Ok I will admit it. I am totally a reactive player. I am hopeless at Chess because i get blinkers and cant see the moves ahead. I like the idea of an aggressive army but i either move too much and isolate my own units and cleaned up piecemeal. So this got me thinking all of the factions I have been playing are pretty aggressive, JSA, Combined army and Miltary orders. Is there a faction or a sectorial that favours a defensive reactive playstyle?
Now, please keep in mind this is just my opinion, but: I find that this is not an approach that fits Infinity. Every army can find itself being on the defensive. All it takes is losing the initiative roll and the opponent deciding to take first turn - and this comes down to your Lt WIP & dice luck. Dice luck, IMO, being the more important part of it. Sometimes, even if you win the roll, you may consider it more advantageous to give the 1st turn away. In my case, it is pretty often a result of a scenario: going second means having the last turn, so having the chance to act without your opponent being able to change the results of your actions after your last turn. Therefore, when writing your army list you have to take into account that you may end up being on the defensive... as far as we see it in Infintiy. Which, I guess, could be defined as "not having the first turn". On your reactive turn, you want to: Keep your models active, so you'll have their skills and Orders to use once your active turn comes. Keep the opponent from achieving their goals & objectives. Make the opponent waste his Orders. In my experience every faction in Infinity I played with or against (note: that's far from all there are, my meta is not big enough!) has the tools to do so (well, rarely all of them, but at least some): Models with Camouflage or (in some cases) Hidden Deployment, Models with Infiltration or Forward Deployment Models with Total Reaction (or Neurokinetics) Models with long-ranged weapons Models with Minelayer skill Models with Direct Template weapons Models with Mimetism skill Models with Sapper skill Models with Sixth Sense or 360-Visor. MSV can be useful, too! Fireteams can be pretty useful for defense, too! As for your problem with overreaching in attack, and getting dismantled piecemeal once your Active turn is over - sorry, a defensive-oriented army won't help that. It is a matter of experience of the player that does the job here. You need to gain that experience - the hard way, if needed be. You need to know how to positiion your troops, when to deploy Mines (or similar equipment), when to lay down Suppression Fire (keep in mind that a Coordinated Order allows you to set more than one model in SF at once!). also, when enough is enough, and you have to stop your offensive so you have enough Orders to prepare to counter the oncoming enemy Active Turn. One more thing: unless the objective is "kill and not get killed", being totally defensive-oriented will not win you games. Because usualy the victory or defeat is determined by the objectives you've achieved - and they are somewhere out in the game table, typically well away from your Deployment Zone. So you'll have to get out of your fortified defensive position, and into the fray to get to them and score some Victory Points.
What @Errhile said was really Ok, read it carefully, while I'm mostly agree I believe Infinity have armies which are better tailored to the offensive turn, or the reactive turn, even they are some which are pretty good in both cases. For example, MO is an agressive army, yes, you can place some pieces, even build some lists with a more ARO approach and probably they will work well for some missions, tables and rivals, but it is in his nature "search and destroy", so, "MO players want the iniciative"(i'm not talking about go first or second, but the style game) instead sitting waiting for the enemy... But staying on Pano, we can find Varuna, proably one of the most defensive armies you can find in the whole game (changes to the fireteams did a lot of harm to Varuna), but you have to be cautious with this, if you only places profiles to be "reactives" you could put yourself into troubles if the enemy manages to avoid your defenses and do the points without having to roll any dice against your "aropieces", this is really important. Someone will have to get there and took the objetives. But some armies can deploy better defenses than others. I categorize the ARO in: -Cheap and Disposable pieces as ARO (daylamis, metros,helots...) -Standar ARO (most fireteams for ARO are here) (fusiliers, ghulams...) -Quality ARO (KoJ ML, Black Frier HRL..., Kama multisnipper, Eatersin). We could add here "active" (pieces against the enemy will have to go rolling face to face) / "pasive" (deployable weapons, camo markers, etc). Of what you said you play, CA is probably the one which can play the "defensive approach" better, JSA and MO aren't any good playing "defensive".
You're probably looking at a camo force to play properly defensively. Something like vanilla ariadna comes to mind for defense in depth. Lots of mines, camo flamethrowers with sixth sense, shell games with autocannon aro from camo etc.
Vanilla Haqqislam can also play a defensive/reactive game. They are great for being able to focus on the objectives and do not need to usually kill to get to them.
In the current meta, the best defence is usually a combination of the following: - Bodyblocking important movement lane with your HVT. This is the most effective and cheapest form of defense in most missions. - Extensive repeater network with 2-3 camo or BTS6 hackers. - Haris fireteams with ARM4+ multiwound troopers with MSV1 and HRL watching 24" range band. - Hidden deployment HRL or ML - Direct template corner guards Sadly, Ariadna lacks the hacking and hidden deployment part making them vulnerable to oppressive rambos and pitchers. Ideally, the enemy must use extra orders to bypass your bodyblocking HVT, can't advance freely with smoke because you have MSV1 and when finally gets a good shot with his rambo piece, it gets attacked simultaneously by high powered Haris HI weapon, hidden deployment rocket trooper and camo hacker. --> Enemy knows all of this and is forced to attack with pitchers, which isn't a very order efficient way to attack.
Vanilla can achieve strong defensive game but sectorials have a very powerful defensive tool: the 5-men fireteam. Speaking about specifics, why not Onyx Contact Force? Unidrons can form one of the most powerful defensive fireteam : a B2 BS14 Plasma Sniper or Missile Launcher (or both?) ignoring cover (thanks to the E-Drone) on a Dogged REM profile is quite scary to face... OCF also have the best Total Reaction drone in the game (thanks mimetism, can also be boosted by an EVO) backed with Medchanoid/Slave Drones and the Missile Launcher Noctifer(s) can ruin the opponent game in a single ARO. In addition to that, you can deploy a very strong defensive hacking game with powerful and cheap profiles like Bit&Kiss or Kerr-Nau + an excellent repeater/pitcher coverage. Let's not forget about the mighty Ikadrons guarding your DZ. Finally, even if not a dedicated defense piece, a plasma sniper or heavy rocket launcher/SMG Overdron, again backed with an engineer can be really tough. Just one suggestion over multiple possibilities! :) EDIT : the drawback of the sectorial choice, in addition of the one of restricting yourself to defensive play, is that most of your lists will probably look quite similar...
Shasvasti is a very reactive army. To play Infinity well it is important to understand how to play both aggressively and reactively. Alot of games are lost during deployment, looking at the table and identifying if a dz is more favorable for your army or puts your opponent in a rough position or if it is neutral and going first is advantageous in the context of the mission being played. Another good rule of thumb is if you are playing someone you think is better than you and you get the option to go first take it, as taking their pieces off the board limits what they can do and you get a chance to adjust your force to your opponents deployment, making their active turn harder. The game of infinity really begin right after the LT roll off.
As others have said, you have to attack in Infinity. Perhaps your issue is that you don't like aggressive fireteams, which you might be playing a lot in MO and JSA. If your main attacker is an expensive link team and you overextend it, it'll get chewed up. You might prefer suicide attacks with disposable pieces while keeping the rest of your force in a defensive position. Vanilla Haqq does this well, with cheap solo attacking pieces like Zuleyka, Liberto, Daylami, Hunzakut, and more expensive but still disposable solo attackers like Fiday and even Asawira sometimes. Ariadna also comes to mind, for bears (and lots of camo for defence). That said, any army can do it, and JSA certainly can do it. Even MO has Peacemakers, Dart, Montesas, and Trinitarians although none are cheap.
