The Factions

The Welters

This faction loves heavy metal. The Welters are at their most comfortable wading into combat and dishing out devastating cannon fire in every direction. They focus heavily on mid-range gunpowder weapons, heavy artillery, and their unique combination of hammers and shields. Welter units can be incredibly hard to destroy, and can dish out a lot of pain. However, they tend to not have very many surprises - what you see is what you get.

Gunpowder

The Welters love heavy guns. This is epitomized by the Mauler Cannon, a massive cannon firing a single, heavy explosive shell, and the Suppression Cannon which launches a barrage of smaller shells to distract and disorient enemies. They also have long-range, high-explosive artillery.

Heavy Metal

Most Welter designs carry an incredible amount of armor. If you're fighting the Welters, you'd best bring tools to defeat armor, or you're not going to have a good time. While some of their designs are slow, the Welters also have surprisingly mobile options - nowhere near the speed and maneuverability of the Solari or Chorus, but their most mobile units can easily chase down almost any other heavy foe, while shrugging off fire in return.

Melee

Melee combat is something most sane AIs would avoid, in a world where high-powered weaponry exists. The Welters, however, have the durability to reach melee range, the mobility and speed to stay there, and the tools to devastate anything they reach. Their long hammers can slam the ground hard enough to cause localized earthquakes, and even their shields can do significant damage and even shove enemies to the ground.

Playstyle

The Welters' playstyle is straightforward: build strong, tanky units with a lot of firepower, and roll over your enemies in an unstoppable tidal wave of metal and gunpowder. Their weaponry and mobility options support this; they can easily get into range of most enemies and start dropping cannonfire or hammers on their heads. Note, however, that phrases like "unstoppable tidal wave" and "devastating cannon fire" do not include words like "finesse" or "precision". While the Welters aren't without their utility tools - they have the ability to share ammo and their Titan can project a potent damage reduction aura for instance - it's not what they focus on, and many Welter generals simply prefer to bring more guns instead.

Counters

The Welters are countered by most things that defeat armor - strong sources of burning, rapid-fire lasers, and corrosive effects make their formidable armor much less imposing, while stability damage (and the ensuing crashes) turn the heavy armor into a liability rather than an asset.

The Solari

The Solari appreciate all things light, in both senses of the term. They prefer fast, focused units with high-energy weaponry. These may at first seem anemic and ineffective, until their opponents realize their thick armor has been evaporated and they're still not in range to hit back yet. The Solari have such powerful anti-armor tools that they place little value on armor, choosing instead to keep moving at high speed and use their powerful

Energy Weapons

The Solari don't have many primary weapons, but the ones they do have are extremely effective in their roles. These start with the Plaser, a long-range laser dedicated to making sure armor is no obstacle to the lightshow. The channeled weapon that fires a stream of super-accelerated particles over extreme range. Very high power draw, but the results are worth it.">Particle Accelerator is an efficient sniping and skirmishing weapon with a massive 14-tile range, while the riskier containment field around a tiny replica of the sun. Intense damage and ignites enemies on hit.">Plasma Projector places the sun in (and probably through) the palm of your target's hands, handling packs of weaker enemies with a small but deadly blast radius and setting everything it touches on fire.

While the Solari don't generally prefer missiles or area weaponry, the rockets, each containing a small plasma core. Very imprecise.">MLRS Bombardment is an excellent area suppression weapon for shutting down crowds of weak enemies. It's highly inaccurate, but in many ways this works to its advantage - it drops plasma warheads on everything in a broad area.

Skirmishing

The Solari always prefer a long-ranged engagement when possible, and the have the tools to enforce this preference. The Pinned effect - reducing target movement by 50% for 2 rounds.">Gravity Spike and crit.">Arc Cutter are cheap, powerful tools for "dissuading" approaching enemies. Between these tools and their naturally high speed, the Solari rarely have to worry about a melee engagement.

Playstyle

Solari is all about skirmishing. They usually won't win a stationary, 1v1 engagement against a similar-cost foe. However, they have incredible tools for skirmishing. Consider the use of tracking glyphs like The Beacon to mark key targets, The Capacitor for boosting damage, and The Volley to fire two shots every other round. Coupled with the unique Capacitor Bank modifier, every third round you can unleash a devastating barrage of lethal firepower.

Counters

The Solari only have one real indirect-fire weapon, which isn't a strong tool against armor. Heavily-armored units can use terrain to cut off the Solari's sightlines and pelt them with indirect-fire weaponry, forcing them to engage from unfavorable locations or angles. Additionally, the Solari rely heavily on evasion from their movement to turn hits into glancing blows, but raw volume of fire wears them down anyway - every glancing hit still lands damage, and the Solari don't have much armor to begin with.

The Ironfall

The Ironfall favor slow, heavy weapons platforms covered in missile launchers. Their mobility options are uniformly terrible at actually moving around, but offer several options for stabilizing and enhancing their missile weaponry. Potent rocket artillery and auto-tracking missiles that can engage secondary targets fill out a formidable arsenal.

Missiles

Ironfall tactical doctrine involves overkill and missiles, and not much else. The most flexible weapon is the Guided Missile Battery: a heavy launcher firing 3 AoE missiles. This unique weapon can choose between Indirect Fire and Direct Fire - when possible it will fire directly at the target, but if it cannot it will lob missiles over intervening terrain. Other highlights are the Cluster Bomb Launcher (enormous AoE, low damage), Anti-Armor Missile (powerful single strikes, ideal for damaging or removing heavily-armored components), and Top-Attack Missile (relatively short range, but indirect fire and immune to point defenses).

Defense

Ironfall excels when defending a position. Their Catapult Turret allows them to nearly guarantee that an advancing enemy will take heavy casualties, while their heavy emphasis on indirect fire weapons, Ballista Missile, and ability to shut down evasive enemies ensures that no one can sneak up on them without eating a ton of fire. When attacking a position, however, their turrets are left behind, they often get out-scouted, and their slow units allow an opponent far too long to shape the battlefield to their own advantage.

Playstyle

Stay on the defense or keep your units together - unless you have scouts, don't have fast units run forward only to explode before your heavy weapons platforms arrive. Consider investing heavily in Spotter drones or some units with a Sensor Array - you can't take advantage of your indirect fire and terrain cover unless you know where the enemy is. Ironfall also makes has trouble with heavy armor thanks to their emphasis on explosive damage, but consider investing in ammo modifiers. Incendiary Warhead or Tandem Warhead both mitigate the weaknesses of explosive damage and offer great ways of defeating armor.

Counters

Ironfall is countered by long range weapons, tools that punish stationary targets (such as the Praxis Immolator), and anything that kills their scout and visibility units. If they can't see you, they can't unleash those devastating barrages of missiles from behind a hill, so killing the scouts grants you an opportunity to sneak up on an unwary Ironfall commander. While they're usually heavily armored, other factions can break through armor with ease in specific circumstances. The question, then, is how you can create those circumstances!

The Chorus

The Chorus are a faction religiously obsessed with the natural bounty of the planet - Ichor. Given the power it grants them, it's hard to argue that they're wrong. However, they do tend to neglect the mundane realities, such as the need to build bigger and better weapons. Instead, their components are carefully shaped to resonate with the natural electromagnetic waveforms produced by Ichor, enhancing the effectiveness of each part in accordance with the strength of the Ichor flowing through it.

Translation: Don't get shot by a Chorus Icaroid with a lot of Ichor on it. It won't be pretty.

Ichor Scaling

Many Chorus parts scale on Ichor strength. While weak compared to their counterparts under normal circumstances, these parts often have a massive Ichor grid and scale powerfully with the number of glyph bonuses formed on the part. In the case of Ichor-scaled weapons, they gain 8 damage per glyph, turning their anemic damage numbers into something truly lethal with an efficient Ichor configuration. Likewise, many of their mobility components interact with the Ichor grid in powerful ways - enhancing its effects or even increasing movement speed. The Resonant Hover component in particular can even outpace many Solari designs if properly configured - but be prepared to pay for it.

Battlefield Manipulation

The Chorus were originally supposed to terraform Icario for eventual colonization by Earth. When contact was lost, they turned their terraforming tools to a more sinister purpose. Eventually, they came to a realization: they could use the trace amounts of Ichor present everywhere on Icario to manipulate the weather, not just over the course of weeks but in seconds, and they turned this knowledge to use in combat. Rather than traditional artillery, the Chorus use heavy terraforming machinery to project storms over long distances. The Resonance Storm over the target area. Arcing Ichor fields hammer the footing and internal systems of every unit inside, dealing recurring stability-class damage each round that armour cannot turn aside. The storm lingers for several rounds, denying ground as surely as raised terrain.">Tempest Chorale projects a violent magnetic storm that cripples enemieszt, while the Blizzard over the impact area for several rounds: drifting snow and frozen ground slow movement, zero-visibility gusts obscure sightlines, and cold stress saps the footing of anything caught inside. Deals some stability damage due to the high winds used to whip up the storm.">Glacial Cantata can cut off sightlines and greatly impair movement.

Manipulating terrain height is also key to Chorus tactics. By raising the height of some terrain and lowering others, they can force certain avenues of approach, provide cover from direct-fire weaponry, or even maroon enemies on pillars or in craters that they can't escape!

Playstyle

The Chorus are an incredibly versatile faction that wins or loses in the Engineering Bay. Your Ichor designs and creativity will dictate whether your units are unstoppable forces of doom, or just another roadbump on your opponents' road to victory. You have the tools to defeat any enemy and counter any strategy, but you cannot bring them all to a single battle - you must pick a strategy and commit to it.

The Echo Core Mk I presents a unique support opportunity; Chorus Icaroids near a unit with this core receive a copy of the Echo core's glyph bonuses when it uses Resonate. A clever commander and engineer could use this to spread buffs to components that normally can't fit them, spread far more glyph bonuses than can normally fit on a part, accumulate negative effects only to sprint towards an enemy and give them right back, or other nasty tricks.

The Praxis

Praxis are enigmatic loners who tend to prefer the quiet company of nonsentient drone AIs than their brethren. Only a fool would mistake this hermitlike lifestyle for weakness, however. All the time they spend tinkering with drones has paid off: their drones are by far more powerful than any other factions', and in many cases fully equal in capability to some Icaroids! One need only view the devastation committed by a small pack of Immolator artillery drones to learn the painful lesson that small enemies can pack big guns.

Drones

The highlight of the Praxis roster, their fleet of drones is second to none, often packing full-size "Strategically Transferred Equipment from an Alternate Location". That location is occasionally enemy Icaroids. Featuring tools such as the Exordian Acid Thrower, the Solari Arc Cutter, or the Praxis-invented Hammer Drill, Immolator Artillery, and MX-I Vehicle Cannon, the Praxis drone roster comes fully loaded and ready to obliterate their enemies.

Note, however, that while many of these weapons use ammo aggressively, the drones can only replenish so much of their supply per turn. Praxis commanders will need to use Disseminate to replenish their drones' supplies to keep them firing at full speed.

Support

Praxis does not emphasize their Icaroid designs - they simply don't have to - but their Icaroids tend to come with powerful bonuses for nearby allies. Chief among these is the Shield Projector: these extend the shields of most Praxis designs beyond the Icaroid itself, allowing them to cover nearby allies. The Underwriter Core Mk III extends its shield radius to a whopping 3 tiles, and clever Ichor grid management can extend this even further. That's a real problem for enemies when the base, unaltered core has the toughest shields in the game.

Even the Praxis Titan keeps this design philosophy: while under-armed and less durable than most Titans, they can deploy two of every one of Praxis' upgraded drones. By themselves, they may not change the course of a battle, but a neverending stream of drones screening for a unit with a Titan Weapon is difficult to counter regardless of faction.

Tough Fragility

Praxis drones can be incredibly tough; the MX-1 Tank is tougher than many stock Icaroid designs and far more than a match for any other faction's drones. However, Praxis engineers are pragmatic - they save that armor for things they want to be on the front lines. Other drones like the Immolator are expected to engage from long range, and are relatively fragile.

Their Icaroids tend to rely on deep shield pools and very durable structure, eschewing armor. This tends to make them resistant to standard armor-reduction mechanics unless coupled with very high damage output. An unprepared opponent may be totally unable to break through a Praxis shield projector wall simply due to lack of damage - especially if the Praxis commander has made the wise decision to boost their resistance to area of effect damage.

Playstyle

Praxis often brings only a couple of Icaroids to a battle. These may be the key to their whole strategy - escorting their drones, buffing allies, sniping high-value targets, and replenishing supplies, or even deploying more drones with a Titan - but at the end of the day, their playstyle is all about supporting the semi-autonomous drones and making them even nastier than they already are. Praxis often places few orders on the battlefield compared to other factions; all they need to do is protect their drones and salvage whatever's left over after the fight.

Counters

Weapons with blast radius are a significant threat to Praxis shield bubbles. Every strike against every target wears away some of the deep shield pool, and once that shield pool is gone damaging the lethal drone swarm gets much simpler. High-speed units can also strike behind Praxis' normally-solid front lines, sniping their Immolator artillery drones. These are a lethal threat if allowed to fire indefinitely, but if they're targeted quickly the damage they can inflict is limited. Additionally, don't avoid shooting the drones - some kinds of drones are much faster than others, and if they arrive in waves, kill them as they arrive and the relatively-slow Praxis Icaroids will not be able to catch up and protect them.

The Exordia

The insectoid Exordian forms are harbingers of their tactics: swarm enemies with surprisingly hard-to-kill, agile units, and ensure that the enemy can't fight back by creative use of disabling conditions. An average Exordian Icaroid can apply a half-dozen nasty effects by itself; a fully-equipped Dragonfly Core Mk III can utterly debilitate an enemy and burn it to a crisp at the same time.

Nimble Carapaces

Exordian designs tend to be more agile than you would expect given their thick armor. However, this comes at a price - they tend to mount fewer weapons and have lower structure than equivalent designs from other factions. This is small comfort for everyone else, however - once you've been struck by a Hexrifle with every known negative condition on you (and probably several unknown ones too), your fate is all but sealed.

Stealth

Exordian engineers pride themselves on their compact designs that can hide behind every nook and cranny of the terrain. Every natural feature, every rocky outcropping, every gentle slope - each and every one might be hiding a Dragonfly assault wing or a horde of Centipede Core Mk III just waiting to skitter out and pounce.

Short Range

Most Exordian weaponry - barring the fearsome Hexrifle and Cloud Seeder - have very short range. This is mitigated by their durability, stealth, and rapid movement, but it's a real disadvantage when faced with a skirmishing Solari force or an evasive Chorus terraforming Icaroid. The Flame Whip in particular, while extraordinarily lethal with repeated strikes over time, requires that the Icaroid carrying it remain in melee range of the target for a few turns to reach its full effect.

Playstyle

Many insects are ambush predators, and Exordian tacticians take inspiration from their successes. No Exordian strategy is complete without a few sneaky terrain-hugging frontline Icaroids with a penchant for violence and venom. While these form the backbone of the offensive strategy, Exordians also have the ability to cause Acid Rain in an area, forcing enemies to move from favorable terrain and straight into one of their signature ambushes.

Counters

Exordian units, while potent, are often vulnerable to friendly fire. Their weaponry can strip armor rapidly, and most of their durability comes from their armor - once that's gone the Exordian frontline will generally die quickly to almost any weaponry. Many of their mobility components are also quite short. While this helps them stay unspotted, it also means they cannot climb steep slopes, so terrain manipulation can rapidly diminish their ability to maneuver and lay ambushes (apart from the flying Dragonfly core, that is). With their low structure, stability damage causing crashes is also a lethal threat to most Exordian designs.