Note: I haven't finished this yet because it is long and I am always busy, but I will add to it occasionally until it is done.
My hope is that this will be the #1 "must read" article on the internet when it comes to Infinity besides The Rules. That's a bold claim Cotton. Read on to find out if I succeed in delivering value. This guide is meant for beginners, but I hope that even advanced players will pick up a thing or two. At the very least, I will introduce some jargon terms that I use throughout this blog (like sniper traps and tarpits) that will help you understand other posts. I suspect it will be hard to absorb everything in this guide on a first read, so beginners will benefit from circling back to it as they progress to intermediate.
The guide is divided into 4 sections: basic principles, the sport of offence, the art of defence, and the lost wisdom of Paradiso (i.e. extra bits and bobs). Before I get started, let me quickly fire off some credentials. This isn't to big up myself. I worry a lot in Infinity that if you lob some "what should I start with?" type comments into Forums you get replies from 75% people who have NFI idea what they're talking about but want to contribute (bless them), 20% decent players with a few too many penchants for sub-optimal units/builds/strategies, and only 5% comments from good players who know what you need. I hope this blog constitutes part of that 5%, and to back that up I think I should list my credentials. I started playing infinity in late 2014, round about the transition between N2 and N3. I played a lot - at least one game a week for 3 years, often more, and frequent tournaments. Worst I've ever performed at a tournament is 3-1-1. That was my first tournament. I've never won anything outright, but I've had numerous podium finishes, including at the Australian championships, and I don't think I've ever fallen outside the top 10%, except when I lost the final of the Australian championships and took a tumble to 8/70. So I reckon I know what I'm talking about, at least on these basics. Onwards!
BASIC PRINCIPLES
Spread is King/Queen
The spread is the difference between your target role and your opponent's. For example, if you are going for 12s on 1 dice and he is going for 4s on 4 dice, you have a very good chance of winning because the spread is 8. Spread is particularly hard to beat if your target is low. Even if you're burst 4, winning on a 1 is tough (this happens to TR bots a lot).
The main thing to take away from the primacy of spread is that MODs are the most significant skill/equipment in the game and stacking them is the most important tactic to understand. The principle MOD is range bands. The next most important are mimetism and its counter, multi-spectral visor (MSV). Mimetism -6 was called optimal disruption device (ODD) or Thermo-optic camo (TO) in N3, so you might see it referred to that way. Other important MODs are the 5-person link team bonus (+3 MOD), shooting through smoke with an MSV (-6 unless countered by sixth sense level 2, AKA SSlvl2), surprise shot (-3), which comes from camouflage, impersonator, and holo-tech, suppression fire (-3), martials arts and related skills, marksmanship (ignores cover MOD), and, the most common, cover. You should almost never fire from outside cover on your active turn. There are also occasionally things that effectively function like MODs, like triangulated fire.
The quickest way to identify a good attacking unit is that it has MODs, typically mimetism/MSV. The most basic principle of effective offence in this game is to get a unit with good MODs and apply it to as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. Pan-Oceania's bulleteer is a great example of an effective offensive unit. 6-4 with mimetism -6, and you can put supportware on it for marksmanship if you have an EVO repeater. It has a spitfire, which has the most commonly optimal range band of 8"-24". This means the humble REM will typically be hitting on 15s against anything that does not have a MOD, regardless of cover. If it is shooting from cover, it's opponent will be on -9 to their target roll. Even a raw 17 BS (some HI in a 5-person link) in good range will be on 11s to hit you. Even before burst is factored in, you have a significantly higher chance of winning the shootout. That's the power of spread and MODs. Learn it and use it or you will struggle to win. There are some factions that can use alternate strategies, but they're quite advanced. There are also some factions with MODS everywhere, notably Aleph and O12, and this gives them built in power.
On principle attacking units, MSV is slightly more valuable than mimetism. This because attacking units are typically doing work in active, where you have a burst (B) advantage and want to kill things in as few orders as possible. Mimetic units are hard to kill, but they can also struggle to kill opposing mimetic units, which makes them potentially inefficient. Consider a Kunai Ninja with multi sniper rifle fighting against an Oniwaban in cover at good range. The Kunai is on 14 to hit base, -6 for mimetism and -3 for cover, so 5. The Oniwaban is dodging on 12s. Even if he can't dodge out of the way (prone, for example), it may take several valuable orders to kill this guy. In contrast, a DaoYing sniper with MSV is 13 RAW -3 for range, -3 for cover, so hitting on 13 vs a dodge on 12. Much more reliable. And this is before burst gets involved.
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| Spread 'em |
Burst is the Prince/ss
People trying to have a fun time in Forums will often point out that more burst is more better. This is true, but it is still secondary to spread. Imagine you're playing O12 and you've got an Omega with HMG and B+1, so B5 on a base BS of 13. You see a tasty cheerleader hanging out in your opponent's deployment and you move over to shoot it. Unfortunately, your Aleph opponent reveals a Proxy with MULTI sniper rifle from hidden deployment on the other side of the table. You're just out of your good range at 34", but at least you're in cover. So are they. You're at -3 for range, -3 for cover, and -6 for the Proxy's mimetism, so you're at 1 to hit. Even on 5 dice, that's not good odds. Meanwhile, the proxy is +3 for range and -3 for cover, so they're on 13. That's a massive spread. Chances are you are about to take a beating - best dodge (on 14, so no spread) and plan an alternate attack. If you can come at the proxy from within 32", even without MSV, your burst is much more likely to carry the day. You're still -9 for cover and mimetism, but you're +3 for range, so you're on 7s on 5 dice vs 13 on 1 dice. Now if your opponent rolls >13 or <5 the odds are very high that you win the face-to-face. So they're really looking for 6-13 on 1 dice. A narrow margin. That's the power of burst.
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| Say hello to my little friend B the HMG |
Wounds are wonderful, but ARM is low value
This is a good opportunity to introduce the importance of redundant wounds on key attack pieces. There are some units in the game that are very difficult to get a decent spread on. Proxy snipers are one example. So even with mad burst and attention to MOD stacks, you might need to take a bit of gamble. It helps if you have, like the Omega, ARM5, W2 and no wound incapacitation (NWI) because if you lose the first face to face you will probably make armour, and if you don't you can take the wounds, and then you can keep firing. Extra wounds are good for redundancy, and redundancy is always critical in games that involve random number generation i.e. dice rolls. Bad luck happens. When it does, take a wound and keep firing. This is why optimal attack pieces, especially what I call "parapet clearers" whose job is to knock off snipers and other overwatch pieces, should optimally have more than 1 wound. ARM is a bonus. Wounds/structure are critical.
Armour adds redundancy, but it's expensive and nowhere near as reliable as wounds. Things get a bit more solid once you're at ARM4. In cover against a combi rifle you've got an almost 75% chance to make the save and you're even decent odds to stay standing against DA sniper rifles. But ARM4 is expensive. Grab the cheap wounds instead if you can. Moreover, we are talking here about a situation where you take an unlucky critical hit or unexpectedly lose a face to face roll on your active turn. In your reactive, armour is unlikely to save you. A decent attack piece running spitfire, MULTI rifle, molotok, T2 rifles, HMGs, etc. will just straight up murder you in a few salvos.
A further reason why armour tends to be sub-optimal in terms of points for power is that most high armour units do not have MOD stacks. Things like Shang Ji, Knights, Amarta Project, and most TAGs. What you get in this case is a unit that can shoot into a coin flip face-to-face and just keep firing if it loses. OK cool. But that's inefficient in terms of orders - why not just get a thick spread that ensures you almost always win? As we'll discuss shortly, a huge parts of winning is getting economy out of your order pool, so look for spread before armour. Armour is mostly something that helps when you're losing.
One good but relatively advanced application of armour is suppression fire. Something with 4+ ARM in cover in suppression can soak a rather large number of orders out of your opponent, especially if they are coming with a combi or some such. The key thing here is that your typical reactive turn disadvantage is substantially ameliorated by having B3 and a -3MOD thanks to suppression. You are probably still going to lose face to face rolls, but then you've got your effective 7+ ARM and 2W to soak the hits. If you can hang around long enough you might snag a lucky critical and prevail. Even if you don't, you can drain a lot of orders from your opponent passively. Some of the heavier TAGs are built for this strategy, notably the Maghariba with 360 visor and the Jotum with its ARM10. Of course, mimetic heavy armour does this even better - try moving a Mowang out of suppression.
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| Kinda dumb |
Infinity is marketed as having no “passive” period wherein
your opponent takes their turn to beat the shit out of you and you just roll
armour saves. The reactive turn player is still participating, making
decisions, and potentially killing enemy units. It’s true. But it’s also
misleading. The reactive turn is mostly about your opponent gaining the ability
to beat the shit out of you and you trying to avoid that eventuality until the
advantage passes to you. In other words, the ARO turn is about hiding. Even if
it goes against game design, you generally want to make reactive as passive an
experience for you as possible. There are some exceptions to this, which will
be covered under the finer points of defence, below, but it’s a good rule of
thumb that if you try to contest the reactive turn you will lose a lot.
Why? Because burst is the prince/ss. You will almost always
have a large burst disadvantage on reactive. Some units, like link teams or
those in suppression fire, can mitigate this somewhat, but even there it is
marginal (A B2 linked HMG will lose to a B4 linked HMG). Winning the reactive
rather than just avoiding it is mostly about spread, because spread is king. It
tends to involve mimetic snipers with advantageous range bands.
So in short: hide in reactive turn. Never leave a unit hanging in the wind.
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| Waiting for your active turn like... |
Do not get stuck in mid-field
This is perhaps the most common error among intermediate
players. They have learnt not to leave their units hanging in the wind, but
they still leave them hanging in no man’s land. Hiding units forces your
opponent to come and get you, but once they’ve found you, they have a burst
advantage. If there’s only one unit there they trade ~4 orders for a kill. Not
great for you, but not bad either. However, if you’ve pushed half your list
into midfield in the vain hope of being in a good position to strike next
turn, once your opponent finds one unit they’re an order away from another
unit, then another, and another. All of a sudden your opponent has spent 8
orders to kill 4 guys, and that’s a very bad proposition for you. The solution
is to stay far away from your opponent unless you are making a decisive attack.
We will cover this under Rambos and Bishops in the finer points of
offence.
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| Even Wonder Woman wouldn't survive No Man's Land in N4 |
Sequence orders
Of all the basic skills, this takes the most practice. It’s
something you’ll see advanced players do fast and seamlessly with all 15
orders. Meanwhile, beginner’s will forget to use a warband to throw smoke for
an air drop unit before it lands, will close to shotgun a link team with a
skirmisher before realising that it prevents them placing an impact template
over that link, and, most commonly, get carried away killing things before
realising that they don’t have enough orders left to press buttons and win the
mission. Plan your turns. When doing so, spare a though for plan B and C in
case your glorious Rambo takes a crit 3 orders in.
Good plans have efficient contingencies. Sometimes
you do plan A in a slightly inefficient way so that if you are forced to go to
plan B you can do it efficiently instead of being stuck with a half baked turn.
For example, imagine my plan A is to use a hacker in 5-order group 2 to put
marksmanship on my bulleteer in 8-order group 1 and then go on a Rambo run. I
will then put the remaining 4 orders in group 2 into the hacker to move 3 times
and press a button. If the bulleteer dies early I will spend the remaining
orders on an already forward deployed peacemaker to mop up. Now I realise that if
the bulleteer dies the peacemaker might not have the MODs to kill the target.
So I should save marksmanship for the peacemaker. So plan A is altered for the
bulleteer to go and kill the target. If it succeeds, I proceed with plan A,
pressing the button, now with a spare order so I can try twice, or put
marksmanship on the bulleteer for the rest of its Rambo run, or suppression
fire. If plan A fails I can buff the peacemaker, reliably kill the target, and
then still have the 4 orders to press a button as in plan A. I made plan A a
bit less awesome, but it made plan B much more reliable.
It is generally a good idea to start planning your turn by
thinking about what absolutely must get done this turn and then about what nice
bonuses you could get. Plan B should guarantee that the must get done items do
in fact get done. Do not leave home without a good plan B, even if it means
your plan A will be amazing. "There is no plan B" is a great way to lose
Infinity. The crit system means that unexpected events are built in. In fact, let's make that it's own bullet point...
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| When you get the sequencing wrong |
Expect the Unexpected
I don't know if you've noticed, but infinity involves a lot of dice rolling. The number that comes up on the dice is random. The thing with random numbers is, sometimes weird shit happens, like two 1/20 events (i.e. critical hits) back to back. Unlikely events can really mess with your game plan and need to be part of your game plan.
I don't want to write an essay on statistical principles, but some ideas from Taleb are relevant here. Let's start with fat tails. Infinity, compared to something like Warhammer, involves a relative small number of models (15 compared to 70+ in warhammer) rolling relatively few (4 at a time vs 20 at a time) relatively large dice (D20 vs D6). When you roll piles of dice, as in Warhammer, the law of large numbers kicks in and you get closer to the long-run frequency of probabilistic events, which means that outcomes are more reliable. Not so in Infinity. Low probability, high impact events happen all the time. Outcomes in Infinity are thus essentially fat tailed rather than normally distributed. In a normal distribution, the odds of rare events (e.g. more than 2 standard deviations from the mean) are very low. In contrast, a fat tailed distribution may have fairly high probability average outcomes, but outcomes far from the average will still occur occasionally. The crit system turbocharges these low probability events into very impactful ones so that they swing games and force even top players good at putting the odds in their favour to adapt on the fly. Understanding these probabilistic dynamics in list building and strategy is a big part of moving from intermediate to advanced in this game (or perhaps from advanced to elite).
The first principle to apply in fat-tailed, low probability, high impact events is redundancy. For example, the Dutch built their dikes to withstand once-in-a-century storms. These are very rare, but if the dikes were not built to withstand them, then that once-in-a-century event would be catastrophic. You should similar leave redundancy in your lists as strategies for rare but impactful events. The most obvious is that your strategy should not be built around awesome 1W models like the intruder, because a single crit or other bad roll will end your entire gameplan.
The second principle is antifragility, which means that something benefits from volatility (as opposed to simply being resilient to it, which is what redundancy gets you). Antifragility is typically subtle in Infinity, but there are some clear cases. Perhaps the most striking is HI missile launchers on defence, like riot grrls in 5-girl links. Missile launchers benefit from volatility because when they win an unlikely face to face roll with their low burst, they turn that event into an impactful one by annihilating the opposing unit. HI missile launchers double down on this antifragility by making the missile launcher last through downside risk (i.e. losing a face-to-face) until an upside event comes along. The impact of those downside events is relatively small because you can take armour saves and lose wounds without dying. The impact of the upside events is that you annihilate a key attacking piece in your opponent's army. This is what makes the Hac Tao Missile Launcher (2W, ARM5, Mimetism -6) one of the best defensive pieces in the game.
Efficiency
The main reason why link teams are amazing is that spending an order to move a unit lets you move up to 4 other units. 5 for 1! That’s efficiency. This simple principle—get more than one order of effect out of each order—can be applied in numerous ways throughout list building and order sequencing, and is a key skill to develop. Indeed, it is probably the main thing I keep in mind when building lists after picking key attack pieces. It's quite hard to describe in general terms, so let me just give a few examples to get your brain on the lookout for similar effects:
- Try to organised order pool by clustering units together that are likely to declare the same order with a command token, such as dropping into suppression or warbands moving in the impetuous phase.
- Use the right unit for the job. Don't try to dig that HI out of suppression fire with a combi. Sweep around with a sniper beyond its range band and blow it away, or get a submachine gun in close with AP rounds. One of the main reasons why camo-infiltrator specialists are better value than their point cost might suggest is that they can start a short-skill away from an objective, whereas a 13 point LI doctor will have schlep there all the way from your DZ at the cost of many orders.
- Press buttons with attack pieces on their way to murder something, like Kusanagi or the doctor in a link team. This way the movement is essentially free. (One of the biggest problems vanilla Yu Jing had for ages was that its specialist were all budget LI doctors and the like, and so you always had to reserve a bunch of orders just to press buttons).
- If you see a cluster of troops, get a template into it (missile launchers coming out of hidden deployment or running down the table just to take an unexpected shot are both lovely).
Play the Mission
This has gotten steadily less important as the seasons have gone on. In N2, many missions involved pressing huge numbers of buttons. As such, there was a hard trade off between killing things and completing your objectives. In early N3, there were many missions that involved some sort of button pressing (like supplies) or didn't reward you for killing stuff (original highly classified). Here again, getting carried away with killing stuff could cost you the mission. Nowadays there are a lot of missions, such as the ground control ones, where it's mostly just about killing your opponent then spending 3 orders or something per turn to take care of objectives. Very important to remember those 3 orders! But you can treat them as a bit of an afterthought. Nonetheless, you should always plan your turn from the objectives to who you need to kill to complete those objectives. It remains easy to lose to a good player who plays for points not kills. Be especially wary of this against factions that don't seem to be doing all that much, like Hassassins and Shasvastii.
Pie Slicing
When attacking, you very rarely want to take on 2 AROs simultaneously. One on One engagements are much easier to win. For this, you want to move so as to only draw AROs from one target at a time. Enter the concept of pie slicing, which is a legitimate tactic of close quarters firefighting. It is easiest to explain when coming round a corner or entering a building. Don't move your unit all the way out. Move as many millimetres as you need to site a target, then retreat behind total cover as part of your MOV short skill. This allows you to heal or reconsider your approach if you lose the face to face. Once the ARO is drawn, you declare shoot with your second short skill. Once the target is dead, or move a few fewer millimetres to target a second enemy. Graphically:
Now it is often impossible to eyeball how many millimetres you go, so you can invoke the 'intent' rule. This was included in the N3 rule book and I presume is in N4 as well. It can be abused by some people in unsavoury ways (see my long post here), but as long as you're using it to speed up the game rather than find a technicality to get out of 2 well positioned AROs, nobody will mind. You say "my intent is to move far enough that I see that unit <point to close unit> but not that unit <point to relatively further unit>". The long post linked above details some behaviours that are not acceptable when invoking the intent rule. Please have a look.
THE SPORT OF OFFENCE
The Alpha Strike
I think a bit part of why I'm good at infinity is because when I first got into the game with a mate he decided to play Steel Phalanx. Their game plan is just to run at you and kill everything with templates. They have perhaps the best alpha strike in the game. I got destroyed over and over, but it taught me so much about offence and defence, and first order optimal strategies. I quickly discarded huge numbers of sub-par units rather than wasting months experimenting with them (e.g. the Bao in ISS). Meanwhile, other people fool around with loads of sub standard units for ages, only very slowly discovering the limits of the power curve. What such players tend to think as they hit the intermediate ranks is that going second is always great in Infinity because you can just turtle, take no casualties, and counterattack. These are my favourite opponents.
Against a well-designed alpha strike, it is extremely difficult to turtle, especially if your list is not built in such a way that it can produce an effective castle (like in Chess - protect the king i.e. your key attack pieces and lieutenant).
An effective alpha strike usually kills about 5 units. That's at least 30% of your opponent's army. Importantly, it is likely 5 orders, which means they never got a turn at full capacity. If you can repeat the feat on turn 2, it's very unlikely that your opponent ever had enough orders to win the game.
You must have the ability to alpha strike effectively in your list. If you do not, a simple turtle on turn 1 will likely cost you the game because you will spend a turn doing nothing of consequence and leave units in the midfield for a counterattack. You can see this in my early Tohaa playtesting here, and when I worked out how to alpha strike I started wrecking people.
So what are some key principles or features of good alpha strikes?
- Note that the table is 48"x48". If you deploy at the limit of your DZ, you've already shaved off 10" or so, so 38" left. Offensive units move at least 4-4, so 8" an order if your opponent turtles and lays out no speed bumps. 4 orders = 32". You are now within striking distance of pretty much anything in your opponent's DZ barring very fortuitous bendy terrain. Assuming they took 2 orders out of your 10 order group, you have 4 orders left, unless you have strategos, bonus lieutenant orders, tactical awareness, or some such (like Hector, who is a murder machine on the alpha strike).
- Note that camouflage often allows you to completely bypass some speedbumps like snipers, saving orders for carnage in the DZ.
- Note also that infiltration and forward deployment save you orders on movement.
- So now you want to maximise kills with those 4 orders (usually you have 5 because your opponent can't turtle that much, 6 if you have strategos etc, and 7 if your opponent leaves things hanging out). An easy way to do this is to use template weapons like heavy rocket launchers, plasma rifles, and shotguns. Kill multiple units with each strike. You would be amazed at how much carnage a humble Liberto Freedom Fighter can do with his light shotgun.
- Barring that, you want to make your kills close to guaranteed. That means going after cheerleaders and units that stand little chance against your spread/B.
- See why Uxia is an amazing alpha strike piece? Superior infiltration, camouflage, boarding shotgun for template opportunities, twin assault pistols for hard targets, mimetism and surprise shot for MOD stacks, smoke to get forward once she uses up her limited camouflage.
- Besides efficient killing, you also want to think about efficiently moving to the next target. Once you hit the DZ, you ideally want to move-shoot every order, killing a piece each time. So look for clusters of units or kills that you can otherwise sequence.
- Things to target: obvious lieutenants, flimsy key attack pieces like Rui Shi and Bulleteers, congo lines of troops that can all be hit by a single template, clusters in your opponent's deployment that you can completely collapse and then bunker down in.
- It is nice to be able to do something useful with the alpha strike unit other than leave it completely stranded deep behind enemy lines. Suppression fire is pretty obvious, but have you considered using a command token to put an entire link team in suppression? Nice. Another option is to have smoke grenades handy so that when your opponent comes to counterstrike you your unit immediately becomes invincible provided you win the first face-to-face roll. A third option is to bunker down a link team with shotguns somewhere in your opponent's DZ where they can only be engaged from within 8". This will make it inefficient for your opponent to kill them, but they must be engaged or they will rampage again next turn.
- Set up a table with enough terrain in it that you never need to move more than 8" between pieces of total cover.
- Place a link team of Hector, Pheonix, Marchaon, and a myrmidon with chain rifle in the middle of one deployment zone towards the front of that zone but in total cover.
- Deploy your own army in the other DZ.
- Take charge of the steel phalanx list and use its 10 first turn orders (10 base, -2 from command token, +2 from Hector) to try and dismantle your own deployment.
- (optional) play your counterattack.
Remember the basic principle: do not get stuck in mid field? As such, you generally want to attack with a single unit that has overwhelming firepower, like the bulleteer in our example far above, and push it deep into your opponent’s lines, slaughtering multiple units. Once your opponent gets the active turn, they will likely kill your attacker, but then they’ll still be in their deployment zone, with a long slog to reach you. They will thus be unable to spend a few orders to kill multiple units. This is what I call a 'bishop run'. In chess, bishops tend to make long, straight moves into enemy territory. Bishop runs are the first order optimal way to attack in Infinity.
- All link teams, but especially mixed link teams, will have a weakest link (like a death star!). It may the unit with the wrong range band, or the weak doctor tagging along with the HI, or the unit that doesn't have dodge+3, or the unit without mimetism, or the unit that's hackable. Target the weakest links first to improve your odds and downpower the stronger members.
- Try to break the link before engaging it. The most straightforward way to do this besides killing the link leader is to isolate it with E/M, hacking, or some such. I don't know why they got rid of exile from the E-drone - that was a great program for this job. Note that stealth prevents ARO hacking, which is yet another reason why Knights are stupid good.
- Templates. The changes to shotgun templates are a huge buff to link teams (indeed, N4 really seems to be about TAGs and HI links, which I think N3 was already tending towards; sad). You could previously get a face to face against a single defensive member of the link while hitting all the others, forcing everyone to dodge against your very large target roll because of the +6 range band. Now you can either hit one member hard while they shoot back, or hit all of them with a template. Still, at least you hit all of them at once. A weakness of links is that they have to bunch up to some extent, so you can get some economic kills with templates.
- A specific template option that deserves its own bullet point is hidden missiles. A noctifer can reveal itself when all it sees is a member of the link that is not the leader (i.e. can't fire back), and then lay a template on that unit and clip other members of the team via their movement path. This is effective with snipers too, but then you can only kill one member at most.
- Close combat tends to be good against link teams, with some exceptions (e.g. Knights), but requires some finesse and typically a smoke template. Once you are in the engaged state, the non-engaged members of the link can't effectively mass ARO you. CC is especially effective with the 'CC team' units like Antipodes and the Uberfallcommando.
- You can use active-turn dodge from beyond LoF (e.g. from within a smoke template or around a corner) to get into the engaged state. This will get past the flamer template. Most TAGs are not great in close combat, especially compared to a dedicated CC unit. It might still be hard to damage the TAG, but at least it is locked down. EXP or mono CCWs will make short work of TAGs, as will E/M weapons on reliable CC units like Domaru. CC gangs like the uberfallcommando will take a TAG down pretty quickly just through sheer weight of dice, even with the changes to crits.
- Hacking, obviously. I tend to find isolation to be a better option than possession, but it depends on the hacker, the TAG (esp. their BTS), and whether there is an engineer close by. If there is a healer in the vicinity, they should be the first thing your newly possessed TAG kills. Also consider driving out into the open and using split burst to target as many of your opponent's units as possible. Against TAGs you are often just trying to slow them down, and isolation does a very good job of that. Having repeaters around the board that are hard to dig out (e.g. on rooves) can stop a TAG in its tracks.
- AP weapons, but perhaps not the one's you expect. AP HMGs rarely get a good range band against a good TAG pilot, and from within 16" a TAG in suppression and cover actually has a good ftf against a bog standard AP HMG like the Blackjack. They will drain your orders without dying. AP spitfires are great because they have the 8-16" +3 band and high B. Boarding shotguns are also excellent, though you will want to apply...
- The pincer manoeuvre: get one unit to attack the TAG from the back. It doesn't get an ARO except to dodge, which TAGs do not do well. Then come round with a second unit and shoot it in the front. It again can only dodge because it turned around to take on the original threat. Repeat until dead, though this will likely require an AP weapon because other weapons may plink off it's armour now that critical hits no longer auto-wound. The pincer is quite efficient but hard to set up against a cagey player.
- Massed T2 hits. This is common in Ariadna, typically from a Mormaer, Isobel in a link, Wallace, or Vassily. As long as you have a good face-to-face, you can probably put on a lot of hits without dying. The TAG will save many of those hits because you're only DAM13 in most cases, but any failed save is 2 STR down immediately. You can do this strategy with just a high B weapon as well, like a linked spitfire. It will be order intensive, but should get the job done if the TAG can't retreat into total cover.
- Take out the order pool. This should actually be priority #1, but order pools got a lot tougher recently. Used to be that a Cutter would be supported by 5 fusiliers standing around ready to die to a Rui Shi. Now those 5 fusiliers are in a link team. Still, if you have turn 1, consider ignoring the TAG and just taking out its support crew - cheerleaders, engineers, fairy dust hackers, etc. A TAG with only 4 orders a turn doesn't do a whole lot.
THE ART OF DEFENCE
Defence is hard and complex in this game. HI links, guerrilla warfare, and placing light snipers late game to lock down the table
Anti-efficiency
Risk-free actions
The tarpit
Winning the ARO - spread is king; TR bots suck (though being able to go prone in N4 is huge!)
Sniper traps - the royal family of defence
Late game light snipers
- Use the ARO to "tarpit" - in the broadest sense, this is about taking actions at no risk. Actions are costless in ARO, but typically very risky e.g. a ftf B2 vs B5 is a big gamble. In contrast, using a jammer or hacking is costless and riskless - both are born by your opponent.
- Sniper traps
- Defending against AD and alpha strikes using good facing on backfield LI
- Using template weapons on ARO
- Sxith sense shotguns in link teams
- Suppression fire on mimetic units
THE LOST WISDOM OF PARADISO
Let me wrap up this long article with a few extra little bits of commentary that I couldn't fit in elsewhere.
Airborne Deployment (AD) and hidden deployment (HD) are mostly bad
When you first get into the game, AD and HD are two of the coolest things in infinity. They are crazy powerful, often swinging games, and they're also just very stylish and HD is unique to Infinity. Once you're a bit more advanced though, these skills start to feel overcosted, with a few exceptions.
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| Corvus Belli: "We need a new HD reconstruction for ALEPH..." |
The main problem with both of these skills is that the units that have them are typically paper thin. Most HD infiltrators - Ninjas, Spektrs, etc. - are typically ARM1 and W1. Same goes for most air drop units, even the good ones like Tiger Soldiers. They win face to face rolls, sure, but they also die in a flash to a direct template weapon or a lucky roll, and lucky rolls are common when you are only B2 or relying on melee. So the first rule of good AD/HD is to take units that are either cheap (e.g. dropsuit taryot, Hassassin Naydir) or have more than 1 wound (e.g. Liu Xing, Anathematic). Now most of the multi-wound units with these skills are extremely expensive (and the AD units don't have MOD stacks), which makes them not so great.
The second problem is that the points you pay to deploy directly into a threatening position are offset by the orders you don't get while the unit is off the table. Getting a 4-4 unit to the point where it can smash something in midfield takes at most 3 orders. AD costs about 8 points, with which you can get a cheerleader. You rarely AD on turn 1. So now you have gained at most 1 order and you still need to take a gamble to arrive in the correct spot. It's not great. So another rule of thumb here is to take AD/HD units that can reliably do an effective surprise attack. These include HD snipers and template units like the Hundun with rocket launcher, and AD units that can come onto the backfield. Such AD units tend to be too expensive and have ineffective weapons (e.g. Van Zant).
Medium infantry are mostly bad
There are a lot of great swiss-army knife profiles in the medium infantry space. These guys have a nice gun, solid stats, a good MOD stack, and some other skill like sensor or super jump that makes them attractive. Now in N4 they even have MOV4-4 (the 4-2 in N3 was debilitating).
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| Tony Stark decided to upgrade to HI after this incident |
But they're quite expensive. Usually at least 25 points. You can get 2 light infantry for that. Furthermore, they only have 1W. That's the big problem. Every 5 games or so, your wonderful MI units, like Rodok missile launchers and HMGs, will take a crit and the match will swing dramatically in your opponent's favour. Have +1/2ARM and +3BTS over an LI doesn't make any difference here. If you're just playing casuals then no big deal, but if you put stock in consistent tournament performance, then you really want to focus on multi-wound guys, especially for your key attack and defence pieces. Remember the key principle: expect the unexpected. That said, it will take luck to win a really big tournament, so maybe it's worth gambling. One of the first Interplanetario's was won by a high-order Qapu Khalki list running a core link of Djanbazans, a quintessential MI that is great until it takes a crit.
Link teams are ridiculously good, but some are better than others
Nowadays I basically think there is no good reason to play Vanilla outside of a few specific builds like Avatar warband spam and Nomad camo spam. The reason is that link teams are too good and most sectorials have all the tools you need so the extra variety from vanilla doesn't help. As already mentioned, link teams give you efficiency, burst, a MOD stack, and one of the best defensive skills (sslvl2) in a game where defence is hard to come by. These are all 'basic principles' in this guide. So you need link teams, and you typically want at least a core + another.
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| Mixed links, amirite? |
How to think about good link team builds? Some thoughts:
- Links are typically back field or front field, not both, though it is great if a back field link has the capability to move forward effectively late game. Link teams typically have access to either backfield weapons that go together, like missiles and HMGs, or midfield kit, like spitfires and tinbots. Don't try to force a team to do everything - it will just become inefficient. Moving forward with a missile launcher so that you can shoot things with your red fury is a waste of the ML and vice versa. Observe the comparative advantage of a particular link team and optimise it for that purpose.
Link teams are ridiculously good, but some much better than others. Mixed range bands, MOD stacks, and utility units (sensor, CC, smoke, etc) are what you want. Maybe discuss a few good links (e.g. Varuna, Teutons, Varg + Orc + Gunnar, Tohaa alpha strike, Qing Quo + Shaolin/Hawkwood + Varangian, Riot grrls).
- SMG and BS so much better than combis. Even rifle is better than combi bc cheap and suppress.
- Medium infantry is mostly bad
- Play 10 orders or 14+ (Tunguska designed around 13 orders and it doesn't really work)
- Orders are king, so tactical awareness and + lieutenant orders are very good
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