The Five (Wrong) Schools of Infinity List Building
Don't fall into these traps!
Initial Premise:
There are many ways to conceptually approach list building as a function of unit profiles in a faction. I’m going to go through a few of the most common frameworks that I have seen, provide their most generous interpretation, and of course, rebut them. At the end, I’ll provide my own strategy and recommendation when it comes to building a list.
There are a few assumptions to be declared and clarifications to be made when discussing this topic:
1. As will be the case for most discussions on theory in this blog, I will be rebutting these frameworks in the context of high-level play. This not to say that the other levels of play are inferior in any way (they’re actually the most common levels that Infinity is played at), but Infinity is genuinely such a well-balanced game that only in the higher levels of play does any discussion of theory or optimization have any kind of relevance at all.
2. Not all of these schools of thought are mutually exclusive. People regularly mix and match these, sometimes even in a contradictory manner.
The Meta Relativist
“That might be true for your meta, but in my meta everyone plays with an eye-patch so its way harder to judge distances”
Generous interpretation:
While there may be some slight differences in the quality of profiles within a faction, what works and what doesn’t largely relies on the meta it is played in. For example, in some parts of the Russian meta, TAGs are unheard of, while in some parts of the Australian meta, TAGs are king and some players might take two or even three in a list. Therefore, lists should be built purely as a reaction to the existing meta, accounting for common table-types and matchups.
Rebuttal:
This idea isn’t wrong per se, inasmuch as it correctly asserts that the context a profile is played in plays a role in its efficacy. If you play in a meta where scatter is low and DZ-to-DZ sightlines are common, then profiles that shoot well may have some advantages. There are two primary issues with this school of thought.
First, metas are, well, “meta”. They are comprised of choices that a collection of players has knowingly or unknowingly made. Are TAGs in Australia powerful because apparently no one in Australia owns more than 3 pieces of terrain, or does no one own terrain because everyone already takes a TAG and its in their interest to keep sightlines large? Metas can be shifted and controlled for, and even in the case of a well-established meta there will be better or worse lists made to account for it (and those lists will contain better or worse profiles).
Second, Infinity is, for the most part, not a game of rock-paper-scissors. Hard-counters and hard-solutions are rare (though Tohaa against Ariadna and Ariadna vs Hacking do come to mind), and attempting to RPS your way out of strategic list building is not only a futile strategy, but an overall harmful one to your development as a player. At the highest levels, players do build for what might be termed “bad matchups”, but much more important is how players play into those matchups. To give an example, running two bears is a common strategy in both Kosmoflot and Vanilla Ariadna. Sometimes the solution to double bears is to pack whatever viral options you have and duke it out, and sometimes its about ignoring the aggression and playing the mission to win. The meta is really only relevant in that you should probably have one list to account for a common “bad matchup”, but should still plan to face other armies too. I once started playing Vanilla Ariadna purely because in the IGL meta Nomads are Combined Army always hacked and blew up everything I knew and loved. My reward for my decision was that in 12 tournament games, I faced Tohaa/Spiral Corp in 7, despite being something like less than 10% of players in any given tournament.
The Skill Supremacist
“Well Polynikes took a Jayth to a tournament once, so obviously a skilled player can just do whatever they want”
Generous Interpretation:
While profile power may serve some small role in the efficacy of a list, player skill and playstyle are vastly more important. The most highly skilled players can take anything and do well, and sometimes a unit is only “bad” because it doesn’t match the playstyle of someone using it.
Rebuttal:
This is one of the most common schools of thought that I see, and it is almost entirely held by people who are not high-level players. To be kind, it is wishful thinking that even the most skilled player in the world could turn trash into success, especially when facing other highly skilled players. Highly skilled players aren’t just highly skilled because they can deploy correctly and make good decisions quickly (though those certainly play a role), they are highly skilled because they are also good at picking the right units to go into a list. Infinity is a resource optimization game, both in that you have a limited number of orders to spend to accomplish your objectives, and in that you have a limited number of points to spend to pick the profiles you’ll need to generate and spend those orders. Sure, a top player might have a fun pick or a vanity pick, but those profiles are taken *despite* being not optimal, not because the player thinks that there is no optimization whatsoever.
The idea of playstyle being a factor is in some ways even more absurd. There may be some “natural talent” to playing a certain faction or even using a certain profile, but natural talent does not get you very far in ANY competitive scene. Whether it be Olympic sports or a bunch of dweebs playing tabletop wargames, what separates the wheat from the chaff is practice. To give an analogy, Michael Phelps may have a freakish body that makes him “naturally” better than any other swimmer in the world, but the man was also eating 12,000 calories and training daily to even have the opportunity to put that natural advantage into use.
The Anti-Comparativist
“Why would I compare a Myrmidon to a Daturazi when I’m playing Steel Phalanx? I can’t take Daturazis in Steel Phalanx.”
Generous Interpretation:
There is little value to be gained in comparing units from two different factions because units outside the faction you are list building for can’t be taken. It doesn’t matter if another faction’s unit is “more optimal” because its not even a choice you can make.
Rebuttal:
This is a factual stance inasmuch as yes; Steel Phalanx cannot literally put a Daturazi into their army. The issue with that stance, however, is that armies aren’t built in a vacuum. It matters that Myrmidons are worse in every conceivable way to Daturazis because not only will you be likely facing Daturazis at some point, they also are useful to inform you on what you should actually expect from a warband that costs 16 points. To continue this longwinded analogy, why on earth are you paying 16 points for a warband that has less PH, less CC, worse CC skills, worse weapons, and 1 order less than a unit that’s 2 points cheaper? And before you tell me “but that’s what they have in ALEPH” I will refer you to General Rule 1a: “Never force a faction to do what it does poorly to match what another faction does well.”
This school of thought is frustrating to contend with because it sounds very reasonable up until you realize that all the other factions in the game have similar tools that do similar jobs. Comparing those tools is a way to triangulate if you’re actually getting a good deal on what you’re taking or if another faction could mirror what you’ve brought and then punk you with it. Even if we don’t care about comparative analysis at all, when the Daturazi and Myrmidon template each other on the field of battle, your opponent can be happy knowing that it took you more orders to get there and more points lost compared to them. Which brings me to the next school of thought:
The Cost-Agnostic
“Who cares about how much the Guijia costs, I needed a strong gun that could super-jump and also CC.”
Generous Interpretation:
The primary concern in list building is that the roles you want to have are covered. In the absence of specific missions that count points in a zone, the cost of a unit is separate from your reasons for taking it. When a unit “trades down” (dies after killing fewer points than it is worth) then it is entirely irrelevant so long as it did what it needed to do.
Rebuttal:
Similar to the Anti-Comparativist, the Cost-Agnostic presents a reasonable argument on its face. Points are an abstraction and once a unit is on the board, in the absence of point-counting missions, the price you paid ceases to be relevant. The flaw in this school of thought is not found in the units that are taken, but rather in the units that aren’t taken. As mentioned before, and as will be explored more later, Infinity is a resource optimization game. Its not just about filling a role, it about filling a role efficiently (or even choosing to not fill a role at all, such as burst 4 guns in Midrangers). The cost of taking the Guijia isn’t just an abstract 82 points, it’s an opportunity cost of 82 points that you could have spent on other profiles. If the Guijia trades down then it’s not just that you’re losing an abstract concept on the field, you lost 82 points worth of profiles that could have contributed to a different outcome. To be clear though, “what if” can be asked of any mishap in a game. What I mean in this case, is that over the course of 10 or 20 games, those 82 points could have been used for a better and more consistent outcome.
Profile Absolutist
“Libertos are OP so I take those, and then Diggers are OP so I take those, and then…”
Generous Interpretation:
Some Infinity profiles are clearly more optimized than others, so list building is an exercise of identifying and including those profiles until you run out of points to spend. There may be some consideration for synergy or a goal for the list, but largely you can’t go wrong with just including whatever is strongest.
Rebuttal:
This might be the most difficult idea to rebut insofar as it does tend to be true that there are a set of profiles in the game that are considered “auto-include”. It would be bizarre to see a Nomads list without 2 Morans, a Combined Army List without Bit and Kiss, or a Yu Jing list without a Daoying Lieutenant. Where this school of thought loses me is in how much competition there is for those “auto-include” spots. I don’t think that Infinity is anywhere close to solved in terms of list building, and simply choosing the “strongest” profile isn’t even a terribly effective way to design a list. And even when there are “obvious” choices, at the highest levels of play there is often fierce debate on which one is actually obvious. In Haqqislam, top players constantly argue over the best Lt option being Saladin or an Asawira. In Combined Army the Sphinx, Avatar, and Anathematic are all common frameworks that a list may start from and then wildly differ in final execution. Certainly, some profiles are over-tuned, and sometimes over-tuned profiles have a higher likelihood to make it into a list, but generally speaking, Infinity is well-balanced enough that its just not possible to fill an entire list with only the “best” and expect it to be effective against more carefully thought out lists.
Conclusion:
Infinity list building is complicated and has a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration, but I would like to propose two primary considerations:
1. Opportunity cost (or marginal value)
2. Comparative dynamic (or oppositive dynamic)
To briefly explain:
Opportunity cost is the price you pay for NOT doing something. Achilles is 66 points, so the opportunity cost of taking him is 66 points that you could have spent on Hippolyta and a Beasthunter.
Marginal value in this case refers to the relationship between additional utility for additional cost. In the case of Dactyls and Acmon, Acmon is 55% more expensive than a Dactyl but has 100% more orders and up to 100% more wounds (depending on how you want to treat Dogged). The result is that even though Acmon has a strictly higher base price, the marginal value he brings is “worth” it, so Dactyls routinely never see play.
Comparative dynamic refers to how 2 different units in similar roles can be compared to determine if a unit adequately fills that role, or meets expectations for that cost. We’ve already discussed the Myrmidon/Daturazi comparison, so to recap, Daturazis perform the same role but better and cheaper compared to Myrmidons. This means that we should conclude that while Myrmidons may be the only option at that price point in ALEPH, they do not meet expectations give that price and you may wish to find a different unit for that role (like say, Phoenix).
Finally, oppositive dynamic refers to how 2 different units match up against each other in a game, typically referring to matchups that a faction already struggles with (like ALEPH into Nomads or Combined Army). These units don’t necessarily need to share the same role, but can be a good way to think about efficacy for cost. Thrasymedes is a good example of a unit that doesn’t match-up well despite having ostensible utility. A mimetic midfielder that can enter suppressive fire and shut down hackable units sounds fairly strong, but when placed against most other midfielders it will find itself templated and dead, almost always trading significantly down.
This all comes to my second general rule for Infinity:
2. Marginal value over gross value. Comparative/oppositive value over marginal value.
Marginal value dictates that within a faction, you should choose units that offer the most value for their cost when compared to other units that offer a similar set of tools. Comparative/oppositive value then dictates that even if you select an extremely powerful unit for the price you pay (Achilles comes to mind), it might not function well in the matchups you need it to. List building is complicated and there are many ways to go about it. With that in mind though, it is important to avoid the traps of overly (or underly) rigid thinking that have been described in this article.