Note: Thought I'd rescue this from the infinity forums before it's deleted. I'll fix the formatting later.
p.s. Nice to be here
There have been many threads on why there's no vanilla tactica yet. However, there are several guides out there, generally in an incomplete state. This is an attempt to combine (see what I did there) all of them into a single tactica thread.
In a few cases I've struck through sectorial specific advice. Any other suggestions please post in the thread and I will try and update it.
General Advice
Eypyeash:
The key to making a solid Combined list is to use full advantage of what you're given access to. You've got a lot of great tools, but your specialists' WIP are generally lacking. You've only got one doctor, and you don't even need him much. Of the four main components in Combined, each has their own piece of the puzzle:
EI - Fantastic leaders, of course; hi-tech equipment, with Lieutenants that entirely take away a major aspect of the game (Loss of Lieutenant). They don't play fair, and get a lot of hate. Show 'em it's justified.
Morats - These are your cheaper end of everything, and usually, cheaper doesn't mean worse. Their hackers are sub-par, but they infiltrate, and are some of the cheapest in the game; their engineers are loaded with options, to include the awesome Autocannon, and sport AP mines just for the hell of it; their medium infantry is solid MSV2 anti-anything type, while their heavy infantry can be a massive pain to put down (Sogarats, specifically). Better still, they provide fantastic synergy with any list in the form of Daturazi and Pretas. Finally, if you want some airdropping troops, Rasyats can help you out... but if you're willing to pay the points, pick up KoDali first.
Shasvastii - Many are these guys' proverbial bags of tricks. You can select from such toys as a Sphinx, who winds up assassinating whatever the hell it wants without much fight back, a Caliban for some specialist support and deployment weirdness, a Noctifer for sneaky long ranged firepower, a Malignos for EXTRA sneaky short-ranged firepower, an Aswuang for gluing people to the ground, or... well, those are the noteworthy guys for most people. The others shine primarily in the Shasvastii sectorial army, where Sheskiin can lead a group of Gwailos or Caliban for maximum stupid and those two units' low movement values aren't hindered as much while they're moving around in a group.
Exrah - A highly debated race, with the Vector Operator being a crowd favorite. Oh. And hey, Caskudas!
And there you have it... the four races. So what are we missing?
Solid hackers, beyond the insanely priced ones. This probably isn't a huge deal, but compared to Nomads and Aleph, our hackers generally suck (again, besides the WIP16 versions... though you could alway just G:Mnemonica into a previously crappy Zerat and have a party). Your TAGs need to be careful, because most of them are very expensive, and if you took one, you probably don't have the hacker support to make a solid Face-to-Face with it. I usually like to default to BTS anyway, because the only hackers we have with BTS are the EI, the Caliban, and Noctifers (the latter two with BTS -3 each, but WIP 13). It's better to shoot a hacker than deal with all that potential ugliness.
Solid doctors... we've only got one doctor at all, and then a bunch of stupid paramedics. But most things you'd want to keep alive usually has some form of keep-alive ability anyway, like auto-medikits, no wound incapacitation, eat-people-dogged (striga), and so on.
Solid engineers... plenty of options, but generally poor WIP, though this is coming from a former ALEPH player's perspective. As said before, you can just G: Mnemonica into any of the specialists and make them better than most, however.
That's really it. If you want stealth, go Shasvastii-style. If you want synergy and brute force, go with Morats. If you want creepy surprise attacks, take some Exrah. But a fully functional Combined list will pick aspects of everything, and let your play style really be whatever you want it to be. Depending on your playgroup and all that, you may already have an idea of what you need to do. We play a lot of ITS around here, and just got done with Paradiso, so I'm very much in the specialist-troop frame of mind; pure killy mission groups will probably find a lot to offer from Combined, and will probably try to abuse the Avatar (it's hard not to, when he has everything but MSV).
My personal tactics seem to work reasonably well in missions that allow AD (half of them in Paradiso don't). I'll also make some severe tactical errors, then somehow fail to capitalize on my opponent's LoL about fifty percent of the time. My general gameplay strategy is this:
Turn 1 - Determine the lieutenant, and find the best route to take to kill him. If there are several potential options, kill them. Then go crush their order pool, but not enough to put them into retreat.
Turn 2 - Satisfy mission objectives, then go murdering some more.
Turn 3 - Defend mission objectives, continue murdering.
To this end, the basis of my vanilla CA lists are a Skiavoro Lt, a Charontid HMG, and Ko Dali. It's a trifecta of happiness that can only result in bloodshed. The Skiavoro usually wins initiative and lets me keep him and the Charontid in reserve. Ko Dali will drop in and kill things until she feels like she thinks she found the lieutenant, then find a safe place to sleep while the Charontid starts marching. I've highlighted a lot of my preferences above, in various forms. I like the Sphinx, but you have to drop a lot for it. I like the Cadmus, but rarely have space. I like Daturazi, and always MAKE space. I like Pretas, and always have four. My regular order pool is usually sitting at about 10 (including LT order), because I won't leave home without the Skiavoro now that I've had a taste. The flexibility afforded by Stratego really helps.
Anyway, I hope this was worth a little of your time. I don't have enough experience with an Anathematic or Avatar to really give much on them.