Guideline/Primer regarding deployment?

I can't think of any, because (as you point out) deployment is so dependant on table, mission, list, who has initiative, what faction your opponent is using etc. Which is one of the things that makes it such a hard part of Infinity.

However, @daboarder's excellent Heavy Infantry primer has some stuff in it that could be relevant: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/a-primer-on-massed-armour-tactics.804/

Anyone else have some tips?

 

I believe I have seen something like that ages ago, so I don’t think there is anything reflecting the current status of the game.

As far as primers go: most considerations for deployment heavily depend on knowing the opponents capabilities. That makes it quite difficult to write an easy to understand primer that covers more than a specific scenario.

Simply deploying in such a manner that, impersonators, superior infiltration (oniwaban, uxia, bran, grunts), hard alpha strikers (achilles, sphinx, AD troops, dog warriord,...) don’t ruin your day can probably take some pages.

ARO duty also heavily depends on what you are facing and your specific game plan: sometimes you need AROs to prevent the opponent from scoring mission points too easily, sometimes you need to protect your DZ, sometimes you have very suppressive AROs that can even lock the opponent in his DZ.

Setting up for a successful turn on your part is maybe a bit more straightforward like putting your camo specialists close to objectives and your big guns in a position that they can start to strike with few orders. But also here there are many execution details like how to deploy links that noone drops out of the link if you activate with the HMG as link leader etc.

My advice would be to ask for faction specific advice in a subforum and work your way from there.

 

Here are some of the pointers I give to newer players:

Do not put too many ARO pieces up. Everything that is up will almost certainly die. Don't try to win the engagement in your reactive turn. Your opponent has better burst and chooses the rangeband. The purpose of your ARO is to deny areas and waste your opponent orders.

Try and cover the 12"-24" side of the table with a unit that cannot be killed from far away. I like to use my flash pulse bots for this. You hide behind a piece of terrain and make sure you have LoF to the side of the table. This helps greatly vs drop trooper walking-in from the side. If they still do, you will at least get 1 unopposed shot followed by a out of cover shot on their next order if they managed to survive.

Vary your angles. Do not make everyone look forward, if your list has short range weapons (shotguns, combi, direct templates) make those troopers cover your sides and back. Try to mentally draw a path that your opponent could take to hurt you and patch it up.

No not clump any of your troopers, this is a very common mistake. Never place your trooper within circular template distance and never line your trooper to be hit by a direct template weapon (or a shotgun). Use the corners to break the LoF between your troopers so that your opponent cannot clip multiple ones.

Know the matchup, this is the hardest one, but once you know the matchup, you know what can and can't happen. If you are playing vs USARF, make sure you see the whole back of the table with a trooper to protect from Van Zant. If your opponent has a lot of extremely impetuous, it might be worth putting an extra sniper up for ARO or keeping it in reserve.

Maximize your reserve. This one is greatly affected by the matchup, but also the table. The reserve is often overlooked by newer players as just another extra model. But you can do some really strong play with it, try and figure out how to maximize it. Some factions have it easy (ALEPH with post-humans), some have to think a little bit more!

 

Considering how important deployment is and how often I have been punished or punished a bad deployment, tips would be very helpful.
It is however very difficult to explain. Diphoration did it pretty impressively.

Maybe some example table and army we could all argue about how to deploy on would do the trick.

 

I’ve started taking pictures of all my games with a top-down view of the table so I can go through the deployment again after the game to see if I would’ve done things differently in hindsight

 

I've gone so far as to recommend that people have 2 models covering left, 2 models covering right, 2 models covering back, and the rest covering front. Per combat group.

Any military veteran only needs one reminder of this, it's basic urban warfare rules (because humans can actually only cover about 90deg arcs, a single fireteam of 4 dudes only has 1 gun facing any direction to be able to maintain a full circle awareness).

 

Oops, forgot another important point: You should try to have models covering each other's blind spots, so that it is very difficult for someone to get a shot at someone's back without taking an ARO from someone else!

 

Something else to add: have a clear idea on how expendable your troops are. In the end, of course, everything is expendable for the sake of the mission, but loosing what in round 1 really messes with your game plan? Try to identify not only long range ARO pieces (probably easy because they were put into that list for that very purpose), mid range ARO pieces (e.g. flashbots used in the way @Diphoration described) and short range ARO pieces ("corner guards", dudes with chainrifle or shotguns with a small price tag, ideally jaguars, caledonian volunteers, any warband if starting second, devabots, auxbots,...) that will protect these units. Then pick the best hiding spots for the most important units.

Example: in my OSS lists I have 4 units that are too valuable for me to trade in gunfighting: Shukra LT (I don't have a chain of command in the list), Apsara Jumper, Davanas HD+ and Posthuman Mk1 Engineer with a Yudbot.
Loosing the Shukra removes 2 regular orders and puts me in loss of LT. Therefore I try to pick the least accessible point for him. The plan is to have him go into suppression fire and maybe do a bit of clean up killing in turn 3. So a save rooftop (not possible to see even with superjump if there is a chance the opponent has that) is a good position here.
Loosing the Apsara slightly reduces the effectivity of my Dakini link team, but since I can still also buff them with my hacker, the loss isn't too great. I usually put her in a very hard to reach place hoping that my opponent might waste too many orders to kill her or even use her to cover a back angle with some suppression fire.
Loosing the Davanas HD+ is bad in case I need white noise in the match up to counter MSV or if I need hacking in general. But she won't be able to perform well for these roles unless I have a reasonable hacking area. My only repeaters are her pitchers and two flash bots, so I usually try to deploy her safe and prone on a building but relatively forward in my DZ because her presence also protects other pieces by deterring HI / TAG alpha strikers.
Loosing the Posthuman Engineer is bad because I often rely on fixing my combat remotes (Dakini HMG, Dakini Sniper, TR bot) back up. But compared to the other models to protect she is a competent gunfigher (BS13, Mimetism, NWI), so I don't want to hide her away. I want my opponent to really work for it if he wants to kill her and keep her in a position where she can quickly walk into relevant zones of the battlefield and be an awesome specialist / gunfighter there.

 

I write about my thought process with regards to deployment in this batrep and will continue to do so

https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/the-art-of-passive-aggressiveness-shas.33938/#post-264414