How is the game looking now?

From where I'm sitting, it's overall its in a good state with - as always - some room for improvement.

The rules are at about 90%. The design goals of the most recent FAQ series are extremely strong, but the execution has left some holes that at least locally we're just sort of cautiously playing around (e.g. the requirement to measure distance between mine and minelayer to ensure mines are placed legally is a totally functional thing to add into the game; the fact that this measurement is public is a swing and a miss). It's not a huge problem but I'm really hoping that it plus a few other things get smoothed out relatively soon.

Tables remain a local convention and down to what you have available. Every now and again I see pictures of tables that make me wonder whether the players have signed a gentleman's agreement to not attack each other's deployment zones or, alternatively, a suicide pact. But overall the quality of terrain and understanding of terrain in the player base continues to rise (and mature in terms of how terrain in N4 can/should be different to N3). I went to a big national event (Australian) in July and the tables were from across the country and ran the gamut from great to needs-improvement, but overall they required a variety of different tools to maximise your chances for success. I'm a big warband player but I didn't have a single game that I won off the back of warbands having totally free lines of advance up the enemy's guts, for example.

There's a robust conversation still ongoing about what exactly is good and it seems to vary from place to place - there's not a firm consensus (although many people have individually settled on firm opinions, which you'll pick up on if you read various threads about the forums). Most vanilla factions are settling strongly into place in the N4 15-trooper meta, while sectorials are still figuring themselves out post-fireteam update. A lot of things wax and wane based on how hostile the rest of the meta is to them. For example, hacking rose to predictable prominence in the year following N4's release (because it's really good). But then in some places you'll see people build lists designed to ruthlessly prey on a something like a standard Nomad-style hacking setup with a couple decent hackers hiding behind morans, and so the cycle repeats. For what it's worth, I did this video a couple months ago and still more or less stand by my takes, but they're just a couple people's opinion.

Locally, our player base is growing slowly but steadily. We're pulling through what I'd call 'pandemic recovery' where people are re-acclimatising to actually playing, and we have new players joining in and around that. Again, will vary locally.

ITS doesn't really set the competitive tone so much as it adds novelty each year. You can run an event that's casual or an event that's competitive using the ITS framework. What ITS does is give us the scenarios and special rules to play with each year and keep the game fresh. This year there's some big seasonal rules to encourage the use of bikes, but that has no interaction on competitive vs casual focus of individual events or even communities. I run events about every five weeks locally and the prize and event structure is set up to encourage very casual relaxed play, but that's something I as a TO push, not something baked into the document.

I will say I don't think Infinity has ever been or can be a 'beer and prezels' game (as I understand the term), because infinity is hard to play. N4 continues the trend N3 set away from hypercomplex simulationism, but actually running a turn of infinity is still a mentally challenging experience. You can't really autopilot through it. But the counterbalance is that infinity forces you to talk to and play the game with rather than against your opponent (because frankly it's hard enough to play a good turn even with someone else helping me with LOF etc and vice versa), so the underlying social structure remains really strong.

 

Competitive? Yes. Healthy? Not in my opinion. Playing at the standard 300 points the game is heavily focused around alpha striking and the first turn momentum gain.

That's not necessarily unbalanced and a great deal of factions can effectively compete on these terms of game play however I find the game being mostly decided on turn 1 a very dull affair and I don't think it's healthy in that sense.

 

Here is the situation that I feel in France:

The N4 rules are clearer and less thick, but the game still suffers from its N3 reputation. This makes influencers not want to touch it (and there are even some sellers on youtube who don't recommend the 2 games for a beginner).
The C1 version was not very successful, although some regional clubs came back to the universe through this version, C1 lacks content (missions set, narrative aspect, official campaign support, etc.) which makes C1 tend to be behind games without miniature ranges.

The set up of the table and the scenery is always a problem, CB should make a detailed article to explain this point, because we always come back to the 'meme American' and the feeling of needing 300 euros of scenery.

The pandemic seems to have decreased the player base by 50%, outside the pandemic the base seemed to decrease slightly, I tried to make tutorials, community pdf, video recaps but it does not seem to stop the decline. This is a problem for our distributor, because less players means higher translation costs and a game that is not translated is apparently a game that will be played 5 times less.
The metal miniatures are also a problem for the promotion of the game.

It remains the same, ITS would benefit to consider the C1 version to bring in a new player base, although the few experiments don't seem to be a success yet.
The game is not more competitive than before, but since there is a low new players, the game tends to have at its heart 75% specialists with several years of experience. And playing against a master when you are a noob is not the most fun.

 

Hello,

I will do use same format as @Wizzy , I really like it.

¿Rules?

Simplear than back in N3, but still how they are wrote could be simplified a lot more. New FAQs sometimes looks like they are adding more confusion instead.

Table Setup...

I feel isn't a thing about how expensive could be, but the space you need to keep things at home, for example. Yes, cooler tables mean more money to pay, but you can do greats things recycling, here is a time matter.

I'm agree about it will be interesting a kind of standar coming from Corvus, something like 3 examples: "open", "medium", "closed".

Players Amount...

Shrinking without any doubt, previous Cov we did 20 players tournaments and all were full, with people waiting to get in, now, if we manage to reach 12 or 14 players... But isn't only a thing of fewer players, they are higher segmentation. People have a tendency to play locally, even in the same city or close village. Catch the Underground is tricky this days, so,people keep playing but with the closer players.

ITS...

I almost said it over the "players" section.

 

Definitely a guideline would be helpful. Also, as for storing your terrain... I depends very much on the terrain itself. How much thought have you given to it, and how much time and effort are you willing to go through every time oyu set it up.

I mean, when we were starting with Infinity here, I have printed a heap of Topo Solitario's iCubes. They could be assembled and disassembled for storage, so the table collapsed to a stack of sheets of paper. We kept our terrain i a box smaller than a shoebox. The downsiedes being - the table was extremally boring (consiting of the very same shaped boxes, just in a few color variants) and assembling / disassembling thme every time was a PITA. But we still have them now, 12 years later.

Now, we have a large plastic box that holds our terrain setup that is enough to cover a standard 4x4' table with quite some bits to spare. I could fit that box in my room if I really wanted (have some space filled with my other hobby's stuff...).
I have made another table myself, giving the problem some thought, and came out with buildings that nest inside each other really neatly. I'm still working on a followup design.

The terrain CB now includes in their starter boxes (the hard cardboard one, I can't recall which Operation it started with) does the job pretty well, I guess. It does nest somehow, and two sets of it (plus perhaps the supplementary set) work quite nice for a table-worth of terrain. So if you want to go this way, it isn't all that expensive and it could be managed space-wise.
Of course if one wants to go above and beyond with their terrain, then sky is the limit. As it always was.

 

All I would add is that while I agree with @RobertShepherd that the state of the rules is about 90%, the state of rules support is abysmal. In April 2021, CB abandoned support for its ruleset and there's no sign of a change. So, the rules were probably at 95% a year and a half ago, but they've declined to 90% since then, and they continue to decline. And that last 10% is an utter godawful mess.

 

Yes I like alot of things about N4, such as the changes to Dodge they were both fun and interesting but then there's the shit like the mess the state Hacking was left in that just really brings everything down.

 

It's not just hacking.

It's CB being unable or refusing to go back through and adjust under used profiles that are just no competitive. There are plenty of bad choices to be made in Infinity list building already without adding to the confusion for new players of having 8 profiles for one trooper, but only one of those ever seeing the table.

The trimming of the Vostok Albedo profiles was great, and they should do that more. Or fix the prices and make them worth using.

Now, onto the rest.

How are the rules going?
Nice and crisp, or more FAQ's needed?
It's a mess, half the rules updates are just forum posts that new players will never find. I would mostly agree with the 90% complete, but then there is stuff that they just don't cover or define adequately in the rules.

Any more guidelines for table set up or is the power of sniper/warbands still heavily influenced by the table?
None, no guidance. We play reasonably dense tables, but with some long lanes and elevation changes. Try to make a space for most weapons and equipment.

I am being told that a meta is starting to form, something about Avatars and Nomads?
Memes. Vanilla Nomads, CA, Ariadna, Haqq, and Tohaa are probably the top.

Is the player base growing or shrinking?
Hard to say overall, locally it's growing again as we've started pushing the game more. One of the big hindrances is trying to explain why a unit or model doesn't exist. The other is that you can only learn the game by having it explained to you by someone else, due to the rules being only partially complete. Check out the Rules section of the forum for fun with that.

What's the health of the ITS? Is this still a casual beer and pretzels game or has TTS brought out more of a competitive philosophy?
Depends on where you are and who you play against. Just like always.

 

The thing about the base player going bigger or the opposite is an interesting question. It is really good we share our perception. As far I'm aware, in Mexico, for example, the comunity is right now expansing. So, what we see in our "local meta" couldn't be
applicable in general terms.

 

I am kinda afraid to ask, but can u explain that to me? From what i read it seems like every game a hacker is on the table all players mind turn to delete and become a metaphorical bluescreen.

Edit: Hacking seems to me like in the best spot since... ever? I mean: After N3 with 4 pages of Hacking programms, 20 different special Programms and 6 Hacking devices, or N2 with Hacking through repeaters standing in other repeaters...

 

Rules
The game gets better each time CB sits down to make revisions. I'm very positive about these changes, but there's still a way to go. F.ex. CB hasn't quite managed to find a way to pre-empt players misinterpreting the rules. Generally speaking, there's a reason why IKEA is often considered the world leader in producing the world's best assembly manuals and there is a reason why they do not only show that a shelf is supposed to be assembled on a carpet and they show that directly on the floor is wrong; a reason they show both the correct alignment of a shelf and what it looks like when you flip it the wrong way; and so on.

More FAQs are needed as more flaws are discovered, always. The need for some sort of arbitration doesn't go down, particularly not when there's an active world-spanning competitive scene.

Terrain guidelines
The lack of directions for a "typical" table is always the biggest flaw. It's gotten to the point where almost without fail the online IGL tournament asks for feedback on the tables they have prepared the best map is always also voted the worst map and generally speaking the reasons people give for liking a map are the same reasons people who don't like it give for not liking it.
Map is good because it uses long range fire lanes to challenge players; map is bad because the long range fire lanes give snipers too much power.
Map is good because the use of elevation means there's more dimensions to exploit; map is bad because elevation means if you win high ground you dominate the rest of the game.
Map is good because the use of terrain features means the list building becomes more involved; map is bad because the use of terrain makes pieces with that equipment too good.
And so on.

The game is heavily dependent on terrain being within some general guidelines to explain weapon prices. Have too much terrain and DTWs get too damned good. Have too little terrain and AROs get impossible to handle. Have no special terrain and units with terrain skill or MSV get that much worse. Have too much special terrain and units with terrain skill or MSV just pops off. Huge tower in DZ? Sniper's dream. Huge tower in mid-field? Infiltrating sniper's dream. Lots of <8" one-storey buildings? No LOF paradise.

The way people discuss things online I have a feeling they're using too little special terrain and too much LOF <8" LOF blockers.

Avatar and Nomads
Avatar just has a lot of really good rules. It has very few blind spots and being a TAG can skew hard against someone not specifically prepared for it, plus CA is an army that's a tiny bit harder than most to make assumptions about when selecting list.
Nomad releases have a reputation for getting very well optimised units that's not really part of their "schtick" while still being the absolutely strongest at doing what is their "schtick"

TTS
IMO, I think there's a lot of dedicated organisers who have enough of a layed back attitude that TTS isn't try-hard territory. Or at least, the try-hards dress it up in a nice and welcoming dress and try their best to not come off as being really invested in winning.

Long story short, one hacker isn't enough.

It's more specifically when a list has the ability to spread repeaters over most of the gaming area, have enough hacking presence to over-power the opponent's hackers, and use a Guided Missile Launcher to punish anything that can't be disabled by hacking that has the audacity to dare activate anywhere on the gaming surface.

Requires some commitment, but not to the point of excluding a mostly normal list otherwise.

 

I have a pet theory that what makes Avatar lists strong isn't the Avatar, it's that CA gets so many disproportionately cheap units. Imetrons, Ikadrons, 2 flash pulse bots, Bit and Kiss, Taighas means CA can take an Avatar and also a fully functional list next to it.

I'm not convinced the Avatar itself is overpriced. In most other factions, taking it would mean crippling the rest of your list, which would be a reasonable tradeoff and those lists would be good but not overpowered (c.f. Cutter lists). Whereas in CA, Avatar lists are exceptionally good but so are Sphinx lists, Anathematic lists, etc.

Imetrons are particularly egregious. They lost all their downsides to the N4 rules simplifications without a price adjustment, and now are just pointlessly excellent.

 

Maybe, but what vanilla faction doesn't have enough cost effective support that an Avatar wouldn't be kind of skewed in it? Maybe Ariadna for their low cube density? PanO for their poorer hacking and engineering?
Yes, Sphinx lists and Anathematic lists are really difficult to deal with as well, and it didn't get any easier thanks to Dartok and Rindak. I'd rank Sphinx the lowest of the three, though.

 

Agreed: not only the Avatar has goten cheaper (it used to be half your list), now it also can be cheaply fueled and protected.

 

....ok, so the point is: IF someone has a huge repeater network AND the enemy is unable to get rid of it AND u play multiple Hackers AND your enemy cannot get rid of them aswell AND u can spotlight enemy Units AND they fail their Reset or dont even try, AND your enemy cannot get rid of the Guided ML REM, which is quite fragile on her own, THEN you can fire 5 Missles per round vs. PH-3 against single units or multiple units in case they are badly deployed.
So basicly that, what was already possible in N3 (ok, spotlight in ARO is a huge advantage now, also the new duration of targeted-state)
Sounds for me like commiting nearly the whole list to that single purpose which stands and falls with a BS12 STR1 drone., and whichcan anly be accomplished by a small handful of armies.

But...the people are aware, that such things as Endgame exists? And that in N3 Grenade-launcher X-visor Fireteams were a thing?

I dont want to sound sassy, but "Hacking beeing a complete mess that brings everything down" seems like a quite dramatic POV based on PTSD.

 

Yes, but I'd hardly call 18 points and 1,5 SWC investment in the REM a huge deal. Maybe 8 points for a Baggage (unless you're some sort of CA in which case they're the first two unit you add to any list you make) so not breaking bank. Playing a faction that can do this stuff relatively effortlessly; you were probably bringing the hackers and pitcher guy regardless. The biggest risk you run is, in my opinion, that the opponent makes the missile REM a bit redundant by killing the hackers.

N3 style Grenade Launchers with X-Visors are still a thing. Grenade Launchers actually had their range bands altered so you don't need X-visor as much to do it now that it's got a +0 rangeband that's quite generous. It's just not as order efficient. Plus they introduced a lot of other one-turn-DZ attack pieces compared to N3 so spamming grenades is kind of slow by comparison as well.
I'd personally argue that the core design of hacking is an under-developed mess that will never work satisfactory regardless of how it is balanced, but I don't think that's what Triumph means.

Mind you, both grenade launcher spamming and repeater spamming had the number of factions that can do it efficiently reduced with the Raveneye update due to a lot of Pitcher and Grenade Launcher units not counting towards fireteam cohesion.

Other factions can also do it with deployable repeaters and a lot more effort and orders, but at that point I'm a bit more impressed if they try it and thoroughly impressed if they succeed without having the strat faceplant into a mine.

 

1) N4 did not functionally reduce the amount of special programs. That is a merely a perception of people who don't pay any attention to hacking. CB keeps adding more and more unique programs with different modifiers, for example CA alone has five unique programs and two hackers with non standard hacking program combinations. Then there are other examples of rule combinations that create functionally unique effects such as Scylla who has Trinity +2 Damage on an EVO device with ECM Hacking -3.

This list of random combinations and shit will only grow as the game continues to add more profiles to the game. N4 reduced the number of hacking device types NOT the number of unique hacking programs.

2) A big complaint of N3 hacker vs hacker combat was 90% of it was hackers trying to Redrum each other or Carbonite to defend against it in the case of AHDs. We functionally had 2 programs that made up the majority of programs ever used. N4 did not fix this. Now the hacker fight is Oblivion or Trinity facing off against each other. CB didn't fix the problem they just swapped it for a new one.

3) Something N4 set out to do was make sure Hacking devices remained relevant against non hackable armies, which they attempted to do by changing the way Spotlight worked so hacking devices weren't simply bloat against Ariadna for example. While on paper this "works" in reality it doesn't. Think about the meta way Ariadna plays, CB doesn't allow them to compete in the hacking sphere so they fucking don't. Meta Ariadna is camo spam plus warbands. Congrats, Hackers remain pointless against these unit types. CB didn't evolve the faction to fight against hackers and/or guided weapons so they simply change the rules of engagement so neither of those weapons are useful.

The gap between those who can hack and those who can't grew wider in N4. In N3 you could have an mediocre hacking faction such as Yu Jing use basic KHDs to attempt to defend themselves, so even mediocre hacking faction such as Yu Jing would take a Ninja and roll hacking dice vs a Nomad player and both players would have hackers trying to hunt each other down. In N4, you cannot reliably tackle S Tier hackers with basic equipment, you need specialised profiles that aren't available to most factions.

So this encourages people who aren't at the top end of the hacking spectrum to simply not engage in it and rather than filling their list with tools that interact with the hacking sphere, design their list to avoid hacking by filling it with passive defences like Tinbots, camo, or units that aren't worth spending orders on to hack. This does the opposite of promoting an interactive hacking meta game.

 

Agreed. It's a bit over-hyped, and I say this as a frequent Moran abuser myself. It's annoying that you have to plan for it and are 50% likely to face it in any given match, but so is actual information warfare. Hacking is going through growing pains in the game, but I have confidence it can be a balanced part of the game.

Hacking is strong mainly if you rely on brutal frontal assaults rather than having a couple other vectors (AD, assassin infiltrators, etc.) that can remove the hacker. Those vectors are also good at taking out cheerleaders etc. after splatting the hacker. Yes, there are hackers that are super hard to kill. They're also expensive key pieces that are well worth devoting -two- or more of your sneaky/flying/whatever tools to neutralize.

Funny enough, grenade launcher spam is a great tool for killing most hackers meant to capitalize on repeater networks. Even in linkteams for Sixth Sense, they tend to have crappy PH. So do the guided missile launchers.

Having to actually plan to deal with hacking is IMO a better place for a futuristic game to be at than "I play Ariadna or took a few warbands and just ignore hacking, template weapons FTW lol."

We -do- need some stronger ability to remove repeaters without having to dig them out, which a stronger Deactivator would be very helpful for (see the other thread about that tool that is currently going on the forum: it's got some good ideas and analysis). Maybe even no-LoF use of them within 8", though I don't think that's a great idea for mines etc. You can do some of this with Jammers, but those are not super widely available.

As for guided missile tactic and grenade spam, I've played GML, HGL, and the Emily Handelman Grenade Howitzer in three editions now (Emily in two I guess). It's decently balanced now, even dumping a whole turn into it really only nets you a few kills unless your opponent has been careless with placement of light infantry/remotes in groups. Like Infiltrators or AD, it has a role as a removal tool but has been decently balanced to avoid being a complete gutting weapon.

6-to-8-point warbands with smoke are all over the place. Watching Avatars get punked by Morlocks has been a consistent feature of large Infinity tourneys through all three editions I've played in.

It does suck to go up against them when you don't have that cheap, widely-available tool in either of your lists, but that's the nature of Infinity in general.

 

You don't need to kill lots of units, you just need to kill a couple of key ones. Your average 300 point list has only a couple of units that are the heavy lifters. If you get to go first, toss a pitcher across the table, and then delete those units from the safety of your own deployment zone your opponent is in a really bad start to the game. Not only are they down orders, their primary attack piece, but they've still got to get across the table if they want to deal any sort of retribution and now they're missing their biggest gun.

Guided weapons are for precision strikes, you kill specific units to remove the opponent's access to tools with them not carpet bomb the enemy. When I play 400 points I actually see significantly less guided fire purely because it stops being cost efficient.