A year ago I wrote Crits Kill People’s most popular, often cited post: The Perfect Composition. I spent a lot of time on it, mostly distilling my thoughts into easy to understand and executable portions which became the basis for most of my Tacticas on Infinity (and Batman too). I also think the MSPaint-style ‘shop job was also helpful as I realized that the human race is a visual creature – even if you’re subjugating to my written word at the moment. I selected an option of units, showed where they existed on the scale and made slight comments on them regarding how they fit the role I’ve assigned them to. Let’s revisit the Perfect Composition.

I think my original thesis of ‘fill this ten man checklist’ is wrong but it is important to understand why. Hell, I only chose the name because it was succinct and catchy. The first reason why the Perfect Composition doesn’t hold up anymore is the permanent move to 1.5 to 2 Battle Groups. The popularity can be traced to Campaign Paradiso which had complicated and difficult missions, meaning that quantity of Orders was more important than Quality. Quality can fail when Infinity rolls so few dice, so more miniatures began to bloat players lists. ITS Scenarios quickly followed in rewarding these list building decisions once TAG Lt. as Specialists were removed. N3 completed the overwhelming preference for larger lists.

There are debates aplenty on the Infinity Forums. Nobody disputes the strength of large battle groups as they’re obvious tournament contenders; however, a great deal of posters are in favour of ten man limits. The majority of those posters, including myself (which does beg the question of selective bias…), prefer ten man because they were originally promised ten models when they started playing Infinity. A great deal have stated that they enjoy the game with ten models because they’ve chosen a Skirmish-level game, fewer models is a selling point.

Corvus Belli removed this possibility with the across-the-board 10% discount to every model. If I could make a 300 point list with 10 models in N2, the same list in N3 comes to 270 points approximately. I cannot fault the CB for the decision, as they are a miniature game company. They need to figure out ways to have players buy more miniatures, especially if they have large collections like myself. I probably buy something every six months because I have everything I want for Haqqislam, Hassassins Bahram, Qapu Khalqi and Ariadna. In fact, the next faction I want to play is going to be the Cossacks which won’t be coming out until two books from now. The question CB asks itself is ‘how do I get Tevesh’s money?’ Requiring more models is a simple, smart business decision.

Once the floodgates of a ten man limit have been removed, List Building becomes incredibly simple. Have as many bodies as possible and because they’re individually not very good, have a lot of redundancy. The Perfect Composition gave you two Murders, two backup switch-hitters, three Specialists, two Deployment Zone protectors and the Lt. With the push to 1.5 to 2 groups in ITS and beyond, you want a Swarm where each model is a race to the bottom. Specialists winning the game and Infiltrators due to how efficient they get into a pivotal position are the only models worth paying points for. Heavy Weapons, such as Spitfires or HMGs might be worth paying for but ignoring your opponent and just trying to win by piling bodies might be easier.

With such a large batch of models, selecting individual models is less important. In fact, this level of redundancy is the backbone to BLOODGOD’s Ariadna style. There has been a great deal of criticism towards ITS Scenarios almost arbitrarily hampering Infiltration or Mechanized Deployment which is necessary due to Ariadna’s overwhelming advantage of bringing Infiltrating Specialists. In a way, I feel like Corvus Belli has pushed themselves into a corner by accidentally handing a factional advantage that happens to coincide with the winning strategy of their designated tournament system.

With players only aware of ITS as specific missions, I believe that there will be an misunderstanding over the game both players agreed to play. This is why I prefer to use homemade Scenarios to get flavourful options that are competitive. I disagree with the entirely random YAMS but it is another batch of Scenarios that don’t cultivate a Swarm. Of course, Data-Sphere’s 20×20 Mission System is not bad either. All of these options harken to the ten man Battle Group. In my mind, this has changed the Perfect Composition from ‘the best way to build a list in Infinity’ to the ‘ideal way’. Perfection is something to strive for, an existence outside of reality. Ideals are also lofty concepts outside of the limits of reality. The Perfect Composition may now be relegated to how we’d like to see lists.