Infinity players like to believe that Infinity is perfectly balanced. We’ve met or watched or posted with staff like Bostria, HellLois, and Gutier, and we’ve played horribly imbalanced games like X-Wing and 40K, and this game and its creators just feel better. But, if the ITS statistics are anything to go by, and the salt of the forum, and my personal experience, it is most definitely false that all factions are created equal. This is the S-Tier, these are my top 3 Infinity factions.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Haqqislam is one of the strongest armies in Infinity, no doubt. The reason I can’t quite put in the top 3, is that Haqqislam will fail horribly if it manages to be cornered by superior shooters, and the strengths of Haqqislam tilt in dependence on the skill of the player and his awareness of the enemy’s capabilities.
ALEPH (and Steel Phalanx) brutalize many players,, but I find that if you are in the habit of making a diversified list, ALEPH falls apart to a few cheap tools like Mines and basic Sniper Rifles. An entire ALEPH or Steel Phalanx list can fall apart to a single Spetznaz or linked Gao-Rael Sniper. Still, ALEPH makes heads ache with Posthumans and Myrmidons and No Wound Incapacitaion.
Nomads are one of the strongest armies in Infinity, having many of the most cost-effective units available. The problem is that it’s very easy to not play the hacking game in Infinity, and the hacking game is Nomad’s primary field of dominance. Whenever I see Ariadna versus Nomads, or when I play my own Tohaa versus Nomads—and of course a Jammislam versus Nomads matchup—I see that Nomads just cannot perform as strongly as the strongest three.
TOHAA
The Tohaa is the faction I feel by far most comfortable with. We get more for our points than any other army. We get more fireteam diversity than any other army. We have more of the most important stat (Wound) than any other army. Easy access to Sensors, Eclipse, Multispectral Visors, Specialists, and Direct Template Weapons, all without being Hackable—in most cases—pushes the Tohaa way up on the power meter. Our Wound totals alone put the Tohaa higher than most factions, as a lateral comparison.
For a couple years, we Tohaa actually had to work for our wins. Sure, a new Tohaa player would curbstomp another newer player, in most cases. But in competitive matchups, Tohaa could be reliably beaten, due to our primary weakness. No, not Fire ammo weakness: Ballistic Skill.
Our Ballistic Skill deficit died, however, with the entrance of the Sukeul Commando. The Sukeul levelled the odds against enemy TAGs and Fireteams. Few PanO players who could take a Kamau would not spend just a few more points for the extra Wound and kit of a Sukeul. We then link that Sukeul with cheap smoke and more, slap invulnerability on it, and still have 15+ orders. Shrewd Tohaa players know too that the Sukeul’s odds skyrocket against enemy fireteams with our plentiful Nimbus.
The invulnerability from Symbiomates themselves are a special kind of bullshit, and being that you’ve probably already used, or been abused by, Symbiomates, I shouldn’t need to explain why they are such an extreme force multiplier for an already affordable and reliable army. I love my Tohaa, but they are rigged in my favor. So why aren’t I two points ahead, you might ask?
Primarily, because there is one other army that gives my Tohaa pause. Two, in fact, but this next one has an advantage that Tohaa can’t scratch at.
ARIADNA
As the player who taught me said, five years ago—one of the strongest players I play against to this day—”Order spam? I can deal with that. Camo spam? Might be a struggle, but I can deal with that to. But order spam with camo spam? That’s a problem I don’t have a good answer to.”
Ariadna has three of the best things available to any Infinity army, and it has these three in the highest quantity available: Orders, Smoke, and Camouflage. In most contexts, orders are usually worth more than strong bodies. A BS15 Swiss Guard with 10 orders will kill less than two BS12 Camo troops with 20 orders and AP weapons and smoke.
One of the biggest embarrassments I see in tournaments is how few players bother to bring a Sensor unit. Every faction can bring one, and due to the possibility of facing Ariadna or Ariadna-like builds, you are basically required to bring a Sensor, in my opinion. Multispectral Visors and Sixth Sense can’t possibly match Camouflage, on a point-to-point basis. You just don’t have enough Orders to safely Discover and Shoot everything.
That said, a few good Multispectral Visor units in the hands of a cagey player will make smoke & camo Ariadna sad. Woe to the Ariadna player who leaves out Camo troops for a Nisse or Rui Shi to hunt, and good luck to a vanilla Ariadna player taking apart a symbiomated Gao-Rael Sniper or two. But against other armies? Military Orders, Combined Army, StarCo, Qapu Khalqi, NCA, JSA? Ariadna is likely to have an cruel advantage.
You can’t shoot what you can’t see, and Ariadna usually has 10-20 things you can’t see. Who knows whether that camo marker is an HMG, an AP gun, a Shotgun, a Flamethrower or a mine. God bless anyone who puts up with an Ariadna opponent.
There is only one army—were I still an Ariadna player—to fear.
IMPERIAL SERVICE
What a story here. From rags to riches, the Imperial Service, once arguably the worst sectorial in Infinity, has become godlike.
The Imperial Service always had potential, of course. Kuang Shi at Availability 8 always allowed players to pump orders into better units, but back then, you had absurd, unrealistic Fireteam options, like AVA5 Fireteam Core Hsiens, who by themselves would nearly fill 300 points. Cranes and Pheasants sagged and dragged the army behind with useless expensive Monofilament CC weapons. The Celestial Guard was more expensive, and did not have the Boarding Shotgun profile, its only specialist being a 21-point Hacker. Wu Ming lacked the cheap SMG, FO and Light Shotgun profiles that they now have, and mixed fireteams, as I recall, did not exist beyond the controller Celestial Guard + Kuang Shi.
Those flaws have changed, changed, and changed again, to the point that ISS is nearly as flexible in its Fireteams as Tohaa, nearly as full in orders as Ariadna, and nearly as high-tech as PanOceania. Indeed, the presence of excellent mercs and ALEPH loaners is a side-salad to the main-course meals of melded Yu Jing options.
No single Imperial Service option is better than another faction’s contemporary, you might say. Perhaps the only truly uniquely powerful troops to ISS are the Hsien and Rui Shi and Kanren, who are not quite with a peer in other armies. Saladin is a better Strategos than Sun Tze. Kaeltars are better Chain of Command troops than Pheasants. Antipodes are better sensor troops than REMs and Cranes. The Galwegian or Morlock smoke is better than Celestial Guard smoke. The PanOceania ballistic skill is better, the ALEPH TO Camoufage is better, the Tohaa durability is better, but there is an unassailable point is that ISS has all these tools available.
ISS can afford all of these tools, in a single list, with redunadancies to spare. There is a joke that the classic ISS list is an equation:
f(ISS) = 2 (MSV2 + Sensor + Attack Piece + Killer Hacker + Smoke + 4[Kuang Shi])
Of course, that is not every Imperial Service list, but the point is that player can buy each tool he needs, twice, in two combat groups, with 18-20 orders. You are not the best at everything, but you have everything, and you have more than 15 orders to do it. Direct Action, Joint Operations, Limited Insertion—there is nothing ISS can’t do except field a TAG, and who really thinks that is a flaw? You have no tricks that the classic Imperial Service needs to fear, and it itself has many tentacles of death to stretch out against you.
My Tohaa only fear Ariadna, and my Ariadna only fear Imperial Service, which makes me declare, altogether, Imperial Service is the best of Infinity.
That’s my top 3 for Infinity. If you disagree, let me know why. You can also check my updated Infinity Factions, Artichoked post for all 2018 factions, here.
Lonely Artichoke 