The CF weekly - Basic Infinity Tactics, Tips and Strategies

Hey there!
So, this week I haven't been making much progress. Or well, I kind of have as I finished painting my first Shasvastii Seed-Soldier and Shasvastii Shrouded Pioneer.
But anyway, I felt like that was too little to speak about, so I figured I should talk about some basic Infinity tactics instead!

Now, these tactics are nothing professional, nor facts. These are just the things I've learned are useful to think of when you're playing. All in all, it's only my advice with my own experience.

So, to keep some kind of order, I will give my Tips & Tactics coming in the order of the game, beginning with list-writing.

List-Writing
Alright, so the main important things with your list are:

The Balance.
Make sure your list is balanced. Putting all eggs in one basket or doing a one-trick pony is generally a bad idea. It might work once or twice if your enemy himself doesn't have a truly balanced list, and you get a slight upper hand as you surprise him... But once he figured out what you're doing, you won't be at an advantage anymore.
Simply put: Include a little bit of everything. You need your long range offensive, short range offensive, stealth support, the tank etc etc. If you spend many points on one units, such as a TAG or a expensive HI, make sure you've got a backup plan should he fail.
Once you've covered all the bases, you should have an answer to everything your opponent can throw at you, and you'll be in a position where you can change tactics on the fly to better suit your position.

Deployment
This is the phase that wins games, seriously.

The first thing you do is look. You have to thoroughly analyze the battlefield. Where are the firing lanes? Where are the choking points? Where are the advancement routes? Where are the fire towers? Where are the defensive positions? Note that different positions on the battlefield aren't exclusive, they can be many of these types at the same time. For example, a long narrow corridor would be a firing lane, an easily defended position, a choking point and, with sufficient cover, a good advancement route.

To easier understand, let describe these positions for you:

Firing lanes:
These are the long, open routes of the battlefield where your men are able to get a clear view of, well, a lot. These places are good to place your units that are good in the reactive turn (Total Reaction, Snipers, Fireteams etc).
My own experience of this comes in placing a Noctifier with Missile Launcher in cover, overlooking a street that almost stretched across the whole battlefield. My opponent tried to push it, and lost.

Choking Points:
These are the narrow positions where battle is likely to commence. For example, an alley between two houses could be a choking point because your opponent is likely to want to push through it, and so are you. That means there's going to be a conflict there, and there are two good ways to deal with these; Either reinforce it, or go around it. The first option is the most straightforward. The second option costs you orders to do, but could take you opponent by surprise since he most likely reinforced it. However, if you leave the choking point unguarded your opponent might advance too easily.
My own experience of this involves setting up camo'd troops, mines and Suppressive fires on a door... and the walls beside the doors covered 2/3 of the width of the table.

Advancement Routes:
These are often synonymous with choking points and/or firing lanes, but measure how smart it actually would be to take this route. It mostly depends on how much cover is placed on the way, both ordinary and total cover. Actually, pretty much everywhere you can walk is an advancement route, but you need a good eye to locate the good ones and the bad ones. By doing so you can easily plan on how to maneuver and predict your opponent's moves.

Fire Towers:
These are the high towers that trace LoF to a grand part of the battlefield, and you know there's gonna be a sniper in it. Your options are either to use the, or avoid them. Or, well, actually they might have no impact on the game if no one brings anything with infiltration, but if someone does... Well, a well-placed sniper is dangerously lethal. So, you should always just take these positions into account when planning.

Defensive positions:
Another simple concept, these are the areas with cover that are hard to reach, yet have a good firing lane in front of them. Your job is to reinforce your own and find ways to break through your opponent's defense.

In addition, take note that if you have first turn, you don't need to deploy all your dudes in cover. I'm sure you'll know which guys to advance with and which to hold back. The one's you're going forward with are best placed on the deployment line so they can reach their positions ASAP. The other guys should stand in cover.

If your opponent has the first turn, then you need to make sure that he either cannot or does not want to be able to trace LoF to your guys. Simply put, hide as many as you can and/or put some in a cluster so that your opponent will fear their ARO.

Also, if you're deploying second you should consider the possibility of only deploying on one half of your deployment zone. That will give you a strong flank to work with as well as rendering some of your opponent's force too far away to be used efficiently.


During the Game
Now, after deployment you should have a pretty good idea of your game plan. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'd bother writing this section. Just for completeness, I guess.

Ramboing:
The act of only using one powerful model to totally decimate your opponent's force. This is a really common gameplan, and it is likely to fail once our opponent gets himself a good defense. What you as a rambo player has to do them is to make sure you've got support to back the powerful guy up with.

Shepherding:
A term I just invented to refer to the acting of trying to shepherd your opponent. Basically, you do not want your opponent to go around the house to the right. What you'll do is spend orders to place mines and suppressive fire corridors there. It doesn't take much to seriously intimidate your opponent into taking another route. Also usable with infiltrating troops.

Cheerleading:
Another common thing, it means having a few Line Infantry whom only provide orders for your big guys. I only included it here to mention that a unit with AD: Combat Jump or something of equal effect will seriously hamper the guy using cheerleaders if he's not careful. If you manage to get in there and kill the cheerleaders, then you'll be in a good situation.

Outflanking:
This is a seriously big tactical advantage. If you place a strong unit on one side of the table and manage to the flank, then you've seriously hampered your opponent's options of advancement and can plan ahead accordingly.

Lockdown:
Similar to the Shepherding trick, but this involves doing the trick in both sides of your opponent's force. It only works if his force is really centered behind a building or equivalent, but it means that he won't be able to move.

Over-extending:
This is a bad side-effect ramboing might have. If you forget to pull your rambo back before the end of your turn, he will most likely die. Don't do this unless you're very certain that your opponent cannot bring your big guy down. As such, this paragraph is not a trick or a tactic, just something I want to stress that you should not do.

Surgical rambo:
One of my favorite tactics, it involves going rambo with one unit with the sole intention of removing some unit critical to your opponent before withdrawing. A few surgical strikes and your opponent will only have basic grunts left or guys in a bad position of the board.

Defensive advancement:
This is basically the opposite of ramboing. Instead, you move most of your units forward to good defensive positions and set up suppressive fire corridors and garrison your chosen firing lanes with 2 - 3 guys.



All in all, I think that concludes what I consider to be the basics of Infinity tactics (and to a pretty big degree, the tactics of many other games). I hope it has been helpful, and would love to hear your thoughts and comments!
Until next time.
Play safe!