Some of you may know I entered the Infinity world fairly recently via CodeOne and have since jumped up to full fledged N4. I’ve got some force/army building questions that have come up as I continue to develop my collection. Background - I started with the Kaldstrom box and have those figures for PanO and YuJing, along with Beyond Kaldstrom (which includes 3 figures each for PanO and YuJing). I’ve additionally purchased the Dronbots for PanO as well as Trauma Docs and Machinists. For YuJing I’ve picked up Tiger Soldiers as well as a Zhanying Imperial Agent. In general I’m less interested in sporting super competitive lists and more interested in having a fun variety of units to play with and different ways to spec my armies to be able to experiment with a variety of play styles - I’m going to start collecting Ariadna stuff as well but that’s a question for another day. That said, one thing I’ve noticed is a strong tendency of players to gravitate towards the biggest armies possible in terms of body count. Obviously order advantage is a thing. Likewise, in the case of the PanO and YuJing the Kaldstrom figures form a good starting point for Svalarheima and White Banner Sectorials, which presumably like to have cheap foot soldiers (Fusiliers and Zhanshi respectively) comprising a Core Fireteam… so here are my questions. I’ve found that its a bit tough to hit 10 orders at 300 points and 6 SWC with the figures I have (since there are only 3 Zhanshi and 3 Fusiliers in my collection thus far). Usually I can hit 9 orders reliably but there are fewer configurations where I can make 10 without going over-cost or over SWC or not have the right balance of skills. It’s not impossible but even with the variety of different figures that I currently have, the number of configurations are a bit limited if you’re trying to also get the full array of specialists and skills that you need. This is currently easier with PanO because I have the Palbots that came with the Doc and Engineer to help round out points discrepancies. I certainly can't get close to hitting 15 orders. Do I just need more cheap units? Or are PanO and YuJing okay to play with Limited Insertion lists based on their strengths? If I do get more cheap units for my armies, does it make sense to just get more Fusilier and Zhanshi in order to form full 5-person Core Fireteams (assuming I’m using them as Sectorials) or are there other low cost units that I should consider? Does this change if I’d rather play the Vanilla factions instead? Does the calculation change at all for lower point value games? I’ve noticed that when I try to play, say, 200 point games to speed up play, I usually have very few orders and my forces never feel well-rounded. I always feel like I’m missing something important - either not enough specialists or not having the right ‘answers’ to certain things, and find the board state tends to block up (on both sides) without having the right tools to break up a stalemate. Do lower point games tend to be smaller teams or does it mean more cheap units instead to keep the order count up? And does anyone even play sub-300-point games? I’m wondering if the imbalance in smaller battle sizes is just because the game is really optimized for 300 point lists.
1. I don't play YJ so I'll answer from a WinterFor perspective. Yes, you need cheap units in order to fuel your heavies with orders. Cheap doesn't mean bad, though. With AVA 3 Fugazi at 7 points each you get a repeater that can also watch your backline. That's 21 points for 3 orders :). The Bulleteers and Pathfinders are also a great value for their points costs, I'd recommend that you check those out. 2. If you don't have it already, get the Fusilier SWC box. Fusi ML and hacker are very useful and sometimes when there's points and SWC to spare I'll use the HMG or MSR. Richard Quinn is fairly cheap and very handy, being a MSV1 equipped wildcard. 3. I have played very few games that weren't 300 points, so I'll leave this question for someone who has :)
Chipping in my answer from Yu Jing's perspective 1. Generally speaking I think neither army wants to do either, particularly not with what's on offer in CodeOne. Often I find lists of 12-13 order generating miniatures to be fairly comfortable mix of orders to work with and units to do the work. 2. Zhanshi strongly depends on whether it's a sectorial or not; in sectorial they are limited to AVA of 4 while in vanilla they tend to compete with Kuang Shi for order generation. Do you want a lot of either? Probably not. Playing vanilla means you'll probably want to max your orders, more than playing sectorial, though. Those two are where you want to shift your attention, though, as well as Long Ya for vanilla and White Banner, once we get miniatures for them. I think Yu Jing has a tendency towards "top heavy" lists more than other armies, meaning cheap order generators and a few strong and preferably multi-competent units. 3. 200 point games are so stressful to make lists for! So hard to get what you need and constantly have to remind yourself that your opponent doesn't get that, either. I've found that some of the less optimal choices for 300 points get a lot more interesting at 200 because they fit more snugly in a list and the risk of running into a TAG or Achilles is decreased a lot. However, it's hard to give generalised answers because everything depends on what's already in the list and what mission you intend to play - and it's hard to give detailed answers without pushing your own play style on someone.
I appreciate these answers @realder @Mahtamori - I realize that its hard to give general advice based the broad range of factors involved in the game but this gives me some unit profiles to look at so I can hone on on what I want to get out of my play experience.
