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Starting ALEPH for an escalation league at my FLGS. We're starting at 100pts, so I'm looking for a few possible starter lists I could use.
I already have a Support Pack (Sophotect, two yudbots, three netrods), and I've just ordered an Atalanta (cause let's face it, Robobunny is awesome), and I may pick up a regular ALEPH starter pack before the league starts. Can anyone toss up a couple example lists with Atalanta, so I have some reference as to what i should be slapping together?
Thanks in advance!

100pt aleph is not a place you want to be - they simply don't have the cheap orders to be fun <200pts imo.
Throwing a few myrmidons on the table might be your best bet (not too much msv at 100pts ) but still...

Yes Aleph are the most 'elite' force in terms of their basic troopers/points cost, but if you are expanding with escalation then obviously that will be a mending fault as you get to 150 and then 200 pts.

Do you prefer the look of Mymidons or the Dakini Tacbots? Either can function as your basic 'line trooper', with the Myrmidon the more effective but more expensive of the two. I would probably base that on which miniatures to get - the standard starter set if you opt for the Dakinis (a negative against these is that they are not for the amateur modeller, they're not that easy to assemble) or the Mymidon pack if you wanted to take that direction.

I'll leave the list to someone who has direct experience of playing Aleph (mine is just of being shot by them ), but for 48pts for the Atalanta it's going to be a very short list!

I'll assume you want to go Stell Phalanx (i.e. Myrmidons) and that the escalation starts at "let's kill each other!".

ASSAULT SUBSECTION
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 4 0 0

ATALANTA MULTI Sniper Rifle + 1 Spotbot / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 48)
SPOTBOT Electric Pulse.
MYRMIDON Lieutenant Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser, Zero-V Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0.5 | 32)
MYRMIDON Chain Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (16)
NETROD Electric Pulse. (4)

2 SWC | 100 Points

Open with Army 4

As others have mentioned before, ALEPH is really not the best for 100pts. You can see why above: the Lt options are expensive, as so are the big characters.
You could probably get something with a mix of Myrmidons, but I would avoid Dakini. Not because they are bad, but because the hacker you need to field them cost about 30pts, and some SWC.

I don't play aleph but looking at that list i would suggest that any 100 point list with a 50 point character that needs a 30 point lt is going to be pretty short on orders. I'd leave Atalanta at home unti at least 150 points.

Yeah, not an Aleph player either... though I was tempted to start it until I a)lost a bumper to an idiot and b)got reminded the wedding is in nigh over a month.

I'd say you need to drop Atalanta for the moment. A 50 pts character can work in some lists if you have a ton of cheap cheerleaders to feed it orders. Which you don't. And even if you could do it, I'd go with someone else beside a sniper.

Thanks for all the advice! I can totally let Atalanta wait until the second or third setup (+50 pts per escalation tier).

I have to say I like the tactbots more, and I'm a fairly seasoned modeler, so that's not really a concern. I could start with the starter set A andsupport pack models If that makes for an easier 100pt list build.

I would hesitate to bring a 50pt unit @ 150pts in PanO - and we actually get decently cheap basic troops.
In Aleph I would think twice before bringing something like that below 200. (OTOH, the difference between such a unit and a basic trooper is relatively small - there's two sides to it...).
Regardless, it is a model which is relatively good for the reactive turn whereas something with an HMG or Spitfire is often a little more geared towards active turn killiness (not insurmountable, but it adds up).
I just don't see how to bring something at that price and still bring the other stuff *I'd* want to bring in low points games.
Might be less of an issue for escalation where you only play one or two games at each tier anyway, though. Don't know, I really wouldn't bother with escalation type setups for infinity.

That does kind of bring me to a point I think might be of interest to you, though: why the **** go with an escalation league for infinity?
I *get* that it still sounds like fun even if painting up 10-12 models in one go probably wouldn't be much of an issue either, but there's more to consider.
What's often overlooked (I think the wiki mentions this actually, but that would be like reading a manual. In a hobby with a ~>80% male audience, I don't hold out much hope for that ) is that while other games often add more models to stretch to higher points levels, infinity doesn't work that way.
At 150pts, you'd generally be at 8-9 orders already (with most armies; Aleph is most certainly an exception to that). You could just add a fancy model or two to reach 200 (though generally it's more involved than that already) but you certainly wouldn't reach to 300 or even the new 400 pts format doing that; that often requires a complete rethink of which models to even bring.
I could see an 'escalation' league being taken somewhat seriously turning out to be more of a "paint 6-8 other models every [[insert tier duration here]]" thing, TBH.
(Then again I have serious issues with approaching these things casually, so there's that )

The idea behind this escalation league is that most of the players that are interested in Infinity at my FLGS (ie don't already play), do not have the time or money to suddenly dump even $150-200 into something they may or may not enjoy.
The 100pt level was designed by the organizer, from what I understand, in order to bring new players in at a fairly low-cost/low-time-investment level, so they could learn the basic rules and move on from there.

The idea is that we all be able to play without a major loss if we decide Infinity is not for us. I know little to nothing about the rules, and having fewer models on the table for my first few games sounds like a quite attractive method of slowly learning the basics. While I'm confident that I could probably jump in and quickly be able to play at higher point levels, I'd like to get a feel for what kinds of models I enjoy fielding before I buy six boxes of something.

Maybe a better request in this case might be an exemplary 100pt list for ALEPH, which gives a decent overview of the basic playstyle.

 Crackgnome wrote:
I know little to nothing about the rules, and having fewer models on the table for my first few games sounds like a quite attractive method of slowly learning the basics.

It is indeed. While I know very few about the playstyle of ALEPH, I know that the simplier things work better to learn. That's the reason why the Infinity Quisckstart rules work pretty good. They start with basic Line Infantry to learn the basic mechanichs, and then on you get to the more complicated (and tasty!) stuff. I'm wandering through the Infinity Army. I think that having 2 Combi Rifle Myrmidons, 1 Chain Rifle Myrmidon and character Nesaie Alke as the LT might be quite simple, and your LT has quite a shooty weapon. You would be playing with 4 minis (4 orders) only, though.

In any other army, I would tell you to make your LT one of the cheap LI guys and keep him covered. Then I would tell you to have more cheap guys to have more orders, and finally another miniature with a big weapon to use the orders and do the job. But the Myrmidons can't be LTs, the Myrmidon Officer is a different unit and a bit more expensive than Alke. Dakinis are cheaper than Myrmidons, but then they are actually remotes, so you would need to deploy a hacker. Probably the best option is the Deva+Devabot, but their are sold in boxes of 2 Devas and 2 Debabots. Can you use proxys?

 Erasoketa wrote:

 Crackgnome wrote:
I know little to nothing about the rules, and having fewer models on the table for my first few games sounds like a quite attractive method of slowly learning the basics.

It is indeed. While I know very few about the playstyle of ALEPH, I know that the simplier things work better to learn. That's the reason why the Infinity Quisckstart rules work pretty good. They start with basic Line Infantry to learn the basic mechanichs, and then on you get to the more complicated (and tasty!) stuff. I'm wandering through the Infinity Army. I think that having 2 Combi Rifle Myrmidons, 1 Chain Rifle Myrmidon and character Nesaie Alke as the LT might be quite simple, and your LT has quite a shooty weapon. You would be playing with 4 minis (4 orders) only, though.

In any other army, I would tell you to make your LT one of the cheap LI guys and keep him covered. Then I would tell you to have more cheap guys to have more orders, and finally another miniature with a big weapon to use the orders and do the job. But the Myrmidons can't be LTs, the Myrmidon Officer is a different unit and a bit more expensive than Alke. Dakinis are cheaper than Myrmidons, but then they are actually remotes, so you would need to deploy a hacker. Probably the best option is the Deva+Devabot, but their are sold in boxes of 2 Devas and 2 Debabots. Can you use proxys?

Our community does encourage reasonable proxying, so I may purchase a starter set and just use a lot of counts-as, if only for my wallet's initial benefit. I doubt anyone would have a serious issue with me using Dakinis as Mymidons, at least for the first couple tiers.

Ok, I had time to look into it a little bit more. Assuming that you get a Steel Phalanx starter + the Support box:

ASSAULT SUBSECTION
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 6 0 1

EUDOROS Lieutenant Mk12, Nanopulser, Zero-V Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 40)
THORAKITES Submachine gun, Chain Rifle, Flash Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (13)
THORAKITES Submachine gun, Light Rocket Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 25)
THORAKITES Submachine gun, Chain Rifle, Flash Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (13)
NETROD Electric Pulse. (4)
NETROD Electric Pulse. (4)

1.5 SWC | 99 Points

Open with Army 4

That give you a short range list, with 2 longer range weapons (the Mk12 and the Rocket launcher). The netrods give you 2 more orders. That's all they do. Literally.
You can add Atalanta to go to 150 pts.

If you get the Aleph Starter Pack, and you proxy the bots, you could try:
ALEPH
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 6 0 0

DASYU Lieutenant Combi Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (2 | 35)
DEVA Combi Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (23)
THORAKITES Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Flash Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (16)
THORAKITES Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Flash Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (16)
NETROD Electric Pulse. (4)
NETROD Electric Pulse. (4)

2 SWC | 98 Points

Open with Army 4

If you go that way, you can replace the Dasyus by an Asura at 150 pts and build a list without proxying. You won't have many orders, but it should work.

Wow! Thank you so much for the llists . That's exactly what I was looking for.

And yes, I'm aware of Netrods and their awesome functionality