Let me tell you a story friends. Or not, up to you, really - click the Spoiler if you want to know how I got here today. Spoiler Me (usually not a regular Aleph Player) processing the new releases: This Vedic thing is a thing now *skimms through* Christ on a Bike the madmen went and did it, Posthumans in a Sectorial Dakini Core + Asura Spitfire Lt L2 with COC at 15 Orders *Coldfront box is ordered* How about Vanilla though? *looks at usual Aleph list* So Achilles Lt is still a thing. Shukra retains CoC in Vanilla huh? 10 more points to spare for toys. What does this Counterintelligence thing do again? right, riiiight.... thaaat So 15 Order lists, with turn 1 10 Order Achilles rampage and more points to spend on stuff actually doing something? That seems.... extra fair? Yes. Well then. Life is good. Turns out that was not the end of it. Get talked into filler for tournament. 'Oh btw theres 7 Tohaa' MFW 7 Tohaa. Quick thought comes to mind - 'Remember what works well vs Tohaa - PanO & JSA.' All ís well, expectations rising. Scrolls down list. Camo, Camo everywhere. In the cracks, on the roofs, between the sheets. EVERYWHERE. So not JSA then, I actually want to have some fun here. Suddenly remember PanO aren't on premise, cuz getting new paintjob. *JSA vs quadruple Strelok PTSD intensifies* Suddenly remember borrowing Aleph for German Masters because of stupid painting requirements. I for one welcome our new Robot overlords. Including a 40 player, 2 day, 5 game tournament my total track record with Aleph is below 10 games. Either due to mostly ridiculous luck or because the Faction really clicked with me, man do I enjoy Aleph. Apart from playing against them over and over again, letting Achilles run free with his hair in the wind and laughing at Proxies being completely ridonkulous I actually think they're okay and can be dealt with as an opponent. However in my humble oppinion there is no question Vanilla Aleph is on the upper Spectrum of Factions to play out there. So with my fairly limited experience, which pretty much can be summed up as running Mr Universe McFancy hair up the board every game. What do you run him with? As a common denominator and more so with the Shukra available, I have no intention to argue about 10 Order Lists outside of LI enforcing them. They're simply not for me. Leaving them at the door, what do you bring when you decide "eh screw it, I'm just gonna run Achilles again".
Mind posting one of the lists? I have been interested in Achilles (who isn't) but my fear with taking him is him being gunned downed in the street like Hector has many times before.
For the tournament I went with a compact list, as I'm not very familiar with Aleph and had to consider time restraints. I don't consider this optimal but it went 4W 1T 0L and got me 3rd. ALEPH ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 ACHILLES Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, EXP CCW. (2.5 | 75) MYRMIDON Chain Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 16) PROXY Mk.2 Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 21) PROXY Mk.5 (Forward Observer) 2 Submachine Guns, Nanopulser, E/M Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10) PROBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) PROBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) LAMEDH Rebot Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) LAMEDH Rebot Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) NETROD . (0 | 4) NETROD . (0 | 4) NETROD . (0 | 4) GROUP 2 4 ATALANTA MULTI Sniper Rifle + TinBot E (Spotter) / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 39) DASYU Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 37) MACHAON Lieutenant Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 38) YUDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) MYRMIDON Chain Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 16) 5 SWC | 299 Points Open in Infinity Army Memory is a little hazy on reasoning, but here is what I can recall. The second list was a Marut List built for 2 specific Missions. As some people might have read elsewhere the Marut List didn't get any use. Terrain wasn't suitable to hide a S7 Silhouette and made it impossible to run. One note on the general premise - Dart wasn't a thing yet. Missions Round 1 Hunting Party (close win VS spammy Aleph sporting Scylla and Drakios) - Fun mission, fun game, unfortunately the entire map was fences and rocks so I couldn't run the Marut list. Went first, but the dice fumbled on turn 1 and nothing much happened. My opponent was dead set on burning Achilles' ODD off with Drakios, disregarding 4" Dodges on PH15. He ultimately rolles a 16 and got shot to bits after wasting about the entire turn. Machaon was impossible to deal with for the opposing side, while I couldn't reach his Deva Lt in the back. Ultimately the Posthumans on both side fought a proxy battle to decide the winner and I got a close win by making my Classified when he didn't. Round 2 Highly Classified (table/high win VS Nomads sporting a Prowler Spitfire, Zoe&Piwell) - Not much to say about this game, it's HC. Not a fan of random Objectives deciding the game after you write your lists. Achilles and Skirmishers went on a Rampage, crippled his Order pool and nothing really went the Nomad's way the whole game. Round 3 Rescue (close win VS Combined Army sporting Speculo, Noctifier ML, Umbra Hacker and the usual REMs) - This must have been the first game I've ever seen a defensively deployed Speculo (or maybe he failed his roll, also a first, but unfortunately can't remember). Actually misplayed and got too focussed on killing, so CA gunned down the Dasyus holding on to one of Aleph's Civilians in turn 3. The pretty boy had meanwhile killed a lot of Specialists and guns in his turn and a Noctifier on ARO. CA couldn't really oppose Atalanta's ARO potential through the Saturation Zone after that. Due to nothing but my own idiocy this ended in a 5-1 and cost me an important TP. Round 4 Acquisition (tie on the last Order vs triple Triad double Sukeul, Gao Rael & Rasail Tohaa) - full disclosure I abhor Acquisition, the game hinges on the central Objective and who can score it. Which is usually the guy going 2nd at equal levels of Skill. Awful mission, got the tie going first but had to get lucky for it. Round 5 Supremacy (high win VS weird Bakunin with 1 HD+ as only Hacker, 1Taskmaster Red Fury and Moderator Link + Skirmishers) - I went second with nothing much happening in Bakunin's first. Atalanta got shot by the linked Moderator and revived, then got her revenge and afterwards killed the Taskmaster sitting in SF in front of her through a Smoke. Then Achilles went on a stroll. With a lot of Camo Markers sitting on roofs expected Hackers there, but without seeing blondie they couldn't do much against his Stealth as he flanked a side, happily killing his way to a TR bot towards the Custodier HD+, which oh surprise was the Lt. The rest was a breeze. Scoring all zones with Skirmishers in Token form and Achilles turned out to be trivial and the tournament ended for me in a nice and clean 10-0. Postmortem: Machaon is a workhorse. Eclipse, CC Skills, Being a Doctor moving a Yudbut while fighting elsewhere on the table, killing TR Bots from outside 32" with no risk. Machaon is good to begin with, but he was there to win Hunting Party for me. As a Lt Achilles would have been vulnerable to give easy points, being close to enemy lines, while Machaon is very hard to hunt down on the backlines. NWI prevents the opponent from being able to score on him while he is Unconscious and he is hard to take out with CC and BS weapons alike. That worked out well for me so I can recommend it for anyone looking at Hunting Party in particular. Achilles is a guided Missile that doubles down as Order swamp after taking out something important. Send him somewhere, let him do his thing and put him in a defensible position to await imminent death at high Order expenditure for your opponent. Supressive Fire always seemed a waste over simply trying to kill more troops. I actually prefer the ODD Version for the better FTF odds in the Active Turn as well as odds to succeed with an Engage roll vs a BS Attack, with Rescue in the mix rewarding Multiterrain over Forward Deployment, V1 hat more than a slight edge for the mission setup. The Dasyus was there to back up the Proxy MK2 and it's a Dasyus over a Naga because several missions had 2nd turn scoring/Zones to hold. NWI and TO seemed worth the upgrade, although losing the Mines is always a little sting. It's unusual for me to only run 2/3 Proxies. As much as I wanted an MK1 Engineer for HC, priorities for other Missions and maintaining 14 Orders ultimately won. Atalanta isn't a natural choice for me and I kind of took her on a whim. She was a gamble that payed off and something I'd consider replacing for more consistency. For this specific set of missions and considering I had to handle it with only one list, everything went according to expectations. Although not screwing up in game 3 could have actually edged out a tournament win, it would have made for different matches game 4 and 5. Altogether and considering how few games I had with Aleph, placing 3rd out of 40 was pretty damn satisfying.
You should play with what you are comfortable with, so no problem with that, i just wanted to point out that with O.S., more than any other sectorial, LI is definitely not equal to 10 orders and 10 bodies. With posthumans, arjunas ... we have more than 10 bodies, and with Asuras, we have more than 10 orders :D At the same time, it's true that O.S. seems (i didnt had the chance to play it till now) to work very well in 12+ orders, with that huge remote network. Maybe we'll see some EVO from times to times with all those repeaters.
I don't mind playing with things I'm uncomfortable with. Exploring CC utility after almost never dealing with it has been a blast. Using mid range troops to do all the hard work taught me a lot about the game. The list goes on. LI simply is a conceptually flawed design where mobility and Objective interaction draw from the same Order pool that determines your damage output. I tried to, but there is no way to alleviate the loss of ressources over 3 turns starting with just 10 Regular Orders. Thing is you can still include pieces that are the most efficient at using Orders in a list that has 14 or More Orders on the table. What you get for limiting yourself to one Combat Group is a better quality of backups, Aleph is already spoiled with Posthumans as excellent and cheap force multipliers and spare attack pieces. AVA3 Netrods and 2x2 8 Points Remotes are your 7 cheapest Orders to fuel the list. Above them, Orders start providing utility and tend to be a fair bit more expensive. Those 7 are relatively easy to take out for your opponent and would be devastating to include in a single group list. So that's another reason why I see them as more of a battery that gets used up during the game to keep the important pieces in mainly group 1 functional with as many Orders as possible. The thing about providing bodies you mentioned is also pretty important here. Just having Orders is not enough, you also need to hold on to as many as possible. Which means protecting your important stuff by utilizing extra Posthumans, Warcors, Mines and mostly group 2 members as expendable roadblocks.
Netrods are AVA 2 in OS ^^ Well, i disagree a bit. Netrods are cheap for a reason, they do nothing appart providing an order. Probots are often the same, being bit fat unarmed remotes, useless except if you really need the baggage thing (for some objectives for example). They won't hinder an opponent. They won't prevent him from doing what he want to do. And if he want to remove them, he doesn't have to try using a specific troop, or get a specific range band. In other words, you have more orders, but so do your opponent: he does not have to spend orders killing or moving around your miniatures. LI is not a flawed design. LI is about forcing the opponent to spend much to deplete you. Yes, on the first turn you may have only 10 orders vs 14 or 15, but often you'll still have 7-8 orders on turn 3, while your opponent had to spend too many to do anything. I mean, what's the matter if you have only 10 orders while your opponent has 15, if he needs 2 or 3 orders to do what you do in only 1 ? Or if by spending only 2 or 3 of your orders, you can cripple him so that he has orders in a group, but nothing useful to do with it ? Meanwhile, you have backup. Quality one. You should also consider order economy. An infiltrator does not have to spend orders to get in position, it already starts in it. Same for an AD. Rather than fielding plenty of orders that will stay in your deployment zone and won't contribute to anything (and will probably be sitting duck for any AD), you have troops ready to do what they need to do. If one get killed, the other is already in position. So, in my opinion, you should not say LI is flawed. It may be very potent, even vs an high order list, but keep in mind it does not work the same way. And our new sectorial can very well play one or the other, and both are viable, so everyone can build the way they want to play.
We actually tested LI to see if we could prove it is flawed. Running a 10 Order list built to kill a 10 Order list against a 10 Order List built to kill a 10 Order List with people knowing what they're doing should be balanced, right? Turns out not being able to strip 2 Orders flips that balance in favour of the guy going first. Testing didn't take long as the games were pretty fast and often called after turn 1. Running something big and nasty to gut your opponent's pool down to half or less and taking the game from there is pretty easy. It makes the game a lot like 40k, where you roll for turn Order and call the game depending on Matchup. Sure you can win with freak dice, people accidentially shooting you in Retreat or forgetting about Objectives, but it turns out Winrate is mostly just about going first and kicking in teeth. We took a sample LI tournament and predicted all games under that assumption with above 80% accuracy. The lesson learned here is not just that LI as an enforced format is quite swingy and not very competetive, but that LI lists in general simply fold under pressure, which also applies for a LI list vs a 15,16 or 20 order List. One Combat group is not enough to deal with AD, Mines, Infiltrators, button pushing, Discover etc on top of your own losses. A lot of LI lists in that tournament focussed on a single Link or Rambo spending 10 or 11 Orders (Lt) to run wild, somethimes getting got stopped by a lucky ARO, But mostly by effectively ending the game in Player turn 1. You don't have space for cheap throwaway roadblocks like Warcors or full AVA Mutts in that Format, while your opponents will most likely have guns that can overpower conventional AROs from their DZ, which already costs you Orders. A Netrod usually does it's job if someone else spends an Order to kill it. 1 Order expended for 4 points isn't a bad deal. With 3 Netrods you're usually getting some of their Orders for yourself and it takes more than 1 Order per Netrod to kill them on average (or some of them live through several turns). Netrods as well as NWI/Dogged models also die completely and don't block their Combat group with Unconscious bodies, which often can be crucial in turn 2. For LI only tournaments you should actually be able to use Command Tokens to strip Orders, that would significantly improve the format. In normal Infinity without LI, running a LI list against a list without that limitation simply puts you in a statistically speaking bad spot. Even Tohaa and Aleph, who can cheat a little by using Proxies or Mates to mitigate the effect of taking damage to their Order Pool, still are better off bringing a second group, serving as expendable AROs or to refill the big Order pool. Limited Insertion lists are actually close in performance to 11-12 Order lists, but really start to fall off against 15 or more Orders that still bring serious Attack Pieces. To be fair that is a sample size of just 60 games, so you are free to have your doubts about accuracy. But to me everything makes sense and the statistics agree. So just humor my theory and lets talk about 2 Combat Group Aleph with Achilles.
Basicaly I can +1 under each and every statement. We also made statistics in this manner, ad we have similiar observations.
How that should be different with a 15 orders list vs another 15 order lists, both build to kill ? More bodies but more orders to kill them. You are just proving that between 2 killing lists initiative is the key factor, nothing else.
Crippling 5 orders with 15 to start is slight disadvantage. You still got 10. Crippling 5 out of 10 and reducing list to 5 orders... Well;) Having 20 orders is poetry - lossing 5-7 doesnt really hurt, You still got plenty to go. More You got, more immune to alpha strikes You are.
Yep. Hilarious situation though is when a 15+ (or 20) order list gets a 2nd turn against old 10 order list who is on top of bad matchup further penalized by -2 orders on their only alpha strike turn ^^ (really good thing that at least this interaction is now blocked by CB)
But with 15 orders, not 10 you can kill more - and with more troops on the ground they may be less movement needed and will be easier to kill.. So it might be more losing 7-8 out of 15, not 5 out of 15.
Because a) without LI you're stripping 2 Orders of group 1 or 2 (offset by Counterintelligence), b) swamp the reduced amount of Orders with expendable and or capable ARO pieces c) despite running 15+ Orders you don't necessarily get to spend more on effective killing. As an example there is only one Achilles in a list so I can't use Orders from group 2 to fuel Achilles that is already in position to continue his run after exhausting the Order pool of group 1. So not only are group 2's Orders generally not equally useful to cause damage, they very often serve as utility where you start Hacking, Moving, throwing Smokes, placing Mines or pushing Buttons instead of killing with them. All that while you still spend a full Group of Orders on killing. Against a good defensive list setup i.e. Ariadna or Tohaa you'll probably spend turn 1 killing 4-5 models and clearing mines and Camo. Larger Order pools give more access to cheap throwaway troops, that are inconsequential to your plans but can soak up several Orders worth of effort to dispose of. i.e. with JSA I can run 8 Linkable troops in a group and keep reforming with new Flashpulse Keisotsu ready to sell their lifes above their meager 10 point value. With 10 Orders I do that, get my opponent to spend maybe 5-6 Orders to kill those 3 Keisotsu and am down to 7 Orders total, which is 30% of my only pool. Without LI I'm probably running 17 Orders JSA and that is only 17.8% of my total Order Pool. In addition being able to spam cheap Keisotsu also allows me to have a Keisotsu HMG that still has B5 and +3 BS in turn 3, while that same guy would be pretty garbage after loosing 3 out of 5 Linkable troops in LI. In LI I probably will not have 3 Mines and 2 Koalas to slow down my opponent either, and with less troops my opponent has more space to work around my defenses. A larger list can cover more corners and firelanes with positive Rangebands, Repeaters, AROs, Deployables and warm bodies. Smoke chugging dirt cheap Warbands in particular can slow you down a lot. One successful Smoke ARO or Engage roll can throw a massive spanner in the works. In LI not every gap is protected by a Mine or Warband and you can just circumvent the few that might still show up. Outside of LI a Mutt will just eat 3 of your Orders or even wins his Smoke wFTF ith your MSV2's occupied elsewhere. In LI that is far, far less common as those dirt cheap, irregular, high impact defensive troops make way for more expensive but often less survivable models. In short larger lists can soak disproportional more damage relative to the pool and also does a better job at wasting Orders without losing models. Without LI you can not be overrun that easy, so your opponent actually has to consider playing the Mission. If he kills 5 Orders but delivers his whole HI Link waiting for you to kill it with 10 Orders he is probably losing the game. So your opponent will mostly use a disposable Missile, like Achilles, AD tropps, Dao Fei etc to do damage but will start diverting Orders to move things around set up better AROs, Mines and goes for the Mission Objective. In LI going second and being down to 5 Orders gmeans you'll probably get to spend like 8 or less Orders over the entire game while your Opponent gets to spend double that amount. In his second turn it is quite possible your opponent secures an Objective and wipes the remaining relevant part of your list out, putting you in Retreat when it suits him to end the game.
I would appreciate if you could take the time to read before posting. Yes with more orders you have more to lose, but if your opponent has more orders, he has more to kill you too ... And it will hurt you more because you may find yourself with plenty of orders but no troop to use them, because your opponent will just focus on those good troops, and once they are killed you have nothing left. For example, if you have a group with Achilles and 9 cheerleaders, what will you do once Achilles get killed ? Use your netrods ? Your probots ? I also said that before in my first answer by the way. I wont be answering again here, no point.
I ran Achilles for the first time tonight, Shasvastii were sprung on me for capture and protect. Achilles ate a speculo are two viral mines and gunned down Aida, walked through and killed 3 Notifier Missile launchers without taking a hit. Proceeded to blow up the LT in cc take the objective back to base and finish the game in one piece. He has far exceeded expectations and I can't imagine he'll live up the that games preformance.
