Infinity Batrep: MO vs Yu Jing Neo-Colonial Wars

I now have 300pts of Military Orders actually painted up. It only took me a year. Chris was keen to give Infinity another go after we had a couple of 200pt games at the club last week. This time, it was the full 300pt experience, using YAMS for missions. Chris doesn't actually have models so we borrowed some of my son's 40k models, let's printed these Yu Jing are in outlandish carnival freak disguises. This is also a new blogging experience. I'll edit photos via an iPad app and post from the tablet. That means formatting will change a little. 

At the start of the game, my opponents objectives were all hidden... Except that one of his was Ambush so he randomly selected one of mine, revealed it and he gets the point for it unless I achieve it. So that's a two point swing based on one point of the board and I immediately set up my two hidden models with that in mind.

Of course, Military Orders aren't renowned for their subtlety and my right jab was my Father Knight Lt with Spitfire and then the strong left hook of the Magister Knight link team. I had won deployment so Chris would go first with his Yu Jing.

Immediately he pushed on the main objective, a hacked Aleph Data cache where Nomads had stashed stolen data from Mototronica. Since that Heavy Infantry was clearly going to end up on top of my sniper if I left him alone, I opted to ARO him. Then I was advised that was a Hsien with MSV 2 and a HMG. He then spent some more orders getting a Tiger soldier on to support the flank, Multiterrain was proving a useful skill for him. We used irregular markers to denote suppression fire.

Obviously I couldn't let that stand. The smart bits of my turn were flanking and shot gunning that Tiger soldier and then getting the hacker round to use Gotcha to immobilise the Hsien HI. The really stupid bits were losing three Magister Knights to reaction fire attempting a frontal assault on the objective. The correct order would have been:hack first, charge second.

With the Hsien locked down, and a Crusader landed by Airborne deployment on the next flank, I handed over the turn. Chris then decided to drop the other Tiger soldier on the far flank, extricated his Hsien from the hacker zone of control (several win rolls later) and set up some deadly suppression fire zones....

But I had a second infiltrator in hidden deployment. He gunned the Hsien down with only a combi rifle. I then moved up the Father knight to gun down more enemy infantry with his spitfire.

Further hits to the Yu Jing order pool came with my final orders put on the Crusader drop troop, who went on a backline killing spree - killing two more Yu Jing soldiers before he was out of orders. Chris at this point was sure he had lost as the rest of his force was over the far side of the board and I was all over the objectives.

We had a chat about how Infinity actually works and Chris put all the remaining orders into rambling Sun Tze across to my side of the table. In a crucial gunnery duel, he got the best of my Father Knight. Whatever else happened, I would be spending turn 3 in loss of Lieutenant and only one order per model.

Sun Tze used his last order to gun down my Crusader. This was actually a big deal as two of my objectives required getting into his deployment zone and no one else was near enough given I could only use one order per model. My Infiltrator then got a brilliant hit on Sun Tze, two wounds... And then I reminded Chris he has no wound incapacitation. At this point I decided the game was essentially getting models to the objective building for one point and hopefully killing just enough to get the final objective point for kills.

However, there was a narrow fire lane down the highway, across the board, over the wrecked trucks. This allowed one of his troops to kill several of my guys in active turn and ARO as the dashed to the objective building. Big lesson two for this game was the Cautious Move is a thing. A thing that would have meant only one lost guy, not three. Worse, the civilian was up by the shooter and one of Chris' objectives was to kill a model in sight of the civilian.

So after it looked like I had managed to pull the game back, it all fell to pieces. Chris had a third objective point too, so he beat me 3-1. It was a very tight struggle with lots of moves and counter moves going on, and a great showcase of the depth of options in the game. No doubt we will both do some things differently next game. I hope Chris gets some models (and commissions someone to paint them?) soon so we can have a slightly less confusing rematch as that was incredibly fun. So thanks Chris.

Last notes: YAMS is far better than ITS/Rulebook missions, in my opinion. We might try variants where more objectives are shared, but somehow the outcomes make more 'sense' to me than the arbitrary and sterile balanced ITS layouts. It's also a big advantage that you aren't straight-jacketed into taking Specialists to be points scorers. 

Secondly, I had both hills and trees on this table. I have a plan to get some mdf buildings for a base on Svalarheima (fits my Hospitallers) as I think there must be more to the game than container yard or urban combat. It was cool to see the Multiterrain of The Tiger Soldiers have an impact. Still not 100% sure on how to do trees. We did them as like Flames of War woods ie block Los through but you can shoot in and out (-6 mod in this case) MSV did not allow you to shoot through. The Rulebook seems to suggest that unless it is actual zero V you wouldn't block Los entirely and MSV could negate the penalties. I'm open to the idea of having LOS go through at a -6 but am not sure about allowing MSV to negate the penalty. My table will essentially have one level of buildings so no one is going to want to use roofs if MSV snipers can never be screened by terrain.... Anyone have thoughts on this?

That's for reading.