Corbeau's Infinity Unit Roles - Tactica Tuesday

We've discussed this before with Batman, but the same sort of thoughts should be applied to Infinity.  I briefly cover the idea of Unit Roles in the Perfect Composition, but I found Corbeau's post on the Infinity Forums to be more enlightening.  If his name sounds familiar, it's because he wrote an excellent review of Haqqislam's use of Rifle + Light Shotguns previously.  Reposted with permission, Corbeau's take on Unit Roles:

When building a list, regardless of faction or sectorial, I've found that there is a common set of roles that I'm always trying to cover.  Infinity is primarily a toolbox game rather than a synergy game: victory comes from applying the appropriate tool to the appropriate situation, not from building powerful combos and synergy chains.  A good Infinity list needs to contain a well-rounded toolbox.  While each unit is subtly different, overall roles are consistent; I see roughly six (or eight) different niches that good lists make sure to fill.  Some units overlap into multiple roles.  Some units are specialized.  Whichever you use, the goal in list building is to include as many orders as possible while maintaining enough role-redundancy that the opponent can't just assassinate one target (whether a single unit or multiple nearby units) and crush you by exploiting the resulting hole in your capabilities.

Cheerleaders

The nature of Infinity means that even cheerleaders can be effective offensive pieces, but that usually isn't their main role.  Cheerleaders primarily exist to provide regular orders and basic ARO defence against airborne deployment at minimum cost.  These are typically a faction's line infantry, the most inexpensive bare-bones units that you can buy.  Quantity is more important than quality for this role, but the occasional factional perk can be welcome (like BS12 on PanO Fusiliers, the Morat skill on Morat Vanguard Infantry, or WIP14 and underslung light shotguns on Haqq Ghulams).  Cheerleaders usually need to be deployed defensively, with limited lines of fire, since they typically lack powerful long-range AROs and have no special survival abilities.  Anything can kill anything else in Infinity, and often will, but it's usually more efficient to channel cheerleaders' orders into units specialized for whatever particular job is required.

Strikers

Strikers are offensive units designed for maximum killing efficiency.  This efficiency can come in variety of ways: a model with Infiltration, Impersonation, or Airborne Deployment can be an efficient striker because they require fewer orders moving in order to reach the enemy, thereby increasing your reach.  Models with multiple wounds and high base stats can be efficient due to limited risk: a single lucky ARO won't eliminate the orders invested into moving, and they might even survive a reactive turn while in a forward position (though don't count on it unless they're well supported).  Other figures are just plain fast, or posses special movement abilities like Super Jump that can bypass terrain or defensive fire - again, requiring relatively few orders before they're in killing range.

Controllers (ranged and forward)

Board control units are the main thing preventing an enemy striker from waltzing over and gutting your order pool every single game.  Board control is a tricky thing to pull off in Infinity, since it's so positionally-dependent, but it's also one of the most powerful.

If your opponent lacks appropriate long-range tools, a single sniper or missile launcher can deny him huge swathes of the table.  Total Reaction or Neurocenetic units can act much like snipers, except that they typically require different tools to eliminate reliably (stacking enormous negative modifiers with surprise attacks, finding hacking vectors, etc.).  This kind of ranged control is all about locking down extended fire lanes, preventing the opponent from maneuvering effectively.

Forward control tactics become applicable in terrain with limited fire lanes: mines (particularly on Minelayer Camo Infiltrators) and direct template weapons deployed in close quarters can exact a heavy toll on attackers.  Almost any durable unit can exert similar forward control just by going into suppressive fire - though entering that state requires spending an order, so it doesn't prevent the dreaded first-turn alpha strike if you're going second.  Trying to brute-force through forward control is generally order-inefficient and often results in mutual casualties rather than clean kills.

In each case, the controller's effectiveness depends on the importance of the ground that they're denying (or at least making extremely expensive to cross).  The order economy is central to Infinity; what makes controllers exceptional is that they can nullify vast chunks of the opponent's order pool.   If the opponent has an easy answer available, or can just bypass the ground being defended, then a controller is nearly worthless.  Reading the terrain table from the start of the game - before even the initial Lt. roll-off! - is essential both for setting up and taking down controllers.

Specialists

Most Infinity scenarios require Specialist units: Doctors, Hackers, Engineers, Forward Observers, etc.  Much like strikers, the most efficient Specialists are the ones that deploy in forward positions and/or have stats and abilities that make them resistant to bad luck (while high BS is most important to most roles, high WIP is the stat to look for in specialists).  My personal favorite (and I'm far from alone on this) are TO Camo Specialists, preferably of the Infiltrating variety.  They're hard to kill, require few orders to move around, and can remain safely in hidden deployment until you need them to complete the mission.  As a bonus, most Specialists also fulfill utility functions that, while a bit more list-dependent, can be very useful even outside scenarios.  Engineers and Doctors can even add to your list's overall redundancy as long as you don't spend more orders repairing or doctoring than you gain in efficiency provided by recovered patients.

Sweepers (ranged and forward)

Every list needs tools for breaking through board control.  I think of such units as sweepers: they exist to clear paths of movement for your strikers and specialists.  It's entirely possible, though less likely with N3's HMG nerfs, that your sweeping piece is also your striker.  When those roles can be combined, the result is horrifyingly efficient (which is why most striker/sweeper units were nerfed by range band changes in N3).

The classic ranged sweeping weapon is the HMG: high burst, high range, high damage.  A Sweeper with Multispectral Visor is going to murder anything short of a Total Reaction HMG, while a Sweeper with Camo will gun down anything short of a Camo sniper (and can kill that too, if within range, though not particularly efficiently due to the amount of whiffing likely to be going on).  Other weapons are similarly capable of sweeping the board, but they're usually more dependent on terrain or more susceptible to bad luck due to lower burst.  It's also worth noting that, though the solution isn't quite as permanent as an HMG burst, Smoke Grenades can bypass long range board control.  Smoke isn't very efficient if you would have to blanket a huge area, but it can work very well in conjunction with cautious movement if you just need to cross one particular sniper-covered street (or similar area).

Not all control is based purely on range though: Mines, midfield Camo, and/or Suppressive Fire are also tools of board control.  If well-placed in positions that you cannot bypass and cannot out-range (the preferred methods for dealing with them), such forward control tools require answers of their own to tackle.  Template weapons, whether direct templates or speculatively fired impact templates, can be useful for forcing enemy mid-fielders out of Suppressive Fire (regardless of Camo/Mimetism/ODD).  Sensors can make it less order intensive to discover a sea of Camo tokens.  Cheap Impetuous bodies with high PH, cheap Ghost remotes, or an actual Minesweeper remote can reduce the cost of clearing minefields.  You'll still pay a price, mind, but having the right tools means paying a smaller price.

Visors

If you don't have a Multispectral Visor in your army, then sooner or later you're going to hit a brick wall due to ODD or TO Camo.  It's possibly to deal with those abilities without MSVs, but it's nowhere near as efficient as just shooting them in the face with an MSV trooper.  I tend to consider MSV to be crucial on sweepers, since some of the best board control units rely on TO Camo or Mimetism to stay alive and threatening, but MSV can also be extremely useful on controllers themselves.  Smoke is a common way of nullifying long range ARO lockdown, but an MSV2 sniper won't be bothered at all.  An MSV striker is no bad thing either, since a fair number of specialists and other important targets rely on Camo or Mimetism to survive.  While I wouldn't field MSV on an otherwise basic Cheerleader, having MSV on the troops fulfilling other roles is extremely helpful - if they're available to your faction, you should probably take one or two MSVs in some role.