop I’d say at least -2 when it comes to outside appearance…

 

Now, with that big negative out of the way, I’d like to mention a few of the postive aspects of the Uprising:

The new Japanese Secessionist Army and the Japanese as a whole have been displayed as a very interesting and competent faction with lots of potential to grow and become even more awesome.

The way they handled the Uprising and outplayed their opposition showed so much competence (partially because of the displayed incompetence of Yu Jing I guess.) that being part of Japan surely feels like being part of the “superior minorty”…

The mentioned “Ten no Bushi” Program that units like “Kuroshi Rider” or the “Daiyoukai” come from sounded very awesome and intriguing, and I REALLY hope that JSA managed to get the Kuraimori Island back during the ITS Event, and thus gains access to some of the technology they had to leave behind, maybe resulting in some more awesome new units along the way? So if you are a ITS player…please consider fighting for the Japanese during your fights, the story will become so much more interesting as a result I think. (After all if Yu Jing keeps the island, nothing will change…and if CA wins…humanity is screwed and Yu Jing might even ally with them out of spite…)

The new Japan feels “positive” like all rising “new” nations who know that from now on, with hard work and vigilance, everything WILL get better for them, which gives a cool buzz from a fluff point of view, and endless opportunity.. (I think some might have gotten a feeling about where my storyline will go towards by now :-P)

The “Kuge” Dark Side of Japan gives them enough grey areas to create some interesting backstories and the “flaws” in their system are quite a lot, as are the flaws of their armies on the tabletop, making them a challenge to represent both in a story and on the battlefield I think.

The Anime vibe is stronger than ever with units like the Ryuken Unit 9 and some of the Keisotsu being obvious references to Ghost in the Shell, and Kuroshi Rider being a very close reincarnation of Celty from Durara as an example, and units like Daiyoukai simply screaming “anime” with every ounce of their being. As a huge anime fan since more than 15 years (leaning more towards 20 by now I guess….damn I’m getting old..) this is a fun thing for me, and I actively had to watche Durarara after seeing Kuroshi rider, just so I knew what all the hype was on about 😛 (crazy Anime btw…a bit out there, but fun to watch for sure)

The new units are FUN and replace the lost units (Raiden and Haramaki) in a good and stylish way. The Raiden felt a bit “bland” before, and the Ryuken Unit 9 defenitely has more style and “coolness” than they had. The Haramaki are a bit sad as they had good fluff background and I will miss that part of the story, but the Tanko simply won by way of their cool hats in my book…and I simply LOVE Monofilament Weapons, so sorry Haramki…I’ll be rocking them Tankos happily from now on!

The new Fire Teams are exciting and give awesome new potential to the already existing options. A Domaru in a Keisotsu Butai Fireteam is just fun and has a lot of potential, a new Specialist Domaru Profile gives the Domaru + Tanko Fireteam more flexibility, the MSV2 Kempei gives the Keisotsu Butai even more “bang” if needed. The Tanko+ Musashi Haris Fireteam means that people will field this awesome model more often than before, which is good as he was a bit too hard to justify in my lists previously I felt.

The fact that they kept some Ninjas in Yu Jing means that they didn’t invalidate the Red Veil Boxes Content (which frankly I think is the only reason why they did it..) , which is good as it’d simply had sucked for the consumers even more than the event already kinda does.

Sooooooo….

Now that I’ve talked about my negative and positive things about the Uprising (surely missing countless other mention worthy things, but oh well…) I’ll talk a bit about how this will influence my storyline.

As you most likely have guessed by now…I am a fan of the new JSA, and the way that my main character Yasashii Fuyu’s character is, it’s basically inevitable that he’ll side with Japan during the Uprising.

This sadly means that there will be a quite harsh cut in a good chunk of the character roster presented until now, as most of them will obviously stay loyal to Yu Jing (cause otherwise they’d end up as Kuang Shi  or Wu Ming obviously or worse obviously..), and many new characters will get introduced along the way. I might also switch from a “Yasashii Fuyu is personally on the battlefield” style of Battle Report Representation, to a more remote version as this has caused a few complications until now, mainly because most of my opponents EASILY knew who my lieutenant would be if they read my blog…as it ALWAYS was the Hsien with the Horns and Katana 😛  or the Crane if there was no Hsien on the table. This meant that I was basically always playing with open Lieutenant Information…which was fun in it’s own way though to be honest….kinda gave me my own playstyle really 😛

It also means that you most likely won’t be seeing most of my Yu Jing collection in the next few battle reports, as I’ll be focusing on JSA heavily. I do eventually intend to using Yu Jing as well (most likely when Invincible Army hits the tables..), and maybe then I’ll create a side story with the old characters and some new characters, or do something else entirely, we’ll see when the time comes, so don’t worry, Yu Jing will be back, it’ll just be quite a bit of time until then I reckon.

Soooo…as a little excuse for me once again being a bit silent in the last few weeks, let me show you the result of those weeks! (I really had to wait until I got the book and read the story so I’d knew how to continue onwards…)

And some closeups to follow (I REALLY should have dusted them off a bit before taking the pictures…)

(Damn her face turned out REALLY scary in the end…but oh well….some people just look scary, it’s not her fault! (It’s obviously mine cause I’m shit at painting faces…) )

Aaaaaaand…while I was waiting for the Box to arive, I struggled hard with myself on the decision what colour scheme to go for….and then decided “screw it, I’ll do it…” and actually began the long and tedious task of doing this:

Which some of my readers might notice is a new colour scheme for my old already painted models. If you are interested in how they looked previously, you can check them out here: My Japanese Sectorial Army

And as some very closely looking readers might notice…I also did a repaint and in fact remodelling of my Guija Pilot…who will now be my 2nd Ryuken with SMG!

I think it turned out quite nicely, and I’m lucky one of the Wu Ming had a spare SMG lying around in his locker room during the Uprising…

So yeah….with that shown, I’ll continue repainting my JSA, and hopefully soon manage to finish my next story chapter…there’s quite a bit of story to get out before the next Online Campaign comes around!

So I’ll leave you with the “Mr. Kiyotaki Kurage Station Special”  Breakfast/Lunch Menu option currently sold at Kurage Station in honour of Mr. Kiyotaki without whom the Uprising would have never succeeded, and who just so happened to order this during his small and obviously “unimportant” stay at the Kurage Station just a short while before the Uprising:

Just like Mr. Kiyotaki it might look a bit ugly and boring and not outstanding at all….but if you happen to be at Kurage Station, why not give this local speciality a go? I hope I’ll be seeing as many of you JSA players participating in the BoW Online Campaign when it comes around as possible! I’ll be there alongside you to:

For the true Emperor and Japan!