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How the hell do I play Combined?

Discussion in 'Combined Army' started by Natsymir, Apr 5, 2020.

  1. Natsymir

    Natsymir Well-Known Member

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    Since I began playing Combined Army, I've seen a sharp decline in my amount of victories, compared to when I played Haqqislam. This saddens me greatly, because I love playing the Combined Army, but they really don't seem to work for me.

    I am certain that is is not just me playing them badly. No, the main culprit is the fact that everything is so expensive. In Infinity, in my experience, the more orders you have, the easier it is to win. A horde army is immensely easier to play, and less dependent on luck, than an elite army. In Haqqislam, I always have this cloud of cheap irregulars that can provide AROs and act as stopping blocks for the enemy, and that works wonders. With Combined, the best I seem able to manage, is 12 orders or so, and it nevers works. The only alternative I can imagine is to play lists that always contain the following, in order to spam Flash Pulses and HMG Total Reaction AROs, and that would get boring soo quickly:

    Combined Army
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

    [​IMG]9
    ÍMETRON . (0 | 4)
    ÍMETRON . (0 | 4)
    R-DRONE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
    R-DRONE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
    IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9)
    IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9)
    E-DRONE Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 28)
    Q-DRONE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26)
    MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID (Journalist L1) Submachine Gun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22)
    SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
    SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)

    1.5 SWC | 124 Points

    Open in Infinity Army



    Do you on this forum actually have success with all the limited insertion lists I see thrown around? (Because in my experience, 10-order lists...well, they suck, to be honest. They're ridiculously vulnerable to chaff, deployment zone attacks and bad luck). Do you actually think 10-12 orders are sufficient in a Combined Army list to be successful? Are my observations completely wrong? Is there any advice you can give me?

    TL;DR: How do I build good lists with the Combined Army?
     
  2. Doppelgganger

    Doppelgganger Well-Known Member

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    CA its a mix-troops army, mostly elite but you may play perfectly a horde troops list, but remember, mission say whos win.

    my apretition to play vanilla: Aspects ( Charontid, Avatar, Anathematic and Skiavoros) they are the most juicy troops to play vanilla LT, although depending of mission, points, local metagame and local table style, this may change to another troops. other generaly LT to vanilla: Sheskiin, Mentor; nexus HD.
    as defenses i suggest shroudeds minelayeer dazer x2+ q-drone + another camotroops (for example libertos minelayer or one seedsoldier) and maybe one sniper (generaly i play Armand msv1/minelayer, because 2 wounds & ddo, with partial cover to limited insertion)
    as horde troops i usually play 4 DA Taighas and 2 regular troops in de second groops (to make coordinated attacks with Taigas or to move it to first groop). Taighas are good protecting ground with his SS1.
    other usually good horde troops are krakots, daturazis and Hungries:Pretas, where Daturazis has smoke (to maybe combo with MSV3 Charontid)
     
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  3. Stiopa

    Stiopa Trust The Fuckhead

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    To put it bluntly: it seems to me that you're trying to use a strategy that works with one faction to work with a completely different one, as well as being stuck on the order count. Orders are very important, true, but they're only one of the components of a good list.

    Haqq and CA play nothing alike; first one gets a lot of mileage from its LI, while CA is very top-heavy, its LI are often very specialized towards specific tasks, while REMs are used to pad order pool which fuels heavy hitters. Our units' cost also pays for a good statlines and a lot of secondary skills and weapons, which results in some very good toolboxes.

    Some CA-unique things to consider:
    • Using most of the EI constructs as Lt's allows you not to care about LoL thanks to Mnemonica, and ensure that you always have the use for your Lt. order.
    • Both Morats and Shasvastii bring in a shedloads of specialized units for both straight-up firefights and sneaky midfield games.
    • Taighas and Hungries used en masse allow you to form a good warband screen; they can shield your units from horde armies, as well as go after the soft underbelly. Daturazi also count.
    Regarding order count: I don't like the middle ground of 11-12 orders; it makes the second group effectively useless, while still making the list vulnerable to strategic use of Command Tokens. I build either 10- or 14-15 order army lists. One of good uses for second group is for example anti-camo net of 1 M and 2 R-Drones, plus a Cadmus to drop and make things interesting for opponent's backline. In general, there's a lot of things you can do to distract opponent from objectives or your troopers. A lot of our units can be a threat or a nuisance for relatively low cost.
     
  4. HardDisk

    HardDisk Well-Known Member

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    I don't play Vanilla CA, but after 2 years playing Haqq/HB i bought my OCF. It was a uphill battle for me, i lose a lot for around 3 months until i could reach some consistency with them.

    Like @Stiopa said, you can't use the same mentality for Haqq and CA, they're different animals, with CA pointing towards key-models that you must use to its potential than a group of "weaklings" that must coordinate attacks to achieve sucess.

    The Avatar is the prime example (at least for me) of how CA works, a big scary boy with some friends watching his back.
     
  5. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Mate, that's on you, not the army. @Stiopa brought up some good points, but I'm going to go into the mindset of someone who plays CA or other elite stuff a bit:

    - First, I like the idea that in an elite army we don't "trade" models very often. So there's no such thing as "I'm going to let this guy here get killed in order to fulfill an objective". At least most of the time. When you need to husband your resources better, you start to think a lot whether you should or should not sacrifice a model.
    - Second, all those expensive statlines and equipment often do become more useful when you learn to leverage them. Sure, a Charontid is obscenely expensive, but it is also either an insanely high WIP hacker lieutenant with a powerful gun and powerful hacking device or a resilient fire superiority piece that can kill most stuff in the game with 1 or 2 orders. Leverage your stuff. Sheskiin can run like hell and attack from different angles, the anathematics can come out of nowhere and shoot like a boss, even the humble Q-Drone can turn into a murder machine with just supportware and positioning;
    - Third, look at your toolbox. CA has some of the best AD troops, CC troops, skirmishers, warbands, etc in the game. Everything we have is just an itty bitty better than its human counterpart. Sure, it is also more expensive, but you will not see an AD trooper more precise than a Cadmus anywhere, and an FA Sogarat is probably the most cost-effective anti-armor unit in the game. Really, we have a lot of tools and solutions for the problems in this game, you just need to check the list.
    - Fourth, look at your mindset. You seem to be very keen on the "drown them in bodies" strategy and that may be the reason why you're struggling. We're often caught in such tight mindsets that it becomes very hard to shift our paradigm and adapt to a new faction. I had this problem when I started playing Ariadna and realized my models were pretty shitty individually, but I could overlap a lot more stuff because of that.

    All in all, CA is probably one of the strongest factions in Infinity right now (as much as that matters, considering this game is balanced enough that the difference is minimal), so I think you can have a bright future in this army, mate.
     
  6. Natsymir

    Natsymir Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the advice guys. I'm sure you're right. I will continue to try and master Combined, and think differently than I do with Haqqislam.

    I tried implementing some new ideas, and your advice, in this list for Highly Classified, and it really paid of. I focused completely on completing classifieds with the Charontid and Ko Dali and locking the scary enemy link team in overlapping AROs from the Noctifer and the Q-drone, and I won 10-6!
    Nevertheless, my takeaway from this game is that having at least 13 orders make things so much easier, and so does having some chaff, so the 2 x ikadron 2 x r-drone 2 x imetron as well as a few taighas will probably remain as a compulsory part of my lists for quite some time.


    Combined Highly Classified
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────

    GROUP 1[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]10
    CHARONTID Lieutenant Hacker (Hacking Device Plus) Plasma Rifle, Nanopulser / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 73)
    ÍMETRON . (0 | 4)
    ÍMETRON . (0 | 4)
    R-DRONE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
    R-DRONE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
    IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9)
    IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9)
    Q-DRONE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26)
    MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID (Journalist L1) Submachine Gun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22)
    SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
    SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
    MALIGNOS Hacker (EI Killer Hacking Device) Submachine Gun, Dazer, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 33)

    GROUP 2[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]3 [​IMG]2 [​IMG]2
    NOX Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (Normal and Nimbus plus) / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 17)
    KO DALI (AD: Combat Jump) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, D-Charges / 2 Assault Pistols, Knife. (0 | 39)
    NOCTIFER Missile Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32)
    TAIGHA Chain-colt / AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 5)
    TAIGHA Chain-colt / AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 5)

    4 SWC | 300 Points

    Open in Infinity Army
     
  7. Death

    Death Well-Known Member

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    This is an old post but I'd just like to add that given the data we get from ITS, the Combine army does better in tournaments than most other factions in the game, especially the most order spam ones like Haqqislam. So while at first glance Infinity seems to favor order spam factions, this tends to fall apart in higher level play.
     
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  8. Natsymir

    Natsymir Well-Known Member

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    too bad I won't ever reach that high of a level :-/
     
  9. Weathercock

    Weathercock Well-Known Member

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    No one starts out at a high level, especially in a game as easy to lose as Infinity. You really have to feel your way through things a lot of the time, and that means a lot of experimentation and a lot of losses.
     
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