Infinity: 300pt PanO vs Nomads YAMS

 Title Translation: Jason and I are still waiting for Operation Icestorm to ship. However, our practice games with proxies (I have three proper models, he has about six) are now up to 300pts. Jason also looted Andy's papercraft terrain and dirtied up some toy cars. So we left the 'Warren of Death' behind and made up a totally sweet roadside table instead. The YAMS part is 'Yet Another Mission System' and you draw six hidden cards, and keep four. Unless your opponent get the Ambush! Card, which forces you to reveal an objective and gives it higher stakes. I played around with the possibilities of the PanO list a bit for this game, and Jason had some tricks up his sleeve as well... First up though, a one-pic Batrep of me playing Chris at Infinity.

 This was 200pts. I tried using the Ariadna list with only Space-Soviet models. Chris used my Panoceania list. Long story short, Chris rampaged down the board with the REM Bulleteer (it has a high ROF weapon and an Optical Disruption Device). I never could get LOS to it with more than one model at a time; and it picked off a fair few models before I burned off the ODD. It turns out all Chris' objectives boiled down to 'turtle up' so he had kept me so occupied dealing with that REM that it was an easy win for him. It was a hilarious game though, that REM was the Terminator!

 Then a few days later Jason rocks around with some stuff he had uplifted from Andy and a whole lot of toy cars he had roughed up. More detail here. We went for full-on 300pt YAMs using our bastardised 3rd Ed/2nd Ed Infinity hybrid we are going with. On the board, I had my Total Reaction REM, Father Officer, Kameu Hacker, Bulleteer (of course),  an Auxilia with Auxbot, Nisse Sniper, Fusilier (he faces backwards to shoot down jump troops...), and TWO camo markers. Jason had Some nasty REMs of his own, one came with jumping explosive Koala bots. He had his own camo troops and link team of line infantry.

He rolled pick deployment (making me deploy first) and I rolled pick who goes first (making me deploy first). I had my total reaction REM centrally deployed with my Father-Officer and  Sniper, and the Aux Bot and a camo marker on the right (the side with the objective crate) and my other camo marker on the left (the side with the Civilian Objective. It turned out my rightmost camo-marker was a lowly Hexa with combi rifle. Good for grabbing an objective, but not scary. I'm sure the other Camo marker is like that too... Most of my orders were used getting that model forward and using the Bulleteer to down one of Jason's line troops.

So not much damage done by Jason's turn but I was right up almost at his deployment zone on one flank. He tried to challenge my sniper and actually got the hit, it made its save and went prone. I had troops covering my REM but Jason had tricks up his sleeve - first down went the smoke screen, then up went the hacker. Then my REM was disabled and one of his troops popped around the corner and shot it while out of LOS form the rest of my guys.  He then also bagged the Akal Commnado I had dropped in to support the REM. Two models down... Ouch.

My Turn two saw my left ("it's nothing, probably another guy with combi-rifle, honest Jason") camo marker work forward to cover the civilian objective. Then up when the Father officer and Auxbot to go for my right flank and run down Jason's weaker troops. When Jason started turn two, he had another crack at my Sniper but improbably, I actually won the face-to-face roll and killed him. Sweet!

Jason also had more bad news as he went for the Civilian objective. That was not a combi rifle under that camo marker. It was a Heavy Infantry with HMG and TO camouflage. It was bad enough in reaction, since I got to reveal at the end of his turn. When I went active, he was brutal - then he disappeared again.

 He had more success killing my Total reaction REM in the centre with his own TO Spektr and nailing my Sniper in the bargain. Luckily for me, the Auxbot's controller took out Jason's REM (with the jumping, exploding, koala bots) in ARO with a combi-rifle. When it came to my turn three, I got a heavy flamethrower Auxbot around that corner and toasted one of Jason's link team. I think it was small comfort at that stage that the body didn't catch on fire.  I had the left well locked down with my fearsome Swiss Guard hidden in TO Camo so it was time to charge on the right.

In Pseudo 3rd Ed, Shotguns are awesome and so is BTS 9 to protect against enemy hacking. The Auxbot had worked forward and also killed the HMG from the link team and the Father Officer's end-run on the last link team member was the nail in the coffin. To add insult to injury, I shot at him via shooting at the hacker. In Infinity, you shout a model with a shotgun (burst x2 shots +6 to hit!) then it spreads a template to hit models behind.

I didn't save a pic of my objective cards buy they were every bit as tinny as Chris' were. Well almost, I did have to bestir myself to take the crate. I also got decimate, put the enemy in retreat, and keep the enemy out of my deployment zone IIRC. So perfect for some Infinity Blitzkrieg. Playing the full 300 pts was heaps of fun. I can't wait to see what appalling Nomad tricks Jason has to throw back at me next time. It wouldn't hurt to have the correct models too.

Jason has two of his REMs now, and Father's fay gifts for me included the box on the left. So I have a pair of Auxbots and controllers to go with my own REMSs. Robots to do your fighting, its the way of the future. Only a few more weeks to wait till Icestorm is in our hands.....

Thanks for reading.