On the other hand we just had VIRD win a satellite with 70 players, so they're clearly pretty good in the hands of an admittedly very good player who knows how to PanO excellently. You can run numbers on the Kamau through the dice calc all day but that's just one aspect. Helots and Zulus and Cutters for example can give quite powerful ROIs, with the former two at least being quite cheap for capability IMHO, and they all synergise well with the Kamau, which regardless adds a capability not really seen in quite that form before I think. It's less about odds, and more about capability - eg being able to lock factions reliant on smoke down if they are not quite careful. In any case I guess we will see. Despite claims to the contrary, there are ways to look at objective data about it (eg ITS results). The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. It is strange to me that people who find VIRD intuitively fine are sometimes people who yelped about Securitate having veteran, like that was somehow OP (!), and might yet yelp again if we see intensely strong pieces from upcoming sectorials like Ramah. Which if VIRD et al are any indication, we might. in any case, I'm sure it will work out fine in the end, it generally does.
Well yes, I was literally 1 Reset away from taking first place at the German Satellite with 50 players (changed the game from Major victory to Tie), I don't use that as data to say that IA is a particularly strong sectorial (I think IA is good, FYI). Helots have no MOD's and honestly they were shockingly easy to deal with. I'm not saying that VIRD is a bad or a weak sectorial by any stretch of the imagination but Im just saying I've seen so many people push this narrative of how this is a "nawmawgawd instant S-tier" sectorial and honestly.. it isn't. It's a strong and decent sectorial and if you want to enter broken territory, go with the 2 first Vanilla armies I mentioned above. My main point here is that I take issue with VIRD being some sort of a poster child of power creep and I also think it robs some of the merit of winner of CanCon. Just my 2 cents though.
I don't think it robs any merit at all. The best player is obviously likely to choose a strong list that they can play well. So looking at what strong players are picking to play is probably as good a metric of what is strong as any. Actual results are actual data though, whatever your opinion may be. I don't really find those two vanilla armies so hard, so that's kind of a wash anyway.
@Hachiman Taro you can’t argue with a guy who starts his argument by claiming people who disagree with him are on the spectrum. However, I agree with most of what you’re saying. I think the creep is pretty obvious. In time, ITS data should give us a better idea of how things line up.
My dude, I’m not even disagreeing with him and I find your misrepresentation absurd. There’s nowhere you can quote me where I call people autistic for disagreeing with me, you could argue that I made a tasteless joke but nothing else. Also, you may have deleted your posts about this but you’re still on the record for belittling a person for taking a degree on something you found laughable, so let’s not pretend you have any moral high ground here. Also stop poisoning the well here, I found @Hachiman Taro points sound and valid and I’m merely exchanging my opinion with him. You’re the one stuck with a toxic mind set if you think every exchange of opinion is about “defeating” the other person in an argument.
This is a classic tabletop chicken-or-egg scenario. If an army wins a big event... Did it win because it's superior? Or because it was taken by a superior player? The answer's probably somewhere between the two. Pulling off ITS results, the Las Vegas Open Satellite was last week too. 5 rounds, of course. Top 5 were 2x OSS, VIRD, Vanilla CA and Vanilla ALEPH. The next 5 places included Tohaa, Steel Phalanx, Vanilla Haqq iirc. There are some additional challenges here too, because those of us who play tend to end up biased by our experiences. For example, I don't view Vanilla CA as an inherently dominant army, but I also play regularly against one of the top ranked players in the world, who is a superior CA player, and we're roughly 50:50. I play multiple armies... He always plays Vanilla CA. As a result, it's hard to disentangle myself from the notion that CA can be tactically dominant, though I can rationalize that they're probably not. But this ends up being circular, because it reinforces the opposite notion... That a superior player can make a mid-tier army become dominant through their play, and that army choice is a lot less important than the player behind the wheel. The most obvious takeaway, of course, is that Posthumans are strong / are perceived to be strong. No surprise there... 100% utilization of Posthumans in 3 of 5 top-placing lists is absurd. Both Vanilla lists relied heavily on Vanilla-only choices too (Achilles + Posthumans, Charontid + Daturazi.) Pretty interesting.
Player skill excluded, I don't even think it has to do with an army being stronger than others as much as it does "this army is well-suited for this series of missions." At top levels of play, I would expect many of the top 5/10 of any one tournament to be playing similar armies but for the top placing armies overall to vary wildly based on what missions are in the tournament.
yeah, i didn't like the Autism comment that much (I know several people in wargaming who are on the spectrum, and they're excellent people deserve as much respect as anyone else) but I didn't take it that way. Hopefully robust discussions like this help us gain different perspectives on different issues though (even if it does get slightly heated at times). That's a lot more productive than just feeding our own egos in front of a hostile audience. I feel like a single tournament result only tells you that a faction is strong enough to win with those missions in the hands of a good player. By itself, it doesn't necessarily show relative faction strength. I'm not surprised at that distribution though. Newness and "hotness" count for something too. What faction won the German one?
Less the unit, more the phenomenon that 3 out of 5 top-placing lists all included max AVA on the same unit. That's not a common statistic for Infinity... Feels much more reminiscent of 40k or WM/H.
I'd imagine the ALEPH/OSS lists that did poorly did too, though. If list diversity is your goal, then yeah, it's a problem, though, I agree.
There is a certain point where "Posthumans" is more similar to "Warbands" or "HI" than "Intruders" or "Kamau". So it's probably more telling that the combination for those Posthumans was (I'm assuming) probably Proxy Mk 1, Proxy Mk 2, Proxy Mk 5.
Sure. But that has more to do with camo infiltrators being, in general, an undercosted option in Infinity, and the particular interaction with Posthumans and Hidden Deployment where you don't pay the main opportunity cost associated with Hidden Deployment.
Top 9 in order (because I can’t for the life of me remember who played what faction at #10): Vanilla Nomads Invincible Army Military Order Vanilla Nomads Vanilla Haqq VIRD Vanilla Haqq VIRD Bakunin.
Surprised not to see Aleph in the top 10. Helps contextualise your focus on Vanilla Nomads / Haqq tho. Anything special in overview about the missions / the lists of those particular factions?
Well, yes and no. My focus on Haqq has definitely been coloured the event but with Nomads it merely confirms what I already asserted awhile back. I started this game with Vanilla Nomads and I've only played YJ slightly more than I have played Vanilla Nomads and I can honestly say my army (Nomads) feels way too strong. With the addition of KB and the 12 point puppetlady (who I usually bring alone) that has counter-intelligence, as well as access to 2 Krakots & Libertos, along with an extremely cost efficient Heckler Red Fury. Nomads now have access to so much crap that it feels over the top now. Aleph were actually very well represented but I suspect that there are 2 key missions which affected their performance (this is pure speculation on my part though): Transmission Matrix and Show of Force, which I suspect Nomads have too much hacking superiority aswell as possessing enemy TAG's and Haqq going the opposite route by being practically unhackable.
Sad we got one Yu Jing on the list. Good we got one Yu Jing on the list! Strange theres no TAK or Tohaa, btw. Im getting curious.
hmm interesting. I haven't really tried much vanilla (Nomads or Haqq) since HSN3. An a lot of those things are obviously new since then. Maybe I'll pull them out for a try.
