Hello everyone, Recently I was thinking a lot about ARO in my lists, trying to improve my list composition and my feelings about it. When I started playing Infinity, few years ago, I often underestimated this aspect, fearing too much to lose an invaluable piece, leaving it visible during enemy's turn. This obviously resulted in bitter losses, leaving uncontested turns to the opponent, letting him focus all his orders in achieving important objects points. With the time I learnt to include ARO considerations on my lists and my approach to the game: one or two units with strong one-shot weapons (DA or Explosive ammo) and with a lot of defences, in order to survive most of the threats. This brought me to consider strong units (Intruders, Yan-Huo) knowing that they will probably never see the second round. Sometimes it worked - the psychological effect of strong ARO units is quite effective in holding back few opponents - but usually this ends in a strong active unit (HMG), at the right range-band that solves the situation in a couple of orders. Survivability becomes quite irrelevant against mod-stacking and an high burst. This became more frequent when I changed my main army to Haqqislam: not having strong ARO pieces to field (frail Lasiq or not-really-dangerous Hortlak are the best choices) I found myself again on the drawing table, figuring how I can improve this aspect. And recently I feel a different approach of the problem should be used. I'm starting thinking about that it's not important to have a survivable piece, with lot of armor, wounds or stacking mods, but it's necessary to provide more aro sources that an opponent can take care of in a single turn. So i'm starting to leave at home all the units I always had taken from granted. No more heavy lifter able to sustain multiple wound, but small, expendable units equipped with damaging weapons (Multi snipers, missile launchers, but even contenders or multi rifles are good options). They don't provide additional survivability, but it's not really a problem (at least on my matches) as bigger pieces are doomed to fail against the same number of orders. My thought is: I don't need to kill pieces, I never had it. I always thought ARO should be a way to waste opponent's orders. If an aro kills an active piece, yeah that's good! But the main reason I always included ARO options in my list is to disrupt the economy of the orders. If the opponent needs 5 orders to kill my units or moving around them, it's half of a turn wasted. A sixth of his total number of orders. So if a single unit gives me a couple-orders-wasting potential, two units in the opposite side can give me 4, three units six. Maybe more considering his main "Aro removal" unit needs to be moved around the table catching the reaction models, expending more orders in the process. So, I'm curious: what's your approach to ARO topic? What do you consider when planning the ARO phase of your matches? I would love to listen your experiences.
Flash Pulse Bots, Noctifers, and Q-drones with assisted fire. As for other armies, the first one is always a staple. They either deal with it and waste orders, or don't and get stunned randomly (and I get to keep my 8 point regular order). I have stopped more advances than I can remember by opponents ignoring the laser pointer to the eyes.
Flash pulses wherever possible, ideally boosted by an EVO-bot. It is enough to let your opponent whiff some orders and in some not so rare cases, the main attack pieces becomes stunned and useless after three orders. Just great! But unfortunately not enough for three turns. They need to be spiced up by cheap or strong snipers/missile launchers/heavy rocket launchers, Otherwise you only light up the board but don't spread the fear of dying. For this, I am used to a core-link with two ARO-units and the rest designed as cheerleaders or as a second turn attack group. The combination is often enough to deny enough space in turn one and let the opponent open up vectors for a counter-strike. More efficient should be infiltrators with mines, ideally minelayers in camo. You have to waste orders or take risks to deal with such things and if you can't remove them properly, they will destabilize your whole game. The most important but difficult thing here is the positioning. If your opponent can shoot your units right away, thats bad (unless you can aim at other units first or pin attack-pieces in bad places for them). Look for spots, where your weapons work good and normal attack-weapons are weakened (HRLs with maximum LoF of 32", MLs with everything below 24" covered by other units,...). This will force heavy thinking of your opponent and whenever you have to rethink, you are able to make mistakes. And mistakes are what we want to produce here!
Flash pulses, mines, Camo saturation, perimeter weapons, cheap shotguns and chain rifles on blind corners, disposable weapons, repeaters. then apply in defence in depth and just waste your opponent's time, Don't contest any fire lane longer than 16" if you can. Hard long range AROs (snipers, TR bots, TO troops though i have issues with them for different reasons), with the exception of a few pieces are just a waste of resources for the most part.
Indirect threats tend to be more valuable than direct ones. A camo unit with Minelayer, on average, is going to take more orders to get rid of than a linked line trooper with a missile, at a slightly higher point cost but much lower SWC cost. This is one of the reasons that camo spam tends to be a really effective strategy -- camo units have to be dealt with in order to cross the table with some units, but dealing with camo can take a few orders. Against more knowledgeable opponents, projecting a threat can be more powerful than the threat itself would be. For example, I'm playing Spiral Corps now, and sometimes, just have a regular Taagma perched on a roof somewhere as an Auxiliar linked with two more Auxiliars is nearly as powerful as the MSV2 Sniper version would be, because my opponent knows it could be the MSV2 Sniper and and behaves as such. Of course, it's easier to reveal your hand this way if your opponent starts tallying up SWC, so you need to be clever. NCA is probably a better example of this -- you should always be expecting at least one Swiss Guard to pop out from somewhere with a Missile, or at very least a Hexa to do so. Both if you're really unfortunate. But altogether, I've found Impersonators to be the most consistently annoying thing, even with Inferior Impersonation. I just camp out near my opponent's DZ, in a location that isn't on a clean path to an objective. Either they waste orders coming to me and killing me, or I do impersonator things to them when my turn starts. One of the more interesting dynamics of employing direct long range AROs in my opinion is how much it depends on your opponent's heavy weapon choices. Against a list with a big spitfire and a weak HMG, a strong sniper perch can be valuable, but if your opponent brought a Hsien haris, your sniper isn't long for this world, and should be deployed in a place to still be annoying but that the Hsien would need to commit a lot of orders to. I agree with @Tourniquet above though -- avoiding contesting longer lanes unless absolutely necessary has always been the most successful strategy for me.
another good example is the Heckler, throw any camo marker within the forward deploy zone on the table, and regardless of wether or not it is a Heckler with jammer they are going to give it a wide berth so as to not get hit, there by wasting more orders, when in all likely hood it's your intruder LT hiding on a roof hoping not to get punked. also useful for herding your opponent into to taking fights where you want them to. Inferior infiltration is also a useful one for similar reasons. the II Grunts with Flame throwers and shotguns providing they stick the landing can cause some ungodly headaches for your opponent especially if they run impetuous as unless they burn regular orders to stop them running at the grunt then it is going to light up a bunch of stuff if its overwatching a few other models, then your opponent needs to waste orders digging it out before they can move out. @Callum does this regularly and is why I tend to not take morlocks often.
When I think of a ranged ARO unit I think of their target as warbands and specialists. Jaguar faust is one of my favorites. Djan sniper is good for the smoke ignoring MSV2 on a low SWC unit. I actually like Hunzakut and Hawwa snipers because their infiltration lets them find a spot that can see a lot of the board but not the enemy DZ, preventing their HMG from getting them. As a bonus if I go first they can get some unexpected angles to kill troops they expected to be hidden such as doctors or potential Lt. The key is good deployment.
If you play Haqq you have access to one of the best ARO pieces in the game - the humble Daylami. Take four with Panzerfausts at 7 points a piece. And a Warcor and possibly a second Warcor which actually is a Hafza HRL if you’re feeling cheeky. Sprinkle some Mutts on top and your specialists can go about their work under an umbrella of jammers and rockets.
Jesus, you could write a book on properly using ARO lol. Really depends on the army, though I feel that generally multiple weaker pieces is a better strategy than less but stronger options. I believe Haqq is one of the better ARO factions in the game due to the power of daylami, muttiwiah and I'm personally a big fan of the Ghulam sniper too. Mostly trying to dominate an opponent in ARO is harder than using more of a chaffy strategy. Later in the game, if you've killed the high end sweepers, a TR bot or something might get a full lockdown of much of the table. You can be a bit more aggressive than that if you are running a high end TAG or the opponent skimps on guns. But mostly I find ARO is variations on area denial options and speedbumps. The difference between a crappy daylami and a linked HI missile covering an area is the quality level of the sweeper required. If you run cheaper options, occasionally you'll find some midfield marksman rifle can deal to them, but mostly the opponent is still using the same orders on smoke or high end sweepers whether its a 7pt daylami or a linked 40pt HI missile.
