Infinity N5 - Initial Plans and Vibes

 

The new edition of Infinity, N5, released earlier this week. There's a lot to absorb as a player, and its going to take a while before I think I've got there. Now, I own quite a lot of factions, so I had a bit of a think about what I'm going to do first...

Our club has an escalation league starting up, and after writing one test list, I've decided to start N5 with my Shasvastii. There's not a huge amount of changes, but one of the more powerful profiles, the Speculo, has had some of its rules made a little less powerful, while half a dozen less used profiles have all had an overhaul. Seeing how a familiar faction has changed will be a good way for me to get a handle on the new edition.

I do want to shuffle into vanilla Combined Army in the future too. I'll have more models to paint up for that faction so it'll be Shasvastii first. However, we're still in the first few days and there may be some errors - the fireteams in particular look a bit odd, so I'm waiting to hear back if they can take a Haris team or not.

So, the Combined Army will likely be a bit of a painting project coming up. I've got some half finished bits to finish up first, and will likely get some Shasvastii profiles done to round them out after that. So it's probably a next year thing, but it shouldn't be too hard to get the basics knocked out pretty quickly.

I had a test game of N4 Druze and they seemed pretty good. I don't think much has got worse for them. They'd be fun to run out for six months or so at some point, and I don't need anything painted for them. A few profiles have changed or got a nudge up, which is a bit of a theme, really. I miss Druze, it'd be good to get back to them. There's a bunch of their N4 upgrades I've not gotten to trying out properly yet.

A lot of the Dahshat staples have suffered a bit in the new edition. Their loss of Ghulam snipers hurts a core part of the N4 build I was using for them, and fireteams getting downgraded on top of that is rough. McMurrough isn't as tough, either. There's only a Cateran sniper to be added model wise, and that's not really going to hold me up from giving them a go.

Ikari are sitting in the "some time in the future" box right now. I basically have them due to a big crossover of the models from Druze, and some discounted models. I ran them on a whim once at an N3 tournament without any practice and got absolutely ruined, and they do deserve better.

Qapu Khalqi also need a few bits before I can get them going, but I think they're ahead of Ikari in my brain. I like Haqqislam as a faction, and "QK" have picked up a few new and interesting profiles. Another future project, but one I think I could really put some time into and have fun with.

I've been playing my White Company for a good bit at the end of N4. There's a bunch of new character models that have been added to the faction, which I'll need to get painted up. I'm going to take a break from them, but I expect I'll start to miss them in a bit and want to come back to them soon.

Nomads are the faction I really want to get back to at some point. I want to get them painted first and that's been the real blocker so far. I think they're pretty much queued up after I get vanilla Combined Army done, but that might be a while. So, one for the future...

White Company Brawlers

 

The Brawlers for my White Company that Tesseract Studios painted for me. I accidentally sent bases without fire arc markers, and we only spotted this after they were painted. Stu then fixed it by sculpting the fire arc markers with green stuff.

Brawlers aren't a White Company profile, but they're available as Reinforcements, so they'll turn up from time to time. They get slightly different profiles as Reinforcements, too. For now, though, they're away in the case waiting to deploy.

Back to steady progress

 

I finally got the first rank of the Bretonnian Men at Arms finished. They've been "in progress" for a whole long time. I'll work on the second rank in a bit, but doing it by rank keeps it to manageable numbers.

While waiting for the Men at Arms glue to dry I got out the Combined Army reinforcements pack to clean up and assemble in between times. They are quite complicated and a little spindly, so I'm a bit nervous about how much faff they're going to be...

The easiest of them proved to be a faff. This "Base Operator" started off OK, but the moment I started trying to glue his left arm on, it all went wrong. It wouldn't stay on, and while it seemed to have a firm connection it turned out to not be meeting cleanly. I've set it down to let the glue dry before I get back to it. I'm likely to file it down and then mark it up for pinning to make sure it stays on next time.

That said . . . it's time to get the painting tray out again. I've got some Battlemechs, a rogue in a wheelchair and some Halfling adventurers to finish up. My hope is to get a few of these long neglected projects finished up before the end of the year.

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 2

 

Day 2 of the LGT, and the mission was Frostbyte, against my buddy Riker playing Hassassin Bahram. I ran the ten order list again, as it had more models capable of surviving the cold.

I split my fireteams at the far ends of the table so it was harder for a Fiday to assassinate everything in one go.

Unfortunately, Riker successfully worked out who my Lieutenant was, and got the hit in, meaning I spent the first turn in Loss of Lieutenant.

My Guija tried to clear the ARO pieces but ended up stunned and damaged. Things didn't improve from here, and I got handily dismantled.

Once McMurrough got into my lines it was pretty much all over, but the game finished 10-1 to Riker, with 251 of his points left up to 0 of mine. Oh dear.

We had another Resilience Operations mission, and this time I was up against vanilla Haqqislam. It was back to the "two John Hawkwoods" list to see if that fared any better.

My Chaksa Longarm got taken out by a Haqq gun fighter, and the Kunai Ninja had to try and stop it. Was this the sole point it was useful? I sadly don't recall.

Weirdly, Taowu went on an absolute tear and took out a whole flank of the Haqq force, pretty much on his own.

I tried to take out a few more Haqq forces, but it was ineffective and my force basically collapsed. The score ended up being 10-5 against me. Could I get a second win for the event in the last game?

So, last game, and a Firefight against Nomads. Time to try and regain some honour...

... it did not go well. An initial attack by the Uberfallkommando damaged the fireteam, but I was able to take out the Chimera to stop being completely overwhelmed. Unfortunately, I just couldn't land a solid hit on the Nomads to take out more points.

In the end, the Gator went on an absolute rampage through my lines, and while I tried to get some points back by taking it out with a shotgun, it managed to stay up, meaning the Nomads finished ahead 10-3.

After five losses and one win, I ended up solidly winning the Wooden Spoon. It turns out taking all the weird profiles that no-one takes leads to you discover that people don't take them for a reason... Still, it was a good way to see off N4, even if N5 has been a little bit held up since.

Product Review: Pathfinder Battles: Impossible Lands - Masters of Magic

 

I had a pretty restrained Black Friday, but did take the opportunity to grab a few heavily discounted Wizkids pre-painted boxes from Thistle Tavern. I've previously bought cards for Flesh and Blood from them, and was after a play mat I really liked, but on an impulse grabbed a few Wizkids figures.

This box was discounted to £11 from the £35-£40 range, and when I received it, I became gently fascinated by the choices made to put these figures together in a box that led to such a large discount.

Pathfinder's setting is the world of Golarion, and they facilitate a wide range of different game styles by having different areas of their world hit different tropes. The Impossible Lands are where a bunch of the weirder concepts are: here lies the wild west / steampunk gunslinger city, a post magical apocalypse wasteland, a high magic land, a land ruled by undead, a fey cursed lost kingdom and a small India themed high magic island.

So, first up we have a Rakshasa Maharaja and a Japalisura Asura. These high level fiends are a good medium level adversary, campaign villain or boss fight, but their complexity means you're getting a mildly disappointing paint job for a premium price. Finding any miniature that meets these monster descriptions is likely a challenge, but given their leader / manipulator energy, I'd probably end up searching for a higher quality miniature I could paint myself so they weren't a bit of a disappointment for a climactic battle.

Next up is an Ifrit Pyrochemist and a Manticore Paaridar. So, a mortal linked to the fire plane who's become an alchemist specialising in firey bombs, and a monk from a niche group who's absorbed monster energy in some way to try and improve their physical prowess.

These are excellent odd profiles to add into a fight as a henchman, specialist hireling or leader of a bunch of goons. You'd want to craft some narrative around the encounter and design the fight around them, but they'd be memorable and interesting.

The next models we have are Nex and Geb. These are the ancient rulers of the high magic land and the undead land, each of which is named after them. You might meet them as a quest giver but if you end up in a fight with them, you'll have an entire nation after you.

Frankly, these are baffling choices to have made, let alone put into such an eclectic box. You might need one or other of these in a weird, niche campaign, but even adventures set in their respective lands might never see either of them.

And finally . . . Nethys the god of magic, and Anong Aronak, the leader of the Dongun Hold.

I'm straight up stumped here.

No-one is going to be straight up fighting a God in almost any campaign, and picking a neutral deity not one of the evil ones, and making it a human sized figure at that, is pretty baffling. I thought maybe you could use this for the 10th rank "Avatar" spell that allows level 19 and 20 clerics to take the form of their god as a powerful divine shape change . . . but that spell makes you Huge, so this model remains utterly pointless.

Alongside that is the third "ruler of a country" model - in this case the dwarf who rules the dwarf hold who makes firearms for the wild west steampunk town. Probably more usable than the other two ruler figures by sheer dint of being a slightly more reasonable power level, it remains weirdly niche by not being a prominent figure from Alkenstar, where most of the adventures happen, but the lore obscure neighbouring dwarf hold that helps excuse the setting's firearms.

So, in short, these perfectly tolerable figures will be unlikely to all be used in the same canon campaign, make little sense to be in the same style of adventure, and all see only weirdly niche uses. They have plenty of options in weird homebrew campaigns, but they're never going to be your first choice purchase. It's a weird one for completionists and lovers of the whackier settings Pathfinder has to offer. And even then.

I definitely only got this because of how cheap it was. I don't understand why it exists.

Druze Bayram Security N4 Update - In Time for N5...

 

I commissioned Thunderbrush Studio to get my neon Druze updated for N4. A mix of me focusing on other factions and scheduling meant that I only got them back after N4 had been announced.

First up, we have a Triphammer. This a large mining suit repurposed to an improvised military TAG. This Ariadnan Triphammer came from the TAG Raid Kickstarter.

The other part of the mining contingent are these two Diggers. Miner's in Exo suits, these are heavy infantry with short ranged weapons. In Druze, they can join the Druze fireteams and provide some defensive resilience.

Next up is Fiddler, a special character engineer who is canonically trans. She's got a history in Aristeia, before moving into mercenary work, allowing her to be hired by the Druze faction.

The next group are Denma Connelly and some Zellenkriegers. These fighters who take part in illegal underground Aristeia rings often get involved in other illegal activities, meaning it makes sense that they might end up involved in some Druze Bayram Security black op.

Finally, a new Bounty Hunter, a Beasthunter, and a CSU. The first two are pretty standard mercenary types, while the latter can't normally be taken in Druze. I've picked her up for Reinforcement games and the extra where you get a free CSU.

I'm absolutely adoring the vibes that the Druze force is giving off now. You've got some notorious mercenaries, pirates, criminals, miners and independent contractors. Every background text you read for the eclectic profiles in the list really hangs together as part of a coherent whole. I still have a lot of affection for the Druze faction so will definitely be returning to them in N5...

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 1

 Back at the end of September, I went to the two day Infinity tournament at the LGT. With it being towards the end of the fourth edition of Infinity, I decided I wanted to take a lot of the more 'fringe' profiles from White Company so I'd had a chance to use them. At the time, it wasn't clear if White Company was going to be continuing into the new edition, but it's since been confirmed they're still available.

I was running two lists - the first used a Chaksa Longarm to lead a small fireteam, had John Hawkwood as Lieutenant and Taowu Holomasked as a second John Hawkwood. The second list ran the Guija TAG, and kept to a single combat group of ten models.

Game 1: Unmasking vs Tunguska

First up was Unmasking, and I was paired against a club mate who I'd not played before who was running Tunguska.

My Tiger Soldier dropped in to neutralise the Grenzer sniper who was dominating the field to stop me advancing.

I sent the Chaksa, Hawkwood and Valerya to hit the first console, but as the team approached, a Heckler with a Jammer revealed and isolated Valerya, leaving the team a bit hamstrung. Worse, this was the real Hawkwood, and he got taken out the following turn, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant.

To try and swing the game back, I sent the Kunai Ninja after the Vostok, but he got caught by another model's ARO, and I didn't really have enough orders left to get to the consoles and the targets. In the end, it was a 9-0 loss for me, but it was good to get my first game ever with a friend.

Game 2: Resilience Operations vs Corregidor

Next up was Resilience Operations against another club mate, running Corregidor. This is a mission where you get your objectives by random card draw. You have different objectives from your opponent, and you don't know what your opponent is trying to do.

The typical Maasai Morans blocked up the centre. I was able to clear some of the Koalas by getting lines of sight to them, but had to be a bit cagey about getting close to the Morans early on as I didn't want to get targeted and hit by guided missiles.

The Tiger Soldier went for the model I suspected was the Lieutenant, but got some unlucky rolls and he got taken out. One of my squads over-extended a little bit and ended up getting completely exploded by the Vostok.

I had trouble pushing forward, and ended up making a run to try and control the centre with Hawkwood, but couldn't get enough points into the zones I needed to score. This left me with a 9-3 loss. I got thoroughly outplayed on positioning, and my opponent really earned his win.

Game 3: Countermeasures vs Druze Bayram Security

The last game of the day was Countermeasures, and I was up against Druze Bayram Security. I decided to take my list with the Guija and a single combat group.

My fireteam got a Repeater onto the Druze remote, immobilised it, and got into cover to try and make it through the next turn...

On the last turn, I sent my ORC Lieutenant up to clear the reaction pieces, but he got shot down... It was all down the the Blade Ops Engineer.

The Blade Ops managed to get the job done, getting some nanobots onto a Doctor to score some of the objective cards.

The Guija then got into gun fight with the Triphammer, and rather embarrassingly lost... But it wasn't enough, and the White Company managed to win the game 6-2.

So, having won one of the three games on the first day, I headed home for some sleep before returning for Day 2. Could I improve my win record on the second day?