Infinity Game: White Company vs Next Wave - Superiority

 

As previously mentioned, after Christmas I managed to get in a game of Infinity at War Dollies Collective. My opponent is pretty new to Infinity, so we picked the Direct Action mission Superiority. I dug out my White Company because they're the prettiest models I have and I wanted to show off.

I ended up going second. My opponent was on Next Wave, so I hid my expensive pieces but left out a couple of defensive pieces like a Sierra Dronbot.

My opponent managed to score a console so I sent up a Peacemaker's peripheral to try and my way. While I managed to clear a mine and wound a Tekdraken, but wasn't able to capitalise on it. I realised at the end of the turn I'd simply not pushed up far enough and my opponent scored points for controlling more quadrants.

I sent the Beasthunter after Patroclus (played here by the WarCor model) and the Raindancer fireteam. Patroclus refused to die and the Beasthunter was swiftly dispatched.

On the right flank, I wasn't confident of clearing the Juggernaut, so I sent the Kunai Ninja to hold it up, and block it's ability to shoot models I needed to advance. I pushed my Nisse / Jujak fireteam up but was only managed to draw the quadrant scoring.

Third round, and Next Wave went on a big push and did a whole bunch of smushing White Company Troopers. I managed to throw smoke to cover an approach for Shona to hit the Juggernaut. My opponent got a quick lesson in "why you never get too close to Shona" as in one swing she forced seven armour saves, and took the Juggernaut off the table.

I managed to push my Jujaks up the table, having cleared an Ironside, and the engineer managed to push a button for a console. In the end, my Key Ops controlled a zone, but Next Wave controlled the other three, winning the game for my opponent with a score of 6-3.

All in all, it was good to get back to a game of Infinity. I did spend way too much time forgetting to focus on scoring objectives, but we both had a lot of fun. White Company are still a "sometimes" faction for me, but it was good to get them out for a little run.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

Christmas and New Year Hobby

I have been pottering on with assembling the Halfling Blood Bowl team. I'd hoped to be a little further along than this, but an assortment of non hobby activities took up a bunch of time. Still, excellent human interaction and resting occurred. 

 

Games Workshop sent me their annual £10 voucher, and I used it towards buying some online only Halfling Star Players. I've also put some money from my eBay sales into picking up the new rulebook and a couple of Treemen (alongside a mat for Infinity), which should show up next month.

The space between Christmas and the New Year also had a meeting of what is intended to be a new gaming club: The War Dollies Collective. The hope is that this will turn into regular club nights, but at the moment these aren't finalised.

There were a wide range of activities on offer. There was a large kit-bashing area for folks to build whatever they fancied. There were also participation games - both some kind of car combat game and a small scale Napoleonic historical game.

I took advantage of the day to arrange a game of Infinity with one of the people I gave a demo to at Dice Cup earlier this year. We had an excellent 300 point game, with me taking White Company and my opponent Next Wave, playing a Direct Action mission.

The arrival of over 300 miniatures from Wildspire Miniatures has also taken up a chunk of time. These models were originally designed by Blacklist Miniatures, who then ended up being incapable of delivering. Wildspire purchased the moulds and produced these models, offering original backers a significant discount to acquire the miniatures. There's still a Horror set that Blacklist failed to deliver that Wildspire has purchased and not produced yet.

So, it has still been a very busy couple of weeks from a hobby perspective. The coming month has some LARP, some card games and some work travel which won't produce interesting things for the blog. Still, I have a few stories to tell about my Infinity game and the Wildspire minis that I'll tell in a short while.

Hobby Review of 2025

 

As we reach the end of 2025, I'm taking stock of what I got up to hobby wise this year. Much of the year has been taken up with a house move, but I did get a bunch of painting done before we moved. I haven't started painting in the new place just yet, but we should get onto that some time soon.

I started the year finishing up a Battletech Lyran lance. The idea here was to get to the point where if an opportunity for a starter game comes up, I'm ready to go with a painted lance. An opportunity hasn't come up yet, but it's a good thing to have ready to go.

HATE then ran a slow grow "introduction to N5" Infinity league, so I decided to get some miniatures painted up. I started with Oktavia Grimsdottir, and I think this was my favourite paint job this year. I'm incredibly pleased with how she came out and I'm hoping to get some more paint jobs to this standard this year.

I also got an elf rogue from Strata Miniatures Dungeons and Diversity line painted up. I'd had her part painted for a while, and was keen to get her done before I moved. Having a good range of potential adventurer miniatures is something I'm keen to build up.

Similarly, this Wizkids Frameworks Tiefling Warlock was a model I'd picked up alongside some models I needed for a D&D game. He got a nice simple tabletop quality paint job. I'm keen to plug through a few more useful fantasy models for future RPGs in the coming year.

I also got Agent Dukash painted up for my Shasvastii. He's no longer available in vanilla Combined Army since the most recent update. At least I got to run him at a tournament in vanilla before the rules changed!

These Hedge Witches from Conquest are good for Frostgrave and RPGs. In RPGs they might end up as PCs or NPCs, depending. Flexible miniatures like this are really great picks for RPGs.

And finally, I got these goblins painted up. I had these Aenor Miniatures on my paint table for months, if not years, before I finally got them done. It was great to get them finished before I packed up to move house.

So, a relatively quiet year from a painting point of view. The goal for the coming year . . . can wait, for now. I have thoughts, but for now, I can sit back and be proud of a good range of figures I got painted this year.

Two different instances of Infinity

 

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of afternoons playing Infinity in the past week. A couple of folks were keen to get a demo of Infinity, and we arranged to meet at The Dice Cup. I've also signed up for a campaign down in London with HATE as I can get games in online using Tabletop Simulator, and I had my first campaign game.

I'm deeply grateful to Yashar who offered some excellent advice for structuring some demo games. One player was interested in JSA, and the other Bakunin. We ran a first skirmish with three Keisotsu against three Moderators. We then added a Daiyokai and a Penitent Observant, along with the Lieutenant rules. Finally, we wrote two 150 point lists to add a few more rules in and had a small three turn game.

Everyone seemed to have a great time, and I'm hoping we'll get more games in shortly.

Meanwhile, HATE is holding a new narrative campaign, and I've signed up to play with my Shasvastii. I'm not in London as much, but Tabletop Simulator exists. For the first round, I got paired with Yashar for a mission of "Area of Interest", one of the latest season of ITS missions. Yashar returned with their beloved MRRF.

I ended up losing 6-3. I learned to fear the Vystrel, a new defensive piece in Ariadna. I also learned a whole bunch about the challenges of diagonal deployments and how much longer ranges are because of them. I'm incredibly stoked about the new season as a result and my brain is now wanting to play more games to learn more about how these new missions play.

Infinity October 2025 Rules Update and Me

Corvus Belli have dropped two massive updates for Infinity this month. They've returned several factions that hadn't been given rules this edition into play, updated a lot of army lists to get some better balance, and updated some rules to make things clearer or less unbalanced to play against.

On top of this, there's a new tournament mission pack, where all the old missions have been replaced (only the most recent three were kept), and a bunch of new ones added. As someone who's taken a few months off the game, I'm feeling a little bit like the meme from Community where the guy walks in to chaos having just gone to fetch the pizzas.

OK, White Company is probably the easiest here. "Officially" the faction had no changes, but a few profiles they borrow from other factions got considerable glow ups - Blockers, in particular have moved from something I only took to see what they could do, to likely a regular inclusion in lists. Taowu gained a Chain of Command profile, and there were a couple of other light adjustments. I might even try the Anaconda at some point.

My Shasvastii got caught in the blast as the vanilla Combined Army took a well deserved balance adjustment to Ikadrons. Their points moving to 11 and losing Flash Pulses is entirely fair, but they were helping prop up the quite weak Shasvastii. Some of the Shasvastii characters got some changes or some new profiles. Victor Messer is definitely better, and the Jayth / Gwailo fireteam gained a keyword to make getting the link bonus easier.

Combined Army, meanwhile, got a bit more of a thorough overhaul. Several Shasvastii and Next Wave profiles got banished to their own factions, cheap order profiles became a little harder to come by, and a few of the regularly taken big scary pieces got a bit of a rework that I think actually makes them a little better overall.

In the land of my other NA2 factions, Druze changes were negligible, Ikari gained a Tohaa profile (the Kiiutan Imposter), and Dahshat similarly only got a couple of minor profile changes due to them being shared with other factions.

In the land of Nomads, the biggest change is officially NA2 - Star Co, the mixed Nomad mercenary company, returned. They're fine. There's basically no changes or they'd mess up the Nomad balance. Meanwhile Nomads got basically no changes. A couple of new profiles that were lacking a bit of oomph got some slight changes, but that was about it.

The changes don't affect me a huge amount. I am loving them, though. In a lot of my factions I've got a couple of new or reworked profiles to play around with and see how they change how the faction works. That said, I'm likely to start pretty conservatively with some simple Direct Action missions and some models I mostly know as I try and remind myself how to play...

Infinity Battle Report: Shasvastii vs O-12: Frontline

 

Continuing my attempts to practice with my Shasvastii, I had another practice game at the club. My opponent brought his O-12, and the mission was Frontline. I decided to try a list that leaned heavily into Infiltrating and Forward Deployed models

I had a good number of camo tokens scattered across the midfield - I had a couple of Shrouded, a Malignos Killer Hacker, and a Caliban Spitfire. I had a classified mission involving a visor and my opponent's HVT, so I held back the Caliban Spitfire so it could make the run early and didn't have too far to go.

This took a few orders, but a Taigha cleared a mine, the Caliban cleared the reaction remote, then camoed up to get past another model, got the classified then re-camoed to provide him a little protection in my opponent's turn.

With my handful of remaining orders, I moved a Taigha up to annoy an errant camo token.

Sadly, the camo state didn't help the Caliban much. It got discovered and taken out pretty swiftly.

My right flank got thoroughly attacked and the pieces there were put unconscious.

Focusing my efforts on classifieds, my Speculo needed to pass a WIP roll in base to base contact with an opposing remote. It succeeded at this, then chopped the remote in half.

The Speculo then went on to try and take out an O-12 hacker, but didn't manage to get a killing blow.

The Malignos also went up to take out some model or other, but ran out of orders to recamo. This was a definite mistake as it got swiftly taken out.

A Varangian ran over to try and rescue the Hacker, but also managed to fail to land a kill - but this stalemate locked in out of the scoring zones, so we were both stuck!

At this point the Zeta came out and just started deleting stuff. I tried to use my Shrouded to Posses it as my opponent was out of Command Tokens, but I couldn't land a hit and ran out of orders.

With a Crusher having joined the attack on my right flank and having scored a classified on the building, I took my Obsidon Medchanoid around to try and fire a Gizmokit at an enemy troop. Sadly, he lost the face to face and exploded.

I moved a few troops into zones, but I was heavily down points, and my opponent was easily able to move troops between zones to get a solid win.

On reflection, I needed more punch in the list. I didn't have enough firepower to deal with some of the threats I was up against. I like a lot of the tools I used, but putting all of the finesse tools into a list can really fall over in the face of even quite moderate violence. Putting in more of a mix of troops may be a better solution.

Infinity Battle Report: Mindwipe, Shasvastii vs Ramah Task Force

 

This week's Shasvastii practice game pulled up "Mindwipe" on the random generator. This isn't a popular mission, but I was up for giving it a go. My opponent was bringing Ramah Task Force.

I'd won the first turn, so wanted to set up pressing the button on a console securely. I had my fancy hacker (a Shrouded Killer Hacker) hiding near the button, with a Speculo Killer tucked into a nook where she could see the console as well.

This plan worked very clearly. The Speculo threw smoke over the console then re-impersonated, then the Killer Hacker came up, pushed the button within the smoke, then re-camoed and headed off to a new hiding spot.

The rogue AI was hiding in the most defended console, in the centre of my opponent's deployment. I used my remaining orders to walk up the Speculo Minelayer to drop another mine in the most awkward spot possible, then again re-camoed.

My opponent sensibly and efficiently cleared the mine, discovered and killed the Shrouded Minelayer, then went to focus on the mission. He brought up a Hunzakut who cleared a Taigha creature before making his way to the console, crawling the last part of the way to stay out of sight of the mine laid on the other side of it, while smoke kept my Q-Drone from impeding the button pushing.

Leila Sharif decided that E/M mining the entire console building was a reasonable and proportionate thing to do. It was a good way of stopping any sneaky rush for the server.

I decided to send my Paramedic Seed Soldier to do my classified with my opponent's HVT. Pesky repeaters got him targeted, then I just couldn't pass a WIP check! At the time, I thought I'd got my classified, but as I was heading home, I realised I'd counted an order in the wrong pool, so texted my opponent to Correct the Record.

I sent my Uberhacker to try and get the console, but hadn't noticed a model who could discover them, which proceeded to leave him sitting in the Repeater network. Checking the Mindwipe special hacking programme, it's burst 1 and D/A, so I was certain it would be multiple orders to clear it - so I went after the hackers first, and the Shrouded got melted.

My opponent made some consolidating moves, then brought on a Hakim, who was able to take out the Q drone, but there weren't quite enough orders for him to get back anywhere safe, or reach the console. That said, it took me some orders to bring my Mentor around to clear the Hakim and for my Med Tech to repair the Q Drone.

I sent Sheskiin in to try and score some servers. Not able to fight through to the main server, I decided on taking out one of the others - I did so, but she got Flash Pulsed as she did, meaning I put my remaining orders into defending my own servers.

The Ramah fireteam was able to make their way up and destroy my centre server, which was also a decoy. My opponent had gotten muddled after picking the server to my left, but we looked back and determined that he wouldn't have had the orders to successfully hit the Rogue AI server.

With my classified actually unscored, this left us both scored with one console and one decoy server apiece. This felt right for such a close, cagey game. I don't hate this mission, but can see how you need to design your list a lot for it, and it favours the player going first heavily. In particular, locking out a console for your opponent is incredibly tough on whoever is going second.

Still, I feel like I'm getting a good cross section of Shasvastii units, and am starting to get a good idea of what I get on with running in this edition.