Infinity is a hard game, and there’s always room to improve your skills, lets cover my 7 ways to improve your game!

1. Stop Blaming the Dice!

Dice can absolutely screw you over in your games, we have all had it happen. The odds that the only thing that caused you to lose a game was bad dice rolls is pretty low though. It may appear that way but that may be because your choices in a game lead to a handful of dice rolls mattering a lot. Sure, you may have failed that WIP15 roll on an objective on the last order of the game causing you to lose, but also you relied on that last order to pass. Try to think past the dice and imagine what decisions you could have made differently to minimize risk, increase order efficiency, and minimize your opponents impact on your plans. The best way to avoid errors in the future is to reflect on the errors you have made in the past, even in games you win handily. There is almost always something you could have done better.

2. Play on different types of Tables

At every tournament there is always some amount of grumbling over tables being too open, too closed, too vertical, not vertical enough and probably a bunch of other complaints. Different metas play with different style tables, and to be prepared for a big tournament like LVO or Adepticon you need to be practiced and prepared for a wider range of table types than you are used to. This also can really help give perspective on the use cases for some profiles that might underperform in your table style.

3. Practice Deployment

Deployment is hard, and can definitely lose you games. Consider setting up a table, or TTS game where you can practice deploying across a variety of tables and missions. Take a good long look after you are done deploying and look for weaknesses. Bad deployment can cost you significant amounts of orders to fix, or worse, cause massive attrition early in the game that can be unrecoverable.

Always keep in mind that many armies have parachutist deployment zone, as well as the possibility of a combat jumper. We will talk about smooth brain plays later, but I will absolutely risk a combat jump on 11s without an EVO hacker if my opponent deploys carelessly and gives me an opportunity to go on a rampage in their back line with something like a Garuda.

4. Read the Mission Rules

Okay this one sounds stupid, but people do not always read and comprehend the mission, and how to prioritize things. Spending your first 15 orders to kill an enemy skirmisher and complete what is effectively a side quest for one OP is often not worth it. You need to know. You should always have a reasonable turn one plan that can address some part of the mission, but you also need to remember that your opponent is on some bullshit to stop you and you will surely need to change your plan immediately.

5. Practice with big tournament lists ahead of time.

So, play more games is an obvious answer, but a way to improve dramatically is to really know your list inside and out. Playing games with skilled players using your tournament lists can reveals both strengths and weaknesses of those lists on those missions. Even if you make no changes, being comfortable with your list for an event is important. Remember you are going to be playing 8-15 hours of infinity over the course of 1-2 days. There may be alcohol involved, late night podcasts, holes in your mouth, and other calamitous things. By your third game in a day you need to have as many advantages as you can, and the best one is for your army to be an extension of your gaming body. As you get tired, your ability to quickly react under pressure degrades significantly. If you are comfortable with your army, you are more likely to come up with better solutions to the problems you face.

6. Sometimes you gotta be a smoothbrain

It’s turn 3, your army has been almost entirely eaten by two bears, duroc, and some terrible dice roll that got your heavy hitter exploded by a Volkalak missile. You have some basic line troops left and his army is intact. This might be the most fun game you can play. There are no good choices left, so what is left? Bad choices. Time to start doing some truly stupid plays to see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? You lose? you already lost!

This can also extend to other game states that are less dire though, and I want to touch on that. Sometimes your opponent has presented you with some horrendous problem, and your options are to take a direct, but really low probability fight, or an insanely indirect route that is extremely order intensive and also has no guarantee of working. Remember, orders are precious and sometimes the reward of saving 5 orders by doing a low probability high risk play is worth it. Additionally, threatening to put yourself into retreat can sometimes put your opponent on a suddenly unexpected clock. This can help turn a hugely losing game into a draw at the bottom of two.

This is by far my riskiest and most controversial take, but one that may help players more than you think. Balancing how smooth brain to be is important. Like all things, moderation is important, but I think it is important to consider just sending it and seeing what happens. Crits are always a thing in this game, and sometimes you have to go fishing for them to come out on top. Sometimes you need to bluff your mim-6 model, threatening that it is a missile, instead of being a combi rifle specialist.

Sometimes, you just gotta get weird with it.

7. Listen to Others, but Form Your Own Opinions.

Okay so this one is funny to say, as a podcaster whose focus is giving advice about Infinity. Here’s the deal though, a main drive for the podcast was that I find a lot of peoples opinions on Infinity to be somewhere in the realm of total nonsense mixed with hot takes. If somebody says something is good, consider it, test it out, and determine for yourself if it is good. Blindly listening to people in the community can lead to a lot of frustration as you try things that “Swiss Miss Gaming says is good!”. If something isn’t working for you, don’t use it. If something “suboptimal” does work for you, continue rocking it. Infinity is a subtle game with significant room for variance.