Imagine you're a new player for a second. Your friends got you into the game with some intro sessions and the promise of a great new wargame. You took the plunge and bought an army box (and have even started painting!) and you're now keen to get your teeth into the game & learn all the nuance and playstyles of your new army. You come to the forum and go to your new home page, scroll through the stickied threads looking for a tactica and you see: one created four years ago for an old edition... With that strange prickly sensation unique to opening up a *dusty* thread, you open it up: one of the very first sentences you read is about running a 20 order list; the next mentions ITS8... Suddenly you feel like you're boarding a sinking ship. 'Are there really so few players of this game that no-one's written a tactica for my faction this edition?' I'm here to tell you that there are currently four N4 tacticas on this website: IA, MRRF, Bakunin & OSS. Four. It's been well over a year since the new edition dropped and the game changed yet very few senior members of the community have stepped forward to start the collegiate work of writing new tacticas. Why is that? The kneejerk reaction is 'Covid, ofc', but I want to suggest that this doesn't ring true. Most of us have been listbuilding, theorising, TTS'ing and playing during that time. We've sure as heck been posting on threads regarding balance arguments, speculation, flame wars and siocast! But where's all the tactical discussion? The deep dives on list archetypes, addressing army weaknesses, leveraging rule changes, etc? Where's the community consensus that emerges through prolonged evaluation of units in a tactica thread? I think one big reason is the rise of Discord; so much chat now happens on there and while it's great it's also by its nature inward looking, exclusive and invisible. A big impact of that move to faction discords is that the official forum is becoming starved of meaningful content; it's reduced to being more and more about news & general, and less about meaningful discussions about how the actual game's factions play in this edition. You may be thinking "if you want tacticas so much Time Bandit, stop whining and go write some yourself". I have indeed been sorely tempted to, but have resisted due to my inexperience. After writing this, I may just give it a pop with ForCo, my main, and let the community panel-beat it into something serviceable. I'd be more than happy to contribute to one's discussion, if any of the 5 factions I play actually had one! There's also the issue that most of the time an excellent old tactica already exists, and so really the work of overhauling it is what's required, or of passing the torch on to another player to do the work. So what do you say? Am I right, and it's time for us to start a new chapter in Infinity tacticas? Or am I way off target? Thanks for reading.
It probably is smart to just get something out there. You should be good to just take your best shot at writing, even if you're inexperienced; some of the most experienced players on here are very quick to jump in and offer suggestions, but don't start many topics.
I appreciate YouTube and podcasts, there are many very good and entertaining out there! But the forum offers a much broader view and it is much easier to start an ongoing discussion. The forum also offers the opportunity to discuss a specific topic whereas on discord it's easy to loose track of the statements to a specific topic. Long story short tacticas are a great way for new player or players testing new fractions.
They're better for quick reference too; it's hard to check a 50-minute VaulSC video for specific opinions and uses about a unit you're considering including.
with the way things are give it a month or two after we start seeing major tournaments again and you may see them start getting posted again.
I wrote the MRRF one and planned on doing the jsa one. In the process of rationalising my rather....extensive collection down into "shit that I'll actually play now" so doubt I'll get round to redoing all the ones I wrote in n2 and n3 back when I was a warcor
@DaRedOne updated the Morat Tactica to N4 and it's been very helpful to me. Add that one to the list, please. To answer the OP's question: I think that people havent been able to get together to play in person for more than a year has slowed everything down. @Tourniquet is right, I reckon, we'll see more tacticas as we see more major tournaments shake out. I know you can play online, but that post-battle chat after the game is so crucial to developing as a player and I think we need to get back into the swing of that. Only then can there be a free exchange of crits and tacticas.
Thank you for this call to action. You have motivated me to work on a draft for HB. There's been plenty of play on TTS including plenty of major tournaments. No reason to wait for in-person games.
Well, this asks also motivation and time. As for myself, I'm writing a tactica about MO for the French community. The kind that wants to be complete and quite detailed. That's really time-hungry. I've been on it for some months now and I still have 5 HI entries to write down plus most of the remotes and the two SK. Then listbuilding, tactical advice and maybe what to buy for starting MO. I'm not sure I want to do this for the international forum as well, tbh, as I already have some motivation issues to write the current one.
Thank you for mentioning me. I did in fact update the MAF tactica to N4, and I plan on keeping it updated as I play more and more. I even played a game yesterday, but I was too sleepy to actually garner any useful information other than what's already there. I honestly think any player should and could take a crack at writing this kind of stuff as long as they have an actual interest in improving their game and their peers.
I think part of it is that for a lot of factions it's been relatively minor adjustments that haven't altered the roles of the units within the faction. So not a lot to update or talk about.
I've created a blog which includes my takes on all the units in Ramah Taskforce, as well as additional pieces on things like list building strategy and what new players should expect when playing the Sectorial. I've also created a thread with all the written articles (as well as some nice resulting discussion) in it in the Haqq subforum. It's not an official N4 tactica, nor is the thread pinned, but it's my effort to ease new players into RTF! :)
I would say that another aspect is the "<insert army here> in N4" threads that are still stickied. Those were about wish listing before N4 was released. and such leading up to N4 and could be really misleading as it sounds like it would be a tactica.
I'm the guy who wrote N2 and N3 tactical guides to Hassassin Bahram & Qapu Khalqi. Since then, I have not only grown my army count to 6, but also, yes, Covid. It is about a year since N4 dropped, and I had less than a dozen games of it, most of them against the same, single opponent. My meta got hit hard by lockdowns, and haven't recovered since. No, I wasn't going for TTS, I can't stand things like it - sorry. So, yeah, I have observed that and, a year ago, knew I wouldn't be able to amass enough experience with these two armies under N4 rules to update the tactical guides. I wrote as much in the relevant N3 tactical threads - it is still there if you want to check me on my word. I hoped someobody else will pick up the banner and carry it forward, but so far no-one did.
There's more quality content for N4 and Infinity now than ever before. While not quite the cess pool they have a reputation for the forums are outdated. Check out Youtube. Infinity videos usually have a lot of comments and seem to attract many beginners. I have no idea how actual player counts compares to a few years back but it feels like Infinity these days is to big, evolving and alive for the forums. Personally I love the wikitactica stuff and Good Guys Wear Orange is one of the best blogs out there. Short answer - new players don't go to the forums to find info. We're good.
Videos are fine for some, especially younger players I suppose, but they're not the best way to talk about tactics. Discord is only good for people logged on in the moment of a conversation, but at least it's interactive. Blogs are better than video, but not interactive. The forums are the best place for considered dialog that endures. All are formats that have their roles, but the forums certainly aren't obsolete.
