Catching Snowflakes: US Ariadna Ranger Force (USARF) (Updated February 3, 2026)

Changelog

Update (Latest): 2026-02-03 for the N5 USAriadna Quality of Life update
Published: 08-06-2021

We last visited US Ariadna back in 2021. It’s been a while since then, we’ve moved into N5, watched as the meta-game has changed and adapted and poor USARF has remained the plucky underdog it always was. Which is secret code for: D-tier on a good day.

But now? Corvus Belli have, as part of returning the lost Sectorials to us, given USARF a quality of life upgrade to get the faction a little closer to competitive. Is it enough to get US Ariadna to top table at a satellite event? Well, read on my friends and find out.

‘Call of Duty: Army-wide Arm 3’

"Damn skippy. No TAK here. What do we look like, Vanilla Ariadna? Hoo-ahh."

In playing USARF it’s important to understand what Arm 3 actually does for you. The difference between Arm 1 (standard LI stats) and Arm 3 isn’t huge when testing survivability on an individual basis. However, across the span of a game you can expect a few models to keep on punching when they should have fallen over and if you’ve leaned into Flamethrowers (like a good little War Criminal), hopefully your opponent has traded poorly with you.

The Too-Long-Didn’t-Read (TLDR) of USARF’s Armour tendency is: It won’t save you on that one roll you really think matters but it’ll give you more, small opportunities across the length of the game.

Rangers Lead the Way (into the Midfield)

Team America World Police but with USARF heads

I'm not apologising for this. (Photo credit: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, 2004)

I’m quote fond of USARF’s mid-field, you get cheap specialists, attack pieces and…Oh, ho ho…what’s this? USARF has been given a mighty boon? A gift coming to us in the form of…*checks notes*…Minelayer Foxtrots? Finally, a camo marker that isn’t a trooper. It’s good to sprinkle these into your lists here and there, it’ll build on your fog of war and your opponent will have to start respecting your camo markers again.

I prefer to lean into spending a fair fraction of my Foxtrot AVA on Forward Observers but don’t let me stop you from testing out the Foxtrot Sniper. Her ability to -12 someone is valuable. Just note that a Total Reaction Remote with Thunderbolt doesn’t get negative range bands, it just runs out of range after 48”, so don’t get sloppy assuming every TR remote can be Negative-12’ed from 33” away.

Then you have the Irregulars, Hardcases and the Beasthunter. Both excellent pieces. The Beasthunter is a trading piece par excellence while the Hardcase is a good area denial piece who can sling arrows with that cheeky +1SD Tactical Bow in ARO.

Can we truly consider ourselves to have fully explored USARF’s mid-field play without discussing our Forward Deployment +8” Arm 3 Flame-turrets? This is where Arm 3 really comes into its own. Every now and then you’ll have a Grunt just absolutely tank some shooting from your opponent, set them on fire, and straight up stall their attack run. This? This is why we’re here, people.

Scramble the Fast Movers

USARF has a crazy high AVA on models equipped with Motorcycles. On top of your baseline 2x Motorised 112, you can have up to 5 Mavericks and up to 6 Desperados. Maxing out your AVA on Motorbikes is an incredibly cool ….silly thing to do. However, everyone loves motorbikes, so take a few anyway.

We’ll talk about the Maverick Duo later but Desperadoes are amazing little Fire-and-Forget missiles. Between their Impetuous Order and their Irregular order, you can rocket them 20” forwards at the start of the game and be shooting people with Burst 5 Assault Pistols before you’ve spent a single Regular order on them. All for 7 points. Huzzah!

I don’t love the 112 Emergency Service (Motorized). 19 points for a specialist competes with Maverick FO at 17 points. That said, with Minutemen having [Medikit=15] and being pushed hard right now, having a Doctor whizzing around the table and using the Fireteam bonus to shoot Healing Bullets at people isn't the worst thing.

Where There’s Smoke There’s Overwhelming Firepower

There’s a reasonable number of pieces in this army that can drop smoke and a reasonable number of models with MSV 1. Now, I’m not going to advocate for using MSV 1 to Smoke-shoot all of your problems away but there is some degree of opportunity here. The other factions have superior technology, TAGs, true Powered Armour and even Cubes (the cowards!), but that all means nothing if we USARF players can drag them into the mud with us and even the odds by turning it into a slugfest.

My favorite piece for leveraging this mechanic is the Maverick with Boarding Shotgun. She brings her own Smoke, MSV-1 and a weapon that has +6 to hit at close range. It’s not great but sometimes you can swing an otherwise hard fight with it.

The Marauders also have a few MSV 1 profiles, so don’t look past some cheeky wetwork with the HRL profile using his Assault Pistol at point blank. Finally, never forget that the Unknown Ranger has MSV 1 and is desperately keen to kill every son of a bitch that ever said a bad word about Top Gun, the greatest film about beach volleyball ever made.

Discoballs aren't smoke, but as it's vision control tech, it's worth mentioning here. USARF's Sacha has an 8-point profile that gives you Discoballs. Awesome. Only downside is that as an Irregular, including her means trading out one of your other awesome Irregulars.

The Van Zant Effect

Van Zant, like Margot and Duroc from Kosmoflot, suffers from the fact that he’s infamous for being a sneaky bastard. If you deploy 260-ish points of USARF (maybe hide some under camo markers? Sure, why not?) with only 14 or so order- generating models/markers visible (Don’t forget Hardcases and their Decoys, though), your opponent is going to think really carefully about guarding their DZ. However, they can’t guard their entire DZ and their flanks. Van Zant, like Santa, is coming and he’s knows who has been naughty and who has been nice.

There can be value in leaving your Van Zant (or Airborne Ranger) deployment until Turns 2-3, in the hopes that your opponent ‘unpacks’ out of their DZ and gives you some openings. It’s a tough call, though. Every model you kill in Round 1 is potentially 2-3 orders your opponent loses for the rest of the game, so delaying Van Zant’s arrival has diminishing returns but a greater chance of landing safely.

Fireteams

USARF fireteams are pretty good these days. It’s incredibly easy to write a list with 2-4 Duos, a Fireteam Core and a Haris and just spam dice at your opponent until they cry uncle.

Grunts Fireteams (Haris and Core): Grunts make a good static firebase. They’re cheap, Arm 3 gives them a little survivability, and they can contribute as Cheerleaders even if the lead ARO piece dies. You can keep the fireteam pure with Wild Bill, a 112 Doctor or Rosie. I don’t mind Rosie in there as a Dogged, BS 12 ARO piece but I don’t love the Doc or WIldbill except if you’re doing something janky like using the fact that Wildbill has one of the few (if only) Cubes in USARF to get re- rolls on Doctor attempts. Honestly, my favorite Grunt fire team is a Paramedic Grunt, a Minuteman Missile Launcher and then whatever Grunt you want (regular rifle, Sniper, whatever works for you). Minutemen!? Yeah, I know, right? We’ll talk about Minuteman later…

USARF Fireteam (Duo, Haris or Core): Minutemen or Marauders, that’s the meat of this fireteam. For the longest time I would have told you to ignore Minutemen entirely and stick with Marauders. However the recent Quality of Life update for USARF have taken Minutemen from terrible to…eminently playable. In N5, the bonus +1SD for shooting is granted at Duo-status, so I don’t recommend running a USARF fireteam as a Haris or Core. Generally, I run these duos as a shooter and a specialist. Your shooters can be a Minuteman AP-HMG, a Marauder with either an AP-Spitfire, +1 Burst Sniper Rifle or +1 Burst HRL, or you can spoil yourself with the big dawg* himself, the Unknown Ranger.

So, Minutemen. Let’s take a minute to talk about the hottest glow-up since Sandy" frameborder="0"> in Grease (Wow, I’m old). Until now, Minutemen have always been the worst elite infantry pretending to be Heavy Infantry in the game. Arm 3, one wound and no visual mods was just never good. Now, to be fair…they’re still Arm 3, one wound and have no visual mods. However, now they get +1SD on all Ballistic Skill attacks, are IMM-B (so can’t get bricked) and have Medikit=15, so Ariadna’s enthusiasm for Amateur Doctors (AKA Paramedics) mean these guys can take a licking, have a quick nap, and then get straight back into the fight. That’s kind of like having two wounds, right? So, +1SD stacks. So, anytime you have a Minuteman in a Duo or better, suddnely they’re rolling +2SD on top of their normal dice. This counts even in ARO. Did you want that BS 13 Missile Launcher tossing 3 dice at your TAG? No? Too bad. Get AP-Exploded, you stupid tin can. Did you want that AP-HMG to be rolling 6 dice, keep 4 at you like a HRMC on cocaine? Yum yum, come get some. Minutemen are still kinda iffy on the cost versus output side, so they won’t be upsetting the meta but they’re good enough that you actually have to think about whether you’re going to use them or not rather than being an auto-skip in list building.

Blackjack Fireteam (Duo, Haris): If you’re not taking a Minuteman as a Big Gun, you’re probably taking a Blackjack, who does at least bring a second wound to the party. You lose that sweet +1SD but you do get BS (-3) which is a very solid buff to their ability to win F2F rolls. If you’re taking a Blackjack in a Fireteam I would probably recommend a Haris with Rosie and a 112 FTO, as this gets you the +1SD shooting bonus (Rosie and the 112 are ‘Counts as Grunts’, which gets you the Duo-equivalent pure fireteam bonus) and, if you really need it, the 112 can try to Doctor the Blackjack if it falls over in the Transmuted state.

Mavericks Fireteam (Duo, Haris): Don’t run a Maverick Haris, trying to keep three large bases safe as they push into the midfield is a lot harder than managing even two. Just run the FO Maverick or Doc 112 as a Specialist and then whatever shooter you can afford after that, with a mild preference for the AP-Spitfire.

USAMC Fireteam (Duo): As much as I yearn to slingshot a pair of Devil Dogs into my opponent’s DZ and just make them someone else’s problem, I can’t really recommend a USAMC Duo of Devil Dog FTOs. Being both Irregulars with Impetuous, you lose so many orders when you run them as a Duo. If you desperately desire double Devil Doggo in your life, just run them as two separate units. Sorry. Tossing in a Wildcard doesn’t make this any better, either. Don’t do it.

Command and Control

Minutepeople: Are they still Minutemen if there are women, as well? (Photo courtesy of Musterkrux)

USARF has a relatively good selection of Lieutenants, as well as solid NCO and Chain of Command options. Happy days!

Grunt: They" frameborder="0"> finally really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to Hell!…They took away the 0 SWC Grenade Launcher Lt. Ahh well, at least there’s still a Rifle option that you can hide in a static fireteam.

Minutemen: Very middling choices here. 27 points for a single wound Lt with a (T2) Rifle is just plain skornegy**, you do get +1 Command token but you’d want to have a plan for using it before I’d commit to this play. The AP-HMG Lt is also cute but, honestly, take the NCO (see below), you get all of the benefits of spending your Lt order on a big gun and none of the down sides when your single wound big gun gets knocked down.

Marauder: Your only non-marker WIP 13 Lt option. I don’t love it, you’d want that Marauder to be active and as neither a shooter nor a specialist, it’s wasting valuable space in your list. Viable, not optimal.

Foxtrot: WIP 13 means you’re telling your opponent your Lt is either a regular Marauder or one of your camo markers. That’s perfectly fine, they’re welcome to come get some either way. SWC 1 hurts a little but it’s miles better than when it was 2 SWC. Perfectly serviceable choice. The Foxtrot and Grunt are my primary Lt choices in USARF.

NCO AP-HMG Minuteman: Because giving your passive Lt order to a soldier doing their best Hyper-Magnetic-Rail-Cannon impression is never a bad idea. You were already considering taking the AP-HMG Minuteman, this is just gravy.

Chain of Command: Rosie with a HRL can pull CoC duty for you. It’s only +5 points, so worth dropping into your list if you have change left over at the end but I wouldn’t be planning a USARF list around an active Lt who passes the job onto Rosie.

Reinforcements

Do people still play Reinforcements? Well, maybe they should. It’s still a pretty cool concept even if the execution is a little flawed. Anyways, if you have the good fortune of playing a game of N5 with Reinforcements enabled, I suggest you run some pieces that provide capability that USARF doesn’t normally have.

Which is to say, I reckon you just windmill slam Equipe Mirage-5 into your Reinforcements allocation and then fill out the rest with Apaches (everyone loves a trading piece with Chain Rifles, No Wound Incap, and Superjump) and maybe a cheap Beasthunter to taste.

Sample Lists

This is a legal Haris with Fireteam bonus (photo courtesy of Musterkrux)

We here at Goonhammer would like to provide you with several example lists for US Ariadna to help you on your wargaming journey. Disclaimer: These lists as for demonstration purposes only. Goonhammer does not accept responsibility for any gaming success that you may encounter while playing these lists. By deploying one of these lists you agree that Goonhammer accepts no liability for any excessive patriotism or unexplainable love for freedom and democracy you may or may not experience.

World Police

Army Code: gTAJdXNhcmlhZG5hDVdvcmxkIFBvbGljZSCBLAIBAAkBgOgBBwACgtUBBgADgOgBBAAEgOYBCQAFgOYBCAAGgwkBBAAHgtUBAwAIhiIBBwAJgQABBQACAAYBg94BAgACgvABigsAA4DrAQgABIDrAQgABYLUAYmaAAaC1AGJnAA%3D

Group 1 USARF Duo: Minuteman AP-HMG with NCO and a Marauder Paramedic Grunt Fireteam Core: Minuteman Missile Launcher, Grunt Paramedic, Grunt Rifle USARF Duo: Unknown Ranger (MSV1) and Marauder BSG and AP Mines Beasthunter Dozer with Turret

Group 2 Rosie with Thunderbolt Desperado with Assault Pistols Foxtrot FO Foxtrot FO Maverick Duo: Maverick BSG and Maverick Forward Observer

Breaking the list down we see that each combat group has multiple attack pieces as well as multiple specialists. Lots of fireteams with both active pieces and specialists. Lots of different attack vectors so that you have a wide toolkit to work with. The Dozer is a bit of a vanity pick and is there to give you coverage on classifieds. Sometimes you just need an Engineer. Also, spending an order at the right moment to deploy a turret somewhere will help you contest the mid-field.

Reign of Fire

Nope, not apologising for that list name. Talk about USARF and not provide a sample list with Van Zant? Ye of little faith…

Army Code: gTAJdXNhcmlhZG5hDVJlaWduIG9mIEZpcmWBLAIBAAkBgPQBAgACgtYBAwADgwcBiy4ABID%2FAQEABYPeAQEABoLwAYoLAAeA6AEEAAiA5gEBAAmA5gEIAAIABgGA6wELAAKA7AEBAAOA6AEHAASC1QEGAAWA6wEKAAaA6wEIAA%3D%3D

Group 1 Van Zant (+1B) T2 Boarding Shotgun (Shh!) Devil Dog FTO Blackjack Haris: Blackjack AP-HMG, 112 FTO, Rosie with LRL Desperado with Assault Pistols Grunt Fireteam Core: Minuteman Missile Launcher, Grunt (Paramedic), Grunt Rifle Group 2 Foxtrot Lt Foxtrot Minelayer Foxtrot Forward Observer Hardcase with Tactical Bow USARF Duo: Minuteman AP-HMG, Marauder Paramedic

This list presents tarpit of markers in the middle of the table, shows your opponent 16 models/markers and asks them if they have the cojones to push through your picket line and try to kill any of your attack pieces before they kills them back, twice. As your opponent unpacks to try and manage your mid-field, hopefully Van Zant will find an opening and exploit it. Unless your opponent does some basic mathematics and works out that you’re likely a few points down.

Mavericks and converted Desperado (photo courtesy of Musterkrux)

Wrapping Up

If you watched that scene in Avengers: Endgame where Captain America picked up Mjolnir and cried a little bit (even on the inside. It’s OK, this is a safe space, no judgement), you owe USARF a game. This is the faction that takes a beating from Purple Space Assholes, refuses to lie down and die, before picking up that goddamned magical hammer and says something incredibly bad-ass like: “Avengers Assemble”. If that doesn’t rustle your jimmies in fantastically erotic ways you can just go back to the safety of your Cubes with their functional immortality and play a crutch-faction while I’m over here with all of the cool kids that don’t believe in TAGs, Hackers or Universal Healthcare.

Even after the quality of life update, USARF is a C-minus faction at best in the modern metagame of Infinity 5 th edition but this game is so heavily influenced by player skill that you can win games with USARF and when you do, you know you earned it. Team America, F**K YEAH.

*The Unknown Ranger is the Big Dawg, but he is not the Biggest Dawg, that honour belongs to the Devil Dog, who is Silhouette 6, 2 Wounds and…a dog. Sidenote: I strongly suggest you do not make any jokes about eating crayons around the Werewolf.

**Skornegy is a portmanteau from the Warmachine community. Blending the word ‘Synergy’ with the faction ‘Skorne’, who were notorious for having rules that interacted in a manner that is, perhaps best described as the opposite of synergy: Skornegy.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.

Tags: featured | competitive play | Infinity | Catching Snowflakes | Ariadna