That sounds incredibly frustrating, and it really would skew the game towards higher BS and negative modifiers. With auto win but no auto wound the lucky hit is distracting the opponent with a shot in a joint, hitting something like a scope or a visor/vision port and throwing off their aim...
As a new player deciding whether to invest into Infinity (and who watched some of your videos by the way, and they are great thanks!) I am intrigued by your comment. Which wargame would you see as having less variance than Infinity ? I admit to not understanding all the discussion here as I don’t get half of the references/abbreviations but I don’t know how I feel about a change to a core mechanic. On the one hand, reading the rules and watching videos, I quickly thought that crits were very random and probably too powerful. On the other, changing something like that upon which a lot of the game must have been balanced around, seems a bit...risky to me. Finally, a quick partially related noob question : I have read somewhere that elite units are not favored because of RNG. Is that really so? I have to admit that I usually like Elite units and while choosing my faction of choice I was gravitating towards those with fewer units per squad, hence fewer orders. Is it inherently too risky and as such unplayable ? I seem to recall reading elsewhere as well that the “norm” was having about 15 orders. Is that right ? Is having something like 10-12 units too risky ? Thanks !
Amount of models in a list should typically depend on mission and faction. Higher is usually more reliable right now, but a well designed and played elite list with one combat group can still win tournaments. The typical issue is that such small lists are pretty bad at defense, if you can get around that you're fine.
Some people feel that because of critical hits any unit can lose a firefight no matter the odds it is not worth it to bring expensive elite units. Even though they have more protection against an unlucky wound. The reason is more that many missions are about “pushing buttons” and the more orders you have for that the better. If you dislike RNG ruining your plans then maybe look elsewhere although I don’t know any similar game that have less RNG. Personally I feel that you can do a lot to lessen the risks. If an unlucky crit completely ruins your plan you made a wrong move somewhere. Probably as early as in your list building. Success in Infinity is built on a foundation of redundancy.
Why would it be frustrating? Putting yourself in advantageous situations is the game. Besides, auto-winning promotes defensive play, skewing the game towards high ARM and cover.
Malifaux' card mechanic means that the cards you draw each round will decreasingly be random and the cheating mechanic also means that you have the resources to make corrective measures to moderately to greatly important actions as well as counter-cheating. You could probably make things happen similar to that using Command Tokens, let's say if you generated Command Tokens similar to how you generate orders and you could use Command Tokens to get a +3 MOD on any one dice rolled, gain a +3 MOD on an ability score for the order, cause a trooper to become Dogged, fix a wider range of states than only POS, and possibly something else. Yes, those would all be fairly huge changes to Infinity, but what I'm trying to illustrate is what shape a limited resource that could mitigate bad dice rolls could potentially take. Incidentally, that would also naturally shift the game away from the current 18+ spam list global meta because you'd be spreading your CTs thin in those lists.
IMO the crit mechanic in infinity is there as a great equalizer (even a 10pts scrubs can be a threat to the mighty avatar, so spray and pray is always on the table as an option though it shouldn't be your first choice), but also as the grain of sand in a well oiled machine, a very real risk of catastrophic failure that forces player out of their comfort zone by unexpectedly killing their favorite toy, and, ultimately, gets them to use options they're not used to because the game's not over, there are still baddies to kill and buttons to push. Problem arises when RNG goes out of control and one player basically just crit the other one to death, or when a succession of mistakes (which can start as early as list building or table set-up) leads to one decisive, game-winning face to face and a lucky crit basically ends the game. It's not unplayable at all, but some factions are better at elite lists than others, and playing with more dudes and orders is often much more forgiving. Infinity is a very lethal game, and more often than not good stats/gears won't save an elite but poorly deployed troop from getting flanked and killed, whereas having more troops on the board will increase your board control, gives your more orders and more options/redudancy, which all together makes the list harder to cripple. If you're a new player learning the game, going for 13/14 orders lists with one main group and a second one solely dedicated to supporting it with some throaway units you can put between your opponent and the units you don't want to lose will go a long way toward making the game more enjoyable for you will you learn all its subtleties.
ok thanks for the explanation. But given the replies below and others, it does seem that the "meta" is something like 18+ models so that very elite/unique troops do not seem to have their place, something I find a bit unfortunate (For instance, I was intrigued by units such as the Avatar). I don't dislike RNG per se as I have played a lot of game with RNG over time, notably CCgs where there are no dices but the "luck of the draw". However, I am also a Eurogamer at heart and like my RNG "controlled" so to speak. So I totally get your idea of redundancy but the thing is, if redundancy = more orders = more units, I find this a bit sad (I reckon that I am probably simplifying things...) Funny you should mention Malifaux as this is one of the game I was looking at as well. I will probably invest in it however as (i) the community seems even smaller than Infinity (in France) and (ii) games seem overly long. However, I found the universe appealing and the "fate deck" is a very unique mechanic.
Interesting thank you ! The thing is, the factions I had penciled as interesting (for now) were Aleph, CA, O12 and JSA and, if I understand correctly, most of them tend to have a lowish model count (with the exception of JSA) . But well, I guess you can build your army a bit differently...
Recently (in the latest ITS-season 11) Tactical Window was introduced. A TO can chose this mode in a tournament reducing the number of models to 15 (10+5) and removing the worst spam lists. I have a feeling that TW will feature a lot in tournaments and there is also Limited Insertion (one combat group only). As for your armies CA is very flexible and can both do LI and spammy lists. While they lean towards elite units they also have excellent cheap support units like Ikadrons and Imetrons. Honestly I wouldn’t worry to much. Infinity is a great game thatvis doing better than ever. Just jump aboard. It sounds like you are doing your due diligence and if that’s the case test it out by proxying or borrowing models (the community in practice if not on all the time on the forums, is really nice). In two months C1 will drop which will be a great start for new players.
Jsa is not for the timid. High order count jsa is not something I am aware of. 15 models...sure that is viable but the good stuff that ones that show you accept the duty and honor of the sectorial take ninjas and samurai and teenage samurai and those are hard to stack bodies around. 012 can get high count ...varangians are pretty cheap, but again efficiency comes in the 15 to 18 range. The true spam lists are obnoxious and unfortunately viable right now but i have a feeling that the days of fielding 20 to 25 scrubs and 1 to 2 real troops are numbered. Not saying certain factions like the peasants on dawn wont have high order counts nearing 20, just that more elite lists will become viable.
Auto wound with no auto win is essentially removing crits in anything but optimal conditions, and entirely removes the viability of the "hail mary" crit on a 1 situation. You also have to account for crits outside of attacks, with no auto win dodge,engage,smoke etc crits are useless. Skewing toward ARM is IMO a very good thing. There are a lot of units with arm 4+ that see far less benefit from it than the points they've paid would suggest due to crit fishing. It would also make AP more valuable not to have the auto wound, since its still a boon in causing the wound after a hit, and the complaints about fatality lv2 would be gone if it still had an arm roll to get past.
It also accounts for the fact that by putting yourself in a sufficiently advantageous position you can avoid the possibility of an opposing win entirely. While crits disproportionately happen for the active player, they disproportionately benefit the Reactive player. This is because in an average game the Reactive player will be put in a situation more often where their only real hope for succeeding in a particular exchange is to crit; whereas quite often active turn crits are simply a case of winning harder. Auto-win is necessary for this outcome: auto-wound with no auto-win is basically just RNG AP for the active player.
First welcome to the game. Higher body count lists, as some have said, are more forgiving of mistakes. Low order count lists can work, although some factions do it better than others. I play Aleph, PanO and JSA. My Aleph and PanO lists are usually 10 figure lists, and I manage to win roughly 50% of my games. Wierdly, the way command points work, and combat groups, a 10 figure list is usually better than say a 12 figure list. If your going to go with more than one combat group, you probably want at least 14 figures, maybe more. While larger lists have more redundancy of figures, and more fire lanes covered, a small list will usually have redundancy of wounds (multi-wound models) and fewer fire lanes covered, but the ones that are covered will be generally be well covered. Players tend to favor 2 combat group lists, but single combat group lists can work. Although those single combat group lists will probably feel the pain of a lucky crit more.
I will say you can go too low. I have lots of factions but my first love is jsa and I am still trying to make a 7 model list work. It's an uphill battle below 10 orders. Maybe IA can pull off 7 models with their extra order shenanigans but it just feels less meaningful to pull it off with them over jsa.
JSA can't operate with less than 13 orders in my experience. Too many of your units require too many orders to get into effective positions and ranges to be able to play with any less than that. My most successful JSA lists are 14-16 orders.
I've got a similar experience with IA. The more successful lists are the ones that take Limited Insertion concept but make a few concessions to squeeze out about 12 orders. Losing two orders to CT use if you win the roll isn't as bad as being a few orders behind because you take a loss or two. That and I've got a quasi-reputation for really loving first turn alpha striking, so people 'round here tend to rob me of that pleasure as I rarely win the LT roll.
Tied crits both wound, you mean? Yeah, 8 orders is the real bottom of the functional army list. Never had any luck with 7 orders in any army, ever since N1. Even IA will struggle with 7 models, tough to push buttons. I have had OK success with my Samurai 7 list (DoTanko core, O-Yoroi, Yojimbo, Kei hacker, Toku Doc, Toku engineer), but it's very much a beatstick kind of thing, not so great at pushing buttons.
Didn't know about ties I seem to recall reading when I started learning the game (just prior to N3 happened) that the higher value crit won. Not quite desirable out of the box like that, though, in my opinion.
I couldn't agree more that crits are fine for the game. In fact for me the make the game much more fun! I have only felt bad playing @helsbecter during a tournament where I rolled something along the lines of 11 crits. Otherwise I think that crits keep the game much more exciting at high level play. A little luck tipping the scales keeps everything lively and makes for great stories later. Other than this one scenario mentioned above, I think good players have already adjusted for crits happening and failing rolls and rarely feel the crits win or lose the game. If a game between two opponents does come down to a single crit changing everything both players likely were playing at the top of their games. It's happened twice this ITS season to me and both games ended up in ties. So my favorite suggestion I've heard is that the crit wins the FtF and it's an unmodified save against the strength of the weapon. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the issues you point out regarding making armor more relevant so changing the dam may be preferable. It does leads to a greater likelihood of a model surviving based on the weapon used and not on the stat line of the losing model which I feel doesn't unfairly penalize any specific type of model. I would also like crits to stay the same in CC to reflect the difficulty/order expenditure of getting your preferred model into CC in the first place. Or at the least to be even more lethal, maybe with HtH skills further increasing the Dam of the crit?
