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Rating armies in N4

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Scribbler, Oct 1, 2020.

  1. Scribbler

    Scribbler Well-Known Member

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    Hello everyone!

    It's been a while since I've written anything to post on Lonely Artichoke, and I'm planning to write a continuation of Magonus' Infinity Factions, Artichoked analysis. I would like to take a look at where everything is in N4, and I thought I would open it up and get some feedback from the community. Using the categories that I have provided below, how would you rate any faction as of night now? You don't need to give me a comprehensive overview of every single faction or sectorial, just whatever you feel comfortable with.

    The Categories are as follows:
    Command structure: How many viable lieutenant options does the army have? How competent are the lieutenants, and do they have any useful skills (e.g. Lt2, Strategos, etc.)? How well does the army utilize its command resources (e.g. NCO), and how easy is to avoid going into Loss of Lieutenant?
    Mission effectiveness: How capable is the army at accomplishing objectives? How order-efficient is the army? Does it have competent specialists, and is it able to deliver them effectively? How effectively does the army counter threats?
    Flexibility: How many ways can a player approach building a list? Are there many ways to build a strong force, or is the army hamstrung into one or two general builds? How easy is it for the opponent to anticipate and counter what the army will be fielding?
    Overall faction design: How well designed is the army? Are there any units that seem out of place, or do not have any role that they fill effectively? Are there any units that seem to be a non-option in any given army (excluding vanilla)? Does the army have a theme that it tries to follow, and is it interesting to play? What are it's strengths and weaknesses?
    Beginner friendliness: How difficult would it be for a player new to Infinity to learn the game while playing this army? How many complex rules come into play when using this army? Does it have a steep learning curve, and how forgiving is the army to the player making mistakes?

    If you could provide me with a one-to-five-point rating, as well as a brief evaluation, that would make my data collecting a lot easier. When I'm ready to publish, I'll take the average of everybody's ratings and incorporate that into the article. For now, I am just collecting information about the current factions that have been released; I'll probably be doing this again in November when the second wave hits. There is no right or wrong answer as far as I am concerned, so feel free to share exactly what your thoughts are, and be respectful of one another's responses.

    If you have any questions or have anything that you would like to add, feel free to reach out to me!

    Thank you for your time,
    Scribbler

    Changelog
    October 1 - Added Beginner friendliness category
     
    #1 Scribbler, Oct 1, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2020
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  2. QueensGambit

    QueensGambit Chickenbot herder

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    Hassassin Bahram: 5 stars

    HB has a funny command structure. We have no good Lts - even the classic Barid Hacker Lt. is no longer interesting since he doesn't have supportware for spending his Lt. order on. Our Lts are obvious and hard to protect. However, all that is completely mitigated by the Farzan CoC, the only auto-include unit in the sectorial IMO.

    We also have the Ghulam NCO as an excellent way to spend the Lt. order.

    We have outstanding toolbox fireteams to efficiently deliver our excellent hackers and doctors where they're needed.

    Our big weakness is MSV2 snipers, as we rely heavily on smoke and our HMGs are subpar. I think that a big part of playing HB will be using Fidays to try to eliminate MSV2 units. It's too early to tell otherwise, but I suspect that we will be able to counter other threats very effectively.

    Too early to tell, but I think we will be middle-of-the-road on this one.

    They will know that Fidays are coming and deploy defensively. But that just means the Fiday has done his job already.

    No. There are units that I feel are close to being non-options, but other HB players love them. It's a sign of good design that there is no consensus as to which units are best. There are no units that everyone agrees are useless.

    Yes, HB is very thematic re Fidays and cheap irregulars. Fidays are also some of the game's most interesting units to play.

    Strengths and weaknesses already covered above.
     
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  3. Vakarian

    Vakarian Bad Nomad

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    Corregidor Jurisdictional Command: 5 Stars.

    Command Structure: 2/5

    CJC's primary weakness is its command problems. Only three LT options, the cheapest of which costs 1 SWC (Alguaciles). The other two (Wildcats and Mobile Brigada) are decent but won't use the LT order, at least until late game, as they generally want to be in a link. Nomads have no access to Chain of Command and little other command abilities. The Wildcat Spitfire gaining NCO is probably the only thing stopping me from rating CJC as 1/5 here because it can effectively use the LT order. The loss of the Intruder LT hits hard and confirms command structure as CJC's primary weakness. This is intentional, and OK - the sectorial is well-built and needs an internal weakness.

    Mission Effectiveness: 5/5

    CJC can complete any mission thrown at it without breaking a sweat. There's always an option that's pretty much optimized to the objectives. Need hackers? Heh... yep. We're only really behind Tunguska and Aleph for quality, have an easier time with fielding multiple hackers, and have better repeater support. Need engineers? That's our faction trait, almost every decent troop type has an engineer profile. Need doctors? The Daktari has wildcard, and we have two separate drop troop options. Need to hit things in the face? Mobile Brigada, Evaders, Wildcats, Vostoks, Tsyklons, and Intruders have that covered in spades (although the Intruder is showing his age a bit). Need to protect something? Morans, Jaguars, Lunokhods, and Transductors put up good, cheap ARO blocks. We can also slot good (if not great) ARO options into a core link with lots of wildcard options. CJC, more than almost any other sectorial, can build to a mission and not lose an ounce of mission effectiveness doing so.

    Flexibility: 5/5

    I'm basically going to beat a dead horse here. Flexibility is CJC's greatest strength, both in list design and on the table. We play asymmetrically exceptionally well and usually have 2-3 unique ways to deal with difficult enemy models built into a decent list. We can brute force pretty well when needed too. The only real downside here is a complete lack of hidden deployment options, but our drop troops are so good and now so reliable that this isn't really even a noticeable defect.

    Overall Faction Design: 5/5

    It's clear that CJC got a lot of love coming into N4 and is one of the premier choices of the new edition. Amusingly, Hassassins are as well, as @QueensGambit said above. I'm hoping to see solid updates for other sectorials in the manner of CJC and HB: clear faction strengths, good mission flexibility, and a glaring inherent weakness that the sectorial has to work around.

    Beginner Friendliness: 3/5

    Edited to add beginner friendliness. CJC has straightforward enough options that beginners should be able to get their feet under them well enough with the faction, but its real capabilities lie in synergy and assymmetrical approaches that will take new players some time to learn. That shouldn't put anyone interested in CJC off; in fact, I'd say it's a net benefit as it gives the player a chance to grow with the faction.
     
    #3 Vakarian, Oct 1, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2020
  4. WiT?

    WiT? Well-Known Member

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    I don't know how useful this is as a tool right now, but would be interesting to compare current inputs and those after like six months with the new rules. I'd also suggest "beginner friendliness" or something as a stat too.

    Hassassins

    Command Structure
    : 4.5/5
    Has access to zero SWC cheap LT. Has access to CoC on a protected and desirable profile, but that profile is either expensive or in harms way. Has access to good combat LT, but not great combat LT.

    Mission Effectiveness: 5/5
    Has no meaningful gaps for mission completion. Has a very flexible roster as detailed below. Might struggle on the "Forced TAG" missions.

    Flexibility: 4.5/5
    Has good access to most parts of the 'tech tree'. Is very strong in Impersonation, link composition, defense and I would argue skirmishers in general. Access to an excellent warband even post-nerf. So, good at many of the things that are good in Infinity. Lacking a standard or high strength TAG, has only mediocre HMG access (BS13 TAG, linked Ghulam etc) are the main weaknesses. No comment on hacking from me, I play Tohaa mainly and know nothing about whether the Barid is good or bad overall.

    Overall Design: 5/5
    I think they nailed it. It feels like an elite force of assassins and what are essentially desert ninjas. I would not want the gaps in the roster filled. Does seem a bit odd that they are so damn good at defense too, but I'm definitely not complaining.

    I would also consider them to be beginner friendly (4/5). As a finesse force, you'll make a mistake and die, but you have access to very broad and good tools and no glaring weaknesses. Impersonators are a very solid attack piece and Daylami & Ghazi are excellent defense pieces that will help newer players weather the storm.
     
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  5. Vakarian

    Vakarian Bad Nomad

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    That's a great idea, if OP or someone else wants to take a reassessment once people actually have played games and gained experience with their factions. I'll be very curious to see if I'm wrong about CJC, although I suspect I won't be.
     
  6. Scribbler

    Scribbler Well-Known Member

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    Totally forgot to take beginner friendliness into consideration; I'm going to go ahead and add that now. Thank you for the idea!
     
  7. Scribbler

    Scribbler Well-Known Member

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    Yes, I do agree at the moment that this analysis may be a bit early. I thought it might be useful to post it anyway, however, to get people thinking. If this exceeds my wildest dreams, then maybe it will also catch CB's eye and they'll have a nice, relatively ordered dataset about community perceptions of the health of various armies.

    After this is published, I'd be more than happy to revisit this and provide an update in a few months, after people have gotten a chance to put the rules into practise.
     
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  8. Erbent

    Erbent Well-Known Member

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    I think I can give some decent input on the vanilla Combined army, it got a bit wordy though, so the short answer is that CA got nearly everything you might want to take in a list, but you pay through the nose for the luxury of choice and taking everything you need in the same list is almost impossible without sacrificing some options.

    Command structure: 5/5

    We've got more great LT choices than we know what to do with, the only thing lacking here is something dirt-cheap like a line kazak for 9 points, but honestly when there's so many quality choices in a mid to high points bracket there's no need for that type of LT's, we even have a chain of command option.

    Mission Effectiveness and Flexibility: 5/5

    And again basically everything you would want to do with missions CA can do reasonably well and flexible, with many overlapping options to pick from. With a game-wide limit of 15 orders and various deployment skills order efficiency isn't lacking either, and there's a whole bunch of multi-purpouse units. it is possible to vild a very good list for just about any situation, and again with a 15 trooper limit there's a lot less aouto-includes, so there's a lot of space for mindgames with camo and off-table deployment, some things can be pretty hard to counter for an opponent, like a double TAG list or a full on shellgame approach with a vide selection of units to hide under markers.

    Overall faction design: 4/5

    there's some things that are just plainly annoying and were not fixed with N4, mainly the fact that all our line infantry are still 14+ points just because they have to be expensive and that ML Noctifer is still our best ARO for its points, but I can live with it, espescially now that with a decrease in possible order counts of other armies and general price drops for HI and TAG's, some named characters feel like they're just bloated with equipment just to make them expensive again, but in general CA feels a lot better in its design in N4 comared to N3. The general theme is that you get a lot of high-quality options, but overall pay a premium in points for that, so even though you have everything in your arme overall, you can't fit everything you want in a single list, so there's some sacrifices that need to be made.

    Beginner friendliness: 2/5

    Honestly, starting the vanilla CA in the early days of N3 was a nightmare and I didn't know what I was doing with it for about half a year of playing, espescially with fairly limited online guides, there's just so MANY options that when you barely understand the rules it's just impossible to know what to take, but actually there was a select few of nearly no-brainer choices (Charontid HMG, Noctifer ML, Q-drone, Daturazi and drones for orders), and a lot of overpriced traps, that got fixed mostly with N4, but it's still harder to build a list with no prior experience of infinity compared to some sectorial armies.

    Edit: I'm literally agonizing over what to pick for a 3 round tournament right now, building CA lists feels like that meme with "why can't I hold all these limes?"
     
  9. Mcgreag

    Mcgreag Well-Known Member

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    Ikari Company

    Command Structure: 0/5

    Ikari company has by far the worst LT options of any army in Infinity. The only options consist of 2 different basic line infantry and one of those cost swc (but it has been reduced to 0.5 in N4). The main defense used to be LT decoys, either just taking more of the basic line infantry or Bashi Bazouks using Holomask to pretend to be the LT but the reduction to 15 orders have limited the option a lot as there are limited room for decoys now.
    The army has one unit with NCO (Daiyokai) which is not bad but it's the only command utilization is has.

    Mission effectiveness: 2/5
    Button pushing has always been something Ikari has been a bit weak at and N4 did nothing to remedy that. It does has a couple of different ways to bring the specialists where they need to be including 2 parachutist option (Bashi Bazouks and Cube Jägers), one Infiltrator (Ninja) and one very resilient one (Karakuri). Good access to smoke helps but limited options against good MSV2 units is a problem.

    Flexibility: 4/5
    In N3 Ikari had some serious problems with too rigid fire teams but that has been fixed in N4. Ikari is a great example of how flexible fireteams can be done without giving everything Wildcard (it has none). For being just a merc sectorial it has remarkable building flexibility with 2 very different cores with several ways to build them, 3 different haris and a plenty-fora of merc units for almost any situation. Do you want to shower the enemy with Yuan Yuans, overrun the with Desperados and Yojimbo, overwhelm them with a Wu Ming core or just cover the board with smoke (it can bring 7 smoke throwers for a total cost of only 62 points). The options are plenty.

    Overall faction design: 4/5
    The cutthroat nature of the faction are well displayed in the unit selection, it's all pirates, outcasts and other miscreants. When you think of guns for hire this is what you think of. The faction is mainly a combination of JSA, Haq and some Yu Jing units but plays like none of them. It's very much it's own entity with some very distinct strengths and weaknesses.

    Beginner friendliness: 3/5
    It's has lots of units that requires a fair bit if finesse to use effectively. It's long range shooting is a bit limited (but not non existent like JSA). It generally fields a lot of Irregular orders and lots of Impetuous which can be a problem both during listbuilding and playing.
     
  10. FlipOwl

    FlipOwl Well-Known Member

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    I think this is a fun exercise, albeit perchance a bit premature. However, I will pitch in, if only because the hype is running high right now!

    Morat Agression Force

    Command structure 4/5:

    The fact that it is now viable to build a list with a heavier focus on actual Morat units makes us less susceptible to Loss of Lieutenant than most factions. And since many of our better Lieutenant options are on otherwise good attack pieces, the Lt order is an additional order to burn on a (now cheaper) Suryat or Sogarat to rampage around the table. We have also seen the addition of a couple of interesting NCO pieces, most notably the Raicho HMG+HFT. This gives us good flexibility and the ability to make effective use of up to 13 orders on our TAG in a single combat group (10+TA+ Suryat Lt +1order).
    With most of our units being regular, and the added control over impetuous troops, we have a good amount of orders for most builds. Most lists will have more orders than bodies by a good margin.


    Mission effectiveness 3/5:

    This may be MAF's weakest point, with no camo infiltrators or Hidden Deployment shenanigans. Luckily for us, our Airborne Deployment game has been turned up a notch, with two units capable of acting both as alternative strike vectors and surprise specialists.

    Our infilitrators are the Zerats, who have been upgraded to mimetism -6 in N4. There are several interesting profiles here, but some stiff internal competition between the Red Fury to act as a secondary strike unit, the minelayer to bolster our defence and the specialists to complete missions makes the choice far from easy. Damn you, AVA 3!


    Flexibility 4/5 (I think no sectorial could really reach 5/5 in this category, when compared to vanilla):

    I feel like the MAF can easily switch between hordes (well, not so much of a horde now at max 15) of impetuous troopers backing up a few strikers, to a more well rounded elite force that relies on armour and manoeuvre to beat the enemy.

    Our new jump troops force the enemy into the same kind of caution as other armies' hidden deployment troops do, albeit with no real chance of surprise in the active turn.
    The biggest problem for us is the lack of camo, which can be mitigated somewhat with coordinated cybermask from several Zerats, but only if we get to go first. Most Morat players should probably try to profit from our strengths, and throw a whole second combat group's worth of Hungries at anyone that dares to come into the midfield.

    Overall faction design 5/5: As alluded to above, MAF is a very straightforward army. No camo, no HD, and the new 15 trooper limit making our drop troops rather obvious. Our long range shooters are only of average quality, and our Warbands are rather on the expensive side.

    On the other hand, we have a robustness that other armies lack, and should strive to use that to our advantage. MAF plays like an armoured fist to the face. You might dodge the first blow, but there will always be another attack vector that is just as efficient as the last one coming. Sooner or later something will stick.

    I think this fits the idea behind the army very well, and I like how CB decided to increase our capabilites with AD troops instead of adding camo to give us some more unpredictable vectors.

    Beginner friendliness3/5: MAF is an army that is easy to play, but difficult to play well. All our troops are quite good at what they do, but not excellent, so we have to pick our fights. We lack many of the more "advanced" attack options that come with camo infiltrators. However, I think MAF might be one of the best armies to play against a beginner, simply because they will be able to see what's coming their way. That is not to say that MAF cannot be played competitively, only that it takes a bit of a different mindset and getting a firm grasp on the finer points of the game system since we have very few crutches to lean on.
     
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  11. Iver

    Iver Human Plus

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    I wanted to do vanilla Aleph since that's what I primarily play, but maybe I should wait until wave 2 for that since they'll be getting a bunch of tools back. I'm not the most experienced player but I hope this'll do.

    OSS: Operations Sub-Section

    Command structure: 4/5

    OSS is blessed with great general options.

    The Marut, as a TAG with a great long range weapon and MSV2, is perhaps the best unit at picking apart an opponents ARO structure in the entire game. We may not have access to setting our own smoke to make the absolute most of it, but it's still worth every point.
    Shakti and the Asura are both durable specialists who can make use of their lieutenant orders to play the games objective, and the Shukra Lt is a wonderful option for a less active lieutenant because of his Strategos lvl1 making his lieutenant order regular.

    We also have excellent CoC and NCO options in our cheap Shukra CoC to stand back and HMG-toting Yadu NCO who can make good use of that lieutenant order herself.

    Mission effectiveness: 5/5
    OSS is designed in a way that nearly every model you place on the table is a specialist of some sort. It is perhaps the sectorial best equipped to play the objective in the entire game. Our specialists are all competent in other ways too, so our gameplan never has to be opening up for a weak unit to move through either. The models you want to advance with with is often also something you can play the objective with. This is where OSS shines.

    Flexibility: 3/5
    OSS has a ton of tools in its arsenal. Our core Dakini fireteam can be either a powerful fast-moving HMG killing machine or a good defensive core with snipers that can easily get fixed when downed due to shock immunity and two unconscious states.
    We have strong potential early midfield presence with powerful marker-state troops who can all do multiple jobs, placing mines or be specialists. And decent ranged ARO units as well, as well as a powerful airborne deployment gunfighter.

    Can't write this category either without mentioning the Posthumans. They may have gotten a well-deserved nerf on some of their profiles and a bit of a price bump in this edition, but they're still absolutely excellent units that one can afford to play in a risky manner since the order they generate is hard to get rid of.

    While our active units being very flexible in themselves, we also do need to resort to things like netrods and the cheap flashpulse/baggage REMs to bump up our order pool. This means that often a good third of our army is virtually defenseless and static. We cannot fall back to our cheap troops to pick up the slack if the tide is against us.

    Overall faction design: 5/5
    Every unit in OSS has a role to play, and the sectorial has it's clear strengths and weaknesses.

    N4 has given more options to our fireteams via wildcards such as Parvati who can make the most of her ability to heal 2 wounds in a Yadu team or the Rudras who can give the Dakini core a heavy midrange fighter that dispenses double the mines.

    It's an army that can build around a powerful lieutenant or not, can riddle the field in camo markers with droptrooper support or not. If you like to play with elite versatile troops that all do multiple things this army is for you.

    Beginner friendliness: 4/5
    I rate this highly because of OSS's redundant buttonpushers primarily. It's a forgiving sectorial to play in that regard, one mistake is not liable to lose you the game.

    Beginners tend to favour very aggressive play styles, and OSS is capable of playing like that, though it's not our strength. The linked Dakini HMG can go on a rampage like few things, the Marut can Rambo like the monster of a machine it is and no one should discount the Asura linkteam especially now that Parvati can make it ridiculously durable.

    It's a good army to play in different ways to get a good grasp of various aspects of the game.
     
  12. Liber8Paradiso

    Liber8Paradiso New Member

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    I like the assessments being written here. They give good insight into how they play in general that isn't captured in unit breakdowns. I was wondering if there would be any specific theme, lore characteristic or "cool" aspect you could cite on the army for aesthetic appeal.
     
  13. Ashtaroth

    Ashtaroth Aragoto GP Organizer
    Warcor

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    Japanese Secessionist Army

    Command Structure: 2/5

    The saving grace is that JSA has very cheap access to Chain of Command, so you can employ very offensive Lieutenants like the Kuroshi, Neko, Domaru, O-Yoroi, blatantly use their Order to get stuff done and be fine even if you lose them. But Lieutenants are often very obvious with the least obvious ones being a Keisotsu/Domaru hidden in a link. We have access to Lieutenant lvl2 and NCO but it's very clunky to pull it off.

    Mission effectiveness: 5/5
    JSA button pushers are beasts, be it the Ryuken-9, Ninjas, the nearly immortal Karakuri, Kuroshi, Shikami, or the new addition Yuriko Oda with FD+8'', JSA has no shortage of WIP13/14 specialists that can push buttons just fine, start in advantageous positions AND have a strong counter game by being very dangerous up close in disputed areas.

    Flexibility: 4/5
    JSA has been healthly revamped and now has a ton of options. From a straight samurai core of Domaru (with or without Tanko), rocking 10 Wounds for (at the lowest) 100 points, to the cheap line troopers that are the Keisotsu powering up your Skirmishers with orders and being somewhat decent defensive line. To the hyper aggressive bikers, popping smoke for Rui Shi and Kempeitai while zeroing in the juiciest target to kill. JSA's aggressive stance crosses all its units, but you can build the lists stubborn and sturdy like the Samurai, or lean and mean like the Ninjas, or anything in-between.

    Overall faction design: 5/5
    It's one of the most thematic and well put together sectorials in the game. It's the peak of what a Non-Aligned Army should be aiming to be. JSA has clear disadvantages (being out-ranged as the most egregious one), but it has the tools to curb those challenges. With N4 a lot of changes were made to make the CC combatants have more chance to actually deal the pain up close and personal.

    Beginner friendliness: 1/5
    JSA wants to play a game that no one else wants to play: Close Combat. They are the ones that brought knives to gun fights. To employ this army strength to the fullest a player requires a lot of finesse, good positioning and overall game knowledge. It's very frustrating trying to make anything out of JSA as a player's first army.
     
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