Updated guide to starting Infinity

I've updated my guide to starting Infinity to bring it up to date with the new edition. If you've been thinking about getting into the game, hopefully you'll find it helpful.

First Ever Frostgrave Battle Report: The Keep

 

I recently got to try Frostgrave for the first time. My witch, Hannah of the Owls, led her warband to explore a magical keep to try and recover magical treasures and knowledge. As her warband approached the perimeter of the keep, they spotted a rival band, led by an experienced elementalist. Both sides drew weapons, preparing for battle.

There were five treasures, one in the centre of the keep on a raised area, the other four in the centre of magic circles spaced around the edge. The warband split up to gather the treasure before they engaged the opposing warband. As warband members on both sides started entering the circles to retrieve the treasure, there were fizzles of magic, but nothing happening . . . 

. . . until one of the warband thieves walked into a circle and in a flash of magic teleported across the keep to another circle. Unfortunately, the circle where the other warband's barbarian was standing.

Several of the warband jumped into the magic circle to try and rescue the thief, but to no effect. Our little gremlin thief decided to "waste not, want not" and grabbed the treasure from the circle.

Meanwhile, the magic circle on Hannah's warband's side was suddenly full of rival warband members, who quickly grabbed the treasure there and started planning their escape route.

The warband thug ran into a magic circle and was pulled over to the magic circle with the barbarian, and the two of them together managed to push the barbarian away, even though they weren't able to take her down.

As the rival elementalist saw my warband starting to head towards the central treasure, he summoned up a gigantic stone wall to block access to the treasure.

Still, it turns out that you can climb, so my woman-at-arms spent a couple of turns climbing over the wall, and engaged the rival man at arms while another warband member was fleeing with the treasure.

A portal flashed, and a giant worm arrived, drawn by the sounds of conflict.

Hannah's archer was overwhelmed by two of the rival band making off with one of the treasures.

The warband's crossbow-woman was chased by the worm, and chose to flee to get away from it.

A hostile construct then arrived, probably following the worm as a threat, but then identified multiple "thieves" in the keep, and moved to try and stop them.

My woman at arms was magically leapt to chase after the treasure, but was caught up by the rival warband and overwhelmed.

Hannah's apprentice ended up caught by the worm after a cunning plan to lure it across the teleport circles to move it elsewhere failed.

A desperate scuffle was breaking out over the last treasure, as both sides had, by now, escaped with two.

The back and forth continued a short while, but soon, Hannah's warband was overwhelmed, and the elementalist's band escaped with the last treasure.

In the aftermath, Hannah's warband took stock. Our woman at arms had been killed outright, and the party apothecary had been injured badly enough to miss the next expedition. No-one else suffered significant long lasting effects. Checking the recovered treasures, Hannah discovered a Staff of Power that would help with her casting, and a significant pile of gold, which was enough to hire a Templar to replace the deceased woman at arms with a little spare.

With my wizard having also gained two levels, I enjoyed my first game of Frostgrave. I'm still learning the rules, and now need to paint up a Templar before my next game.

Hedge Witches, Goblins, and a Plinth

 

This week, I finished up the Hedge Witches from Conquest Games. They were a good couple of miniatures to get my vibe back for painting. They're good options for Frostgrave, too.

I've also been plugging on with the Aenor Miniatures goblins. I got started on them ages ago with a sepia wash over off white, and they've been sitting for absolutely ages. I was very pleased with how a little drybrush really brought out the details on the cloak.

Three of the five are now finished and waiting for photography. I'm going to finish the last two before I count them all as "done". I'm also pondering the Steel Legion Drab base rim - maybe I should change it to black?

My big purchase that arrived this week was this 5" x 5" plinth from Fenris Games. I've picked it up for miniature photography so I've got an alternative way of raising miniatures up to the hills I'm currently using. It'll need washing and cleaning up before I get started on painting it, but I'm going to finish a few bits and pieces first.

Infinity Campaign Game: 250 point Custom Mission, Shasvastii vs O-12

 

Our club Infinity campaign continues. My Shasvastii were sent to face O-12 in a custom mission where you needed to upload data on consoles and photograph enemy troops. (I believe put together from the YAMS system.) There was also a special mission rule that meant that there was a visual mod if you shot over a long distance.

I based my list around two small fireteams. The first was a Gwailo with Heavy Rocket Launcher, Victor Messer and a Jayth, the second was a Nox HMG, Tensho and Aida Swanson. I'd lost the Lieutenant roll and my opponent had elected to go first.

O-12 had the first turn, and the Nimrod went for a Super Jump, shooting my Q-drone as part of the move. Some unlucky dice meant that the Nimrod went down, with my reaction remote still up and active.

My opponent then moved into "making my life difficult", and moved a Gangbuster up, deployed a Madtrap to cover my fireteam, and headed back to a little nook again. As my list lacked Taighas, I broke the fireteam apart, had the Jayth idle to trigger the Madtrap, then successfully dodged it. I had a servant remote close enough if I'd messed it up.

My Shrouded then took out the Cyberghost who'd moved up to lay a pitcher down.

And finally, my Jayth Cutthroat managed to push the button on the console. Well. They failed all the WIP rolls so didn't score me points. But they spent time there, so at least they were contributing. I couldn't send Victor up there as it was covered by a Repeater. While the hacker was down, there was still a Killer Hacker lurking about somewhere.

A Raptor then came up and sent his flamethower buddy into the team. Uh oh. This is "sub optimal".

End result: Victor Messer dead. Gwailo Lieutenant dead. Jayth has dived into close combat with the robot to stop getting set on fire himself.

The rest of the game passed pretty quickly as I didn't have a whole ton of stuff left. The Jayth finally pushed the button on the console, uploading some data or something.

A hidden deployed Razor also showed up to make the mid field a sadder place for me.

In the end, with me having the last turn, I needed to photograph the Raptor, move around him, and then push a second console button to win. Sadly the Jayth, needing a 19 or less on a D20 to get the photograph, managed to roll a 20, meaning I didn't have enough orders to get to the second console. I took the remaining photo, tying the game, but was just a little short on the win.

All in all, it was a good game. Taking a Gwailo Lieutenant without backup is not smart, but I was limited by the points available for the mission. The Gwailo / Jayth link seems excellent, and I want to give it a bit more of a test run soon.

End of month check in, and Marching forward

 

February has been really busy. I went to Tinbot III in Norwich, I've been busy having a clear out on eBay, I played a bunch of games at the club again, and my work was really rather busy as well. That did mean I didn't get quite as much painted as I'd have liked, but it was still a good month for hobby all told.

I got Dukash painted early in the month for the tournament, and he did well in one of the games I played him in..

The Tiefling Warlock also let me experiment with a possible Morat red skintone, but while I liked this one for the Tiefling it's not what I'm looking for for my Morats, so I'll try something else on another model until I work out what I'm looking for.

I had a bit of a painting stall for a couple of weeks after that. A mix of being exhausted after work, spending more time playing games, and prioritising getting stuff listed on eBay to sell over painting meant I didn't get anything else finished. This is fine. It's about priorities, and things being out of the flat before we move is more important than a few extra miniatures getting painted.

That said, the goal for March is to finish my half finished jobs - both these part painted models, but also finishing those half assembled Exrah that I abandoned out of frustration a while back. Which I definitely need to space out given . . . you know, that giving up in frustration issue I mentioned.

I also got in my first ever game of Frostgrave, which I'll write up on the blog later. It's a fun, swingy game that I really enjoyed. I think it's too random to try and make it competitive, which helps keep the pressure off.

I also picked up the John Blanche paint sets from Army Painter at the end of the month which I'm planning on using in some projects in the future. I'm pondering doing my Imperial Agents in a limited palette scheme using these paints but I'll need to do some test models to decide if that's the right call or not.

Tinbot III Infinity Tournament

 

At the start of the month I headed up to Norwich to play in the "Tinbot" tournament that was running there. I headed up the night before to avoid an early start and spent some time resorting my token box having managed to drop it some months ago and not taken the time to fix it.

I was running vanilla Combined Army with one 10 model list intended for Supremacy, and then the list I'd run a practice game with for the other two missions.

Game 1: Supremacy

For the first round, I drew against Copper, a very skilled Combined Army player. I had the first turn, but my Speculo Killer got hemmed in by a Libertos Minelayer, and my Q drone was wildly ineffective.

Dukash and Sheskiin managed to flank my Rindak so he couldn't avoid getting shot in the back, and I was definitely ending up on the back foot.

My Rasyat dropped onto the board edge and sadly was broadly ineffective and ended up failing to take out the Q drone and being taken out in return. I'd spent quite a few orders that hadn't turned into the loss of a huge number of orders for Copper, although I did manage to complete my classified.

The Charontid pushed up the vain hope of scoring some points, getting shot up by the Q drone on the way as his plasma rifle was thoroughly outranged, but I was running out of units and was getting out manoeuvred. 

Without much further opposition, Copper neatly pushed plenty of buttons, set up defensive positions and was able to resist my quite weak turn 3 push to solidly secure the game 10-1.

Game 2

Next up was Capture and Protect, against solomon0997, a returning player from N3 who was running Yu Jing. I won the Lieutenant roll and chose deployment to push to get the second turn.

In the first turn, I was showered with Tiger Soldiers, but fortunately a couple of failed Combat Jump rolls meant that only one got close to the beacon, and wasn't quite able to make it into base contact.

In return, I decided to try and push to get Dukash onto the beacon to score some first turn points. Sadly, while he fought most of the way up, he bit off a little more than he could chew and fell on the last order that would have secured him the box.

My opponent then tried to push onto the beacon with his Hac Tao. Sadly, as my opponent was still getting the hang of the rules after a long break, the game was far enough behind that the TO curtailed his second turn so I'd have a turn as well. These things happen sometimes - my opponent was lovely and not doing any intentional mischief, just needing a little too long to work out what to do at this point.

I then engaged in some relatively swift on table violence - a Daturazi cleared a Ninja, threw a smoke to block a Reaction Remote, and then Sheskiin moved up the field. She eliminated a couple of Shaolin, cleared the reaction remote when she got into a good range, and moved up to capture the console to give me the win for this game.

Game 3

For the third game, I was delighted to be paired against my buddy Jarval, the reason I started coming to Norwich events. The final mission was Unmasking, and he was running Kosmoflot.

Having trouble clearing my Q Drone, Jarval resorted to smoke grenades to get up the table, and scored an early decoy before pulling back to not get gunned down.

Agent Dukash then redeemed his appalling run of luck in the games I've run him in so far as he walked out, took out a Volkolak ARO piece, one of the bears, and a Kosmosoldat. It was an absolutely brutal turn that I think left Jarval a little shell shocked!

He returned the favour by air dropping a werewolf onto me. It wasn't quite as destructive, but I lost a chunk of my backline to an angry werewolf.

I then scored a decoy by berserking a Daturazi into it, but Margot and the second bear did away with the Daturazi before it could do any more damage.

My Libertos tried to clear the other decoy and got blinded. Oh deary me.

It was time for Sheskiin to do her thing... She moved up the field, finding an angle to pick off Margot before she could cause any more trouble.

She then worked her way up, dodged around a corner, and engaged the designated target. The poor civilian had no chance and was eaten by this awful alien, before she charged into the bear to pin it down and stop it causing too much damage.

Duroc worked his way around to get smoke down onto the Q drone, but it sadly left not quite enough orders for Kosmoflot to score back the boxes they needed, and the game ended with a Combined victory, 8-4.

It was a great event, held in a school cafeteria that had been booked out for the Saturday. I finished 4th out of 10 players, and would absolutely recommend them to anyone who plays Infinity who can reasonably travel to Norwich. I sadly can't make their next one, but intend to make it up again in the future when time allows.