The Lead Cotillion: March 2013

Just a quick one this time: Britt and I played another refresher game of Infinity. For some reason about halfway through the game we started handling orders and reactive orders incorrectly, but otherwise we had fun. His sniper basically destroyed me though, as I wasn't air-dropping in my Tiger I had no real way to pry him off his perch once I misplayed my Shang Ji, who should have taken him on. Dumb move on my part!

This is basically a proof-of-concept shot of some cheap woodcraft Asian-themed buildings for my Yu Jing themed-terrain. For $6 shipped, I ain't complaining.

My Tiger Soldier, walking in the long way around since we agreed to leave out special deployment stuff and focus on basic rules (Britt hadn't had a chance to play in over 2 months).

A basic overview. I am not sure about using the 40k ruins; they lead to a bunch of Line of Fire/ARO/cover rules headaches. Still, it was a nice dense table.

I should have taken more pics, or at least some more dramatic ones. Ah well. Later this week a batrep of our massive 4-person Flames of War game. For the impatient you can go see where my friend Rory wrote it up on his blog.

I don't even remember if I have posted anything about playing Infinity here yet or not, but I've played about six games now, two of them with my own figures. Nothing painted up yet, and frankly I'm a bit terrified because the minis are small (non-heroic 28mm) and fantastically detailed. Still, the system is a blast - the closest thing to a tabletop version of a first person shooter, as Britt and I both independently said after our first demo games - and I dig nearly all of the fluff/aesthetic choices they've made. So here are some pics of a demo game I tried to run for Rory last Thursday. Like I said, that was my 6th or so game, and his second, so there were some definite pauses when we had to look up some incredibly basic rule or the other. Still, it's a hell of a lot of fun. Rory and I set up the table with all the terrain we could reasonably apply (Infinity demands way, WAY more terrain than your average minis game) and about half-way through our vague scenario idea had mutated from a simple firefight in a city to a Yu Jing Imperial Service strike force (commanded by Rory) attacking a PanOceanian (me) consulate.

Below is a view from the top of the Consular Security building, where I'd parked my Nisses (Niss? I don't know what's the plural and what's the singular) with HMG. I felt a bit guilty about this; before rolling for sides we'd agreed that the 'parkland' in the center of the Consular enclave was a Low-Visibility Zone, which my Nisses (Nisse? is is named for the Scandinavian nature spirit? I will have to ask) could see right through with her MultiSpectral Visor; in addition, she had camouflage and cover so Rory's return fire was going to be at -6 before applying any range penalties. I figured she'd be good overwatch for this layout. For this picture I actually asked Rory to move his Wu Ming with HMG back into the center of the alley, between two concrete bastions, which is where I'd just successfully shot and wounded him (he is the black figure in the center rear ground, in other words).

Rory continues to push part of his force around that back corner. At the time I felt like I was going to basically pick him apart with the Nisses and a bit of help from the rest of my army. I was wrong.

By now I had decided to push my heavy trooper, an ORC with a Multi-rifle, forward to start pushing him into Rory's lines. I had been plinking his Kuang Shi link team (think brainwashed convicts with remote-control suicide vests) as they pushed into the center. My Croc Man and a mine he'd laid were camo'd just on my side of the treeline (the two markers you might be able to see there) and I figured I had stuff on lockdown. You can also just barely see on the other side of the right-hand building where I'd run one of my Fusiliers (basic line troops) forward to speedbump Rory's advance. I'd already got a lucky reaction-shot kill on his HMG-armed Wu Ming with this Fusilier, taking his second wound and getting the kill. I figured that Rory's Celestial Guard that had been following him might get stopped by the Fusilier, and if not that ORC could just turn back around and get her. Again, I was wrong.

Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of it, but basically Rory drove that plain vanilla Celestial Guard around the corner, shot through a window and forced my Fusilier to go prone, finished him off, ran to the corner and shot my ORC in the back and killed him with a single burst from her combi-rifle. That she-devil then ran the rest of the way down to my baseline, killed another Fusilier, then killed a THIRD fusilier (my Lieutenant) before finally running out of orders at my back left corner, below and behind my Nisses' sniper perch. Bear in mind that Infinity, unlike many other games, allows a fair amount of reaction by the 'passive' player during the active player's turn; each of these kills was in the face of defensive fire or dodging or something. That damn Celestial Guard was just a machine.

In any event, it was finally my turn again. With just two orders left since I was in loss of lieutenant, I walked my Nisses over to the other ledge of the roofline and lit the Celestial Guard up with HMG fire. I also think at that point I started to move my fourth (and final) Fusilier and my Croc Man into what was meant to be more defensible terrain. Of course, at this point we also realized we'd probably hit if not exceeded the turn limit so we counted up points and while I'd killed a few more of Rory's models, the majority of them were 5-point Kuang Shi, meant to die in the Emperor's service anyway, and he'd beaten my on points by a little less than ten, I think?

We agreed to just finish the game by trying to wipe each other out instead of trying to play a 2nd game that night, and I'm a bit fuzzy on how it happened but at some point in the next turn or two my 4th Fusilier and my precious Nisses both died, which was what it took (more than 60% of my army by point value dead) to put me in retreat. My sole survivor, the Croc Man, ran for the hills but was taken down by the other Wu Ming, who was wounded but still able to shoot through the low viz zone and take out my poor Space Maori guy.

We leave you with a picture of Rory's heroic Celestial Guard, a true paragon of the State-Empire. Her family will probably get a totally boss letter from the Emperor and maybe tax immunity for the next year or so. Anyone know how to say dulce et decorum est pro patria mori in Mandarin?

The Lead Cotillion

Monday, March 18, 2013

more more infinity

Monday, March 11, 2013

More Infinity