Well, technically second, but the first one I was still very new to infinity in general. I am an Aleph player through and through. And holy crap, it is a entire new game. Not even trying to spam camo and I had something like 8 markers on the table. And then, assimetric trading. Caught myself thinking I need to protect this, which approach will give him less AROs..... took me a couple of minutes to realize that the cameronian costs 20ish points, so I just shoved him down the middle instead. Took 6 shots in the process, but his double chain rifling killed 3 troops. Using a infiltrated grunt to deny half a board of deployment space to the oponent... It is completely different from the cold, methodical play that Aleph lends itself to because everything is so expensive. On Ariadna I feel like I have suicide guys #1 through 6, and they are the distraction from the main components of the list. That said... the models. What were the first digitally sculpted models on Ariadna? I am finding it much nicer to assemble and paint my digitally sculpted ones in Aleph, so if I ever think about a new faction then I wanna keep it mostly to those.
USAriadna is almost all digital and new, Caledonia has a huge majority, the rest have very little, but the Russians are maybe coming this year. The French could be waiting a while longer... In general Ariadna is best played slightly more aggressively, which is why there are a bunch of cheap units that work best up close...
Aleph is quite strong in ARO (those Dakinis in Supressive Fire in the middle of the table with just 2 coordinated orders... or the Mk4, or...) while Ariadna suffers there (a little less thanks to the Blackjack, now). You will miss some shenanigans like smoke combo, cheap ODD toting melee machines, and the ever-lovable Devabot, but... yeah, tons of infiltrators, tons of camos, cheaper infiltrated specialist in the game (with mines, in case you didn't knew what to do...), no servitors (ouch!) and no reliance on EST troops.
Our ARO game in vanilla Ariadna is stronger now than it used to be. Surprise Infiltrating flamethrowers and minelayers for mid-field have been augmented by options like Total Reaction for close range AROs and the Blackjack T2 sniper and Knauf for long range ARO coverage. Knauf is, for his points, easily the best sniper in our faction, and ranks highly in the game across factions in my opinion. If Knauf is too fragile or you need more coverage, the T2 Blackjack is durable and the Cateran T2 is cheap.
Sounds like a great experience! And yeah, Ariadna might lack fancy hacking, buffed drones or spicy tags. But the Camo shellgame can be both challenging and extremely fun. Regarding where they started with digitally created miniatures I’m not 100% but I think the border is somewhere are the antipodes/dogwarriors and the new spetsnaz and tankhunter. Speaking of which, I don’t know what your list included, but I really recommend trying out both spetsnaz and tank hunters. Great fun but also incredibly powerful. Good luck mate!
I believe the "new" range of models for Ariadna started at the end of 2nd edition around the initial release of the Scots Guards and Spetsnaz models and profiles. I don't know for sure if they were truly part of the digital sculpt range, but all the Spetsnaz look accurate and consistent next to each other.
I agree regarding long distance ARO but Ariadna has very good midfield/shot range ARO. Between chasseur (LFT, SS lvl1) and the hardcase (light shotgun, very good at killing fireteam, ultra cheap) we can lock midfield quite easyly. With their dogged and chain rifle, highlander can help a lot too.
That's not ARO (having powerful reactions in the opponent's turn. usually forcing order expenditure to clear your ARO pieces), but Board Control (forcing your opponent to burn orders to avoid danger zones they cannot clear from a distance). But yeah, the difference is Aleph's AROing is shooting galore, while Ariadna's is template a'plenty XD
