WHAT ARMY SHOULD I PLAY? PANOCEANIA PanOceania is an army of elite, high-tech professional soldiers who specialize in leveraging their superior Ballistics Skill to win head-on engagements. They specialize in the use of TAGs (Tactical Armoured Gear) and the variety available to PanO is higher than any other faction. From the nigh-impenetrable armor of the Jotum to the stealthy camoflauge of the Cutter, there's a TAG, if not two, for any problem that needs the adjustment of a giant robotic fist. PanOceania's troops rely on their equipment to complete tasks, and as such have a plethora of Multispectral Visors, TO Camoflauge, Remotes, and Auxbots to assist them in the mission they need to accomplish. Panoceania is a very straight-forward army with fewer "dirty tricks" than the likes of the Nomads or Ariadna. They'd rather use the barrel of a gun to solve their problems than a cheat or a ploy. PanOceania currently has no native warbands, as well as no native access to smoke grenades outside of the Guarda de Assalto. Their sectorials include: The guardians of their capital planet, the Neoterran Capitaline Army The Military Orders, a branch of power-armored knights who fight in the interests of the Catholic church and the NeoVatican The Shock Army of Acontecimento, the guerilla-style fighting force from the industrial and agricultural planet of Acontecimento. [**//UPCOMING//**] The Varuna Immediate Reaction Division, the advanced fighting force native to the aquatic planet of Varuna. If you want to play an army of hyper-advanced humans who use their tehnological superiority to win the day, fight for PanOceania! YU JING Yu Jing's specialty lies in their sophisticated Heavy Infantry. They have the Infiltrators, Multispectral Visors, Thermoptic Camoflauge, and TAG sized weaponry all arriving to the battlefield in full-body heavy combat armor. While PanOceania hides its soldiers from harm by using disposable bots and remote presence pilots, Yu Jing greets the enemy face-to-face to display the full power and protection of the State Empire. Yu Jing tends to have a wide variety of technology to suit their needs, and are more of a jack of all trades than their competitors. They tend to have the equipment to do their job well, and while they're not on the bleeding edge of technology like PanOceania or ALEPH, it gets the job done. To quote the lore for the Zúyong "Other regiments, other armies, can claim to have the most advanced technology, but the Zúyong have what they need to see their duty through, and everything else they make up for in skill and determination." Their sectorials include: The Imperial Service, the judicial corp of Yu Jing who specialize in internal defense and anti-terrorist operations [**//UPCOMING//**] The Invincible Army, a powerful force of Heavy Infantry designed to be resilient and show the might of the State Empire If you want to be a very balanced faction, or you want to play powerful Heavy Infantry who can crush the enemy under their armored heel, fight for Yu Jing! ARIADNA Ariadna is a faction that shows a very close approximation of today's military technology, but flung into a time when it has since been far surpassed by everything around it. To cope with this technological deficit, sneaky camouflage, dirty tricks and powerful teseum-coated munitions can help bring the odds back in their favor. Ariadna has lots of camouflage, even having Ambush Camouflage which places 2 markers per unit! They also have AP ammunition in abundance to shred enemy's armor, as well as T2 ammunition that causes 2 wounds on any failed armor check. Their home planet of Dawn has also provided them with Antipodes and Dog-Warriors, vicious beasts who can ignore the effects of most standard munitions while being able to blast enemies with chain rifles or maul them in CC. While their weapons are strong and their armor is tough, they tend to be unable to deal with weapons affecting BTS like Nanopulsers, Pulzars and Breaker ammunition. Only 2 units native to Ariadna have a BTS value, and both are 3. Their sectorials include: The Caledonian Highlander Army, a group of Gaelic warriors with an abundance of Teseum, an abundance of antipode-hybrids and lots of tartans. The USAriadna Ranger force, the ruff and gruff descendants of the United States. USAriadna has tough armor, lots of Aerial Deployment in the Airborne Rangers and Van Zant, and the hulking Blackjack [**//UPCOMING//**] The Tartary Army Korps is a group of mostly Russian descent who hold a great amount of power within Ariadna. They are the elite of the elite on Dawn with fantastic gunfights, tons of camouflage and heavy armor. If you want to play a faction that loves camouflage, has powerful munitions and can put lots of models on the table, fight for Ariadna! (Moving to bottom for now) So we've had an influx of newer players to our local community and quite obviously one of the first questions anyone looking at the game asks is "Which army/faction should I play?" A lot of the answers for this are always "Well pick what you think looks cool" or if they've played something like 40K before "What army did you play in your old game?" A lot of the guides online concern mostly the fluff and were made several years ago, but I'd like to do one more focused on gameplay with a smattering of fluff. I also realize that most armies can make most types of lists and most armies are very diverse, but if you had to give an extended elevator pitch for an army, this would be it. I'd like to make my own version of many of the old faction tests and army quizzes, and make a hype guide for each army on the whole, then maybe delve into sectorials if I have time. This'll be for when I have a new person I can just be like, "Check out this link, this is a general idea for most of these factions." Obviously I don't have complete knowledge of every faction, every playstyle etc., so maybe you guys can help me. If you notice something that's off in the guide or cool to mention, suggest a change or an addition and I'll put in the stuff I think is relevant or useful.
In my experience, this question comes a lot from people who have background playing other games who are afraid of buying the wrong toys... Do your best to explain that in Infinity there are no duds, there are no units that are total wastes of time or money. Then encourage them to go with what they think looks the coolest. Back that up with broad stereotypes of the major factions, you don't really need to get into super detail, at this stage they're probably more concerned with the feel of an army, rather than getting into all the details of the mechanics. PanOceania - High tech humans, a lot of great TAGs, not a lot of fancy tricks Yu Jing - Probably the most well rounded faction, fairly high-tech, lots of variety Ariadna - Lowest tech, lots of camouflage and guerrilla warfare Haqqislam - More high-tech than Ariadna, lots of tricky units, asymmetrical warfare specialists Nomads - Mid-tech, but best hackers, good camouflage Combined - Super-high-tech aliens, very well rounded, but elite Aleph - Super-high-tech Artificial Intelligence, the anti-Combined Tohaa - Artichokes in Space. Lots of light specialized skirmishers
The biggest hurdle I find is that veteran wargamers know there is always a "ignored faction", or "lower power" faction that usually has an uphill battle against all others and its difficult getting across to them that Infinity does not follow that trend. All factions are 100% viable, and while some units in each one are less useful than others in the faction, there are no outright useless units. This is the single biggest challenge and the idea of "just choose the faction with a cool looking model". They don't get it. Warmahordes, 40k, Bolt Action, etc, all these games you have to see the faction as a whole, but in infinity, you can just look at a unit or two.
PanO - Plan A is shoot it in the face. Plan B is shoot it in the face again. Yu Jing - If shooting it in the face doesn't work, try a knife in the ribs. Ariadna - "Say hello to my 20 friends in camo!" Haqqislam - "oh, no, no, my friend, jihad is bad for business!" [said in the voice of that Arabian trader from Disney's Alladin] Nomads - Dirty Tricks, Inc. Their most normal attack is what most other factions call a dirty trick! Combined Army - All the scary aliens. Aleph - The Computer is your Friend. You trust the Computer, don't you? Tohaa - Guyver Bio-Boosted Armor. 'Nuff Said. NA2 - Mercenaries and minor players, hard to describe in general.
Can I just tell you right now that if Tohaa had a Super Rambo unit like the Guyver armor I'd be so down, also a S6 Worm Monster like the Hunters from Halo. That's what I need in my life.
Yeah that's always been how I've seen it. If a human faction had one I would already be playing around it, but it loses something being on aliens. Actually the Su Jian gives a lot of the vibe I like. I would watch a show based around Su Jian pilots.
No, they're remotely piloted. Supposedly RemPres can run basic functions on rudimentary AI, but there's a pilot doing the advanced decision-making.
I should probably add where I got this from: there's a much longer blurb released with the old Su-Jian model (you can still find most of this blurb on Miniature Market's homepage) where you have an unknown pilot gushing about how nice it is to kick in the booster and run up the walls to shoot targets from unexpected angles.
I think there are definitely tiers and that veteran players have figured it out. Tohaa is the memetic powerhouse but camo spam Haqq and Ariadna, as well as vanilla Aleph, seem to pick up the same set who plays power factions in other games.
I think this is two fold. I wouldn't say there is a tier structure I would say some factions take advantage or rules knowledge or lack there of far better than others. If you don't know how to deal with Reactions or proper target priority, Tohaa will wreck you. I think it is more leverageing strengths to new players detriments. Case in point, I have never lost against Tohaa becaus eI have played them fairly regularly, I know the targets, and what the Tohaa strategy usually is. A new player would not. Tohaa's strength lies a great deal in their small numbers, many folks simply do not know how to deal with them.
You can powergame the heck out of Infinity, but with less dice that let's say 40k an Missions based on pushing buttons and holding zones it matters less than for 40k. I'd consider lying to a new player about "everything is viable" as a dick move. He'll understand if you tell him that balancing is vastly improved over what he is used to, but there still are a few nobrainer picks and clearly suboptimal choices. Personally I'd also consider "it's not your list, it's you" as terrible advice. That slogan has been around since forever and a shitty list can singelhandedly ruin a game before deployment. Then bad deployment can also singlehandedly ruin your game. Then you can screw up and make horrible decisions to ruin the game. After you passed all those obstacles you got yourself a game... where the dice can still screw you, but dealing with that is honestly the most exiting and fun part of the game. Picking a Faction should initially be an aestetic choice. For actual preferences you'll need to know if you prefer big numbers or big troops, Links or solo strikers, heavy Hacking or being completely immune to that, CC shenanigans or raw firepower. All that exists in nuances and there is a lot of crossover, so it is hard to narrow it down to one specific Faction or even Sectorial. Most of the time you'll end up with something like a top 3 to choose from. That's gonna take a while to figure out. So picking a Faction for their fluff or a very rough summary desceiption is perfectly reasonable for a beginner.
Actually I cannot stress this enough. Deployment in Infinity is CRUCIAL. Bad deployment usually lead to a game which ends on turn 1 (maximum half-way through turn 2). I've been on both ends of this (my last game on my first tournament ended in like ~15 minutes). Also it's a known fact that every Infinity player learns "not to congo line" in a hard way :P (the way of shotgun :D)
Well if you don't have a way to bypass Tohaa aro pieces you're stuck spending multiple orders chewing through mates and symbioarmor. If you've never lost a game against Tohaa, period, then the skill gulf between you and your opponents is so vast that it doesn't matter. The question is more if choice of faction gives a player the edge, all other things being equal.
All things being equal (skill level and such) that is a tough one to answer. I don't think Tohaa have any more an advantage than SP running teams of 3, or other Sectorials that know how to leverage their linked teams. Normally you would answer this with which player with more skill would win? But if both are equally skilled, then honestly its down to the dice imo. If Tohaa in the hands of skilled opponents were so devastating then we would be seeing them top of tournaments far more often than they are. You really cannot take player skill away from this formula because its such a huge defining factor. We have had 4 Tohaa players in my meta for a while off and on, further I have traveled to Baltimore Brawl, and a couple other large independent tournaments last year where I fought a Tohaa player in each. Granted Tohaa did win this last years Baltimore brawl, but I was unable to go to that one to know the players skill level (better then me, the same, worse, etc.). If you play against an enemy force consistently (especially Tohaa with small amounts of options) you learn their weaknesses and what units best exploit them. This is the case with any army. The armies that really give me issues are Combined Army and Nomads just from the sheer toolboxes they can bring.
