Trying to make Nomads work

I’m a bit bored with Infinity. I’ve played just about every faction (excepting Pan-Oceania outside of military orders, and TAGs don’t really excite me) and none of them really do it for me. I can rarely sustain enthusiasm for a faction for more than 2 months. More importantly, the more point-and-click strategies seem to have the advantage at the moment. Link teams with a few good support pieces, especially defensive ones, crush it. This sort of first-order optimal strategy does not give way to more nuanced tactics that require skill to exploit effectively. The skill requirement is there in things like Hassassins, but the payoff is not. 

I get the sense that it was in N2, but the power of 5-man teams (especially sixth sense, which neuters the surprise attacks), proliferation of warbands and killer hacking devices has really put a dampener on skirmishers and hackers, which are the backbone of any finesse-based strategy. Symbiomates are icing on the funeral cake. Nonetheless, I am persisting with such strategies, in part because they are more interesting to play, in part because they function like a handicap and we have a lot of new players at the moment, and in part because I want to believe they can work.

I certainly want to make them work. Back in my M:TG days I always played against the meta (to some success—a narrow miss for nationals top 8 when I was 14). Now that I am older and smarter I can afford to play the top builds and just be better with them than my opponents, but deep down I would prefer to play something weird and win with that because I play smarter, not tighter. Finding the scalpel with which to defeat the hammers would really thrill me.

The main tricksy factions are nomads, haqqislam and Ariadna, especially Vanilla Ariadna. The main differences are hackers, melee and some high tech (ODD, MSVs) for nomads, impersonators, chain of command and ghazi for haqqislam, and great snipers, heaps of cheerleaders and antipodes for Ariadna. I’ve mostly gone with nomads in the past, mostly just because I like their aesthetic and fluff, and because I love melee.

Before I launch into how to do tricksy shenanigans in Infinity I should perhaps give an example of a list that did excel at this approach in the past. Vanilla Ariadna in N2 was power. You could take a solid base of snipers like tankhunters and the Cateran, sprinkle lots of cheap cheerleaders in mules and volunteers, flood the midfield with camo tokens (chasseurs, foxtrots and hardcases) and still have space for a few key attack pieces like the Spetsnaz HMG and Jacques Bruant and/or antipodes. This list excelled in the old button-pressing days.

I’ve tried making something similar work in Nomads for ages, but it never quite comes together, at least against the top lists. There are a few things that trip you up. 

• Your primary attack pieces are expensive. The intruder and Kusanagi both come in at over 40 points and aren’t crit proof (neither is the spetsnaz, but it is cheaper). The Moira HMG was my fall-back option in a lot of cases, but it feels bad not using the intruder when you’re packing heaps of smoke. The Kriza helps with this problem, but is expensive (though relatively cheap for what it does). 
• There are no good snipers in Nomads. The closest thing is the riot grrl missile launcher. The intruder is too expensive for a single wound. Knauf has too many expensive bells and whistles and dies to a 5-man HMG without any hope of getting lucky and killing the thing. TR bots suck. The sin-eater is good, but very narrow without an active turn threat factor. This lack of ARO pieces makes it hard to control the board and get economy out your mines and other area denial tools. My kingdom for a Lasiq. 
• Your lieutenant options are either weak or rambos that don’t quite have the staying power, especially as you don’t have a chain of command option. Interventors get assassinated a lot by KHDs, Kusanagi dies horribly to warbands. The Kriza single-handedly resolves this problem, which is huge.
• You don’t have a sweeper piece. Nomads operates with skirmishers or HMGs for killing things. There is no mid-range option. Kusanagi is the only decent spitfire banded unit in the whole faction, and she is slow at 4-2. This is still a problem, but the heckler red fury and hopefully the hollow man spitfire (or even MULTI rifle if it infiltrates and is cheap) changes this. 
• You often find yourself using combi-rifles or melee to kill things, which is inefficient and doesn’t work against a lot of ARO pieces. Enter the Kriza. 
• The shell game is incomplete because Morans aren’t under a token. The Heckler changes this by giving you two more tokens.
• You don’t quite have the cheerleading depth that you need to run offensive hacking, especially if you want to fire pitchers. You don’t have those 5-point orders like Ariadna.
• You don’t have a REM that is worth putting supportware on. Nomads have these great hackers – Zoe and interventors – and nothing to use them on. The attack remotes are terrible and the AD troops dead average. Pi-Well is the best thing you’ve got, and he has a freakin combi and already packs a big MOD stack. Hacking becomes a purely defensive affair. 
• You don’t quite have enough to set up a repeater web going second on turn 1. The Morans can’t cover enough space. Bunkering and refuse-flank tactics are important to mitigate this. The heckler and his ARO jammer/fast panda will help as well.

So that’s the run down. As you may have noticed, the new Tunguska units have made things more interesting, and I’m hoping Securitate and hollow men continue the trend. The heckler brings 2 much needed camo tokens for the shell game, a sweeper with the red fury, and repeater extension in the midfield with the fast panda (and jammer). The Kriza is a hard-to-assassinate lieutenant with a big HMG for knocking over ARO pieces (I think the Kriza might have the game’s best ftf against 5-man HI missiles). He can also do strong complementary area denial using suppression fire (-9 to hit against a BS13 schmo with ARM8 is a tough nut to crack even with 10 orders). I am hoping that hollow men are a REM worth putting supportware on. Ideally, Securitate will be moderators (i.e. terrible LI profiles) equipped with repeaters. This would make them complementary cheerleaders like transductor zonds.

The hollow men would ideally be something like 6-2MOV, BS12, terrible CC, no ARM/BTS, PH10, REMs with limited camouflage, infiltration, repeater and both an assault hacker (MULTI + pitcher) and spitfire profile. This would open up a lot in nomads and Tunguska. The repeater would allow you to both set up a hacking web and use supportware downfield. The spitfire on 6-2 (or 4-4) would give you the sweeper unit, though you might need camo rather than limited camo to really make that work. Any sort of camo and infiltration would make the nomad shell game into a real force to be reckoned with. The MULTI + pitcher + AHD profile, if kept reasonably cheap (say 25 points with the REM discount) would be a bag of tricks: repeater web, supportware on a decent attack platform, hacking with range extender and a shell game complement. I would fiz for that unit. Another thing that would be super helpful is MSV1, which is rare in Nomads and currently only on expensive or shit units (Grenzer, Riot Grrl spitfire, Intruder). Infiltrating repeaters under a camo token don’t exist so I might be hoping for too much on that front. Limited camo, MSV1, forward deployment level 2 would be hot.

While waiting to see the rest of the Tunguska sectorial, I have been iterating lists for an upcoming small tournament that will have a lot of new players. I’m going to run some jank with Bran do Castro and potentially no HMGs to test some stuff out, but secretly I’m hoping the pieces for Vanilla nomads come together. Here are the basic building blocks of the list:

• A bandit with KHD, 2 zero minelayers (or assault hackers, which lets the morans use shotguns), 2 morans (probably 1 FO and 1 shotgun) and 2 hecklers (probably 1 red fury and 1 jammer). This is the shell game and the midfield presence. All the cheap guys, but plenty of variety and hitting power.
• Morlocks: smoke, templates and melee for trading up. Morlocks are definitely the worst of the cheap warbands (Shaolin are more reliable, Kuang Shi are dogged, Galwegians are shaolin kuang shi, Ghazi’s are oblivion-slinging defenders) but they are still good
• Interventor for white noise and defensive hacking (and supportware if the hollow man turns out to be good).
• Kriza for a big anti-ARO HMG and board control with suppression. 

This comes out at 23 + 19 + 19 + 21 + 22 + 24 + 24 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 22 + 54 = 252 with 9 regular orders and 4 imp/irr. The rest of the list is open for discussion. I think order monkeys will be important. Candidates are the following:

• Transductor zonds: repeaters, flash pulse defence, great cheerleaders. Might be worth taking a stempler zond for the sensor bonus (or Zoe and Pi-Well)
• Securitate if they turn out to be cheap LI with repeaters
• Uberfallcommando: powerful melee for crumping TAGs and eclipse to boot. You just have to be cautious about having too much irregular given you’ve already got the bandit and 4 morlocks. I would also note that the commando usually functions best alongside some riot grrl missiles—when your opponent comes forward to get inside the missile range band, the commando efficiently eats them on the counterattack.
• TR bot for supportware and defence from turn 2 onwards. You have the interventor, but this would require an engineer.
• A hollow man if he turns out to be a good attack REM
• Healers (daktari for the Kriza, engineer for any REMs that might come along)
• Krakots for trading up and some early orders.  These guys complement the midfield game, but that means that they can just be juicy targets for someone trying to alpha on turn 1.  
• Zoe and Pi-Well for more hacking and repeater coverage. Without good REMs to bounce off though these guys feel a bit wasted (Zoe is a very expensive clockmaker). Not having oblivion and white noise also sucks, but gotcha is a good program.
• A prowler for more shell game
• Bran do Castro for more shell game (he is the superior shotgun option over the prowler). ·       This guy is a surprisingly capable problem solver. He is very rarely expected and can take out some very big targets. If only the boarding shotgun was a specialist. 
• A spectr assault hacker or boarding shotgun. I don’t know why this guy is so expensive when the clipsos is so cheap. The clipsos minelayer profile would be so hot in nomads. In Tohaa it is basically pointless.
• A second bandit, probably an assault hacker.

A question that remains is why you would play this list rather than just Ariadna? All you are getting is hacking and a crit-proof attack piece that can take 5-man missile launchers (the Kriza). The latter is huge, the former is almost a liability. It is a liability because you are vulnerable to KHD. It is an advantage against some factions because it can be a massive tarpit. Every time your opponent comes through a repeater with no chance to really hurt you, fire off oblivion. This can dismantle link teams and drains orders over the course of a game. It also stops that unit dead in its tracks for that turn, which can roadblock a particular turn’s strategy and be a huge pain if your opponent has already sunk 4 orders to position a piece for that strategy. This is why Ghazi’s are amazing on defence. With a hacker, you get the option to fire off an isolation and then you can clean them up next turn. This is how nomads do board control in the absence of snipers and Yu Jing’s armada of cheap, sometimes dogged, warbands. The problem with hacking is that it takes a lot of investment to get off, and that investment is always fragile. Repeater networks are usually made up of shitty REMs that are easy to knock over and hard to hide (no prone). Deployable repeaters can be great, but there’s often an order investment in them that is rarely worth it.

Some other thoughts:

I am tempted to use zero assault hackers. If the heckler cybermine profile was an AHD rather than a KHD I would also be tempted to go for that (I really want the minelayers for the shell game). The reason for this is that this would make the zeros specialists which would allow me to use shotguns on the Morans, which is better than combis and keeps them cheap. Morans want to turtle and act as repeaters. The shotguns make them expensive to uproot. The AHD zeros can also hide from KHDs under camo tokens whereas interventors have a tendency to get redrummed (though sucker punch with WIP15 and BTS9 is as soon as defence can get). I am hoping that the hollowman has an AHD or HD profile to solve this problem. 

I am very curious about Bran do Castro. The mobility on a shotgun melee threat is very tempting. I just wish he was a bit cheaper, and that the shotgun profile could be a specialist. Superior infiltrating camo always has the potential for a massive alpha strike through the cheerleaders. I wonder if the bandit gives you enough of this.

You want as much stuff to be either under a camo marker, expensive to dig out (Morans) or a cheap warband that trades as possible. This is how you waste your opponent’s active turn. Nomads is all about hide and sneak with a few choice lines of suppression. This is the main reason why I would actually prefer a zero AHD rather than an interventor—the zero can hide under a camo marker. One thing to remember: have a repeater within 8 of your interventor for your opponent’s KHD to use; when they do, spring your bandit KHD and hit them with double sucker punch.

The primary function of morlocks is to act as bodyguards for the interventor on turn 1 

I've got one list. For the club tournament I'm just going to run a silly list as my second list for games against people relatively new to the game. It's going to have no support weapons other than mines and hackers. People will learn to fear the blade. The list below is the nomad list in the tricks mold that I think will work. It will obviously struggle against factions that aren't hackable, and I think that basically invalidates it from tournament play. I'm not sure there is enough power in nomads without hacking to make it worth it. You don't have snipers, so without hacking I just think you won't have the necessary board control to win games of infinity. 

 Nomads

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GROUP 1 

 MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 6)

 MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 6)

 MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 6)

 MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 6)

 ZERO (Minelayer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 19)

 ZERO (Minelayer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 19)

 KRIZA BORAC Lieutenant HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54)

 HECKLER Red Fury / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 24)

 HECKLER Combi Rifle, Jammer, Fast Panda / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23)

GROUP 2

 BANDIT Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Light Shotgun, ADHL / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 25)

 BANDIT Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Light Shotgun, ADHL / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 28)

 MORAN Boarding Shotgun, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 20)

 MORAN Boarding Shotgun, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 20)

 INTERVENTOR Hacker (Hacking Device Plus) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24)

 MODERATOR Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 11)

 TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

 6 SWC | 299 Points

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The bandit with assault hacking device will hopefully become a hollowman with AHD. That would give you a much needed regular order while preserving everything else about the list. The paramedic is there as a cheerleader and to potentially heal the Kriza if it needs to Tango with a chunky link team. The idea with this list is to use all of your regular orders to kill stuff, press buttons and go into suppression, and then spend your ARO turn pooping mines and hacking units entering your zone of control, thereby denying your opponent order economy.