I've had a pretty hefty stack of O-12 models for Infinity that I'd got various people to assemble sitting waiting to be undercoated for quite a while now. I knuckled down in December and got about half of them sorted.
The first plan with my O-12 is to get enough painted up that I've got two fully painted sets (along with my Combined Army) I can demo Infinity with to people. I haven't decided exactly which blues and yellows to paint them with yet, so I've got some models to test paint lined up once I've dealt with the half finished project mountain.
First up we have the Knight of Santiago (left) and the Raveneye Officer (right).
The Knights of Santiago are a PanOceanian troop that can be taken in the O-12 Starmada sectorial / sub-faction. They are a powerful Heavy Infantry model choices of a specialist operative with a Spitfire or a Killer Hacker, with or without Combat Jump. He can also duo with a Bronze, but a Bronze is minimum 1 in that fireteam, so there's no shenanigans to be had with a different profile.
I'm not going to get to Starmada for a good while yet as O-12 are difficult enough for me to get my head around. The Santiago is also a hefty points investment, and a bit of a niche pick at that. I grabbed him on release from Shae Konnit's split box service as I wasn't sure how good he was going to turn out to be and there was a real potential he'd end up being a huge faff to find split out at a later date.
The Raveneye Office was another "grab him when he came out to avoid inconvenience" as he was the release model with the Raveneye book. While he'll probably get a production sculpt eventually, I didn't want to miss out.
Tactically, the Raveneye is going to see a bunch more use. He's got a cheap Lieutenant profile in O-12, and can join a Security fireteam in Starmada. Add E/M mines and the Minelayer skill and he's likely to be chilling out running the operation from a secure corner of the deployment zone in a lot of missions!
In the "civilians" assortment we have the Bounty Hunter, an NGO worker HVT, and a Warcor. I got the NGO worker in the Dire Foes box with Knauf and Arslan and felt that she was an excellent choice of civilian objective for Space UN.
The Warcor is a familiar sight on the battlefields of 177 years into the future. A 3 point irregular model with a "Flash Pulse" stun weapon, they often end up being left out to slow enemies advancing with little loss to the force effectiveness if they die. I . . . feel that narratively, the number of embedded journalists the Human Sphere's special forces are going through as they're used to slow the advances of hostile troops must be raising questions somewhere. But they're too good a profile not to have and paint up.
Meanwhile, the Bounty Hunter is a pretty standard mercenary you can take in vanilla factions, and O-12 is no exception. A cheap profile with a regular order and a roll on a random equipment table can often fill a slot if you're short on points. I picked this one up cheap on a Facebook group and am looking forward in painting him up in matching colours with the rest of the force, irrespective of how often I end up actually taking him in practice.
Next up are the named characters. Left to right: Katherine Cho, Knauf and Casanova.
Cho is a command character who can either be taken as the force Lieutenant, or a Chain of Command trooper who can take over if the Lieutenant is killed. She's equipped with a Holoprojector so I can deploy a different model in her place until she takes an action, letting her hide away pretending to be someone else.
Knauf is a mercenary sniper who was the main character in the first graphic novel set in the Infinity universe. He's an interesting alternative to taking the Epsilon Sniper. He only has a Level 1 Multispectral Visor so isn't quite as good at dealing with smoke and high Mimetism. But instead, he gains an extra burst (and Shock) on his shooting attacks, meaning he's much more reliable at taking out mid ranged threats.
Finally, there's Casanova, NOC Operative. He's a forward deploying character with Mimetism -6, No Wound Incapacitation and Immunity (Shock), but no Camouflage. This means he's able to look after himself but is still quite vulnerable to warbands and other cheap template weapon troops. He's definitely not a model to take without support, as he probably needs some Mad Traps or other similar gear to protect him until he gets to act.
Next up, the Lambda units, the generic Doctor and Engineer units for O-12 with their Yudbots. They are both WIP 14, so a little better than the average specialist. I try and take a doctor and engineer in most of my lists, but I am noticing a lot of people don't bother to do so. I might give that a go in my list building but I really like being able to fix things if a model gets unlucky.
This is the O-12 Booster Pack Alpha. It consists of a Lynx, a Razor, and Psi-COp.
The Lynx is a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model that doesn't have any deployment skill so starts in the deployment zone. This profile has a MULTI Sniper Rifle, so is a long range attack piece that can either surprise a model out of position during the opponent's turn, or go on an attack run during your own.
The Razor is also a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model, but instead has Infiltration. This leaves him with a different role to the Lynx - either as a midfield specialist, or a midfield hunter who waits for the opponent's attack pieces to pass them while they're hidden before emerging to cause some damage. Given the specialists can also do the latter, I suspect I'm more likely to take the specialist profiles more often than not.
Finally, we have the Psi-COp. This is an intelligence unit in the universe background, and this model is the Hacker profile. With a high BTS, they're really quite survivable. While they cost twice the points of the Kappa Hacker, that survivability could be quite useful. I'm pretty sure I'll end up swapping between the two profiles while list building depending on what points I have left over. The Psi-COp is also a Wildcard model in Starmada, so gives a good flexible option during fireteam construction.
Remotes are a really important toolbox for almost all Infinity lists. You'll notice there's a significant difference in how light the two models are at this stage - this is a definite downside of spray can zenithals as you get some variation. A bit of tidy up with drybrushing will bring them back in line, I'm sure.
Here we have a Peeler Copperbot and an Oko Copperbot. The Peeler has a Heavy Machine Gun and Total Reaction, making it a key defensive piece, particularly to hold off light troops or warbands. The Oko is what's commonly called a Sensor-bot, with a package of specialist support skills and equipment, including Forward Observer, making it a fast moving specialist. These remotes have also been given a free upgrade during the current tournament season (ITS 14).
Finally, we have this big lad. The Gamma is a large heavy infantry who is a bullet spewing equivalent of a half brick in a sock. He's got a bucket of armour and a big gun.
This model is from the Defiance Outcast expansion, and isn't available any more. You can get a Gamma Feuerbach in the O-12 Action Pack. That's an excellent anti-armour gun that can put a serious hole in some of the more heavily armoured units. This model instead comes with the Heavy Machine Gun, which while high damage, will struggle to get through high armour in cover, and instead does better at winning firefights against light or medium armoured troops. It's an excellent tool for clearing reaction pieces (such a Total Reaction remotes) with violent weight of fire.
I hope you found this all interesting. I'm getting quite excited about starting to understand how to play O-12, but I'm a little way off having a painted force just yet. The next thing you're likely to see is the test models crossing my paint desk, and hopefully once that's done I'll be able to get to a playable force relatively quickly.
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