I still prefer a choice of when to drop as I have found situations where it makes more sense for me to hold the reinforcements back. For example that previous Firefight game I mentioned, I had the option to call my reinforcements as player 2 on turn 2, but I elected not to as they had no viable targets with their potential order pool. If they arrived they would literally achieve nothing but create a huge target to get counter dropped on turn 3 by player 1. My window to get back into the game that I was behind in required me utilising my reinforcements to have the final say in the game, if I was forced to drop them turn 2 it would simply allow player 1 to maintain his momentum. If I had the option for the reinforcements to arrive piecemeal, it actually would make sense to start dropping them in. Like I could afford for 1 unit to drop in and start doing some classifieds, but being forced to commit the entire team would have been bad. If I had the option to deploy 1 unit turn 2, then 3 more units turn 3 that would have worked. As previously stated I do agree certain missions need considerations taken into account for last turn drops. Missions like Frontline should just force drops by turn 2 as a mission specific rule, it's an easy enough solution.
Last-turn drops for Player 2 have been getting a lot of feelsbad feedback. It does seem like mandatory drop when triggered gives Player 1 at least some ability to mitigate that, so it should probably stay that way.
I think this is an unnecessary one size fits all response. It's very mission specific where it matters. Better to adjust the missions where it needs to be fixed, which, as mentioned is an incredibly easy fix. The opposite response has several issues: Lowers player agency and decision making, which is a core aspect of Infinity. Puts even more power in player 1's hand about dictating turn 1 alpha strikes, which is already a problem. They don't also need the ability to force reinforcements to deploy on the turn they dictate. Greater chance player 2 gets railroaded by momentum. Situations like finding yourself in LoL while also being forced to feed your opponent all your irregular reinforcements isn't good.
I agree the mission do need to change, being able to drop your Reinforcements last on Turn 3 as Player 2 in a zone control mission is as close to an auto-win condition that I've seen so far. This is an extremely feelbad situation for Player 1, hopefully missions will change to better balance scoring. That said, we know CB is very slow, if not unwilling to shakeup and make drastic changes to missions where they are stagnant and boring, and extremely favored to one player over another. Given that making reinforcements have to drop when a player suffers 40% casualties seems like the correct way to go.
I'll give my feedback without first checking what others have said. List building process for a game of reinfocements is a lot more time consuming and labor intensive as you are doing two operational "cells" for the game. When trying mentally to simplify it into 250 pts + 100 pts doesn't really work as that single-option Commlink-trooper just breaks the inherent faction synergy already. Maybe this is intended, yet it makes things more convoluted. This makes me feel tired before the game even begins and I'm less keen on playing the upcoming game. However, I wanted to try this out and see how it goes. I'd prefer there to be interesting commlink-options. When the moment for reinforcements to arrive happens the game flow stops. Now we have: "One hour later... Deployment phase revisited". Afterwards the game continues again. With some models appearing on the mid-field. This is mentally the same thing that during a chess game after certain number of moves have been made and then someone re-orders some of the pieces and game continues. This takes time to re-orient into the game when we could have just continued the game as it was with more traditional game mode. I get the feeling that previously familiar rules like Parachutist, Aerial Deployment and Hidden Deployment to name a few alredy cover the "get additional models on the table" part in more elegant and flow friendly way. They are thoughtful tools for a task compared to the "bring me a bag of hammers! Now!"-blob that arrives on pre-determined time. Overall and in general - for me - the sense of game flow gets disrupted when using reinforcements-mode. Yet it does not really add that much into the game compared to the extra time it takes to plan lists, extra time and flow-disruption that comes from doing middle-game deployment and having to now re-orient for having a bunch of extra troopers within their own bag of specialities outside the faction/sectorial identity. It is just... Clump of models on my side of the field. Now... What to do with them. Other thoughts on the concept and future of reinforcements rather than : Reinforcements might work as a concept if it could be possible to play - for example - 300 pts normal list vs 350 pts reinforcements list. I think someone else came to this conclusion earlier. Hmm... Robert Shepherd mentioned this on one of his videos. I hope I recall that correctly. I've seen some discussions live and elsewhere how reinforcements change some pre-conceived aspect of the game (some call this... <add-a-thing>-meta) for the better when in reality it is just that reinforcements mode have just forced those pre-conceptions to be thought anew thus leading to change in collective thinking. This happens every time players get out of their comfort zone and try (willingly or by some outside force) something be it a rules change or not. Getting out of the comfort zone and trying something new or different is the hardest thing for a human to do because: Learning new is always difficult. Thus to my eyes and enjoyment of problem solving, reinforcements just adds more models on the table. I love the concept art of the reinforcements packs and models! I'll get them to collect and paint even if I don't have the opportunity or tenacity to play with reinforcements :D Games have been fun but they would have been so without reinforcements. Cheers all!
My biggest issue is commlink. I don't want to spend any points on it, and certainly not on any special weapon cost. I'm not sure what the point of this rule is, especially as it doesn't do anything other than be free agent I guess, and its already hard enough to make a list for 250pts and a list for 100pts without having to include one guy who honestly just kinda sucks and is a tax. The profiles for reinforcements are great ALTHOUGH I find the lack of any sub 13pt option for most factions really annoying. Like if I have 90pts of guys... that's it! Nothing to take. Give me an AVA 1 flash pulse bot or something so it's less arduous Triggering on 100pts doesn't feel right. Summarise: commlink is an unwelcome tax, list building is arduous, 100pt trigger too high imo.
If I was to suggest a change I'd say that you nominate a guy to be your commlink and they can choose to transfer into the reinforcements group when they come on if you like. No points cost no additional spend. Then you just say how many slots a faction gets for troops. Haqq 17, Nomads 16, PanO 15 etc etc etc. That's what happens with how many Haris teams you get, it's just a thing for that sectoral/faction. So you just do the same thing and imo strip out commlink as a profile skill choice. I think right away that would hugely improve the game experience.
Played my third game of Reinforcements yesterday. Takeaways from the game: 1) For 3 games in a row now, reinforcements for both players have not dropped until turn 3. Both myself and my opponents have found it extremely hard to trigger reinforcements by killing 100 points. The result of this is that Reinforcements arrive on turn 3 and end up just sitting around securing a zone, maybe getting 1-2 kills. Both myself and my opponents have agreed that playing a standard 300 point game would have been better instead of having 1 turn where 5 models appear and do 2) Player 2 reinforcements arriving at the bottom of Turn 3 are an auto win for that player as there can just land in a zone and autodominate it to win, or land prone next to a button and push it to win without triggering any AROs. This is extremely disheartening and unenjoyable for both player, for player 1 most of all though as there is absolutely no counter-play available without AROs being allowed for landing. 3) The large amount of ITS missions have scoring occur at the end of the game through zone control (Frontline, Acquisition, Cryogenics, Supremacy, Quadrant Control) or have exclusion zones preventing deployment of Reinforcements (Countermeasures, Rescue, Unmasking), with the remainder of the missions being quite boring and unenjoyable to play (Firefight, Annihilation). Supplies is probably the only decent mission mission out of the pack for use with Reinforcements. If CB want Reinforcements to be played more then a drastic shakeup of the ITS missions is needed, or brand new Reinforcements missions, otherwise I think we are going to see a trend in second player winning the majority of games for Reinforcements tournaments. 4)Commlink, is still terrible implemented, and is still a triple tax that is unenjoyable in list building. This either needs to be removed or be put onto other models so 5) Considering how bad I'm finding the experience so far with reinforcements, I will not be playing the Reinforcements mod again. Reinforcements as a whole is an interesting idea, but it has been poorly thought out by CB from a competitive aspect (player 2 getting an autowin) in certain missions is unacceptable from a design standpoint, and the majority of missions just do not work for this reason. Combined with list building problems due to the poorly thought out commlink, I'm done until CB make some drastic changes that are sorely needed to issue that should have been obvious in development. The fact that these issues were not picked up when the majority of competitive players saw these issues at release makes me even wonder if CB knows how to play their own game. Please do better CB, I want to continue playing this game rather than finding another game to play because balance issues and poorly thought out rules exist.
I've played probably around 12 games of Reinforcements so far. Most of those have been Supplies - as others have said, Supplies is one of the very few missions that seem playable with Reinforcements. So my comments below reflect the best-case scenario of playing the best mission in the game (we all love Supplies!) that is also the best mission for the Reinforcements mechanic. (Of course, the next season's mission pack hasn't come out yet. Perhaps we'll see new made-for-Reinforcements missions). My feelings on the Extra haven't changed much since my earlier post in this thread, so mostly I'm going to be reiterating and elaborating on some points based on having played more games. Commlink Commlink is fine. It's silly, and it could be a lot more interesting, but it's fine. Look, suppose there was no Commlink, but CB said "the recommended play mode is a 240 points 4.5 SWC Main list." There would be some raised eyebrows and some "wow, you must have done some really fine-grained playtesting" comments, but we'd all happily play 240/4.5. That's mostly what Commlink does (that and mildly favours most sectorials over vanilla, which is fine). Like RobertShepherd said, it's just like paying the hydro bill. You open Army, click Add on your Commlink, and go on to build your list. I got used to it pretty quickly and I can't honestly claim that it bothers me that much. Turns 1 and 2 So far, 240/4.5 feels like an interesting points level to play at. In Supplies, players are focusing more on the mission where at 300 points we would just kill first, grab boxes later. That seems to be partly because alpha striking is more difficult, and partly because you need to spend some orders on defense for when the Reinforcements arrive. Will this be the case in the long term? It's far too early to tell. If the Extra keeps getting played, it will take quite a while for players to work out all the options and best strategies. Maybe playing the mission will turn out to be best, or maybe we'll find new and better ways to alpha strike. Who knows! For now, it seems good. If nothing else, the Anathematic/Bit&Kiss/Bultrack list at least seems to be dead and buried in Reinforcements, which is a big plus. I've quite enjoyed the first two turns of my Reinforcements games. They feel refreshing and different. Turn 3 Then on turn 3, the Reinforcements drop and the game turns into an utter chore. Just a tedious grind. You drop a fireteam in the midfield and spend X orders driving it straight forward into my defense. Then I drop a fireteam in the midfield and spend Y orders driving it straight into your Reinforcements and your defense. Not everyone feels as negatively about the Reinforcements phase as I do. That may be because I've never enjoyed the aggressive fireteam playstyle. I'm a vanilla player at heart - I like flexible options, multiple attack vectors, flanking attacks. I don't like charging in with five troopers that I have to keep repositioning over and over. It's a perfectly good playstyle and I'm glad it exists and that some players play it, but it's not for me. My biggest complaint about Reinforcements is that it forces every player to play the same playstyle on turn 3. Conclusion I can understand why people are optimistic about Reinforcements, because of the way 240/4.5 shakes up the meta. But for me, the Reinforcements mechanic itself is turning out to be a deal-breaker. I'll play a few more games, but I'm close to reaching the point where I go back to normal Infinity. I love Infinity and didn't think it needed a drastic change in the first place (sorry if that's an unpopular opinion!), so I won't shed any tears if Reinforcements doesn't work out and we all go back to playing the game I love.
I agree with everything except that the Commlink costs 20+ points for most factions. Meaning you're playing a 230 point list at best. Some sectorials it's only a 10 point tax, but foe others it's close to that 20-22 point tax.
I have played 6 games now, and it's been rough. I'm not having fun with this. I play wonderful people and I love getting games in with them, but this is not how i want to be playing infinity with them. The stringent list-building requirements mean you play 250pt lists which feel more like 200pts. I personally like the 200pt level, but this just feels muddled. Commlink +X is useless unless you take an fragile list for the express purpose of getting that extra order, and in many factions thats almost impossible to do. I also means I end up with games where I have orders spread out across small groups and can't utilize them well. Maybe with like 10 command tokens instead of 4? It's hard to get enough orders into 100pt reinforcement groups using profiles that don't seem to have been costed to fit into 100pts. The "comeback" mechanism ends up feeling like a way for whoever did the damage to put an extra boot to someone who is down. Or if neither team does a terrible amount of damage in turn 1 or 2A, then it becomes anticlimactic on turn 3. On the positive side, the new reinforcements mini-sectorals are interesting and I do want to get to explore them more. I am happy that CB is willing to try something crazy like this.
I would also like to note that, as a rule, I do not visit the Infinity forums. I logged on and posted here with the express purpose of posting that I am not having a good time with Reinforcements. It feels like I am doing homework for a school project, not like I am playing a fun and interesting game. I am done playing Reinforcements now, until the mode is redone. I will not play in any events with the game mode in its current iteration enabled. I won't host any serious events with it either. Because it isn't a fun game experiance. We can invoke "balance" all we want, but first and foremost it needs to be fun, or else what's the point in playing at all?
I actually think that increased tax on factions which have a ton of very-cheap LI link fillers is a good balancing measure. Rokots with core Volkolaks are already skewed enough, they get even more skewed when you're trying to pack value into 250 points instead of 300.
It's causing list building issues though and it's being received overwhelmingly negatively because it feels bad with absolutely no way to get around that. It's a mechanic that more than likely must shift dramatically in how its designed when this much of the community dislikes it in the current iteration.
Oh I get that about Commlink overall, and agree. I just think making it a bit more expensive for Rokots than for Celestial Guard for example is a good balancing measure, if stripped down to 1-5 points instead of 9-14 points or whatever it is now. (Personally I'd prefer a two-level Commlink thing where level one gives +0 and no swapability but costs 1 point max, and level two gives +X troops and lets you swap groups but costs points and SWC)
I mean realistically the base skill shouldn't cost points, the same as the LT skill. Doesn't make sense to charge people for the worst version of a mandatory item. The cost is already baked into the fact that you have to pay points for this unit in the first place instead of something else. Who really wants to pay 11pts for an extra Zhanshi? Nobody, really. They'd rather take something else in the slot. The tax is already there at 11pts, you don't need to jack it up again for no real benefit. Upgrades on the other hand should cost where appropriate. I wanna address this because it's got pros and cons to making it like selecting a Datatracker: Pros: Relatively simple, low friction and easy to implement in the short term Easy for players to build lists around and least likely approach to cause list building stagnation Cons: Harder to future proof in terms of balance. Every future profile released needs to be considered whether allowing it to jump into a fresh pool of orders and rambo with them is balanced. More likely to be potentially problematic with infiltrating/camo attack pieces/specialists Removes the option to provide unique faction flavoured upgrades and profiles, like Ariadnans getting unique access to +2 options right now to better represent their quantity over quality approach and better define a low tech faction. Making it work like a datatracker prevents expanding on this idea. Personally I'm against making it a datatracker system.
Okay, good point. I'm convinced of that I guess Though I also still appreciate the novelty of implementing an arbitrary squeeze into less troops slots and some mandatory basic LI; I think the game is a bit more interesting when you have to improvise with at least some stuff that isn't hyper-optimized. But I do think making swapability into the Reinforcements group and the bonus to number of Troop slots cost 5-10 points and 0.5 SWC is appropriate. Making players have some small opportunity cost for increased late-game swing of orders and troops quantity feels balanced, but that is purely gut feeling.
Sure, upgrades over a baseline should cost something. The nature of the game is the tighter you squeeze points the more hyper optimised you have to get, and taken to the absolute cut throat extreme the tighter you go the more you have to just make a choice to just forego things and pray you didn't need that tool. More available points to spend = more room for less optimisation. I've spoken about this at length about playing 400 points vs 300, more profiles and fireteams are competitively viable at 400 compared to 300 points. It's the exact same reasoning why units like the Hulang or the TR baggage bots are kinda meh to garbage at 300 actually excel at 400.
Had a game of Panikroom last saturday. We tested RF the third time. This time RF were devastating. Could clean the room in R2 (an unfortunated crit on my Bluewolf, lead to his early unconcious state) with Sora Kwon and put my opponent in LoL. His RF troops struggle to get the game back. So this is a mission, that favors RF troops (we opt against Unmasking, because of the exclusive zone, but will test a game with EZ also). Comlink guy still feels like something that let you think: Realy? For what. I play a mod here, why you punish me for that. Comlink is no fun. Make it free or at least only 0,5 SWC for the +1 / +2 and make the ability available to other models than the plain LI linetrooper.
Making me take an Alguacile as one of my ten guys is bad enough. Making me take a 20pt 0.5 Alguacile with a combi rifle and spec op is even worse. I do not want to take this guy! He sucks. Why do I have to spend my hard earned points on this?
