more more infinity

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.

More Infinity

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?

EDIT: vorthain on the official Infinity forums reminded me that it would be a nice thing to post the army lists, so here they are, written up with the great free Aleph Toolbox program:


 Yu Jing - Imperial Service | 9 models   -   http://goo.gl/fCMP0
 Celestial Guard Lieutenant (13|0)
 Celestial Guard Combi (13|0)
 Celestial Guard Smoke LGL (13|0.5)
 Kuang Shi Chain (5|0)
 Kuang Shi Chain (5|0)
 Kuang Shi Chain (5|0)
 Kuang Shi Chain (5|0)
 Wu Ming HMG (43|2)
 Wu Ming MULTI (47|0)


 Panoceania | 7 models  -  http://goo.gl/LkUzG
 Fusilier Lt (10|0)
 Fusilier Combi (10|0)
 Fusilier Combi (10|0)
 Fusilier Combi (10|0)
 Croc Man Minelayer (34|0.5)
 Orc MULTI (40|0)
 Nisse HMG (36|1.5)

Flames of War engulf Dusseldorf

So we (me, Rory, Josh and Britt) had a Flames of War 'Total War' megagame last Saturday, kindly hosted by Britt at his house with every table at his disposal and a bucketload of terrain.  Massive unstructured picdump follows:

Beginning of the game, the Hungarian (me, a few thousand miles out of my historical place) sector of the bombed-out ruin of Dusseldorf faced off against British artillery (Josh) in some fields

US Tank Destroyers (Britt) appear from ambush to threaten my StuG Gs. Inexplicably I pass all my armor saves!

Blurry men having blurry fun

A view from the British sector of the battle, and the Anglo-American artillery park

The Heer commander (Rory) is vehemently gesticulating about... something

Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of the intermediate stages of this, but Britt's four M10s, while only scoring two kills, held up my entire armored push for about three turns, which was more than enough to let the British infantry dig in on their objective

By this time we are running out of clock, so I push forward and find out just how much harder it is to assault in v.3 of these rules compared to v.2; my Hetzers pay the price

The German sector of the assault has also bogged down short of their objective; perhaps divisional command should have released their Tigers sooner?

The Allies, despite being infantry companies, were able to secure their third objective before the Axis with their armor; by keeping the Axis off their third as well as securing their own, they wind up winning 9 to 6.   Casualties were fairly light, although things might have gotten worse if we had more time (which can be blamed on my unwise consumption of gas station hamburgers for dinner the night before).  Still, a good time was had by all!

40k Doubles Tournament yesterday

So while my home internet has been Having Problems (which has negatively impacted my blogging), I've been slowly getting ready to play in a 2x1000pt Warhammer 40k doubles tournament yesterday.  I stayed up late Friday night getting my 1000 points of Deathwing ready, and awoke to a steady snowfall.  Still, assuming they wouldn't cancel due to snow, my doubles teammate Rory and I headed up there.  It was a long day - we got up there at 10, probably got started around 10:45 or so, and left at about 7 that night.  A long slog for three games, but we had a pretty good time.  I'd love to post some detailed game breakdowns, but that will have to wait for later in the week. For now, pretty pictures:

GAME ONE: our opponents: Chaos Space Marines/Traitor Guard

Result: we got tabled around turn 4 or so?

Game Two: double Chaos Space Marines (Alpha Legion, "For the Emperor!") with Daemon allies

NB: thanks for being awful, new version of Photobucket.  I can rotate the picture there but it shows up here unrotated.  New Photobucket is awful.

Results: We held 4 points of objectives to our opponents' 3; plus we killed a lot of their stuff

Game Three: Necrons/Guard

Result: Rory and I got whittled to death by giant piles of dice and incomprehensible Necron special rules.

Steady as a weathervane

And now that I have about 75% of my 1850 points worth of White Scars assembled and ready to prime, what better time to radically rethink my Combat Patrol selection, and switch to Orks?


400 - Da Firestartas

HQ: Big Mek w/ Kustom Force Field - 85

Troops: Boyz Mob x 20 - 120

Elites: Burna Boyz x5 - 75
-???x Meks w/ Kustom Mega Blasta, or Slugga/Choppa, or Big Shoota: free

Heavy: Killa Kans x3 - 105
-each w/ Skorchas - 15

Basically all I have to do is assemble the Killa Kans (two extra Skorchas are e'en now winging their way here thanks to eBay) and find my Big Mek with KFF who is in the garage, somewhere.  The Boyz and Burna Boyz are already assembled from the handful of games Britt and I played back in 5th edition; the biggest thing is trying to decide if I want to run more than the one Mek I have in there right now.  I hate losing the burna for a KMB on somebody with BS 2, but having a spare Mek around to fix the Kans might be useful? Or maybe not, I dunno.

Consistently Inconsistent

So after a productive afternoon of cutting Space Marine bikers, speeders and attack bikes off the sprues (thanks again Rory!)  I have decided to run White Scars in the Combat Patrol league as well!  Ignore the previous post!

We learn by failing

So a while ago (two years now? how time flies) I tried to inaugurate a Warhammer 40,000 "Combat Patrol" league at my local game store.  This format, for those of you unfamilar with it, is basically supposed to represent a few squads of troopers running into each other unexpectedly, rather than the pitched battles of full-sized 40k. I think we had a decent turnout for 'opening day' - eight players, if memory serves, which isn't bad for a store with virtually no minis scene anymore.  Unfortunately it fell apart nearly immediately, for a few reasons which I will address frankly here:

1. no one was sufficiently familiar with the rules
2. some people outright cheated
3. other people brought 'netlists' specifically designed to abuse the Combat Patrol format
4. #2 and #3 above got me so pissed off I basically abdicated my responsibility as league coordinator

So it died a flaming and well-deserved death, and I'm only sad about it in the abstract.  However!  Another local game store (well, 45 mins away, but still) is starting up a Combat Patrol (now called 'Force Patrol') league to begin in the new year, and I am interested again.  There's a new version of 40k out there, several new codicies, and from what I understand the player base up there is not horrible.  So I'm playing with list ideas again!

400 point Lamenters (Blood Angels)

Troops: Assault Squad #1 - 135
-Sergeant w/ Infernus Pistol, Power Axe
-4x Marines: 1 w/ Flamer

Troops: Assault Squad #2 - 265
-Sergeant w/ Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield
-9x Marines: 1 w/ Plasma Pistol, 1 w/ Meltagun

These guys are actually built and primed from the failed league - they were the list I built to punish the guy who bragged about his net-built abusive list, and they worked for that.  I would kind of like to play them for fun instead of for punitive reasons, but I am assuming the typical Space Marine-heavy metagame so maybe....

400 Point Recusant 113th (Traitor Imperial Guard)

HQ: Primaris Psyker 70

Troops: Veteran Squad 80

-Sarge 

-9 Veterans, 2 w/ Flamers

-Chimera w/ Dozer Blade 65

Troops: Veteran Squad 80

-Sarge

-9 Veterans, 2 w/ Grenade Launchers

-Chimera w/ Dozer Blade 65

Fast Attack: Scout Sentinel 40

w/ Smoke Launcher

Again, this one is mostly built from my earlier Traitor Guard project, that fell apart due to the sheer distance I was having to drive back then.  I think all I need to do here is hammer together another Chimera (ugh). The Dozer Blades are frankly a points sink, but the backstory is they're a PDF from an Agri-world that falls to Nurgle so all the armor has Dozer Blades as they primarily used them for civilian work before they turned to Chaos.

396 point Kabal of the Annihilating Embrace (Slaaneshi Dark Eldar)

Troops: Kabalite Warriors x 10 - 105

-1 w/ Shredder, 1 w/ Splinter Cannon

-Raider w/ Splinter Racks 70

Troops: Wyches x 9 - 140

-1 w/ Razorflails

-Hekatrix w/ Phantasm Launcher, Agonizer

Fast Attack: Reavers x3 81

-1 w/ Blaster

I have no idea how these guys will work but they are the ones I actually think I want to play the most.  The only thing I wonder is if I would be better off leaving the Warriors on foot (which gives up access to the Splinter Racks on the Raider) as a stationary firebase and loading the Wyches on the Raider for delivery of boot to head (in which case I'd probably shave points from somewhere else to buy them another body and special H2H weapon.

400 point Necrons

Troops: Immortals x 9 - 153

Troops: Warriors x 9 - 117

Fast Attack: Canoptek Wraiths x 3 - 130

-2 w/ Whip Coils, 1/ Particle Caster

I have boss red plastic rods to replace the green ones on the gauss weapons, so I am kinda stoked to play these guys as well.  The warriors are color primed and ready to go with just a few details and some metallic drybrushing; the Warriors are clipped and ready to go.  But I'd have to buy a box of Wraiths for this list, which is not the biggest problem in the world as I really like the Wraith models.  Plus I think they'd be a very good mobility element for this level; I'd love to run a unit of Praetorians instead but that'd be half my points for 5 guys....

So what I have here are four lists, one which is actually ready to paint, two that are a model or ten away from being ready to prime, and one that's half ready for paint and then 1/4 unassembled and 1/4 still unbought.  Expect my usual dithering and screwing around before deciding.  Updates to follow, etc.  

PS obviously if any of you reading this have any Combat Patrol experience I'd love to hear feedback/critiques/suggestions/etc!