Infinity N3

This fellow is a robot with a machine-gun. He is one of hundreds of models from the Infinity Skirmish game, by Corvus Belli. I never realised how much I needed murderous sci-fi Robots until I started looking at their range in depth. Consider 'him' (it) a down payment as I see I can have another pack of variants of this body, a range of smaller bots, and of course the huge eye-catching Anthropomorphic TAGs that are also a feature of the game. I came for the Knights-in-Spaaace (sci-fi power armour is on my list) but it turns out there are some really cool things in this game....

 

It was announced a month ago that there would be a Third edition of Infinity and a new box-set to go with it. I tried Infinity this time last year and painted up some old GW figs I had to sue as proxies. The idea was then dropped as I realised the problem wasn't the models, it was the terrain. In Infinity, a model gets a reaction shot every time it sees an enemy do something. Terrain is crucial in this game and I had no Sci-Fi terrain. But I couldn't resist the models in the new starter box and Jason wanted to go halves so we have that on pre-order. In the meantime, we have had three rounds at giving the rules a spin with proxies (including progressively more proper Corvus Belli models) using Jason's Fallout terrain. I found it so fun I got together some junk, paint, sand, and printed images and bashed together the start of some of my own. Since we would soon be playing a new version of the rules, we've been playing a mashup of the current rules plus what I know of the new rules.

 

 First two games (a week ago) I had us use the Operation IceStorm lists (see above and on the right, minus the TAG units and the Auxilia/Interventors) with only rules from the current 2nd Ed quick start (no templates, hacking etc). This gives lists of about 170 points.

Jason had cheated and went off and bought more models ahead of our pre-order, while I had exactly one official model: the Military Orders Crusader (a drop troop)

 First game saw us test the theory that asymmetrical boards made choosing deployment (as opposed to first turn) a real option. Jason got first turn so I got to put my sniper with Mimetism (it disrupts his shape and makes him harder to spot) in a tall tower with view of most of the board.

 That was a really unbalanced game. My Sniper beat his Sniper in ARO (so he had two shots to my one) and then beat his Spektr the same way. Without a HMG to get four dice on one, the Sniper was pretty much impossible to dislodge. The rest of my guys were left slogging forward to mop up after that.

 Game two saw rearranged terrain and a lot of attention for my poor sniper. Here you see him getting up from prone position to shoot in his turn after getting shot at by two guys in Jason's first turn. I lost a lot of face-to-face (the core mechanic is a Runequest style opposed roll) rolls. When you pass an armour save (I made a lot of these) you then roll 'guts' to be able to stay in your shooting position. It always seemed safer to take the option to 'fail' and go prone/out of LOS. We weren't playing for objectives but I did have the satisfaction of running my 'Father Knight' (modelled as a Terminator Librarian lol) around a corner and smacking his Mobile Brigada (basically also a Terminator) with a sword and knocking it unconscious.

 Last night we played a game with objectives using YAMS 1.1. Basically you draw six random objective cards and keep four. Jason AGAIN got first turn and so I got to choose my deployment zone. This time around we picked lists up to 200pts using the 3rd ed pts/stats where available and otherwise used the 2nd ed ones. In the intervening week I had acquired a pair of combat robots. Right out of the gate, Jason landed a drop troop behind my flank. My models got to turn as a reaction but the face-to-face at point blank with my Sniper went badly. However... my Robot (a Bulleteer ARM bot) cut Jason's drop troop down.

 Jason had also placed a model with HMG and Thermal Optic camouflage in hidden deployment. First turn, it revealed and engaged my other Robot (a Sierra Total Reaction bot) in a shootout. My Sierra gets its full dice in reaction (reactive player usually gets burst 1) but had neither the skill nor the stealth device of Jason's sneaky guy. So I lost the Sierra first turn as well. Then Jason took his first objective, a crate. I ran after him with my Father-Knight on my turn, but no luck. However, on the way back to his lines, Jason decided to take my other Bot on in his own turn. My bot doesn't get full dice like the Sierra but is A. harder to hit (has an optical disruption device) as well as better shooting skill and B. Could always roll low enough when shooting and high enough when making armour saves/guts rolls. First shootout saw me make my saves. Second shootout (Jason wouldn't let it go) saw my Bot cut down the HMG armed infiltrator. Hehehe.

 Then Jason decided to move his link-team (lots of lesser guys grouped together for bonuses) forward. He discovered I had hidden a guy in his path and hadn't revealed him on my own turn. His lead model got a shot gun to the face and died. This seemed to put off further aggressive actions. In my turn I ran my Bot up and had a crack at the rest of the link-team. First face-to-face saw my Optical disruption burnt off by flamethrowers but a kill for me. Then second face to face saw a third member of the link-team go down. So I had knocked out six out of nine of Jason's models (one of my objectives was cause 50% casualties), Jason had also lost 75% points so was 'In Retreat' so I used my last order to run my own infiltrator up to the civilian and kill it in melee (my objective card said it was actually a spy). So two objective points to me and one to Jason. Phew, that was close.

 Here is my two foot square warren of death (think of it as a training ground, seems fitting).

 It's the plastic packaging from the bottom of our new fridge with some sand and paint added. Not bad for a couple of hours work and should tide me over until I get something fancier.

My other terrain project is making little bits of scatter terrain out of assorted junk. My best find was 'party poppers'. I was cleaning up after my Son's second birthday and realised these things would make great fuel canisters. I also made some motivational bill-boards and other containers. The colour is the same spray paint I used on my 2012 Afrika Korps army for Conquest (I am not usually a desert army guy).  Waste not, want not. Next job is to get the Bots painted.

Infinity is a lot of fun. It's the type of game where you can have all sorts of different abilities and weapons and there are counters - to counters - to counters (ie rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock). I would like to point out at this stage that my Bot that basically killed most of Jason's stuff could have been stopped before it started if Jason had only taken the hacker version of the drop troop OR later took the opportunity to sneak up behind all those walls and hack it from outside LOS. It's not just about the guns. Which is a shame, since my Panoceania guys are basically only about the guns.

Adding YAMS objective really improved the game. There is also an objective based ITS (Infinity Tournament System) version but the big flaw in that IMO is the requirement to have heaps of 'specialists'. The most recent video batrep on Miniwargaming.com shows how problematic that can be if  your list isn't build right. At least YAMS is more newbie friendly in that more models are capable of scoring objective points. Can't wait to get more models and more games in.