Nomad Camo Spam: One more time

I miss the infinity community so I'm thinking of getting back into the game in a very casual way. New edition seems good though I really don't like the 15 order cap. Not because I played many lists with order counts above 15, but because it just seems like a really lazy way to balance the game. It also makes link teams even more important, which was something I didn't like even before the new edition. 

Anyway, some of the new Nomads units and changes means that nomad camo spam might finally, finally, be viable. I have been trying to make this list work since the end of N2. It feels like the way Nomads are supposed to be played, you could just never quite get all the pieces together under 300 points. Has that changed? Read on to find out. 

How to win at wingspan

My girlfriend's family is full of bird nuts and boardgamers, so what a delight when we discovered a multi-award winning boardgame based on building a bird sanctuary. Wingspan deserves the accolades. It is beautiful, wholesome, deep but simple to play, competitive without being nasty, and educational. We burned through a lot games over Christmas, and because I am mildly austic or something, I had to break it. I have a problem and I need help. Anyway, after dominating proceedings I decided to write up my stratagems for you to benefit from. Voila!

Character building guide for Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel

Another one of those posts where I brain dump. Been playing Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel lately because it's something I can do for an hour to unwind. Pick up and put down as it were. Not a good game in the pantheon of Fallout, but fine on its own. The early levels are much more tactically interesting than the late game. Ambushes and minelaying work pretty well against raiders and mutants. Reavers are always static and wait for you, which makes sniping the (boring) game, and robots also have huge health which means you have to basically just run up with a full squad of laser/plasma and shoot the crap out of them. Pretty boring but at least the last few missions are fast. Anyway, thought I'd write a character guide because Tactics is quite different to other Fallout games, notably:

Best one-run guide to Baldur's Gate Trilogy

I have a compulsive need to write down things I have painstakingly assembled in my head, even if nobody else cares. This is in that vein. I've played the BG trilogy through 4 times (good guy fighter-cleric, neutral fighter-druid, bad guy kensai-mage, neutral Barbarian in a deliberately bad party). Here are my thoughts on how to do it if you only want to play through once and want some respect for roleplaying i.e. you won't kill Drizzt the lvl 14 ranger with your lvl 4 party by abusing the video game format, and you won't mix-and-match good and evil party members who really don't belong together.

O12 listbuilding

Hola

I have retired from Infinity, and I've actually been really good about it and only checked army twice in like 3 months. It's working! Then O12 came out and I had a bit of a longer look. Eventually I felt the need to write some stuff down. Getting it out of my system will make it less likely that I look at Army again.

Infinity faction tiers 1-4

Edit (17/07/2021): I have updated this for N4 in a new post (there aren't many changes) - see here: https://emperorsghost.blogspot.com/2021/07/infinity-tier-list-for-n4.html

It is often said in Infinity "it's not your list, it's you". This is somewhat correct, but mostly horseshit. Some units in the game are simply inferior to others, like the Yan Huo with Missiles is strictly worse than a Hac Tao with missile launcher. Let me list some other units that are just bad: bolts (they are now passable with CoC and the changes to bioimmunity), Aida Swanson, Cube Jaegers, Taskmasters, Guijia, Takael (the symbiobug guy). You never see these units in winning lists, and I would almost say that you don't see them period. The same can be said of some factions: they just suck. Inversely, some units and factions are simply outstanding. I won't write a list of the best units, because that would take forever, but I do think it is helpful to have an idea of the faction tiers so that newbs stop playing Morats because "it's easy". MAF is actually infinity on hard mode. Yes, there are fewer rules. There's also no hope of winning unless you are very skilful in melee. I will explain my picks.

Note that some factions in tier 2 become tier 1 when the mission mix/meta is right. For example, Hassassins is nigh-on unbeatable in ground control missions when piloted by a good player on tall terrain. I would also say that the difference is only really noticeable between tier 1 and 3/4. Tier 2 against 3 is totally fair. Tier 1 against 2 is also barely noticeable. Tier 4 is always noticeably hard to win with.

Playtesting Vanilla Ariadna

I make no secret of a few opinions that I hold:

• I want to be able to play a finesse faction - something that relies on things like melee, hacking, stealth, smoke shenanigans and jank like sat-lock to win games rather than just pounding my opponent with first-order optimal strategies (e.g. link teams) and units (e.g. Rui Shi). 
• I think link teams are a bit broken (make BS only work on active and B only work on reactive) and I don't really see any reason to play vanilla these days. As such, playing Vanilla is basically a handicap. I like the idea of playing with a handicap and still winning
• I've been trying for ages to make a camo-spam Nomads list work but it just doesn't because hacking is over-costed (compare it to a 5 point Mutt that does the same thing) and under-powered (mostly because everything you want to hack has stealth...<cough> knight <cough>...)
• I'm bored with infinity because second-order optimal strategies are so tough to make work.

Well I have an announcement: vanilla Ariadna may save Infinity for me.