How to Quit a Faction

There's been a very interesting thread on the Infinity forums recently ("When Do You Quit?"), and I wanted to take the time to speak to it here.  Quitting a faction (or even game) is very hard to do, especially when you've invested so much time and effort into assembling/painting/playing/becoming good at it.

Sometimes, though, it's time to move on.  Either your storage and/or display case is full (one of my many problems...), or you just don't have the same connection with your faction ethos as you once had.  Maybe the game has changed, or maybe you have - both are ok.  Either way, I very recently quit Ariadna, and here's the story of how and why I did it.

Source

I had stayed out of Infinity for a little while, but was eager to come back into N3 with all pistons firing.  I threw together my two-combat-group list and won a few games, but things had become...different.  Either I was grossly out-numbering my opponent (and out-ordering him by 1.5x or more) or my opponent was getting dissatisfied with putting serious dents into my list without actually robbing me of much of my order-efficiency.  Infinity felt less like a small squad game and more like a small army game.  Not what I wanted, at all.

So I put my Ariadna up for sale, and waited.  While it was up for sale (can you guess how many offers I got for "only interested in your four Chasseurs"?), I played them a few more times just in case I'd made an error in judgement, but they never managed to click with me again.  I'd tried to play single combat-group lists, but it just proved over and over again to be unfeasible in N3.  I grew more and more irritated having my playstyle pigeon-holed into the popular "two group stomp", which I think started up when Campaign: Paradiso rolled around.  The semi-required meta (for many factions) seems to have shifted towards two groups, and that's not a style I enjoy playing, which is why I left my work on the Ariadna Tactica behind.  So finally, when a kind soul from Germany finally offered to pick up my entire collection, I didn't hesitate for a second.

My reaction whenever anyone
said they only wanted my 4 Chasseurs

Now I only play one faction - the Imperial Service.  I'm finding that I'm still pushed into two-combat-group lists (even with Wu Ming links), but a) I don't have to play that way, and b) my second groups usually have a lot more focus and are easier to keep track of (4x Kuang Shi, Controller, Sforza, Sophotect).  I really miss the mid-line Camo and my sweet, sweet Chasseurs, but I find that ISS is an exciting tactical challenge for me.  Ariadna had just become something I wasn't interested in playing, and I put out a net for interested buyers while I kept trying to get that old spark back.  It never came, so I moved on.

I think the key to dealing with faction/game separation is to replace the hole in your heart with something else, even if that thing isn't another faction or game.  For me, I focused more tightly on the tactical challenges presented by my Imperial Service, which made it easier to get over the fact that I'd lost a big chunk of my identity as an Infinity player.  With miniature games, as with relationships, the main thing is to just find a way to move on.