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...

Infinity Non-Aligned Armies Reinforcements

 

First up, we have the High value Target from Defiant Truth. She's a "Freelance Stringer", the sort of civilian who might be associated with a rag tag group of mercenaries. This batch of miniatures was once again painted by Thunderbrush Studio.

Next up is the Ghulam from the Haqqislam paint set. He'll be seeing service in my Dahshat Company relatively soon (and maybe Qapu Khalqi at some point when I decided to bring them out for a run.

Meanwhile, for Ikari Company, we have the delightful Tanko Zensenbutai. These heavy infantry used to be the core of the Ikari Fireteams, but the loosening of the Fireteam rules in N4 have made them less essential. They are still great and fit into a lot of common builds, so will certainly see some play time.

This means the only models I'm really missing from Ikari Company now are the Karakuri and the Wu Ming. I don't think I really need either to play them effectively so I could start giving them an outing now. As it is, I'm waiting for the Fireteam rules, but Ikari have definitely moved from "a force I'm building towards" to "a force that's on the bench ready to be learned".

Finally, I got a deal on a couple of Haqqislam Remotes, which I will need for Dahshat Company and Qapu Khalqi. I've been using the old PanOceania remotes up to now, but these ones just look so much better! I'll start cycling the rest in as soon as budget allows.

Latest Infinity Commission Painting

 

I recently got back an assortment of bits and pieces I'd sent off to my commission painter. This was mostly an 'odds and ends' batch of little bits and pieces for different factions I've got.

First up is this Maghariba Guard pilot for Dahshat. I got her cheap in a deal, as I don't actually have the Maghariba Guard itself!

I picked up the newer Odalisque Spitfire model. I'll definitely want to give a bit of time to trying this out with Dahshat Company, but it'll also run fine in Qapu Khalqi when that gets published in November.

The Janissary HMG is also for Qapu Khalqi. I picked him up in a cheap bulk deal - hopefully I'll be able to pick up a box of his friends in the near future.

I also grabbed the older box of Kaplan Tactical Services so I've got some flexibility in what profiles I take in that fireteam when I get the newer box.

Meanwhile for Ikari Company, the Cube Jaeger is all painted up and ready to go.

I've also got the Keisotsu for Ikari Company done. We're still missing the Tanko, which are key to making Ikari work, but I've been holding out on getting those until we saw the Ikari army list for N4 in case anything changed.

And finally, I got the Tokusetsu Butai, the Support Pack that Ikari use, so I've got a doctor and engineer option if needed.

November St Albans Smackdown with Ikari

Back in November, I headed over to St Albans for the St Albans Smackdown Infinity tournament. I decided to run Ikari as they'd happened to come back from my commission painter just before the tournament.

First up was Countermeasures, and I got drawn against WarCorChris, who is running Shasvastii at the moment. I opened up by hailing Yuan Yuan down onto him, which caused the odd model to reveal itself to stop them, but they sadly failed to take down the Total Reaction remote who was their primary target.

I also tried using a Druze Haris against the remote, and they also failed. Someone eventually got it down, though.

My Lieutenant was hiding on a roof with a Speculo Killer hiding away inside the building. I ended up throwing a Krakot at it after discovering it. Sadly, he wasn't able to get the job done but did leave the Speculo tied up in combat with him.

In the Shasvastii turn, down came a bunch of Cadmus decoys, which did not fill me with joy.

The Cadmus managed to deal with the Krakot, then got a boarding shotgun down the line of all the other models hiding behind the wall.

The Speculo then dismantled my support models, taking out my doctor under smoke...

The Speculo then made it over to my Lieutenant and took them out, and I never really recovered. WarCorChris ended up pulling a 6 - 1 win, and deservedly so.

Next game, I was up against kaizer82, who is also part of HATE. He was running his US Ariadna, and we had Decapitation as a mission. My main plan at this point was to simply throw Yuan Yuans at his Lieutenant until it died.

His Lieutenant was hidden up a tower in the top right corner, so I had very little other than the Yuan Yuans that had a chance of getting to it.

I kept one of my bikes right at the back so it didn't rush out and die straight away.

The Yuan Yuan made their drop, managed to cause some chaos, but didn't survive long enough to get to the Lieutenant due to the overlapping field of fire.

I then took a counter attack from Van Zandt. He caused a little damage before being taken down. I then ended up bouncing off the Ariadnan firepower, and just couldn't make a dent. Kaizer82 ended up getting a comfortable 5 - 0 win.

So, final game and I was facing another HATE player - Aravar, who was running his Tohaa. It was a nice simple Quadrant Control game, and I was hoping to just get one win to try and regain some self respect.

I hid a ninja on the right hand flank in the hope of keeping it hidden for as long as possible.

The Yuan Yuan all died pretty quickly, but one at least managed to cause some damage on the way through.

Sadly, I never really managed to get the board control away from the Tohaa, but the man of the match (battle?) has to go to my Haris Druze Datatracker, who murdered an obscene number of Tohaa on his own, mostly in ARO. In the end, he didn't make it, and the final score was a solid 10-1 to Aravar.

So, maybe taking a faction you have literally never played and don't have several key models for isn't a bright idea. I was also thoroughly outplayed by excellent opponents. In the end, my three thorough drubbings left me holding the Wooden Spoon for the tournament. Despite that, it was a lovely weekend and I'd always recommend the St Albans Smackdown tournaments to any Infinity player.

Infinity Learning Game: Ikari vs Druze - Decapitation

With my Ikari models recently back from my commission painter, I decided on a whim to run them at St Albans Smackdown. I haven't got the Wu Ming or Tanko models yet, so wrote some unusual lists to try out. I took one of them down to the club to try out against shrikeh's Druze.

The list I wrote was as follows:

 Weathergirls
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 5  / 5  / 5
 PANGGULING Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)
 YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9)
 YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9)
 YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9)
 YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8)
 FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
 PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)
 RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 20)
 LÙ DUĀN Mk12, Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)
 DESPERADO Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / 2 Assault Pistols, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)

GROUP 23
 DESPERADO Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / 2 Heavy Pistols, AP CC Weapon. (0 | 11)
 YOJIMBO Contender, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 21)
 FASID HMG + (Smoke and Normal) Light Grenade Launcher, Antipersonnel Mines / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (2 | 53)
 BRAWLER Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
 KRAKOT RENEGADE 2 Chain Rifles, Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 14)
 WARCOR (Sixth Sense L1) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)
 TOKUSETSU EISEI Doctor (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
 TOKUSETSU KOHEI Engineer Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
 YÁOZĂO Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
 YÁOZĂO Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
 LIBERTO (Minelayer) Light Shotgun, Chain-colt, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 10)

 5 SWC | 300 Points

Open in Infinity Army

The test game went really well. A little too well in fact, as the Druze got blasted off the table. At the end of my first turn, I'd got a Lieutenant kill and taken out Cordelia, so I was up on specialists, too.

It all fell apart when the planned Druze counter-attack with Scarface failed a Flash Pulse save and then failed to pull back, so the Al Fasid filled Scarface full of HMG bullets, and by the end of my second turn there were perhaps two Druze left alive... We called it there at 10-0.

The downside of this game was that I hadn't managed to get a good experience of a lot of my models - the Rui Shi had done a little, the Al Fasid had proven a useful gun platform and the Yuan Yuan had been devastating. But similarly, Yojimbo and the Lu Duan hadn't done much at all.

I'm not planning on running Ikari much this year, I just thought it would be fun to run them for a game and a tournament to see how they run. I had good fun, though, so I'll definitely come back to them.

A busy couple of weeks

So, I've had a couple of weekends since my last hobby update, so how have things been? The original plan was one weekend for painting and one for things to do, but that got rather stymied by a request to spend a weekend re-sorting the eBay pile.

Still, I managed to settle down on Saturday morning and get three of my Inquisition nearly done - there's just a few details and finishing up the bases to go. With me off at a LARP next weekend, I've got one weekend to get it all done. Achievable, but *internal screaming*.

My Ikari came back from my commission painter and I decided on a whim to take them to the St Albans Smackdown tournament. I threw a couple of lists together and took one to the club to practice on Wednesday. Poor shrikeh got demolished by Yuan Yuans and we called it part way through my second turn with two Druze left able to move.

Sadly, that used up all my skill and luck for the tournament itself! I managed to come dead last after three losses. It was a lot of fun, but for my next tournament, I'm definitely practicing to try and do better! The odd loss isn't a problem, but consistent loss drains your enthusiasm for playing.

Then, on Sunday, HATE had a bring and buy. So I dragged a bunch of stuff down to the club and spent a few hours parting people from their cash. Taking into account the cost of the taxis to get me there and back, I just about broke even. When it happens again, I'll only take enough to take on the bus. The extra stuff really didn't merit the taxi fares.

As expected, November's White Dwarf had new Inquisition rules. And as I feared for Purge the Pit, there were points drops on some of the units I'd taken. Inquisition flamers and the Jokaero both got a chunky price cut meaning there was a need for me to find more models to paint . . . or was there?

With 25 points to spend, I decided that rather than make things harder for myself, I would use the model I'd planned to use as a Primaris Psyker as a Daemonhost, and in turn, give the model James painted for me to round out the warband. An extra model, but no extra painting.

There's a busy couple of weeks to come, so the blog may be a little quieter than it's been. December (after the first weekend) is pretty quiet, then busy again between January and April. I think maybe a little too busy. So, for the future . . . perhaps leaving a little more time for me, rather than over-committing due to the fear of missing out.