Midrangers: The Future of ALEPH

Meet the new ALEPH build taking the online meta by storm.

Initial Premise

There are a few general rules I follow when it comes to understanding Infinity, and one of them is below:

1.        Never put a good gun on a bad platform.

a.       Corollary: Never force a faction to do what it does poorly to match what another faction does well.

Premise: ALEPH is Combined Army’s pale shadow when it comes to list-building.

Now let me explain. If there was ever a faction to represent the one-scary-guy-plus-buncha-mooks ways of playing, it would be Vanilla Combined Army. Their high-cost units are unparalleled: Avatar, Sphinx, Anathematic, Charontid; and their low-cost units are also excellent: Taighas, Daturazi, Ikadrons. The result is a very powerful faction able to operate around their most powerful pieces. ALEPH could try to do this too; we of course have the Marut and Achilles (and even Hector), which by all rights are incredible powerhouses: the only MSV2 TAG in the game, a TAG in dude form, and an expert Lieutenant/CC-monster hybrid. Where list-building becomes difficult is in those low-cost options; there is no Taigha, the ALEPH baggage bots (like most others) are bulky and weaponless despite costing only 1 point less than an Ikadron, and the Daturazi seems to be everything a Myrmidon wishes it were (burst 2 template weapon, berserk, impetuous for throwing smoke, higher CC, higher PH, 2 points cheaper). This appears to be a violation of Rule 1a; ALEPH may have premier high-cost units, but the chaff they are forced to bring are insufficient for the role.

Resolution: There must be a way to build ALEPH that plays to their own strengths, that doesn’t rely on rallying around a single powerful unit.

ALEPH’s Strengths

So, what are ALEPH’s strengths? To put it simply: Greeks and Posthumans. Perhaps that isn’t clear; what about “consummate hyper-generalists”? Maybe clearer, but still favors the abstract for the explicit. ALEPH does 3 things rather well:

1.        Extreme Durability: The Greek heroes have at the very minimum one Wound and No Wound Incapacitation(NWI), alongside Mimetism(-6) (or 3 in the case of Penthesilea). Posthumans are similar though in exchange for the many skills of the Greek heroes, they are significantly more disposable, stacking up to 6 wounds worth of bodies and 3 ARO’s into a single order-generating trooper slot.

2.       Extreme Versatility: Premier ALEPH units aren’t just good at one thing. They are the ultimate generalists and regularly boast statblocks with BS13, CC23, WIP14+, Mimetism, Martial Arts, and a Specialist role of some variety. Now, they won’t be the best at any one of these skills (okay, maybe at pushing buttons on WIP15), but their ability to shift their strategy of attack to the need at hand can be extremely valuable.

3.       Extreme Denial of Play: This category is somewhat of a combination of the previous two, but also introduces what is perhaps ALEPH’s most powerful weapon: Eclipse Smoke. The only faction that has more sources of Eclipse is Tohaa, in that Makauls and Mirrorball are plentiful. The strength of ALEPH in this, however, is their ability to deny play entirely. If you want to advance, you throw Eclipse to sneak past ARO’s. Many of your units have Stealth to ignore Zone of Control or use superior Cautious Movement. Even in the reactive turn, with Mimetism(-6) and PH13 and superior CC, opponents will find it difficult to dislodge you. At its core, ALEPH has the ability to largely ignore what the opponent has brought and play the game on their own terms.

Overall, ALEPH can take several highly skilled, highly self-sufficient units that go where they please and have a tool for every job.

The List

The end result of all of this is Midrangers, a list-building strategy that focuses on ALEPH’s strengths rather than trying to make-do despite their weaknesses (in this case, taking 4-5 units in the middle price range). Below is my current iteration of Midrangers (though I am now no longer alone in building this way, and several others have crafted their own variations along with their own frameworks, such as this primer by HeadChime, the author of Under Bourak’s Sun.)

The list stacks a total of 23 Wounds across 15 models, which tends to be significantly more than other factions can bring to the table. The list also runs six Specialists, with two being WIP13, one WIP14, and three WIP15. While sometimes unfortunate in Firefight, this allows for superior ability to complete the mission over an opponent, and removes the opponent’s ability to deny the mission by killing your specialists. Finally, the list brings three sources of eclipse smoke, and 1 source of normal smoke, allowing you to essentially place smoke from any attack vector you choose.

The parts of the list are as follows:
Netrods – three orders for 18 points.

Eudoros, Machaon, Penthesilea, and Proxies Mk1 and Mk5 – these are the midrangers who can push buttons and generally are able to handle themselves.

Hippolyta – this is your alpha strike piece, and what she loses in ability to push buttons, she gains in being extremely lethal and extremely mobile.

Armand, Lamedhs, (Liberto and Beasthunter) – disposable ARO pieces.

Liberto and Beasthunter – disposable attack pieces, perfect to scalpel out an enemy hacker or missile launcher as part of a turn 1 alpha strike.

Daleth and Samekh – currently “slush” points. Daleth gets a cheeky extra order this season and its repeater can be used to cover an area in the midfield to use the Mk1’s spotlight for the Samekh’s guided missile.

How to Play

            Midrangers at its core revolves around not using the traditional infinity strategy of “apply gun with high burst and hope for the best”. The very astute among you might even realize that the list I provided has a single gun above burst 3, and its an SMG+1B. To put it simply, shooting is for suckers and eclipse forgives most sins (what can I say, I’m best known for my hot-takes after all). What this actually means for play, is that Midrangers wants to interact with the opponent as little as possible until they can take fights with overwhelming odds. Midrangers is a build of opportunism, and because you have several units that do very similar things, even if one dies or one lane is far too open to traverse down, you can just pick a different Midranger to pilot for that turn and have grand results. If an opponent has ARO’s standing up to shoot at you, simply throw eclipse or cautious move past. Don’t traditional gunfight, you have the ability to get enemy units out of cover and sometimes in their back arc. You have 2W and can force your opponents to either take a terrible point-blank FtF or eat templates at close range, while not losing your own unit if the opponent decides to trade. Never take a risk, because with eclipse you really don’t ever need to.

            That was the broad overview, but how does this list play in practice? Well first you can find a few batreps on the matter on Khavrion’s channel here. But if like me, you prefer a written description it goes as follows:

Turn 1, you have initiative

            Always reserve Hippolyta. Deploy Armand, the Lamedhs, and the Mk5 to be on ARO duty. Spend all of your group 1 orders alpha-striking with Hippolyta. Typically, this means going to destroy the enemy core-team because she can efficiently eclipse and explode them in CC, but Lt. hunting or key-unit hunting are also fine options for her. You don’t really care if she dies, but remember that with eclipse there’s no need to take risks. If you can keep her alive in their deployment zone by the end, they will forced to deal with her on their turn, and with Superjump she can hop onto a roof and go prone, or even just crouch behind a corner and wait for them to come to her. With your group 2 orders, typically the Beasthunter or Liberto need to suicide to break the guided missile if the opponent has brought one, but they are also effective at hitting fireteams with the forks they have. Armand can also pick off flashbots or exposed warbands if for some reason an opponent was foolish enough to deploy them in his vision. As they say, all missions are annihilation on turn 1. Eudoros can spend his Impetuous and NCO throwing smoke for Hippolyta or grabbing an early objective (or setting up for it on the following turn).

Turn 1, you have deployment

            Same ARO set-up as having initiative, but this time you can deploy Armand to make sure he isn’t in easy LoF of an MSV2 attack piece. You have strong ARO’s and you have entirely too much durability, if an opponent spends their turn trying to alpha-strike you (even with the classic nasties like Bears and Uberfallkommandos and Fidays) then they will find that they aren’t able to efficiently strip orders from you and will leave themselves overextended. You will outlast them and, more often than not, you are better at doing the mission than they are due to all of your high-WIP specialists. By the nature of what Midrangers brings to the table, you will break their tempo and take an advantage.

Turn 2 and onwards

            Do as you please. Push the buttons you want to push, take the right fights with overwhelming odds, and generally ignore your opponent’s ineffectual flailing as you refuse to engage with the Avatar and instead casually cut it down with Penthesilea’s monofilament CCW.

Why not just play Steel Phalanx or Tohaa?

            Now in reading through all of this, you ask the question: aren’t SP and Tohaa just this but better? And I’ll contend that they are certainly similar in concept but ultimately very different in execution.

            Why not Steel Phalanx:

            There are two primary advantages that Vanilla ALEPH holds over Steel Phalanx. The first is access to mercenaries which gives Vanilla not one, but two inexpensive and powerful camo midfielders in the form of the Liberto and Beasthunter. Armand is less relevant and competes with linked Phoenix and Atalanta, two common SP choices. The second major advantage is the ability to spread out power and attack vectors across the map. While the advantage that SP gains in removing impetuous and granting extra burst to units like Eudoros is immense, the disadvantage is that all the expensive, high-power units are in one place. In an era of pitchers and guided missiles, this can be a significant disadvantage. A third advantage, though certainly less important than the other two, is AVA 3 Netrods. Vanilla ALEPH is much more easily able to take several powerful units and still hit 15 orders.

            Why not Tohaa:

            Tohaa is extremely powerful defensively, and I might even argue that they are more powerful defensively than Midrangers. The major functional difference, however, is that although a triad may be able to cover all three roles – CC, BS, WIP – they rarely have much overlap. Although the Makaul is an eclipse-chucking CC expert, it needs to drag around a Draal and a Taqeul who are not. The Draal is a powerful gunner, but the same. And the Taqeul has access to perhaps some of the strongest ZoC WIP abilites in the game but isn’t a terribly good shooter or stabber. In application, this means that choosing any one of those strategies in attacks, a specific unit of the Triad has to be the active piece while the others are dragged around. To break a Triad is as “simple” as applying the right match-up to the right unit. Hippolyta can shoot the Makaul or the Taqeul, and then CC the Draal once they’re dead. The reverse also holds that Hippolyta can CC the Draal and the Taqeul (though maybe not in that order) and shoot the Makaul. Doing the same to Hippolyta is somewhat more difficult. With Mimetism(-6) and eclipse on 17’s or dodges on 14’s she’s fairly hard to shoot or template. With CC24 and Martial Arts she’s fairly hard to CC. Overall, outside of the uniquely powerful ZoC abilities available to Tohaa alone, she’s just difficult to deal with, and even if you do kill her then only one order is stripped compared to the Triad’s three.

Conclusion

I’ll be frank; I see Midrangers as the future of competitive ALEPH play. Traditional Achilles lists, while often able to storm through on sheer stats alone, begin to falter when facing some of the overwhelming hacking power from Nomads and Combined Army (what I feel like are already ALEPH’s hardest matchups).