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I started playing Infinity about 2 weeks ago. So far, I think it's a great game system but I've got 2 games under my belt forming that opinion.

I picked Pan O because I liked the models. Then I found out they could run a pretty elite, Terminator-type killteam list effectively and I feel very good about my faction pick.

I'm running @ 300 pts:
Father Knight Lieutenant
Aquila Guard with HMG (and popped collar trenchcoat)
Nisses with multisniper
Swiss guard with Missile Launcher

Couple of Bolt paramedics
Couple of Akalis that walk on board edge and shoot enemy sniper in the back of head with shotguns.

So it's pretty straightforward. I've got these beefy heavy weapons guys with paramedic backup, and I've got these infiltrators that try to pressure enemy models into a midrange firefight where my generally heavier models have advantage. 2-0 so far.

Reading the forums, it sounds like 'this is terrible' (or something) and other factions have ways of just walking all over this gameplan in N3.

I don't know if that's generic forum DOOOOOM! or if there's something obvious I'm missing (due to scenario, or model selection, or game mechanics). I've found that I'm generally outnumbered 1.5:1 or even 2:1, but provided that I hug cover and my general 16"+ rangeband superiority, my models can outshoot a 1.5:1 numbers disparity.

It kind of falls back on the same line as a discussion we had around here about TAGs earlier it is the "Eggs in one Basket".

They are bemoaning your list because you have a massive chunk of points tied into a few models, which is generally not a very good idea and I am guessing you only have 8 orders whereas you should be operating at 10 for a 300pt game.


I can tell you come from 40k and there is no Terminator list in Infinity, ever model can die by weight of fire and you have to many order intensive models and not enough orders to use them effectively. This allows players to maneuver on you very easily, a most Infinity game are fairly quick, you don't want pricey models just doing nothing.

Also if you are new to the game, I suggest you ramp it back to 100-150pts to learn before going full bore into 300pts.

I find I'm playing for the reactive turn more than the active, and my momentum builds through the game. I use terrain and the Swiss Guard's camo to put myself in a place where my opponent is going to begin giving up a lot of AROs when they attempt to press forward, or clump up and become victim to shotguns, explosives, whatevers. My Aquila Guard's L3 visor and the Commandos begin immediately pressuring my opponent's specialists to give them a Very Bad Day and basic troopers ultimately seem to lose a 1.5:1 shootout.

I'm coming more from a Warmachine mindset of complicated turn-planning and c-c-c-COMBO! building. So playing for AROs with overlapping fields of fire, 'breaking' my opponent by Discovering their camo before they do mine (L3 visor), keeping my HMG, multisniper, and rocket launcher alive as long as possible has generally been working. That could be me adapting to a new ruleset faster than my opponents.

I believe that forums are generally more right than wrong, and I can definitely understand how my opponent having 2 or even 3 times more orders than I do if I lose a couple models early is a big drawback. I don't really understand how a massed charge of derps is my biggest problem, though. Even if my opponent uses a combined order to put derps forward, the single ARO from each specialist heavy should put me on roughly equal footing, no?

To a large degree I can understand my smaller model count having to maintain 'ideal game state' where I want to operate in my preferred rangeband and maintain cover (whenever I get shot at without cover, my guys are simply dead).

They typically also critique list from an ITS perspective as well, where you need specialist to claim objectives.

They are going to look at your list at the only specialist you have are the 2 bolts and if they can eliminate them you can no longer win the match, also you are incredibly susceptible to hacking with 4 HI, so there is the potential that half you army can be locked down and be able to do nothing.

I would reduce down your HIs and pump up your specialist count, engineer and hacker comes to mind.

Your list looks fun for a kill game, but anything else it is going to lack.

 NuclearMessiah wrote:
They typically also critique list from an ITS perspective as well, where you need specialist to claim objectives.

Okay, now I can definitely understand the limitations. If I have to spend aggressively to get my 2 docs up the table for objectives (where they will probably die), then I give up positioning and orders and probably AROs as my position erodes.

Are the scenarios in the core book the ones commonly played?

Isn't routing your enemy's list generally a 'win' by itself?

 sourclams wrote:

 NuclearMessiah wrote:
They typically also critique list from an ITS perspective as well, where you need specialist to claim objectives.

Okay, now I can definitely understand the limitations. If I have to spend aggressively to get my 2 docs up the table for objectives (where they will probably die), then I give up positioning and orders and probably AROs as my position erodes.

Are the scenarios in the core book the ones commonly played?

Isn't routing your enemy's list generally a 'win' by itself?

The scenarios change each season, we are awaiting the ITS 2015 ones, I don't have any tourney experience myself but others around here do, but if I recall, if you table your opponent it is considered a draw and if you force your table to retreat the game ended at that point and objectives are tallied.

CB wants you to play for objectives versus trying to kill everyone, hence the draw rule.

If someone is in Retreat! at the start of their turn the game automatically ends at the end of their turn. You tally up the points from there.

CB put it in place to stop people from board wiping on turn 1 with AD and TAGs then scoring max points at their leisure. It's kind of aggravating to me since it can negate the advantage of going second to get the last turn. I really wish it ended on the game round instead of player turn.

I'd have to play it, obviously, but I'm not sure I like that game structure. Generally I prefer to 'feel' like my guys are important to me and my opponent's guys are important to him. Throwing your list zerglings away to enable a specialist to push button/escape is okay when it's rare, but I don't like that as a general win condition or play style.

I'd have to play it out before I made my mind up though. So far it's a very smooth game system.

Couple things at work here.

The largest part is that most folks assume ITS on the forums and a list like that is pretty dry on specialists (and orders in general). Most folks don't like going in to an ITS mission with any less than 4-6 specialists and 12+ orders. The 3 turn limit really puts a crunch on smaller lists to be as efficient as possible with order usage and movement in order to get to the objectives with enough spare orders to try and achieve them if the first roll doesn't go off (quite common). So a lot of ITS forces are geared toward being 14+ orders with ~6 specialists.

Now ITS does have some missions where you don't need to grab so many specialists, in those missions smaller lists aren't punished as much since the higher killing power is actually a boon.

In general terms, not sure on the exact makeup of your force and whether or not it hits 10 orders, but that tends to be another oft un-spoken list-building thing (Infinity had a lot of these in 2nd Edition and still has several obvious ones in N3). But in general, so long as you are hitting 10 orders at the 300 point level, you are mostly doing fine.

It isn't a huge issue to go in with less orders against an opponent who isn't quite as good as you. But against an opponent on the same skill level or higher, you will begin to feel the pinch. You can still win with an 8 order list at 300 points, but it will be more difficult than it needs to be.

My only personal issue with your list is one of order efficiency and cannibalizing your order pool. A healthy order pool is one that has enough "spare" orders to go around. Some units in Infinity are what one may term "order hungry". That is, given the chance they will devour 3+ orders all on their own. These units tend to be things like fancy heavy infantry (Father Knight, Aquila Guard, Swiss Guard), aerial deployment troops (Akalis), skirmishers, and other nasty units.

As it stands, your list contains a lot of hungry units in it. This means that you wont be able to fully utilize each of them every turn. Give the Swiss too many orders and the Aquila will be more limited in the tasks it can perform that turn. In general, it means that getting a bad roll will affect you a lot more. Getting a bad miss with one unit means you need to make the tough decision and cut your losses or spend another order to try again. This will leave you fairly order-starved if things don't go to plan. Especially early on when your Swiss is in Hidden Deployment and the Akalis are off the table.

It is doable, but very unforgiving of any kind of mistake. Not terrible, but not what many consider to be ideal either. But if it is working for you, who is anyone else to argue. Some metas are open to different list-building constraints.

Basically, ITS perspective, few additional things on top of my head.

- What specialists am I fielding?

Forward deploying specialist that can capture objective on the first turn and possibly deploy mines or suppressive fire is in high demand. Completing classified objectives is also somewhat important aspect.

- Board control, do I have it?

Rather than forward elimination, you need to focus on locking down the objective. It comes down to simple order economics, preventing my opponent to casually walking to the objectives and claiming them. This can be achieved in many ways, from cheap warbands, mine spam, total reaction units and new suppressive fire.

- The importance of mobility

Comes back to order economics, the faster I can race to the objectives, less orders I need to spend. With better mobility I'm able to pick better position to engage the opponent's model. You can somewhat compensate this by making larger order pool.

"Couple of Akalis that walk on board edge and shoot enemy sniper in the back of head with shotguns."

I dont see this happening. I love drop troopers, but mine will be collecting dust.

You cant drop in enemy Deployment zone, half the time you cant drop in the middle zone, and you cant drop on any piece of terrain, even tops of buildings.

So at the best, you can drop down in the middle somewhere, and it takes a whole order

Your list is fine in most asepcts you just will want more specialists and a variety.

Check out the 4 missions in the N3 book, specialists are what you need for many of your victory conditions....oh heck ill go over them.

Firstly - all missions in infinity provide 10 vicotry points to fight over usually

secret objectives - You will pick one of the four charts and roll on it for your objectives. If you get one you cannot complete then that sucks for you. Its why people say you need a variety of specialists so you can do the secret missions. In N3 they ahve helped make this not as bad with the high value target mission you can always replace one of your secrets with and it requires NO specialists but it is hard to accomplish.

Scenario 1 Annhilation - Winning is based on how much you kill and how much of yours survives.

3 points max if you kill over 250
3 points max if you have 250 survive
then you also take 2 secret objectives (require specialists) and EACH objective is worth 2 points.

Scenario 2 Armory - King of the hill scenario with a twist in that you can loot the armory for cool gear and looting gives victory points

Whoever has the most points inside the armory each turn gains 1 victory point (3 points max over 3 turns)
Whoever controls the armory at the end of turn 3 gains 3 victory points
Whoever uses speciliasts to access the most loot from the crates in the armory gets 2 victory points (need specialists of any kind)
You also have 2 secret objectives worth 1 points a piece (you need specialists for these)

Scenario 3 Supremacy - A take and hold quarters mission. Center of the board between deployment zones is divided into 4 quadrants with a console in the center of each quadrant

End of round - gain 2 objective points if you hold more quadrants than your enemy
OR
gain 1 point if you are tied (2 quadrants each)
Hack a console for 1 objective point (4 consoles 4 possilbe points. If both players hack the same console at the end of the game you roll for all specialists you have alive and the winner gets the point that console would provide) Specialist required and hackers can do it easier)
1 secret objective for 1 point (specialists required unless you do HVT)

Interesting tactics - blow up the consoles! with d charges or anti material weapons

Scenario 4 - Nimbus Zone - Interesting scenario with a band of saturation and low vis in the center of the table which is being created by nimbus antaennae. Your goal is to drop the antaenae and hack the consoles in the center. Get to one of 3 consoles that are dead center equa-distant between both players.

Hack the consoles for 2 victory points (specialist required, hackers can do it better) Three consoles three chances for 2 vp each (both players can get them)
Disconnect (do not destroy) nimbus antaennae and if you disconnect more than the opponent you get 2 victory points (6 antenna to go for) If all 6 go down the nimbus zone goes down as well. Specialist required, engineers do it best
End of game if you control (base to base contact) more consoles with a specialist at the end of the game you get 1 vp. (specialist required)
Each player has 1 secret objective (specialist required unless you do HVT)

str00dles1 wrote:
"Couple of Akalis that walk on board edge and shoot enemy sniper in the back of head with shotguns."

I dont see this happening. I love drop troopers, but mine will be collecting dust.

You cant drop in enemy Deployment zone, half the time you cant drop in the middle zone, and you cant drop on any piece of terrain, even tops of buildings.

So at the best, you can drop down in the middle somewhere, and it takes a whole order

Airborne Deployment is a free order, AD troops still generate an order off the table that can only be used to deploy. Hidden deployment works the same way. You can combat jump into terrain, ie hills, as long as you can see into them clearly since the rule specifies "free of scenery" not free of terrain and the rulebook makes a distinction between the two. Also the rules seem to suggest that you can combat jump onto buildings with enough space based on the Landing Aid rule on page 170.

Anyways AD requires more thought if your opponent leaves no open table edges or empty spaces to drop into. If my opponent didn't leave a hole during deployment I deploy on the second or later turns and create openings for my jump troops. Either by pulling troops to the center of the table to deal with threats or by picking off the over watching troops. And if it's packing a Spitfire/HMG landing the middle of the table still means most things are in the +3 range. Heck I've even held an HMG Ekdromoi in reserve for three turns and only walked him in off the edge just to score while playing the Frontlines scenario. He didn't fire a single shot just walked in as my last order but he still won me the game.