Hi, Really new to the game and haven’t yet decided if I want to play ultra competitive or just paint some nice mini’s (looking through the range though, there aren’t that many I’d hate to paint). Would someone be kind enough to list the factions by competitiveness to help out with my decision?
Infinity is a lot better balanced than most other tt games. you can go pretty much by fluff. also you will probably perform better with a faction that fits your personal preferences and play style. don't start merovingia though^^
The game is really balanced – each faction has sectorials or vanilla builds that are just as competitive as one another. So much of the game relies on personal skill aswell and in turn the difficulty curve of learning it is pretty steep. Be prepared to lose your first couple games and welcome to infinity!
Hello, even when Infinity is well balanced, more than many others games, still it has issues sometimes, and of course, factions more or less easy to play with, but, as others have said before, choose wathever you want. I have to say MO is really cool and easy to buy because the MO Box, but it isn't the most easier to play. They have a really well defined way to do things, so you should learn how to achieve succes with the MO troups. In the other hand you will have a lot of hard troups and few minis in the table, which it isn't bad for beginners :) Enjoy the game.
In approximate order, Vanilla ALEPH, OSS, Tohaa, VIRD, Vanilla CA. Dashat might be up there too. Those are the top contenders. There are arguments about the viability of MO; for some, it's very low-tier, others think middle. Regardless, it's generally considered to not be very new player-friendly.
I gotta moderate @Hecaton and @KoenigLeberwurstIII . This game certainly is significantly more balanced than most any other table top I've played, and I've been playing table top games for over 20 years now. The game also is a lot less flavor of the monthish than others, even new factions are arugably created withthe same or very similar point formulas and old factions regularly get at least small face lifts as new stuff comes out. Players are far more a factor in this game than factions. That said there are contigents of players who always rank things, Hectacon does a good job ranking some more powerful factions (though I'm not sure I would go so far as to say its consenus) I for one am shocked not to see vanilla Ariadna in his list. Really the difference in powercurve is less pronounced so its harder to point at any given faction and say they're the most powerful.
I like list. I am a big believer in ranks and tiers. I think list building is fun and important and one of my favorite parts about playing infinity. I am the kind of man that enjoys net decking lists. With all that said... as a new player you are pretty free to play what you like other then JSA. Hecatons list is probably correct but they are all so close as to not matter as much as your own feel for them.
Whatever factor player skill matters relative to the strength of factions, the strength of factions still matters. At the time of this post someone's in first place in the Interplanetario with Druze, apparently. Go them. But that doesn't necessarily show that Druze isn't the least powerful faction in the game, it just means that player skill matters more than faction strength. But you can never discount faction strength entirely.
I'd let the Rule of Cool guide you, Context. Hecaton's power rankings are essentially correct, but with N4 coming and in Infinity especially, it's not all that relevant. Go for what draws you. The important thing is that you play and get better, because that will serve you more in the long run than some hyper-optimized sectorial.
Any of the "lists" will be subject to change. Starting with the next ITS season and continuing on to the 4th edition next year.
There is no "more competitive faction". There are great competitive players. What does exist are factions with certain difficulties. MO has obvious and easy to identify lieutenants; There are also sectorials (for example some NA2) with very little variety of lists. There are also some sectorials that have something more difficult if they play missions with many objectives to activate by throwing dies against army with 20+ troops. Sorry for my bad english.
Those can be easy and hard at the same time, it's a combo faction like Haqquislam... you can make it work wonderfully, but it can explode in your face. Also, Vanilla Nomads can deploy a 20 orders viable list, and that can bog down a game with ease. CA & Aleph have very strong solo units, and very capable "cheerleaders", and have all the variety they need (CA specially, fitting for a whole galactic civilization). Tohaa has a lot of 2 wound shock inmunne troops, and good combo, but can't reach 5 man fireteams and you need to use well the triads, but has the flexibility of being able to switch members between games... OSS & VIRD are, by my reckoning, easy to play and very forgiving of mistakes (because of different reasons).
Vanilla Ariadna is a weird one, imo. On paper it's very strong, but it doesn't seem to have tournament performances to match. Part of it is that the vanilla Ariadna playerbase is kind of small, but also because it's a high skill floor high skill ceiling faction. You should look at tournament results since their release. OSS is without a doubt the strongest sectorial in the game and probably the second best faction in the game altogether right now.