Dr Cancon: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Roll Dice

Well yea but you don't want to over-respect things that you don't have to. If you have a tool that reasonably can do the job head-on, I think it's a match-up you should take. You can have other options and going right up the middle is still totally valid.

Maybe. TBH I'd still fight most snipers with the swiss guard if given the option but maybe that's why I'm not a great player.

 

A sniper I'd probably make the same choice as you still have a good survival rate. Against linked MLs though, that's just asking for something to go wrong.

 

Well said. I think that's the crux of it.

Using the situation here, there are definitely times where you want to engage that linked missile with your Swiss Guard, but you definitely don't want to do it if you need the Swiss desperately for another role... Or if it puts the game on the line by losing a 68 point unit... Or if the missile launcher isn't posing a threat and you could just as easily bypass it in the marker state... Etc.

 

Or don't use Kusanagi to take out the Ryuken SMG when you have a Rev Healer right there...

 

Thanks for the response. I'd love to have a discussion about this with you but I'll wait for another venue.

 

I do like the discussion about considering the 'floor' for a F2F. There's rarely "sure things" in infinity due to the crit mechanic and even the most favorable odds for cracking a tough ARO piece are only ~70-80% chance of success as far as I've seen. An 80% chance of success is honestly not that high-- 1/5 times you're going to fail and if that failure is going to cripple your win expectancy then that's really a F2F you want to avoid. Even the baseline ~5% chance to be crit that exists in most F2F rolls should be a cause for concern - that's going to happen 1/20 times which is actually pretty frequent if you think about it. How many games of infinity do you play without a single crit? It almost never happens. I don't really see huge swings in the number of crits from game to game--their impact mostly depends on whether they happen in high leverage situations or not.

The problem is that infinity is super complicated so understanding the what actual impacts on win expectancy are at any given point in the game just has to come from lots of experience. Sometimes (rarely) losing that Swiss is going to be less of a big deal than losing the fusilier (maybe the swiss is out of position and isn't actually helping you win the mission but the fusilier is busy in suppression covering a vital bit of the board).

You can usually go back and think about a game you lost and see a 'point' where you lost. Interestingly, in my experience that point is usually not actually a roll at all, but a decision to put a model somewhere that you shouldn't have (or, conversely, not put a model somewhere that you should have). For all the focus on F2F percentages I bet if you could break down the win expectancy of a game of infinity, most of the dramatic shifts would come from moving models around.

 

@daboarder
Will reply more in full soon, but I've been burnt a lot by that Burst 2 EB too. I think the notion is awesome, and he's had some keys successes with Burned or Template splashes, but in the 4-5 games I've used the EB LRL, he also misses easy or unopposed shots a lot. Great theory, awesome application, really solid for people with different dice, but I've been leaning more towards the Paramedic and want to try the Red Fury too. I still love the notion and the concept of that fiery template, but haven't had great experiences on the table. Will keep trying it out though.

 

It confuses me that this isn't already a more common opinion. If I go to an event the lists are always built to handle the mission packet with particular lists designed to handle specific missions.

 

I've dropped the BSG Garuda from my lists (mostly Aleph player, just here for the great discussion) almost completely and take either the Spitfire or Combi for that same reason. The template and AP options are super tempting, but that extra dice....Maybe I should start taking the Spitfire and BSG for versatility

 

It's an interesting matchup. Tohaa have good (occasionally great) answers to the individual questions posed by Varuna, but Varuna's defences overlap extremely efficiently, and it makes deploying resources against them an arduous task. It always ends up being something like: I want to bomb into melee with the Cutter or Patsy's team but I can't do that until I've cleared the Helots covering any close angles; I want to use smoke gunfighting or expendable elements like symbiobeasts and the libertos to safely discover and clear the Helots and Cobras but I can't do that until I've blocked LOF to or taken down the Kamau MSV sniper (or Clipper). I want to clear the Kamau MSV (or Clipper) but...

Varuna's biggest weakness in the matchup is that even if it establishes ranged dominance it still doesn't necessarily want to attack into a tohaa heavy flamethrower cordon, but it can usually force it if it needs to, especially on more open or multi-leveled boards. Varuna players also sometimes make the mistake of deploying their Helots in Decoy rather than Limited Camo, which at least for Tohaa makes dealing with them pro-actively almost immeasurably easier*, but provided you don't do that and make sure your most valuable active pieces end up back inside your overlapping ARO network at turn end, I think the advantage is Varuna's.



*unless something happens like, say, a Fugazi stunning both my snipers from 40" in ARO for two consecutive turns.

 

This particularly jumped out at me as well. While it probably meant more about not losing valuable troops to bad luck the first thing I thought about is one of the advantages of AD I've considered. There's usually very few orders until you get to the result of using an AD troop, so even when you've failed you still have the stamina to start your "real" turn.

 

Yes and they're usually dropping to solve a single problem not to go on a rampage, so it's enough orders. Depends on the drop maybe. But I consider keeping them safe off board and having extremely reserved deployment choice to be the main advantages.

I'm used to them being out of the formation to be a neutral thing because my typical faction doesn't lean on many important models to keep safe and almost everyone else has a DTW or token state, so I'll need to be adjusting to Varuna. But Echo-Bravo took no small part in me starting them. Althou it's hard to keep in mind not having climbing+...

 

Sometimes the bigger picture matters most. Sometimes your whole goal is to gut as much of the Order pool as you can and you just have to play greedy and split Burst 4 ways to win.
The problem is figuring out when you are ahead and playing it safe has the highest chance to let you win.
Assume you start your turn and decide there is a path to your opponent's obvious Lt and your goal is to put him into LoL no matter what. Sure Achilles could try to kill his way through 2 Flashpulse bots to do that, but he could also sneak past them with a Cautious Move insteas of putting the main goal at risk in case of a crit.

Killing off unconscious pieces so they can't be revived is another such thing. Sure it costs Orders and you could probably do more dangerous things with them, but as satisfying as killing that Kamau Sniper that got on your nerves for the entire game would be, finishing off that Cutter for good is more important so he doesn't score a Zone in case the Engineer makes his mad dash across the table to put him back up.

That said there are a lot of nuances to "worst possible outcome" risk evaluation.
A Swiss vs a Linked ML is fairly risky and I'd look for something else to give that a shot instead. A TAG on the other hand has a neglible chance to die here and is safe to use (preferably with the Palbot around the corner).
A linked MSR is scary for a TAG if your opponent is good enough to think about Stunn ammo, but only if you need that TAG to do more this turn. It's fine if you can lose the FTF and have other pieces to spend Orders on for that turn.

Infinity's decision making is always more of an educated guess than a perfectly executed strategy. Being aware of any potential point of failure and working around them in a way that allows to compensate in case the worst case happens, is what makes you good at the game.
Picking a goal, succeeding every roll and to achieve everything you wanted that turn is a rare occurence.
There is always something you could have done but won't have the Orders or pieces to do. With one Order left you often can Recamo something, put someone else in SF and have yet another piece that would like to Move or go Prone. Figuring out which decision is the least bad or most important is what ultimately adds up.

That and DZ bound TO Attack pieces, especially multiwound ones that can take a stray Chainrifle or Crit.
The biggest plus point a Cutter or Swiss HMG have is that you will always get to use them for a turn no matter what. No one is ever going to Sensor sweep, find and kill them in your DZ before you get a chance to pump some Orders into them.
Marut, Avatar, Achilles or any other piece that has to be deployed might get taken out before you get to use them. In some matchups, like against spammy JSA, that outcome might even be quite likely and you shouldn't bring a list with a big important target to begin with.

 

I am sorry to ask, but I don't get the Point on using stun ammonition against a TAG.
My thoughts: stun as aro prevents the TAG from ramboing into your DZ