Infinity N5 Announced for October 2024
Note: the new rules will be available online 20th October. There should be previews throughout Infinity Global Week (a promotional thing running all next week) so stay tuned for more on this.
Genghis Cohen: Shocking! I think there’s been a reasonable amount of time for N4 to reach maturity and show its very minor issues. The surprising thing to me is the timing. There’s not long until October, and we would normally expect a summer release for something so major. But overall I’m glad to see this. The game is in a good place but balance and the meta has grown a tiny bit stale, at least for jaded old salts like myself.
What will the new release look like? A paired battle box?
Musterkrux: Agreed, the timing feels weird. I would have thought CB would be keeping people focused on War Crow right now. Asking their player base to split their hobby funds between two IPs when one of them is only just launching boggles the mind.
Genghis Cohen: We can expect a 2 player set, probably with 7 models a side as seen in Operations Icestorm, Red Veil, Kaldstrom, Crimson Stone and Blackwind. The silhouette teaser shown makes me think that PanOceania will feature once more?
Musterkrux: Point of order, I think they announced that the new starter is JSA vs PanO. There’s an art-splash with models blurred out (likely to be revealed in time) but it looks like there’s going to be an Orc or Bolt with SMG and …someone who likes jumping and knives, I guess? We’ve had generic Fusiliers in Operation: Icestorm and we’ve had Winter-themed Fusiliers in Operation: Kaldstrom. I demand that we get Beach-themed Fusiliers to represent Varuna/VIRD in this new box.
What do we know about the new edition?
Genghis Cohen: Corvus Belli have openly said that this will not make any major changes to the rules system. They have a few talking points, pictured, which basically boils down to it being a polishing rather than a rebuilding. Everything about AROs, Face to Face rolls, should stay the same. We know that unit profiles look and function the same (see below). So this should be tweaks of individual rules, and there are one or two changes to presentation:
Most importantly, the way Damage on weapons is determined will change. This sounds bigger than it is – really it is a presentation issue. Instead of a Damage stat, weapons have a Probability of Survival (PS) number. Those numbers also look a bit different, because instead of the player being hit rolling over a target number, they will now roll equal to or under a target number. This will make it the same process as the other normal and FtF rolls in the game, which is good for simplicity and explaining things to new starters.
Example: combi rifles are shown to have a PS of 7. So if my ARM3 model in cover has just been hit once with a combi rifle, I must roll 13 (7+3+3) or lower to survive. That is the same chance of survival/unconsciousness as before.
On a similar note, the Wounds statistics seems to have been changed to Vitality – presumably the equivalent, Structure, may also get a new name.
Musterkrux: It’s a nice quality of life change but fundamentally it’s just the same mechanic of rolling a D20 and comparing it to a threshold/target number. Now we’re looking to get below rather than above for ARM rolls.
What other changes would we like to see for N5?
Genghis Cohen: Display of information is a big one, and I have a lot of faith in CB that they will further iterate on that. Some people still criticise the Infinity rules as being hard to understand, but if you were around for N2 and N3, I think it’s inarguable that matters have improved each time. Things are laid out far more clearly than previously and that trend should continue. At the most finicky level of the game, figuring out every iteration of the Short Skill-ARO-Short Skill declaration process, and where edge cases needed FAQs, there are some things which have developed during N4 which we hope will be distilled in the new rules.
Musterkrux: I’m going to rampantly wish-list here and hope for two changes: One: Introduce a way to break the 15-trooper cap. Some factions will do better with a few extra troops on the table. Even if you gate the ability behind obvious Lts who pay a surcharge for the privilege. Two: Reinforcements being a standard (but optional) element of list building in the core game. I appreciate it’s super hard to balance Reinforcements against non-Reinforcements lists but feel like CB was so close to scoring a massive goal with Reinforcements in N4, be a real shame to let it go.
What balance changes are we hoping for?
Genghis Cohen: N4 was a big change from N3 due to the 15-model cap, and a general price reduction in ‘heavier’ units, ie those with armor and multiple Wounds/Structure. So while in N3, Warbands and Light Infantry predominated, and what great shooters needed was MSV2 and other gunfighting skills, in N4, we see many more TAGs and Heavy Infantry used on the battlefield, and access to AP ammunition is frequently discussed as a make-or-break factor when choosing a firepower unit. We might predict that this will nudge back slightly? But who knows, a lot of the cheapest units in Infinity are still the staples. The units suffering (as in not being picked for competitive lists) tend to be 1W models, often Medium Infantry, which are relatively expensive due to other good stats and specialized skills or equipment.
Musterkrux: Tough call. The game feels pretty balanced at the moment. There’s a few mechanics that appear to be easier to execute than to counter (ie. GMLs) but I feel like that’s not something that needs to be aggressively ‘balanced’. There are, certainly, some profiles that are commonly overlooked that could be adjusted to be more competitive. I agree with Genghis Cohen that the mid-cost models seem to be overlooked in favor of the models at the extremes of the cost spectrum: Budget-options (cheerleaders and trading pieces like Libertos) and the elite models (TAGs and premium HI options).
Genghis Cohen: Another big one may be changes to the Guided Missile rules. While present in the game since at least N2, Remotes with guided weapons were seldom taken prior to N4. At that point, the ability of hackers to give enemies the Targeted state was boosted, becoming an option in ARO and against typically non-hackable enemies, as well as being automatic on success of the hacking WIP roll – no second roll against BTS being needed, as with other hacking programs. This generates a lot of salt. It is not so much that guided missiles are dominating top tables, although the factions which can use them well take them very often. It is that, at all levels of play, a significant percentage of players find facing guided missiles a negative play experience. So it’s fair to predict some sort of change here, although we have no idea what that might look like.
Musterkrux: Oh yeah! I’d also like to see the use of Strategic Command Tokens tweaked a little. The second player currently seems strongly incentivised to strip orders instead of options like putting a model into Suppressive Fire. Maybe CB will let us put 2,3 or even 4 models into Suppression?
Finally, I’d love to see Limited Insertion lists get immunity to order-stripping again. You’re already playing on hard-mode with just 10 models and no bubble-wrap or expendable trade pieces, why not just give people playing with a single Combat Group a little break?
Genghis Cohen: Oh yeah, Command Tokens are a strong prediction for tweaks. Right now the auto-pick option is to dock your opponent Orders when they’re going first. I’m just excited for an overall balance pass really. When you play quite competitively for a long time, you just want a chance to not use certain auto-take units, and place long-neglected toys on the table for a run out. How might faction identities in the competitive meta shift? Will my beloved Corregidor still be known primarily for fielding two Moran Masai backing up by Jazz the hacker? Might McMurrough, the mercenary werewolf, not be a battlewinning asset anymore? Will I get an option to be my Lt which doesn’t flat out suck? I’ve got that new edition fever!
New Faction: Japanese Secessionist Army
Genghis Cohen: To explain for any newer players, this is more the elevation of a minor faction. JSA is currently one of the “non-aligned armies” in the game, something of an odd one out since all the others are fictional mercenary companies, and tend to be mash-ups, with their units drawn from different main factions. JSA, on the other hand, has relatively narrow roster of troops which are basically unique to it. This is because of its history as a faction…
In the halcyon days of N2, JSA was the Japanese Sectorial Army of Yu Jing. The backstory is that in Infinity’s far future, Japan was part of the wider, Chinese-dominated state of Yu Jing. This was not a happy state of affairs, so in N3, there was a revolution where they threw off the Yu Jing yoke and became independent. See the Uprising fluff book for details. In game terms, this meant a great wailing and gnashing of teeth as Yu Jing lost one of their Sectorials and a large number of their units. It was before many other additions, so they only had one other Sectorial (Imperial Service) and many of the units that now contribute to their Invincible Army and White Banner Sectorials didn’t exist. This is the reason that JSA currently uses Yu Jing Remotes, by the way.
We have also seen the new faction logo for JSA, which draws more on the modern Japanese flag and less on the Imperial Japanese 20th century flag. It should be obvious why that is in better taste. At time of writing, though, we should note that JSA still has a unit called the Kempeitai. That was the Japanese military secret police during the period. For those less familiar with the history, it’s about equivalent to having a German-themed unit called The Gestapo as an option. I mean, part of Infinity’s charm is the national military call-outs in different units’ names, and no historical military power really has clean hands, but there has got to be a line drawn somewhere. Hopefully something which gets edited out.
What does this mean going forward?
Genghis Cohen: Well, JSA will now be a full faction, which should mean they will also get their own Sectorial Armies. That will come sooner than we think. O-12 is the most recently added faction, and it took them a year or more to gain each of their current 2 Sectorials. The buzz from this seminar video is that JSA will launch with two Sectorials ready to go. This is an understandable move as JSA seems to be a consistently popular faction with players. Infinity has always had a strong shared aesthetic with anime and the presence of power armored samurai and cyber ninjas definitely acts as a magnet to people that like that sort of thing. (I don’t, but even I think ninjas are cool).
Musterkrux: I wonder if Ikari will get shunted into JSA as a sectorial, probably not but it also just feels like JSA with the brake-lines cut. Otherwise, yeah, we’ll see a HI-centric sectorial like MO and Invincible Army (Domaru, Tankos and Daiyokai), and maybe either a Street-gang/Yakuza or Ninja village sectorial.
Genghis Cohen: I am surprised if JSA will form half of the new battle box. It seems like it would make sense, but they might want to do a full starter army set (typically a box of about 10 models which can make a 300pt force) for them, which might or might not be a separate thing. There were a LOT of JSA renders, including some new units, shown in the seminar, so there should be a flurry of releases. It will take a lot to flesh out 2 Sectorials in a vanilla faction that on current form is a Sectorial itself, and not a particularly broad one at that. Current rumours are to expect a ‘first wave’ of around 13 models in line with previous big releases. Presumably there will be more coming behind that.
Conclusion
Genghis Cohen: Look, we know relatively little right now, but previews should begin to fly thick and fast, while the actual release date of 20 Oct is just 2.5 months away. Go check out some of those sweet sweet model previews, and look forward to an in depth review of the rules as they become apparent.
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