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. 

Tunguska speculation

White noise is going to get me to do an interview with them to dissect Tunguska when they drop. In preparation for that, I've been thinking about the sectorial a bit. Here are some thoughts on what they would need to be viable.

Druze tactics and playtesting

Alright let's dive right in. Druze have a couple of things going for them:

How to beat Tohaa

As a farewell to the artichokes (I almost never play a faction again after I've taken it to a major tournament), I thought I'd write up the stuff that scared me the most while I was running them. People say Tohaa are OP. While symbiomates are indeed broken (in the sense that they undermine some of the core mechanics of the game), the rest of Tohaa is really manageable. The reason why they seem broken to people is that the meta currently (or has been) plays right into their strengths.

Let me start an explanation by looking at things that are really scary to Tohaa

Druze for CanCon 2019

I'm taking Druze to CanCon next year. They're pretty weak in my opinion (MOD stacks are really hard to come by, and you need to use terrible units like Valerya), and require a tonne of finesse to play. I like that. Making the final with Tohaa is one thing, doing it with Druze - now that's special. However, I won't be writing pretty much anything about how to play Druze, because I like to keep my tech not just up my sleeve, but in my armpit, especially when I'm playing a faction that relies on shennanigans. I'll write occasional tactical pieces about other stuff. I do want to have one post though about how I'm going to proxy everything. This is that post.

Short story: I want to use all of the Outrage models - Emily Handelman and her gang - in part because I paid for them so I want to play with them, and in part because the Druze models are ugly.

CanCon 2018

We had the Australian Infinity Championships over the Weekend. I was one of the TOs, but also playing (see the tournament blog for heaps more info, especially on the narrative: infinitycancon2018.wordpress.com). People seem to have had a great time, which is the main thing. I also managed to make the top table for the final round despite being totally fried and sleep deprived. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. Lost there and ended up 8th, but I'm pretty confident in my Infinity abilities now. Which is why I'm retiring! Lists and rounds below:

Camilo Potocnjak-Oxman designed the event logo and Sam Benson free-hand painted it (whhaaaaaaat?!) onto the base of this CSU, which was the prize for best sport.

CanCon Playtesting Tohaa

This is a log of all the playtesting I did for CanCon with my Tohaa. It starts from after War of the Worlds in the first week of October 2017, by which stage I feel like I had the basics of Tohaa down, and the Totally Crit Open the week after where I placed 3rd/14 running a Gorgos in a limited insertion setting (undefeated but I had a draw in a 3 round event).

That's me in the light blue shirt at CanCon 2018

Note that CanCon 2018 has the following missions in the following order: Capture and Protect, The Grid, Power Pack, Acquisition, Highly Classified. It is a spec-ops class tournament i.e. all the missions had to be drawn from the special operations variety of missions.

EDIT: I came 8/68 at CanCon (not so great), but I was on the top table for the last round (i.e. the winner wins the whole tournament), and I played Damien Stallard in round 1 (I reckon if there was a vote people would say Damien is the best player in Australia) so I like to think I know what I'm talking about.