The INFINITY N4 META - commentary, 'meta' army list review

Don't forget to check out Tablegame Funtimes here - • s1e6: Tablegame Funtim...

[@pandabeastmode2434]

I agree with a lot of what you said. One slightly frustrating thing in the current tournament meta is that in competitive international tournaments you always have to plan how to counter these same top tier lists that you face in every tournament. Also, currently most top tier players are often playing top tier factions (maybe because they're the best at countering each other) making it very hard to compete for the top spots with mediocre factions. It would be interesting to have a tournament where, instead of banning vanilla factions altogether, top tier factions would be banned from top tier players.

[@VaulSC]

Your heart is in the right place, but good luck getting anyone to agree with you as to where to draw the line between 'top tier player' and someone who isn't :) Good comment

[@pandabeastmode2434]

The good thing in having a TO is that they can make that decision :D Just as an example, a top tier player could be someone who has either 2 or more top5 finishes in your or IGL leagues or has an ELO score above 1100. It's not perfect, but probably wouldn't be an awful way to draw to line either.

[@UnkaStunka]

​@@pandabeastmode2434those kind of guidlines can lead a whole bunch of complications, which of some could be much worse than the current imbalance.

[@OldManRogers]

@@pandabeastmode2434 ELO bracketing of armies?

[@pandabeastmode2434]

@@OldManRogers I don't think there are enough games/data to accurately ELO bracket the armies. Infinity is a lot more about skill than faction choice, so a lot would depend on who is playing the faction.

[@skeletor957]

Non local player - “What’s your local meta” My local group - “pray to the dice gods and hope they don’t find you wanting.”

[@andrewbeeching1240]

@8:25 Hector's Lt Orders just get converted straight to Regulars thanks to Strategos, so no NCO necessary in this list. LOVE piloting a Phalanx big boys list myself, because it's way less mental load for me. Fewer models to keep track of, only 2 main teams to think about, and they're all quite similar in terms of abilities and weapons. That's a big+ and is something to consider about this list when discussing it's popularity and tournament effectiveness.

[@mickevans6205]

Something I have found is that lots of N4 seems left to be solved. Many players mistake skill floor for faction power and overlook many lists/factions that may have high ceilings allowing them to win as reliably as a meta "list". Khavs SP list is the most obvious example but there are many more left to be discovered. Great video though! All true!

[@MetaVita]

Love your unapologetic takes Vaul! Keep it coming!

[@TimothyEdwards]

What I’d find useful would be a discussion of how to deal with each of these “meta” lists. What tools are good at digging out Morans? How should you deploy against a missile boat list? Are you better killing the hackers or the missile boat to neutralise a spotlight heavy list?

[@orbitaloperations]

I can tell you my experience. I stopped using Morans at all because I was sick and tired of losing all my hackers to enemy killer hackers in turn 1. When I need a repeater I place it myself rather than tell my opponent, "hey you can come here to snipe my hackers for free!"

[@oliverfbarnes]

@@orbitaloperations The only hacker that has decent odds of killing Jazz t1 through their own repeater (e.g. Jazz at WIP17, BTS9, and you're on WIP-3 from their repeater) is an Anathematic. The vast majority of usual hackers struggle. Barid, for example. 25% chance to kill Jazz in active turn with trinity. Danavas 27%. In fact many of these units are about as likely to take a wound from Jazz back as they are to kill Jazz themselves. using an enemy Nomads repeater is a really good way to spend 3 to 5 orders and get one single kill. If not take wounds yourself. Not great. It is simply not good odds to hack Jazz through their own repeater. It is even worse odds if the Nomads player is running two hackers and you need to split burst or take unopposed hacks.

[@jasonma1632]

I personally use Tian Gou holomasked as a hackable HI like a Shang ji or Jujak. I run up to the Moran making sure to double check ZoC, and stop right before moving into Moran's Repeater range. First Short Action, Move Most players will see a Jujak profile and not care to reset their Moran. They will have a hacker declare Oblivion or Carbonite. I reveal the "Jujak" as a Tian Gou with a Jammer, and declare a jammer attack. Isolated state turns off any Comms devices, including repeaters.

[@krim7]

A similar issue to this happened with MtG over the last few years. Wizards of the Coast created a new digital version of their game called Arena. It was slick and fun, attracted a ton of people to the game. Over time, it was found that the ease of access to playing when combined with the gigantic number of players jamming games and the ease at which players across the world could communicate and workshop ideas led to a situation where formats that once took months to figure out and "solve" were being figured out and solved in a handful of weeks. This led to a huge swathe of the community playing with and against the same lists over and over again. Which is really boring, IMO. I feel like N4 has the same issue in that the prevalence of online play has meant there are thousands of more games being jammed each month than would have ever happened prior to 2020. The simpler N4 rule set also brought way more people into the game, doubly so with how cheap/ease online play is. That larger volume of players are also communicating & workshopping with one another more and more, which just leads to a situation where N4 can be "solved" much more easily than N3 could have been. The easy short term solution is to give each ITS season more identity and weirder season-specific rules, ones that are designed to shake up the meta and force players to innovate. I also think designing weirder missions that cannot be solved simply by murdering your opponent would also go a long way to fixing the issues we are experiencing. In the longer term, CB needs to do more balancing more often. I 100% agree with you that there are too many good models being allowed to join "pure" fireteams. Also, Immunity (Total) is absolutely too good and is way undercosted on most units.

[@brutalcities]

Prepping for Cancon, a bit rusty so this was very helpful to catch up on what to expect. Cheers!

[@VaulSC]

Gotta get around to buying myself some new BC terrain at some point, so I can use it in Tablegame Funtimes

[@brutalcities]

@@VaulSC awesome, I'd love to see that. by the way, I really want to try and bring in some of the kits for TTS too (it's just a bit hard finding time to run the business and come up with designs etc, so I haven't done it yet unfortunately!) As you are quite experienced with that, do you think polycam is a good way to do so, or is it better to use 3d models and then make textures/find textures for them?

[@VaulSC]

@@brutalcities I would get them into Blender, then reduce them to fairly simple .obj and textures, then get them into TTS using the method in my tutorial video. Just DM me on Discord if you're stuck on this but it should be easy enough. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqjVZKB-h9qab7M

[@brutalcities]

@@VaulSC Much appreciated!

[@sdahl468]

Interesting takes. I don't play near enough (and my opponent don't have near enough models) for this to affect us, but I can see how it would affect tournament players. As a constructive counterpoint, How about designing a counter-meta set of missions? This would be a set of missions specifically making life hard for one or meta lists each. Tournament or mission add-on rules could also do it. For example: "Confused command" - after counting orders, the opponent can remove two regular orders from the pool. The strategic effect, every player turn. This punish low-order count armies. "Static comms interference" - hacking performed through a repeater suffers a -6 mod. This penalizes all those repeater shenanigans. "Indoors/low ceiling" - indirect fire suffers a -6 mod. This penalizes missile bot shenanigans. "Minefield" - allow a custom unit for lidt building: an AVA 4 shock mine with +8" deployment at, say, 5 points with no orders. Penalizes any kind of bums rush alphastrike. TOs could add one or more of these rules to one or more of the missions in their tournament. Knowing these restrictions, players would be encouraged to come up with different lists that don't rely on the penalized aspects

[@vyttieri]

great timing thanks

[@dougquinn9705]

Thank you for your commentary...I know this comment is coming months behind the times but I subbed so I will make sure to watch any of your other newer meta updates. I am returning to Infinity after a long spell (life got in the waay of wargaming around N3 release) I affluent in infinity but still low skill level and very very casual at the moment. I think extra emphasis should be added to excercise house rules and missions for casual play. I personally play with several people who are extremely meta focused and heavily influenced by meta lists and "net listing" even in our casual games. Personally I plan on thinnking about this a little bit on what sort of casual house rule/aka format rule that can be implemented to counter this sort of thing. I also think that an organized effort on the behalf of TO's to instutue format additions to their Tournements to balance things will go a long way in showing that Corvus Belli that they need to have more active effort in competitive meta balancing.

[@VaulSC]

A new meta may form around the latest update. Don't forget to check out the Tablegame Funtimes infinity show series :)

[@michaelcrawford1233]

When i start competitive games, I usually look for the Meta so I can learn the mechanics without just getting wrecked. This is the first time I've seen a discussion for infinity since I started playing last summer. Do you think these lists would work for new players, or is there a bit of finesse an experienced would have to make these work

[@ralphschneider9652]

One suggestion. what about you do a video that features next-to-competitive or at least interresting lists for otherwise neglected factions, i.e. Merovingiennes, USAriadna, Ikari, RTF, Druze, Acontecimento, etc.? And what about bikes? Are they vaiable and which factions would benefit the most?

[@misomiso8228]

Is there a resource for a record of Infinity tournaments and tournaments lists? Newbie here and havn't found anything :-(.

[@patrickdusk3030]

Hello. @vaulsc very newb question. How come some of the lists in the video have 11 models in a group and some of them exceed the 15 model cap(looking at the images)? Do they have special rules allowing them extra models? I only started playing a few weeks ago so am still very green.

[@BigCatPiranha]

Some factions are capable of including extra orders with fewer models (using tactical awareness, extra lieutenant orders, and NCO) this allows them to be viable with less than the maximum unit limit. The lists that appear to have more than fifteen models o ly have 15 order generating models. Models that do no generate orders (models with the Peripheral skill that are attached to another model) do not count towards that limit.

[@thug4lyfe]

Damn, that Volkolok still providing pure core bonus is not right!!!

[@AdamDundon]

CB still wants to sell models...

[@skreppeknekker]

How come the T-drone is in group 2? It will only have two regular orders to shoot?

[@The_Revanchist]

The idea that players looking to optimize their game will look for the most optimized profiles is far from revelatory, though I do agree that more frequent balancing would be preferable. I don't believe that these lists push out other options, and the choice to not experiment is on the player. So much of the Infinity meta is subjective and contextual, to the point that there really isn't a centralized meta where these things are all true. Participating in a number of local and regional events in the US, I haven't found these to be utterly dominating or repeated, anecdotal as that may be. I think the variance of factions is not incredibly disparate, and while there are some differences in tool access, player skill and practice will typically win out (even if it's not the only factor). I think it's clear that there are some over-tuned units that could do with changes, but I don't think there is anything egregious enough to destroy the balance of the game. The increase in FAQ frequency is a good indicator, and I hope the trend continues as I would certainly love to see more nudging in the right direction.

[@wolpertinger4527]

So, my two cents about the meta... A) Meta is dependent on the missions played and the last few ITS seasons supported agressive play which lead to the fact that killing ist one of the best course of actions most of the time. B) Meta is very personal and table dependent. The online IGL meta is different from your US/Spain/Russian ect one... in how the tables look, factions played and missions choosen. And at least: C) the player behind is still an huge factor. While these Meta lists give you great tools, if you playing it don't use them right and lack the experience needed to play to their strenght you will loose to better players playing b-tier lists

[@orbitaloperations]

I always find interesting how you talk about your meta as if it was THE meta. Aside from the Bearpode list, most of the other lists you have shown here would get you tabled easily here in spain. Any midfielder without marker state (like the Moran) is just free lunch for libertos, beasthunters, dart, andromeda and pretty much anything the opponent can throw at you on turn 1. Right now one of the strongest lists here is the PowerPuff Girls aka the A-Team (Achiles, Andromeda, Atalanta and friends). Overall the general consensus is that core link teams are not as worthy as they were before, so people are running mostly 3 man teams even for core. Also mimetism has increased a lot in value since n3. The fact that you can no longer burn mimetism and camo with flamers has made Mim -6 troops that can resist at least a hit the apex predators. You also need all the cheap midfield you can afford. The more templates the better. I agree that you tend to stuff all the best units in your faction on the list, however what is the "best unit" varies wildly from place to place, board to board. I for example would never drop a Zero with repeaters and EMmines in favor of a Moran. Specially if i'm going to a big tournament, were terrain is usually scarce and not all boards are made of "buildings with convenient roofs" were a Moran can just sit and watch netflix during 3 turns.

[@shurikhhn]

What is the reason to use Andromeda with nerfed infiltration? Especially on the real, mostly open tables? How Achilles (lieutenant I guess) solve hacking problems? Which Atalanta do you use? Hidden or TR version?

[@MajorBorris]

Table time fun time it's cool.

[@VaulSC]

Yusss

[@MajorBorris]

@@VaulSC what if you showed the dice in the corner, obviously a desired result for your scenario. Maybe it slows down the animation too much though or it's something people can just see when they pause. At any rate your doing something nobody else is and it is fun!

[@OldManRogers]

That first list has 0 specilists - how does it do objectives?

[@GarageLabScience]

Honestly @vaulsc, have you thought about offering to work for/independent contractor with CB to officially balance and do regular updates for infinity? Every time you have a suggestion on how to fix something in the last 4 years you've been on target. They'd be stupid not to listen to you

[@MajorBorris]

Game designers and players are rarely on the same page.

[@PapaWargamer]

Interesting insight on what you and some people on the internet consider as THE meta. As usually not sure I agree with all of it but some interesting points and arguments are made. Edit : actually what is annoying me is that some people are using your argument and video as "This is THE truth and you shall listen to it you fool", even if they dont even perfom or even show upnin our real life tournaments. But that's not your fault. 😅 Agree with your idea to devellop more personalized mission. I ran a tournament recently with 3 custom mission and people enjoyed it. One if these was from your custom mission set. So thanks and merry christmas.👍

[@VaulSC]

I wish those people would also promote my sitcom in the same way

[@PapaWargamer]

@@VaulSC haha as a content creator I understand. I have some episodes to catch up. 😋

[@simonberndt2015]

@@VaulSC where can we find your custom missions?

[@elijahlevi6201]

Not as much a direct balance comment as much as an overall design philosophy and thematics comment, but I'm not particularly a fan of how we keep trending in the direction of big aggressive attackers backed up by disposable chaff and control pieces. It's always been a part of the game due to the order system, but it feels a bit...anti-tactical to me, if that makes sense, more like everyone else is just here to cheer on your supersoldier. When you think of special operations officers doing *cool* *tactical* *stuff,* its usually small teams of specialists operating together to accomplish objectives. And the units for this do exist in the game, things like Wildcats and Yadu and Bolts (although those are better now)! It's just that the way the game works heavily disincentives these relatively expensive (compared to disposable LI and REM) models that still can go down relatively easily, and are exceptionally vulnerable *to* said cheap stuff because of templates. I recognize that this is more a personal preference on how I think skirmish-type games (especially those deliberately trying to have a spec-ops feel) work and is not a particularly useful observation when talking about current balance, but I also can't help but feel that changing emphasis more in this direction (somehow) would work to alleviate some of these problems.

[@2ACruel]

There is generally a feelign that we don't have as many strong pieces compared to the sheer amount of aggressive profiles.

[@Xagroth]

So, the Agema... it feels to me that CB tries to make some Aleph units mirrors (darkly) of sorts of EC ones. The Posthumans Vs Mnemotecnics, the Myrmidons Vs Daturazi, etc..., and the Agema oppose the Noctifer (being a little cheaper by exchanging some stats with skills, making me wonder about the combined cost of those...), but as usual in N4, it looks like CB does not care as much as it used to, resulting in that kind of troubles. As for "META", I feel the best one is an evolving one (where at least half of the variables can be optimized, but no more than 80%, leaving the rest to your opponent's actions and some chance), but that is not truly possible in Infinity, more than the "pick the optimal faction & troops" and "always go first" (even if the mission makes it more beneficial to go second). Why? First, in my zone the tables are rarely repeated, and depending on where you play, those tables are whipped out by people who maybe even don't play the game (stores), or by people who simply doesn't want to spend more time than the minimum (usually because they had to come to the store an hour or more before opening, clean the tables from las night's games, and assemble the Infinity ones). Second, because there are so many bases to cover if you want to defend (so many, in fact, I doubt you can cover even 2/3 of them), that it's better to go for an Alpha Strike and try not to wipe the opponent's points. My gripe with Infinity in N4 is simply that the power creep has become obvious, that they are more interested in Warcrow than in Infinity, and the attention they devote to Infinity goes to their pet factions, meaning some get too much love while others are ignored (for example, it was in Coldfront that we got OSS, so we have been waiting nearly 4 years for a new Dasyu... and the old ones went OOP more than a year ago). Those are signs that the game may be going to get the Blood Bowl treatment...

[@thug4lyfe]

I thought Infinity is their main money earner?!!

[@Xagroth]

@@thug4lyfe it is, but because they are not selling anything else on the regular, only the three KS (and let's hope they don't go that way for their primary business model). Now, 2023 will bring Warcrow, they promised it would not impact Infinity... but we got this past week a video in OnTableTop with assurances that there won't be a 2023 Operation box, Bakunin will be redesigned (more Observancy-centric and less... "crazy". I fear for the ship), and I think we will get the second O12 sectorial (there was a hashtag o12 in the Interplanetario announcement, so maybe then, but I won't believe anything till I see it). On the other hand, Warcrow is completely fertile ground... regardless of the market saturation with fantasy battle or skirmish games and 3d print models... The movement is extremely risky, so I believe they think Infinity can't provide more money (and the system gets complicated fast with the amount of skills they keep increasing, look the Lobos and their +3CC skill because it's cheaper than giving them CC23...), or at least Gutier may be out of ideas (not that he had many, considering the amount of recycling and the poor quality of the writing...)

[@noname36099]

These lists reflect the thing I hate the most about Infinity: half the list filled with trashcan models just to pile up orders for the high tier ones. I play mainly CA and the unlimited order use per model is making me quitting the game.

[@OldManRogers]

Sounds worrying for getting back into it TBH

[@ReidPage]

So a dumb question probably. Why would a new player, me, play this game if it is so broken. Is it a fun game or not? Is it worth a new players time? Or shout I just stick with my old sometimes broken games.

[@VaulSC]

How deep do you normally get into strategy games? You wont run into problems unless youre really getting competitive with it

[@ReidPage]

@@VaulSC thanks for the reply. I probably wouldn’t be getting into tourneys for a long time. I do understand meta problems though playing xwing.

[@WardenOfTerra]

The 15-model limit isn't good. It's made the game very stale, as everyone just picks a hard hitting single unit like an Avatar, and then runs through an entire army with ease as you can't bog it down with numbers.

[@Blaze_Raven]

It sounds less like a 15 unit slot problem and more of a CB is pumping out badly designed units problem.

[@jasonwales1573]

So there is stuff in this video i dont agree with and some i do Yes the fifteen order limit affect list building, it will do that. We had tatical window in N3 and it was a fun different thing to do in that era, i thought so. But this is a different rule era. Do you just want N3 and not have the game change? They arent afraid to change what is happening in the game, and im sorry your army isnt the same in n3. Maybe its time to go for a different army and support your game? Is N4 easily solvable, absolutely not. If you can bring a bran new person and say, this is how you win. Then have them win? It is not that easy. You still have a lot of decisions to make in the game that doesnt make up that this is the be all list. Dont get me wrong, there are profiles that are better than others, but that is my personal opnion and my playstyle. The big thing i can say about this video, is yes to supporting each other tournaments, you know why? Because we are ultimately the one that can put the things we want to put in. Want to have a tournament with unlimited troops, Go for it! I think this community has a lot of negativity in the game right now that shouldnt be presented and just do the things that we want to do.

[@blacktau]

This game has lost any kind of direction it had left from late n3. Abandoned factions, must play promotional profiles, lack of gameplay diversity, terrible profile and power creep, profile overlap (bearpode was a mistake, dog warriors are obsolete) one group lists are not viable, alpha strike gameplay with centerpieces... the list goes on and on. At the beginning, this game was the definition of High Quality products design and theme. The current state of the game is just sad.

[@ZeWrAtH]

This is why I've basically dropped N4. 90% of what I did in N3 was list building, carefully optimizing and tweaking each list for each tournament, sometimes for months. In N4 this died immediately and I could immediately tell wich army would be disgusting to play against from the start and so far nothing has changed since I made my early predictions about the meta to come. There should never have been an order cap but rather, all armies should've been redesigned in their point system to organically reach between 13-15 models and some armies (Ariadna, Haqq, JSA) should be given leeway to make lists around 15-18 (with several irregular orders). As I said from the start, nothing good comes from the 15 model hardcap, as units you would normally experiment with, never gets taken because the fact that they eat up a slot, rather than points, means every unit now compeeds with each other, so naturally, in a competitive game, only the best is taken. N4 is extremely boring and the convoluted spanglish rules haven't changed from N3 anyways. The only thing they got rid of was nested rules.

[@VaulSC]

Did you get banned on the forums

[@ZeWrAtH]

​@@VaulSC Huh? No? xD