It’s Infinity Week, ie Corvus Belli is promoting their new N5 edition and its Operation Sandtrap release box, together with its release factions, the Japanese Sectorial Army, its Shindenbutai Sectorial, and PanOceania’s Kestrel Colonial Force Sectorial. This means rules previews! We here at Goonhammer are gagging for details on how N5 will work, how it will change the meta, what our armies will look like, and so on and so forth. We know you are the same, so read on below for a summary of what we know of the changes, and our dazzling insights thereon. 

N5 Factions (on Release)

The sheer number of factions in the game by the end of N4 – 43 – was known to be a weight around the game’s neck. Accordingly, all the predictions were that some Sectorials would need to disappear, to make room on the production schedules and shelves for new stuff. So the following 38 factions will be available in the N5 rules when they release:

This number is including the new introductions [JSA and its two Sectorials, and KCF] and missing the following Sectorials:

• PanOceania lost a whopping three Sectorials:
  • Shock Army of Acontecimento
  • Neoterran Capitoline Army
  • Varuna Immediate Reaction Division
• Ariadna lost two:
  • Caledonian Highlander Army
  • Force Rapide Reaction Merovingian
• Unaligned Armies (NA2), mercenary factions, lost three:
  • StarCo
  • Foreign Company
  • Spiral Corps

These changes are mostly pretty consistent in that they aim to leave fully-developed factions with no more than three Sectorials; Yu Jing, Haqqislam, Nomads and Combined Army were all at this number and escaped unscathed. Aleph, O-12, and now JSA, which are all newer, even if Aleph’s release is now far in the past (the faction came out alongside the first Sectorial armies for other factions) stick with their two existing Sectorials each. All of the Sectorials lost from main factions were ‘out of catalogue’, as in their rules had been kept up to date, but their exclusive miniatures were mostly out of production and they had not seen new model releases for some time. 

PanOceania fully loses quite a lot of units in this change. Some of the iconic HI from Neoterra (the Aquila and Swiss Guards) and their baseline MI, Bolts, will remain in generic PanO. A few Camouflaged units from Varuna also remain in generic: the Zulu-Cobra, Croc Men, and the powerhouse Cutter, a camo TAG. From Acontecimento, only one of their TAGs, the Tikbalang, appears to have escaped the axe, remaining in Generic and KCF. But a lot of middling-elite 1W models, like the Kamau and Bagh-Mari, will depart the game for the moment. 

Ariadna will also lose a bit. Some of the Caledonian units made the jump to Kosmoflot, notably their heroic leader, William Wallace, as well as SAS (and their special character, Uxia), and Caterans. These all remain in generic Ariadna as well, as do Galwegians. But the bulk of the highlanders, even their line infantry, are being piped off into the mist. Merovingians are a mixed bag; a handful of their units did get updated models alongside Reinforcements, and those will remain in generic Ariadna, while a few units which overlap with Kosmoflot (Mirage-5, Chasseurs, Para-Commandos) will likewise remain. The other, very old, models and profiles will allez dans le bateau. 

NA2 is not a unique faction; it has no generic/vanilla faction roster, just a selection of Sectorials. Apart from a few units that are explicitly mercenaries (and do sometimes appear in other factions) most of the units in NA2 Sectorials are drawn from other human factions. Their schtick is to combine them in unusual ways, e.g. White Company, which stays in N5, features a mix of PanOceania and Yu Jing units, along with some mercenaries and characters. NA2 honestly lost fewer Sectorials than we expected. Some rumours were that none of these mercenary factions would be playable, at least on release day. We can make some conclusions about the removals.

• Spiral Corps, which was conceptually a stand-out since it was more ‘Tohaa with a few mercenary troops’ than a human-based mercenary faction, was the only lost Sectorial that was out of production, and we can only guess that any exclusive profiles will be folded into N5 Tohaa, while it might feature, spiritually or as a Sectorial, in any Tohaa refresh down the line. 
• StarCo has been heavily hinted [by the CB spokesman in interviews] to be folded into Corregidor, which already provided many of its units. Our educated guess is this means their special characters [Knauf, Uhahu, Emily Handelman] becoming available in that Sectorial; the smattering of cross-faction choices (from Bakunin, Qapu Khalki and Ariadna) will probably not be ported over, although it’s possible for their generic-mercenary units and a couple units and characters which are Nomad-associated but not in Corregidor currently [e.g. Zellenkriegers].
• Foreign Company (ForCo) is a mystery; it was a mix of PanOceanian and Nomad units, but also featured some special characters that, unusually, didn’t actually appear anywhere else at all – for that reason its removal is something of a surprise. CB’s spokesman has said to ‘wait for a surprise with this’ when referring to StarCo and ForCo’s removal, so our guess is that the exclusive characters (Hannibal, Laxmee, Valkyrie) will appear in some other faction(s), but it’s hard to guess where. 

Tohaa, which definitely remains and will be fully playable, is an odd fish here. They have not been in production for some time, and although their rules are strong and work fine with N4 (and will receive at least some sort of update to N5 compatibility) they haven’t had any new units, rules or models, introduced for years. The implication is that CB does want to ‘do something’ with them, but it’s not clear what that might look like.

Robert Cantrell: Without having an idea of how successful the Tohaa ‘happy days’ promotion was, it would be quite anti-consumer to run that promotion and then obsolete the models so immediately afterward. I’m glad to see Tohaa sticking around; they’re usually quite unlike anything else in the game, and it’s good to have some of that preserved as the game (quite necessarily) contracts.

For all the removed Sectorials, messaging from CB has stressed that there are no current plans to add them into N5, but also dangled the fact that they could well revisit any of them in the future.

Musterkrux: As someone who went all-in on Varuna back in the day, my coping mechanism for seeing Varuna get removed from the catalogue is to aggressively pretend that generic/vanilla PanO is actually the new home of Varuna. I call it ‘Varunilla’ and I will force this meme until it sticks.

The loss of the Ariadnan sectorials has been long telegraphed and is honestly fine, with Kosmoflot and Ariadnan Reinforcements giving us just enough of a taste of the Old Ariadna that we can pretend they’re not gone, just sleeping.

As for NA2, honestly I’m surprised they weren’t even more cutthroat. Why is Ikari still there? It’s just Angry-JSA, that could either be a Sectorial or just folded into Generic JSA. Why did Dashat avoid the chopping block when it’s just Haqq + YuJing with a sprinkle of Ariadna?

Genghis Cohen: Yeah, the NA2 changes are surprisingly restrained. Like you I’m shocked to see Ikari and Dashat, which are only faction mash-ups and characters who exist elsewhere, stay. While ForCo and StarCo, which had unique characters, go away. I’m not even opposed to the latter, I think 38 factions is still a hell of a lot! It just confuses me exactly how the survivors were picked. I choose to believe CB had some of their staff or playtesters compete in a thunderdome-style elimination tournament. 

Fireteam Changes

This is the big one, perhaps the biggest change to army building/unit balance which we have firm information on thus far. First, Fireteams come in the same categories, Duo, Haris and Core, which will be the same sizes as before. We have no reason to think the number of Fireteams Sectorials can form (typically one Core, 1-2 Haris, and unlimited Duos) will change, and it is confirmed that generic factions will also be able to field one Haris (and probably a max of two Duos). 

Second, how Fireteams count their bonuses is changing. In N5 it only matters how many of the same trooper you have in the team. Three Fusiliers in a Core team, receive the same bonuses as three Fusiliers and two Wildcards. Another unit can still have (Fusilier) denoted in its faction’s Fireteams chart, in which case it would count as a fourth model. As now, the type of team makes no difference to bonuses received, those are only dependent on the number of models – so a two-model Duo receives the same bonuses as a two-model Core. Let’s look at what these bonuses actually are:

Headline news, the maximum bonuses from a Fireteam did get weaker, and for Core teams, they need to be five models from the same unit (or counting-as-the-same) to enjoy anything like the same security. Against that, two-model teams drawn from the same unit now receive a meaningful mechanical benefit. Let’s dig into that.

The Mechanics of “+1 Burst, Drop One”

So rather than simply adding +1Burst to all BS attacks, Fireteams (with 2+ models from the same unit) now roll +1B, but the player chooses a die to discard after rolling, the implication being they discard a miss or the lowest hit, if possible. Everyone reading this had the same reaction: “this is worse, this is a nerf, oh no”. Please take a moment to think about FtF rolls in Infinity. The +1B, dropping one, has exactly the same odds of winning a FtF as +1B. What this change does is limit the total damage such units can do, because they will never be able to convert all their dice into hits. How much this change will impact each sort of Fireteam-able unit depends a lot on their weapon and their role. 

Genghis Cohen: I do not see this change much affecting the benefits an Active turn, native Burst 4 weapon gets from a Fireteam. It’s unusual to hit all of your shots, and while it is nice when it happens, the combination of rarity and likely overkill means that’s not the biggest loss. But it will be a more impactful constraint with lower burst weapons. An Active team sniper, feuerbach or HRL was hoping to occasionally beat the opposing roll with all 3 dice, and this goes double for MLs. Similarly, in ARO, we won’t see any changes to a Fireteam’s ability to slow down attackers. But an Active player using a robust model will now find it safer to ‘brute force’ the Fireteam ARO. 

That is my concern with this change (which I’m broadly happy with). TAGs, pending any other changes, will only get more favoured as the way to break through hard stop AROs. A 1W gunfighter is still taking a big risk attacking one, because they are likely to go down on any sort of FtF loss. A TAG is happy enough losing one FtF roll before it brings the target down, because now it can’t get very unlucky and eat 2 missiles to the grid. 

Template Weapons Do Not Benefit(?)

Because there is no roll, it’s potentially confusing whether using Direct Template Weapons will receive any bonuses now from being in a Fireteam. CB do seem to have confirmed, in response to Warcor enquires, that they don’t. We badly need to see the full rules document to understand this. It is potentially a very significant change (if they don’t benefit) and a bigger hit to some team compositions than the Burst change to other BS attacks. 

Genghis Cohen: I think this is fair enough if this does nerf Fireteam templates; B2 templates in reactive made attacking a lot of Fireteams at close quarters suicidal, even for heavy units. Interesting to see how this will affect the value of template units which have previously been considered very efficient close assault/protection in Fireteams, like the Kaitok or Teutonic Knights (obviously some overlap with shotgun changes there). Overall I hope this will make solo attacking units into Fireteams feel a bit better.

Musterkrux: It’s a change, and change is (generally) good. I’ll admit I’ve spent N4 leveraging templates to avoid the inconvenience of rolling to hit and missing. So, dis-incentivising diceless interactions is mostly a good thing even if it’ll force me to play the game properly.

Pitchers, Smoke, Disposable Weapons

Although we should read the full rules before coming to a final conclusion, this system could alter the huge benefits Fireteams got with certain odd weapons. They won’t ever land two smoke grenades in a single Order; our assumption would be that players have to attempt both rolls aiming for the same spot, since anything else would be pointless chaos. Still a very reliable boost to that important tactical function. For disposable equipment, our assumption is the player rolls two dice, drops one, and that sequence only uses (1) disposable charge. In other words, instead of firing both your panzerfaust shots in a single ARO, you would now get two chances. That’s a huge boon to defensive disposable weapons – if our assumptions are correct. Finally, as with smoke grenades, players will no longer be able to spam out two Pitchers in one Order (and their BS ceiling is reduced). This is a welcome change, making spamming out a huge Repeater net slightly less efficient, but on the other hand, if our disposable assumption is correct, shooting Pitchers one at a time would get more reliable. Essentially the player would get four rolls to try and land their two Pitchers, if they spent two Orders. 

The New Important Numbers: 2 and 5?

The established truths of Fireteam-building in N4 were that Duos were purely a convenience, for order efficiency in movement; three-model teams had extra punch and for those, purity hardly mattered; for bigger Core teams, four models was the important level, running five models was only super important if you could get full composition bonuses, but most players did take five, just to be able to sustain one casualty and retain the important bonus (Sixth Sense). 

Well forget all that! Right now, having two models of the same unit (or counts-as) is the entry point to having an ‘effective’ team. Everyone wants a sweet mechanical bonus, no one wants to leave it on the table. Players may still want to Duo two models together who don’t get the bonus, if there is a strong synergy, like TAGs being supported by engineers. But running pairs of models is now sure to be a big thing. Players can get a lot of the benefits of an N4 three-model team, without having to compromise deployment to keep coherency, or expose as many models to risk when making an attack run. Adding a third model, if they have useful capabilities, still keeps the important bonus even if they’re not the same type. If you do take three of the same model, there is some redundancy, as the first casualty won’t necessarily cost you the bonus.

The actual bonuses for three and four models are minor and incremental. Our approach to Fireteams has always been that you’re balancing an efficiency (moving together and dragging different capabilities to where you need them) with a vulnerability (your models have to stick in coherency, so are more efficient for the enemy to attack). So we are not sure that 3-4 model teams will be popular, unless the models involved have strong complementary skills – not often the case if we consider that all 3-4 would have to be from the same unit or count-as. What having 3-4 models does do, potentially more importantly, is give a cushion before losing the important Burst bonus. 

Five (pure) models seems to be the absolute requirement to build anything similar to the 4-5 model Core teams we have been used to up till now. Any Sectorial should have access to five line infantry in a Core team. There will be a haves vs have-nots distinction in what Sectorials can include good shooters which ‘count as’ line infantry. 

Genghis Cohen: I understand that CB’s intent, moving Sixth Sense to five-model pure teams, is to give some incentive to taking line infantry. It does matter to more expensive units, but there’s no incentive which is generally going to make a team of five more expensive Medium Infantry type models worthwhile. Well, I’m not convinced. Because the BS bonus has also been reduced, I simply don’t trust my line troopers enough. I can’t rely on a 1W, BS12 (best case BS13 for some sectorials) ML or sniper, with no gunfighting skills, even if it does have Burst 2 (drop one) in ARO. So while I will hold judgement until a while into the new edition, I don’t see the appeal of a pure five model team of cheap guys. It will matter a lot which factions, if any, get to keep gunfighting models as ‘pure’ options for a fifth model. 

Robert Cantrell: Here’s a fun drinking game: every time someone says “this nerfs Steel Phalanx” or “this nerfs Tohaa” before seeing at least the fireteam composition rules for those sectorial, take a drink. To play this drinking game responsibly, first draft a last will and testament.

RIP Core Fireteam AROs?

For larger Core teams, against many enemies, they need five models which count as the same unit, if they want to act as the defensive, long-range ARO bricks we are used to. Any other composition puts them at risk of being eliminated by enemy visors shooting through smoke. If they can achieve that composition, they can fill the same role, but have some notable downgrades from N4:

• Big Core teams are now capped at +1BS, although they still receive and retain that at 4 models. This reduces their overall chance in FtF rolls.
  
• While the new Burst bonus doesn’t hurt FtF rolls, it does make the risk of attacking a Core team in ARO slightly lower. The worst-case outcome for an Active turn player attacking them isn’t quite as bad.
  
• While the Sixth Sense bonus is still vital to stop smoke-shooting, it won’t stop Surprise Attack anymore; that interaction is separated into a new skill, Combat Instinct.

All those factors together mean that a hard-stop ARO piece, like a Missile Launcher or sniper in a full Core team, seems like less value than in N4. They may have less BS overall, they are now vulnerable to Surprise Attack, and tougher attackers will be more willing to risk ‘brute forcing’ through them. However, we can’t draw any final conclusions until we know more about what units are eligible to create teams with the full five-model bonus.

Musterkrux: I’m fine with all of this. You want a Sixth-Sense Missile Launcher or Sniper on ARO duty? Take a look at an pure five-person LI team instead of the usual min-max of a Riot Grrl and 4x Moderators (noting that a Riot Grrl likely still has some play if they keep their MSV-1 but at least that’s better than the dilemma they presented when they had Sixth Sense). Do you want a reasonably costed ARO response to smoke? Get yourself an MSV-2 model. These design decisions are giving us, the players, more reasonable options in list-building rather than 1-2 obvious and borderline mandatory optimal builds.

Dropping the high watermark for shooting (ie. capping out at BS +1 and only if you meet Purity 4+) means that solo pieces have more play into contesting firelanes. Again, great to see CB opening up our options.

Genghis Cohen: I welcome the death of (most, presumably) Sixth Sense, MSV, gunfighting AROs. It will be interesting to see if MSV AROs which don’t have Sixth Sense get more popular – after all, not every opponent will have access to White Noise, which is still their only massive vulnerability. But overall there may be less incentive to build 5 model defensive teams, and I am a huge fan of that, I find them boring to deploy, play and play against. 

Robert Cantrell: certainly, I can’t imagine any profiles being released with the N5 flagship factions that give us linked ARO firepower as strong as some historic examples. Maybe something with a visor and mimetism, and an FTO neurocinetics profile…

RIP Pain Trains?

There’s not much ambiguity, pure teams in general took a hit – if you were eschewing any kind of Wildcards already, and just really liked your five identical dudes, your little squad will get +1PH for Dodging in N5, but at the heavy cost of -2BS. We’ve discussed how this affects defensive bricks, pure or otherwise, but another consequence is that full Core Heavy Infantry teams – ‘Pain Trains’ – are not as powerful as before. They have usually been off-meta, but they have also been consistently popular, especially in certain Sectorials. Some builds in Invincible Army or Military Orders, while not really competitive, definitely drew casual players to that power fantasy of a big unit of super-elites. CB reducing the punch of those teams does feel like putting the boot in while they’re down. Our only crumb of comfort to such players is that costs on the games’ more prosaic HI do look to be going down slightly (Quick Start Rules previews indicated Orc troops are likely going down by about 3pts). Possibly running four HI, which is a slightly lower investment and still gets the Burst and a minor BS bonus, will still be something we see around.

Changes to Frenzy

CB have verbally confirmed (in a video about Shindenbutai profiles) that Frenzy is now “related” to the Limited Cover skill. Our understanding, based on that, is that Frenzy models still track inflicting Wounds, but once that happens they gain Limited Cover (and, we assume, the Impetuous skill).

Genghis Cohen: this is interesting but an area where we really need to know more. If Frenzy gives Impetuous activation (an advantage) but still allows Limited Cover, that’s a clear improvement over how it works now, and might make it not a giant red flag on any non-Fireteam shooting model. But a lot of the appearances of Frenzy models in the game are in Fireteams, and the effect this has on their points cost is a big factor in their popularity, so we really need to know more about how these interactions work before it means much to the wider meta.

Close Combat Changes

The biggest news here is the revision of Martial Arts – still comes in five levels, but now they ascend in power a bit more evenly. In N4, levels 2-4 were almost the same, and there are only a couple models in the game which had level 5 anyway.

As we can see, levels 1-2 are pretty much what we know and love already in N4, giving successive little boosts to the model’s chances in a FtF roll. However we have a new break point at MA3. Using the same Burst bonus that Fireteams get, a model with Martial Arts 3 (or higher) suddenly gets a significantly more reliable way to beat targets up in close combat, including a real advantage over level 1-2 Martial Artists. This trend continues up the levels. A MA4 user has a full +1B – so they are just as good at winning FtF rolls as a MA3 model, but with a much higher damage ceiling. A MA5 model gets +2B dropping one, so they hit as hard as a MA4 model, while again being significantly better at winning a FtF. 

So our headline take is that this chart is terrific. It’s not a return to the darkness of N3, when you had to pick one of your levels to use, and they had ill-balanced situational benefits. What it does is add a good measure of complexity. Each level of MA is impactful over the lower ones. While all close combat specialists will still clown on regular models reliably, we see a big jump at MA3, then MA4 is more of a ‘win harder’ skill, letting the user potentially put really big damage into a target – remember that unlike BS attacks, a skilled melee fighter can’t miss their rolls and is vastly more likely to land critical hits. Being genuine Burst 2 makes a MA4 model with a good CC weapon into a threat which can reliably put a 2W model down in one order. MA5 gives users an advantage against all lower levels, and given that all the MA5 models in the game have an insane CC stat, makes at least one critical hit more likely than not. 

Musterkrux: I’ve mentioned in other discussions that I think a mild overturning of Martial Arts will be great for the game. Even if MA 3+ combat monsters are a little bit overpowered I think that’ll be good for the game overall, as we’ve had a few editions where melee has been considered inferior to shooting. Forcing players to adapt to melee monsters like Shinobu will not only shake up the way people play the game but the way they build lists. It’s a term used in competitive online gaming: Perfect Imbalance. By tweaking the game to be a little bit unbalanced in favour of one playstyle you force people to adapt to it, and that keeps the game fresh and interesting. Bravo, CB.

Genghis Cohen: Eh, I don’t think melee has been ‘inferior to shooting’, or maybe I agree it’s more niche, and I like it that way. It shouldn’t be the main way combat is done in the far future, I like how it has sat for a couple editions now, as a potentially very decisive asymmetric way to kill things that are hard to shoot. In my games, close combat is rarely between two actual melee experts, because good play means sending your dudes who know kung fu to beat up enemies who don’t. I agree it’s nice to see some more value for the higher levels of MA. 

Interaction with Natural Born Warrior

As we were already aware, NBW now only lets the user ignore negative modifiers to their CC stat (E.G. from an opponent’s MA skill). This is a dramatic reduction to its importance in deciding close combats between hard melee models. It essentially makes the user ignore MA1 and halves the effect of MA2. But if the opponent has MA3 or higher, while NBW will affect the target number, it won’t be enough on its own to give the user an advantage, even if they have MA1 or MA2 themselves. Models with MA3 and NBW, which exist now and may well exist in N5, will still have some advantage over other MA3, and even MA4, models. But they will still likely be overpowered by MA5.

This is a good thing for the health of the game, since NBW becomes less of a hard counter skill. 

Genghis Cohen: it’s never been a great concern to me, but I do like that this change merges with the new MA levels to create a more fluffy hierarchy of hand-to-hand skill. Previously, some top melee characters, which were supposed to be the epitome of skill, were at a decided disadvantage against any MA1 scrub who had the NBW skill. Now we may see the more ridiculous levels of kung fu reach their potential. 

Changes to Sixth Sense

This important N4 defensive skill is being split into two. Sixth Sense remains the ability to return fire without penalty at attackers behind your LoF or through zero visibility zones, as well as ignoring negative penalties to any Dodge roll. Surprise Attack is no longer affected, instead we have:

It’s difficult to say which half is more important. Immunity to smoke-shooting is particularly important for hard stop AROs, if their opponents can access MSV2 & smoke, or White Noise where relevant. So it’s vital against some armies and enemy lists, but will have little effect against others – being shot in the back is always technically a threat, but it’s often avoidable with careful deployment. Protection from Surprise Attack mods, on the other hand, is widely useful – most Camouflage units in the game have surprise – but the mod itself is usually only -3, and usually needs order investment if a player wants to use it more than once per model.

The big ‘so what’ about this change revolves around how rare built-in Sixth Sense actually was. Very few models had it on their profile, most of its appearance on N4 tables was via Core Fireteams. This change may mean we see more units introduced with Combat Instinct or Sixth Sense in the future. It certainly means that Surprise Attack became widely more valuable, since Core Fireteams no longer ignore it.

Genghis Cohen: Pure speculation here, but one oft-requested rules change was for Surprise Attack to work in the Reactive turn, in order to raise the value of camouflaged sniper types and to give Camouflage models some sort of incentive to ever reveal in ARO. Can’t say if that’s purely a good idea – it would also strengthen many hidden impact template AROs, which are already strong – but it has been talked about by the community. If it does happen, clearly Combat Instinct will be even more valuable, and the new vulnerability of Sixth Sense including on Fireteams, will become more important. 

Interaction with Stealth

There are more unknowns here. In N4, under the Stealth rules, it specifies that Stealth does not work against Sixth Sense. We have no confirmation at the moment whether that is still the case, or if Stealth and Combat Instinct interact at all. Watch this space – especially for hackers (and so for any hacker capable of being in a Core Fireteam) Sixth Sense was a key skill. If the Stealth interaction changes, or transfers to Combat Instinct, that is a big deal. 

Vehicles

Most of the details of what vehicles are being added to the game are now available, we have seen names and concept art, like the Nomad Go-Pods and O-12 Firebats pictured below. Flying drones or one-pilot craft seem to be the order of the day. What we still don’t have is the actual profiles.

In interviews, CB have confirmed that these will have tall Silhouettes, to represent the space they fly in, and a combination of skills to make their movement work: Super-Jump and the new Jet Propulsion rule.

Those seem to give a terrific amount of mobility, even if there aren’t any further special exceptions to how vehicles move. Jet Propulsion also shows up on the new Banshee drop troop in KCF, so could be retroactively given to some other models – any number of drop troops in the game would work thematically. 

Genghis Cohen: Jet Propulsion is cool as hell, no doubt about it. But I definitely have some mental scarring from the old N3 Super-Jump. Giving models, especially if they have strong firepower available, that level of freedom to ‘hover’ in the air and gain LoF from weird angles, is opening a can of worms. If a player leans hard into it, things can get very frustrating as they spend half an hour checking sight lines, before trying to convince their opponent they can see the back of a model from this point in midair right here. 

Rob Cantrell: Okay, I’ll say it. This is how the super-jump rules work right now. I’ve argued about this in YouTube comments and I’ll argue about it here. As such, this is how I’ve played this rule the entire edition and this isn’t weird or new to me. What is potentially unusual is a secondary weaker form of super-jump this rule implies, which is strict parabolic super jump. That’ll be fun to argue about. And measure accurately.

Our take here at Goonhammer is that vehicles could be hot stuff – mobility is very strong for active turn units, as the Su Jian, Roadbot, and several motorcycle units show – but it’s hard to say without profiles. So much depends on their stats, weaponry and of course points cost.

Speedball

CB have given some more details on the new Command Token use, Speedball. This is all verbal, but it allows a player to place two markers on the table which represent equipment that can be picked up. One marker has a selected piece of equipment and the other is generated from a random table. They were explicit this was Equipment, not weaponry – the example given was a medikit.

Genghis Cohen: This could be a good use of a Command Token, and it’s nice to see them try and introduce uses for them that aren’t just +/- Orders. What I think will determine usefulness is what kit is available, how much freedom and control the player has with placement, and whether models actually picking up the kit also needs Orders. I do like the idea that a vital model has gone down, and despite not having a paramedic, you could use resources to try and rescue them. Or – pure speculation – if pinned down by a Mimetism ARO you could try and get a visor to help dig them out?

Musterkrux: Yeah, I’m all for more interesting/useful ways to spend Command Tokens than adding or removing orders. Though, the problem is that Orders are such a key and scarce commodity in Infinity that any Command Token use that grants or denies them is going to be vastly overvalued than most other uses. Speedball seems fine. Not having weapons drop will likely reduce the ‘Feels Bad’ moments in the game, while allowing the player to have one item of choice and an RNG element ensures that at least the player is getting what they need when and where they need it (hopefully) and then maybe a little extra treat.

KCF Units and Fireteams

Bottom Line and Caveat

Most of these profiles look to at least have potential, with several really pushing the envelope of ‘very very good’. Before we go raving on about power creep, there are two caveats to that. First, preview profiles are not final, they can, and sometimes do, get a bit of an edit before the Army builder goes live.

Genghis Cohen: Readers may remember the release of Bixie, an Aristeia character who crossed over into Infinity as an ITS prize. She’s a powerful model now, but when she was first previewed, was shown as MSV2, for the same price as her actual MSV1. We lost our collective minds, and whether it was the reaction or a simple error, the profile was changed before it ever made it to the army builder. 

Robert Cantrell: It’s also well worth remembering the Parable of the Shakush, which we had a full N4 profile for that was playable in late N3. By the standards of TAGs of the time, it was aggressively costed and reckoned to be a future meta-dominator. Edition changes around the Shakush made fools of us all, and it’s very possible that the same will happen for some of the more pushed profiles shown off here. The Banshee and Scarecrow in particular, while aggressively costed in comparison to N4 drop troop and hidden deployment troops, may well represent a new normal for these kind of profiles.

Second, the smart money is on broad points changes to under-used profiles across all factions, when N5 releases. So while a Griffin Troop does look insanely pushed compared to most factions’ bog standard heavy infantry, our prediction is this is less ‘new stuff OP’ and more ‘old stuff will be updated in line with new stuff’.

Musterkrux: Agree. Getting riled up over points, skills or stats without seeing the full picture is a fool’s errand. Enjoy the leaks as they trickle in but don’t go dousing your army in kerosene and burning it for Likes on Youtube until all of the army rules are released. Or burn them now, they’re your models, do as thou wilt.

Fennec Fusiliers

These are the spiritual successors to Acontecimento Regulars. Fairly standard line infantry, with BS12 (good) but WIP12 and ARM0 (bad). What makes them stand out is some optimised profiles – they can get light rocket launchers and the new Thunderbolt for 0SWC, so can efficiently punch out to longer ranges.

Genghis Cohen: I really like the minelayer profile. Seems like a few points for a lot of added utility in defence, and then a budget option for taking long range shots at targets of opportunity. The Thunderbolt in the hands of a BS12 mook isn’t something you’d want to get into fights in Round 1, but it means your opponent can’t dismiss the Fireteam at range once they’ve put down the main gunfighter.

Musterkrux: Welp. That’s a Fusilier. They picked some cool niche profiles to lure us in but I’m telling you that it’s just the same old Malibu Stacy with a new hat. 

Genghis Cohen: Oh my god! THEY’VE GOT NEW HATS!

Banshees

MSV1 and the mobility of Super-Jump (Jet Propulsion) are good things on a drop trooper. The key constraints are the short ranged weapons, but equally those lead to a terrific low price point, and the specialist profiles offer KCF, and PanO, efficient ways to score a number of Classified Objectives, which is helpful in several missions. Wild Parrots, of course, are great. Crazy name, crazy equipment.

Musterkrux: The only profile I don’t think is amazing here is the normal Hacker. Everything else is gold. +1B Pulzar on a Super-Jump (Jet Propulsion) profile has the potential to be nuts.

Black AIR

God damn that Black AIR. Again we see some really interesting and complex profile design, with each profile changing dramatically from the others due to special skills or equipment added. The most expensive is the Neurocinetics sniper, which has got to be the gold standard for hard stop AROs going forward.

Genghis Cohen: It is flat nuts to me that they are introducing an MSV2, Mimetism-3, Combat Instinct sniper with Neurocinetics into a Core Fireteam. This unit can get the four-model bonus, so will be ARO-ing with B3 (drop one), on BS14, ignoring almost all mods. The only things which will help direct FtF rolls against him are White Noise, Albedo and BS Attack (-3), all of which are rare skills, inaccessible to most factions. I’m not trying to cry doom and gloom – personally I do play factions with White Noise and Eclipse Smoke, I’m fine! Of course suicidal templates and Guided Missile play can also still counter this. But it’s such a contradictory design philosophy. CB have explicitly said they consider defensive brick wall Fireteams as bad for the game, and their Fireteam changes are meant to curtail them. Why would they introduce a fireteam sniper whose whole raison d’etre is to do that same thing? This gives me flashbacks to the mid-N4 Fireteam update, when they introduced the requirement for ‘pure’ teams to gain the best bonuses…then gave the just-released Morat Sectorial the ability to count most of its units as pure.

Musterkrux: Before I get super excited about Burst 3 AROs, I’d want to see confirmation that Neurocinetics isn’t a listed exception or otherwise incompatible with the Fireteam Burst bonus first. Still, Black AIR looks like a very solid Nisse-adjacent sniper.

The other gunfighting profile is a K1 Marksman Rifle, which in a Fireteam is an incredible way to remove any heavy targets. Between its gunfighting skills and special ammo, there is basically nothing in the game which isn’t scared of this thing in the Active turn.

Also of note is a Parachutist (Deployment Zone) option. Spicy! Although an SMG isn’t an ideal weapon for a 1W gunfighter of this calibre, it can still get work done with that sort of deployment. Maybe more importantly, for PanO and KCF to have this profile means that opponents will always have to respect the threat on their back board edge. This is especially useful because both factions have such potent Hidden Deployment units. Which surprise will your opponents be unprepared for?

Scarecrow

Well, a surprise like this perhaps. The Scarecrow is a Camouflaged, Hidden Deployment, Mimetism-6 Infiltrator, but with BS13. That means it can absolutely fight anything short of a TAG, as long as it doesn’t come up against any template weapons – all of its options are rather short-ranged. This seems like a good specialist and a way to ambush enemy teams coming through the midfield. As with all 1W, short range skirmishers, it is depending on a decrease in the number of direct template weapons in N5 to reach true greatness.

Musterkrux: I was going to say that introducing an infiltrating marker state model to PanO was a weird departure from their usual character (see: Locusts and Nokken) but then I remembered Croc-men (Croc-people?) exist. If SMGs keep AP-ammo, I reckon the Scarecrow FO would be my winner out of those profiles but I suspect it won’t, so I think that means all of the profiles there are good.

Griffin Troops

God damn, MSV1 on a heavy, BS14 unit is a nice perk. The stars here are unquestionably the Feuerbach and HMG profiles. When you consider that these guys count as Fennec Fusiliers, so can get a Burst advantage simply from having one cheerleader following them around (Ed: Two cheerleaders, Fennecs can’t Duo), it’s gold standard for efficient firepower. 

JSA Shindenbutai Units and Fireteams 

Bottom Line and Caveat

The reaction to these profiles has been more tepid than that for KCF. A couple profiles still appear to fall into the classic trope of ‘1W model, loaded with skills and equipment, but lacking one clear mission to leverage’. We will go through the details, but please bear in mind all the caveats, as for KCF: we don’t have a lot of other profiles for this brand new Sectorial, and things can still be adjusted prior to release.

Musterkrux: I just want to call it now that AiBot Atom, Uran and possibly even Robio are Astroboy references and I am absolutely here for it. Additionally, Shurayuki Onna Koroshi-ya is potentially a reference to Koroshi Rider, so maybe Asuka Kisaragi rides on (again)?

Senku Troops

These are mostly very standard, combi rifle toting line infantry. It’s nice to be 9pts base, although the stats do reflect that. The paramedic, and to a lesser extent other specialist profiles, will all no doubt play a role. That’s all the good news. Unfortunately their Lt option is 0.5SWC (remains to be seen if there is any distinction between generic JSA and Shindenbutai), they don’t have any hacker option, or any ARO-centric SWC weapon, not that we consider those a hopeful prospect for line infantry in N5. Overall serviceable, but looking very dull compared to the more esoteric profiles Fennec Fusiliers received.

Musterkrux: I’ve already made the Malibu Stacy new hat joke but I do appreciate a BS 11 Combi Rifle on a 9pt profile, so they’re actually better than Keisotsu. Some people take Flashy-Boi/Repeater remotes to bulk out combat groups at 7pts a pop, JSA takes dudes with guns.

Raiden Senbutai

Hidden deployment impact templates – that’s the good stuff. The Raiden is a classic piece and just having it is a boon to the factions, because opponents have to respect the threat. 2SWC on the ML profile is rough, though. Minelayer is a troublesome skill on a Hidden Deployment model. Especially if a faction has no Mimetism-3, Camouflaged models likely to deploy standing up in its DZ, that mine will telegraph the presence of the Raiden loud and clear. But, that opens some interesting mind games. Minelayer is optional. Opponents might assume that no mine means no Raiden, lulling them into a false sense of security. Or, if the faction has any other Hidden Deployment minelayers, they could bluff the presence of a Raiden to scare off attacks, or a savvy player could put a mine in ZoC of one obvious ARO position, and actually place the Raiden covering another lane. This is a fun troop, as well as a sick model.

Musterkrux: My OG Raiden sculpt is coming home to JSA, oh yeah! No more pretending to be a Hundun for you, friend (Narrator: The Raiden model was going to continue to proxy as a Hundun for the foreseeable future). As much as I love the Noctifer-level hate that a Hidden Deployment Missile Launcher ARO can pose I think the HRL remains my preferred profile of the two. 33/2 is just too many points and SWC sitting off the table until the right conditions are met for my liking.

Nokizaru Unit

Well this is a very loaded out skirmisher, which means it is on the edge of impractically expensive for a 1W model. The real kicker is the lack of a marker state. That can mean if you play second, it’s hard to make use of its Forward Deployment without making it a tempting target to attack. But limited gunfighting, being a specialist, mobility are all very useful. Our base prediction is this is a usable tech piece, but not a hyper-tuned powerhouse.

Genghis Cohen: I am most drawn to the FO profile – I don’t want a model with expensive fighting and shooting skills to be hackable, especially if it starts forward and not as a marker, I’d consider that too huge a liability when playing second. If I did have to play second, I like the thought of setting this guy up in a position that could be attacked, with some Orders spent on movement, and then revealing a Raiden covering it at the last moment.

Musterkrux: Interesting; I prefer the KHD myself because while it is hackable, at least you do have access (presumably) to a Marker-state if you survive the enemy alpha strike and as a KHD they can, at least, fight back. Overall, I am notoriously leery of single wound, low-Arm models that are expensive but I think all of these profiles are viable to some degree, which is nice.

Jizamurai

Difficult. This is a close combat unit with no forward deployment or smoke grenades. Fireteam filler possibly, but it’s too expensive – Mimetism-3 is a poor substitute for a second Vita point on this type of troop. Players might develop a role for these to accompany more powerful models, but their weaponry is so limited that we struggle to see a clear use case. Comparing these to something like Tankos (which obviously may change significantly with how Impetuous, cover, Fireteams and points discounts work) is just cruel. 

Genghis Cohen: No sniggering at the back of the class, there! Jizamurai is a word for a low ranking samurai.

Musterkrux: Yes, Mr Co-hen. Jokes aside, I’m pretty down on the Jizamurai except as a cheap Duo option for a Hatamoto in a Bushi-Tai fireteam. A 4-4 Footslogger that starts in your DZ and only has limited ranged weapons is a struggle to recommend, honestly. Even then, you can go for a Senku Haris if you want the cheapest possible way to give a Hatamoto +1B/discard 1. Jizamurai aren’t terrible, I just don’t think they’re good.

Hatamoto Imperial Guard

Genghis Cohen: Hatamoto means ‘companion’, and yes, I did watch the recent TV adaptation of Shogun, it was quite good. 

Holy plasma carbine! This is a tuned up unit which is clearly intended to move and attack aggressively without being constrained by any need to stick in partial cover. Seems like a winner to us, the trick will not be getting bogged down against really high-quality shooting AROs. While Mimetism-3 and BS13 are fairly good, its real strengths are the ability to do objectives en route and then smash things in melee combat – under the new rules, MA4 and NBW will give it a clear advantage even against MA1-2 targets, and it has some of the punchiest close combat weapons available. 

Musterkrux: I have big love for the Hatamoto. Arm 2 kinda hurts but let’s see exactly what Nanoscreen does before we get too upset over those armour values. I couldn’t even tell you which of these was my favorite profile. I want to say the Plasma Carbine NCO because I’ve only ever had the pleasure of being melted by them in the past and have never been on the other side of a Plasma-centric F2F roll before but the positive range bands will likely be 16″ and less where I think the Hatamoto probably needs to think about how it fights out to 24″. If Lieutenant orders remain inviolate while a model is in a Fireteam, I think the Lt (+1 order) profile are DOA unless JSA has other NCOs in N5 (I recall the Daiyokai has them at the moment but who knows what the future will bring?).

Conclusion 

The last thing to say here is that we know so much of what will change, but there are so many things we don’t know, which will be vital for context. Frankly, we could have every aspect of the core rules laid out in front of us, but without full rosters, fireteam options, profiles, and points costs for every faction, the picture still wouldn’t be complete. Infinity is a complex web. But our excitement has never been higher; everything we have seen points to the same great core gameplay loop, but with some shake-ups to the weapons and sorts of profiles which will appear. We are most excited to see the effect of new Fireteam composition on how players build their lists.

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