Infinity League: Last Launch - Nomads vs Invincible Army

 

For the second round of the HATE Infinity League, I was up against Invincible Army. The mission was Last Launch, one of the new missions in this season. I've never played it, either, so I was a bit nervous. The mission is about getting points and specialists evacuated, so I chose three expensive specialists - Mary Problems, Mother Agatha and Zoe, on top of Jazz as a primary Hacker. For firepower, I was relying on an Intruder sniper and a Hellcat with Spitfire.

My opponent won the Initiative roll and chose to go first. He had a chunky heavy infantry link led by a (proxied) Shang Ji HMG with all the tools. On the closed table, it was able to clear out the one ARO piece that could see the box, have a specialist take three ID tokens to escape, handing them around the team.

Two models then headed up into space, with the missile launcher staying behind to provide some AROs. I ran up my Heckler and tried to Jammer the Shang Ji HMG, but he passed his save. Someone then managed to take the Missile Launcher out, all the way to dead so he wasn't getting back up again.

Mary Problems had started heading up the table to push a button and got very lucky avoiding the Shang Ji HMG in ARO. Mimetism -6 turned out to be clutch in this case. The Shang Ji then ducked back inside to protect the box.

So, there was still a special character engineer on the ID dispenser, and a Shang Ji HMG guarding the room. How was I going to clear this?

I dropped in my Hellcat Spitfire, scored my classified with him, and shot someone who was protecting the engineer, before going out for the engineer.

Unluckily, I didn't manage to land a useful shot on the Engineer and he failed guts out of my line of sight, and I didn't have the orders to chase him down.

I then mercilessly bullied the Shang Ji HMG. He got Isolated, Targeted, and shot unconscious. A Pan O Paramedic managed to get a shot to medi-kit him back up again, and now I still had a problem! 

Agatha ran up to the box, shot at the special character until he ducked, but ended up having to spend a turn holding on the box...

The Morlock dropped smoke on himself and got a lucky high roll meaning a Total Reaction remote couldn't beat the roll. This gave Zoe a clear run for the box.

The Chimera dropped Eclipse smoke to cover the box, and the Shang Ji dropped a chain colt, killing the Chimera who'd gotten a little too close. Two Uberfall smacked him about, but he passed all four armour saves and survived the game!

Agatha and Mary Problems were able to evacuate the room, swinging the mission score from a 3-5 loss for me to a 9-1 win for me! So a very good score, but it didn't reflect how close the game was in practice.

My opponent is now assembling and painting his actual Shang Ji HMG model in honour of this brave soldier who survived all sorts of Nomad awfulness to hold the room. A true hero of the people!

An awful lot of Infinity coming soon

 

This week I've had four Infinity games - my League game on Wednesday, and then Red Star Blues - a tournament - on Saturday. Having been away for the two weekends previous, I spent all of Sunday tidying up, catching up on housework, and generally getting on top of life admin, rather than painting.

My limited edition models from Infinity's Adepticon release also arrived - a bounty hunter model. I've got one each for Nomads, my neon NA2 factions, and my White Company. I'm hoping to spend Easter Friday listing a bunch of stuff up on eBay to start selling on the Saturday to begin the next stage of my clear out to make a bit more room. It's been a fun month, but I want to settle down to both some serious life reorganisation and a whole bunch of hobby painting and assembly!

A short update - Bretonnians, a Limited Model and playing 40K

 

Between work being busy and being Out out, I've not got much hobby done at home. The other half of the Bretonnian command group are mostly done-ish, and I'll be getting on with them over the Easter weekend.

A friend was up at the Warhammer World Open Day and kindly picked up the Steel Rook for me. I love this model - it calls to basically all my aesthetic buttons. Not sure what I'll use it for just yet, but he looks great.

I also managed to arrange my first game of 10th edition Warhammer 40,000 with my Deathwatch. A full write up will come later, but I'm much happier with how 10th plays than my short experience of 9th.

In the upcoming week I've got my Infinity League game on Wednesday, and the Red Star Blues tournament at HATE on Saturday. The weekend after is Easter, where I'm aiming to get a bunch of hobby done alongside some tidying up around the flat.

Assembling Bretonnian Men at Arms

 

So, it's been a long while since I've painted anything for a large battle game rather than a skirmish game. I did a little bit of a stock take, and decided I have enough models for two units of 25 men at arms, and one of 20, leaving me with 36 archers. To bring it up to 4 units of 10 archers, I ordered one sprue of 4 archers from eBay.

I've started by sorting the basing. I've really liked how Krautcover "Common Earth (dark)" looks so far, so I'm using that. I glued it on using a bunch of Geek Gaming Scenics glue I got free in some goodie bag at some point.

I was a bit nervous about how much might flake off over time, so once the glue was dry, I mixed up some more with a bit of water, and soaked them all in a layer of water and glue with an old brush. Once it dried, I wasn't losing any material when I tapped them. Success!

I started assembling the first unit and glued a couple of them to the bases using super glue. After leaving them overnight, I confirmed my suspicion that I couldn't be this lazy and that they were very wobbly due to the connection between the basing texture and the base. I quickly pulled them off and pinned them.

I'm already thinking during assembly of how I want the units to look. I like the idea of naming units, so thought about what their backgrounds could be. For the first two big blocks of men at arms, I've decided to split them between peasants raised from the countryside, and a town militia. This unit is going to be the country unit. In assembly, this will mostly be down to what they're not - I'll be using all kettle helmets for the town militia!

To pin the dog, rather than try and pin through the leg, I ran a pin up into the body up the inside of one leg. You can't see it at any angle you'd view it on the table. I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I decided to use the dog with the "rural" unit as I felt it fit quite well.

For the town militia unit I'll be digging through the internet for town names in Mousillon. For the rural unit, I'm thinking of using the name The Good Folk of Mousillon. It's a nice medieval sounding phrase, and is a nice counterpoint to the later fate of Mousillon.

Infinity Game: Nomads vs Yu-Jing: Acquisition

 

Popped down to the club last week for a pick up game of Infinity. My friend was running his Yu Jing, and we randomly selected Acquisition as the mission. I threw a basic list together including the Gator, won the Lieutenant roll and chose the deployment edge, meaning I got to go second.

My left flank was effectively and brutally rolled up, and a Shaolin made a run for the backfield, getting hit by an E/M mine laid by Billie to end his rampage.

I was deeply worried about my opponent's Hac Tao, and tried to use a Heckler Jammer to deal with it. The Heckler failed and was quickly shot to bits, and I saw at the weekend my opponent is now assembling a Tian Gou with Jammer after finding out how amazing they are.

So yeah, sorry locals, that one is on me.

I sent the Gator out to clear a Total Reaction remote, but he could only draw a bead on it when outside of cover. He messed up twice, and on the second go, failed two armour saves and spent the rest of the game hiding.

A Lu Duan made an offensive run up the board, dropped a deployable repeater to inhibit the Gator, then found Jazz and took her out with a Heavy Flamethrower.

Things were going badly enough on my second turn that I brought my Tomcat Doctor on to heal up a couple of models just to mean I had some orders in my third turn...

But it wasn't enough, and the Hac Tao secured the central tech coffin to win the game. I was thoroughly outplayed here, with a pretty well tuned Yu Jing list (that I think I've just helped tune up even more). I'm still pottering through different unit picks in Nomads, and haven't truly gelled with a build just yet. I definitely still love the faction and am enjoying playing them, but I haven't found the build or models that really bring me joy. There's some little elements I'm definitely getting on with and I'm liking some bits and pieces, but I'm still on the search for the That Thing I Love...

Plans for March

 

I've got quite a few commitments this month, but lets try and set some goals. I had a delivery a while ago for the next "big" project. I'm not sure I'll get it all assembled this month, but I definitely want to get started... And the reveal as to what it will be is coming a little later on in this post.

Along with the Frameworks kits I looted for parts in January that I got assembled in February, there were two more that I got in case I needed them then didn't open... One is just short basing texture, the other is still on sprue. Lets get them assembled, shall we?

That said, the "ready to paint" tray is basically full, so no more "fun little side paint" assembly until a whole bunch of this lot get painted... If I really want to assemble stuff there's all sorts of dull repairs sitting waiting to be done, even if it doesn't generate any content for the blog...

I've got this small assortment of half finished works in progress to sort out. None of them are particularly time consuming, so should be good for the delicious brain chemicals you get from finishing something. There's plenty to pick from the tray once these are done...

As the project assembly is a biggie, I've dug out the Imetrons I had been thinking of painting last month before I got distracted with a couple of Battlemechs. While the big work this month is project assembly, I want to keep the pace going on getting projects painted.

So, the big project assembly... This is sadly not full boxes. I sold the knights ages ago, leaving only the peasants. Still, it's not the end of the world, I can pick up new ones once I've got these done. The current plan is to paint a Mousillon force, as Warhammer: The Old World is set before its fall.

One thing I haven't decided yet is the colour scheme. The canonical scheme for the Duchy of Mousillon in this time period is blue with fleur de lys, but other sources have them in a yellow and black quartered scheme. I quite like the yellow and black scheme, but I reckon I could do a really solid blue scheme too. I'll probably paint a couple of the palette cleansers in each scheme to help make me the decision.

Why am I putting time into assembling Bretonnians while also saying I have enough stuff assembled? I split my hobby painting between "projects" which are things I game with or super fancy time consuming paint jobs, and "fun little things", which is random bits and pieces and D&D models that are smaller numbers of models who get simple tabletop paint jobs. I've ended up focusing more on the latter for a while, and while its built my painting momentum, it's time to get back to getting stuff done to play with.