Things You Might Want To Know About Corvus Belli's Infinity

As many readers may know, I'm a massive fan of Infinity, the wargame by Corvus Belli. It's getting more popular at the moment, and I've realised every time I see people talking about getting into it, there's a bunch of stuff I want to tell them about. Rather than go on an excited ramble every time, I thought I'd try and put some structured information together . . . 

What is Infinity?

Infinity is a skirmish wargame made by the Spanish company Corvus Belli. It's set 180 years into the future, with Ghost in the Shell and Altered Carbon being the most well known strong influences on the look and feel of the game.

The universe of Corvus Belli is in a state of cold war, in the early stages of an alien invasion. Open warfare is war, and the game focusses on small, special forces style missions where the objectives are often not related to destroying the opponent's force, but controlling territory, interacting with civilian models, or taking control of computer consoles.

How do you play?

I'm not going to focus on this too much. There are plenty of excellent tutorials online, and I'll link some in a little while.

The keys thing to be aware of are:

• its a skirmish scale game, with forces typically limited to fifteen models or so
• the system is incredible lethal, and models die very easily
• you spend a resource called "orders" to move your models, and can spend multiple orders on one model in your turn
• while its your opponents turn, if your models see an enemy model act, then they can react - dodging, or even shooting back

Is there a starter version / what's Code One?

There used to be a starter version of Infinity called Code One. This was a starter version of the rules in the last edition of the game, but aren't produced any more. There are some "quick start rules" available now, but these aren't a full game.

What do I need to start?

The rules are free online. There is a download page for the Infinity rules on the Corvus Belli website. You need the N5 rules and the FAQs - there's also a regularly produced mission pack called "ITS", but the core rules have a few missions to get started with.

You then need miniatures, a tape measure, some 20 sided dice and some scenery that will completely block the line of sight between models. Blocking line of sight is absolutely essential for the gameplay mechanics - its what keeps the lethality of the game in check. Tokens are useful but not essential. Some of the competitive play missions require a "Classified Deck" of secondary objectives.

The largest play space you will need is 4 feet by 4 feet, but smaller games are played in a smaller area.

The models

Corvus Belli has traditionally made it's models in metal. The newer ones are easy to assemble, but if you end up with some older models they can be hella fiddly. If you're finding metal intimidating, have a look at Mr Shy's video on the subject. It should demystify them a bit.

A few of the bulkier models are now produced in Siocast, a form of resin, to offset the rising costs of metal. This stuff is fine, but some people are not fans. A handful of models have been made in a plastic called Unicool, which behaves pretty much as you'd expect a plastic kit to.

The rules call for every model to have a fire arc marker to check line of sight. The newer kits come with plastic bases that mark this, older ones don't. You can just paint fire arcs on if you want.

There's nothing stopping you from using models from another manufacturer if you want, but tournaments you attend may have rules about using Corvus Belli models. If you're looking for a cheap option, consider the Stargrave plastics. If you want to avoid metal entirely, I'd recommend Anvil Industry. That said, Corvus Belli's miniatures are stunningly pretty and I absolutely recommend picking one up to try out if you're unsure.

Operation, Beyond and Action Packs

Each year, Corvus Belli release a two player starter called an Operation box. It gives you two factions of models, some dice and some scenery. They they release an expansion box with another 3 models per faction, called a Beyond box. After a year or two, they then produce a new box, and repackage the miniatures into two Action Packs for just one faction.

Currently, you can get Operation: Sandtrap (PanOceania vs Japanese Sectorial Army) with Beyond Sandtrap coming soon

There are then a selection of Action Packs, either from previous Operation boxes, or released without having previously been in an Operation box.

Cardboard Terrain

As I mentioned above, lots of line of sight blocking terrain is vital for a game of Infinity. Corvus Belli produce pre-printed cardboard terrain with their Operation Packs, and the quality has been really going up over the years. Sandtrap has a new design entirely. The recent ones before that are also good, and are double sided to give two designs.

Outside of Sandtrap, you currently have Hlokk Station and Darpan Xeno-Station. Both have a Scenery Pack and an Expansion pack. You can get all the terrain you need for a full size game with two Scenery Packs and one Scenery Expansion Packs.

If you come across Daedalus Gate, Dawn-02 Aplekton or Neon Lotus sets, these are the older sets and not quite as good. They're still serviceable though, so if you get offered them super cheap, it can still be worth picking them up.

Infinity players are really rather serious about their scenery, and can end up spending more on it than models. There's a huge range of third party suppliers who do good terrain that suits Infinity, but I think that's a separate article all by itself.

What are the factions / armies?

First thing to note - this is a game with specialist sub factions as well as the main armies. The factions represent large, space faring human nations or alien alliances. You'll see people refer to a "Vanilla" faction or a "Sectorial". Vanilla is a force selected from troops across the nation you've picked. A Sectorial is a specialist sub faction who might have a more specialist focus. These days, most Sectorials will have models that can't be selected in a Vanilla list, and some that are shared across both faction.

There are also the "Non-Aligned Armies", or NA2, a "faction" that consists of minor nations and mercenary companies. These groups take models from across the other factions and can be awkward to collect.

Some factions have left the game with the start of the 5th edition for Infinity. Others are currently out of production but are still game legal, so you can choose to hunt them down, or proxy some more modern models to play them. The Infinity Army page will show you what factions are currently playable.

Covering all the factions is more space than I'd want to cover in a starter article. There's a YouTube playlist of short videos introducing the faction backgrounds made by Corvus Belli. Click through each individually as they're produced in both English and Spanish!