Books in, models out, and some news about the future

 

After my first game of 40K 10th edition went well, I noticed that the club was kicking off a new campaign based on the Pariah Nexus Crusade book. I decided it was worth signing up, and while I was grabbing the Pariah Nexus book, I decided to order the Tyrannic War Crusade book as well. I've had a little scan read of the Pariah Nexus book so far, and while there's a little bit of admin, it looks like Goonhammer have built a good app to handle all that stuff 

Much of this weekend was spent packing up my O-12, which I'd listed on eBay. With 50 lots sold, it's a good chunk of stuff out of the flat, but it was very time consuming to get it all gone!

The internet has been getting very excitable about the discontinuation of a significant number of Age of Sigmar models, including a good chunk of the Stormcast Sacrosanct Chamber, which is a good portion of my Stormcast. I've not played AoS yet, and given 4th edition is coming, I'm now planning on holding off until then. Having had some time to think about it, I'm pretty relaxed about the whole situation. Age of Sigmar isn't my main game, and I don't really know enough about what's staying and going to really know how it will affect me until the new edition releases, so I may as well wait until then.

Work in Progress Wednesday: A little O-12 Support

 

I got a handful more of my O-12 models ready for paint recently. Pandora is a very tough doctor and engineer who a lot of people are very complimentary about. There's then a Flash Pulse remote and Agnes, who just got some interesting new rules with the Reinforcements rules.

Looking at my painting list and my upcoming focus on my Nomads, I've decided I'm likely to commission out my O-12 painting rather than doing them myself. This takes a whole bunch of pressure off my painting queue, but means this is probably the last "Work in Progress" O-12 post you'll see...

Work in Progress Wednesday: A little O-12

 

These O-12 have been sitting around waiting for me to finish their undercoat for ages, so I decided it was high time to get them ready for paint so they can be put away and stop cluttering up my hobby desk... Left to right, we have two Nyoka, a Bronze, and a Psi-Cop.

The Nyoka will likely see more use in Starmada, as they can form fireteams with an assortment of other models. The Bronze is a reliable heavy attack piece, and the Psi-Cop is a really solid second line attack piece whose marksman rifle and visor can solve problems you might otherwise struggle with.

Because housework doesn't make a good blog post

 

I've been plugging away at various bits and pieces on the hobby desk over the week, but it's mostly been assembly and so on. I managed to varnish and put away a whole bunch of projects, but as you've already seen those, that's not exactly photogenic...

I'll schedule in the handful of "ready for paint" models into a few posts over the coming weeks. As of Friday evening, when these photos were taken, I haven't finished painting a single model over my week off. I'll report back at the weekend whether or not I managed to remedy that.

A good part of the problem is the sheer volume of "unfinished" things I'm letting build up for myself. I ended up taking seven bin bags of packing material and flattened cardboard boxes to the recycling from a pile of "possibly useful in the future" boxes at one point. That was a pile of things that were in the way of me getting into and out of the hobby room, and of getting out or putting away any of my models. It made things slower every single time. Now they're gone, that's one less obstacle for doing things.

While I was in Dark Sphere this week picking up new undercoat spray, I grabbed a Reaper Bones camel with a pack, and some Wizkids Thri-Kreen. The former because that's what the City of Absalom has in the Pathfinder setting as the local centaurs get aggressive at horse riders, and the latter because I spotted a blister without any bent weapons and that was one less stage of faff for these models sufficient that I bought them immediately...

Continuing to learn O-12: Firefight vs Combined Army

 

I had a quick game of Firefight on Sunday at the club, stepping in for a player who needed an opponent for an ongoing league I'm not a part of, and getting in another game to shake down my O-12 at the same time.

I ended up starting off by losing my Engineer and Reaction Remote to a Speculo, which rudely also survived the return fire too. Fortunately, I was able to get my Epsilon to have a little walk up a wall and put down the Speculo permanently in my first turn.

I was running Katherine Cho as a Lieutenant masquerading as an Omega HMG, and placed as my reserve model to avoid the Speculo. Unfortunately, in the second turn she fell victim to a parachutist who was intended to sacrifice itself to cause a cheeky wound on one of my attack pieces and accidentally hit the jackpot in taking out my Lieutenant.

I was running Cuervo Goldstein as a drop troop this game, and while he managed to take out a Yaogat sniper that was causing me significant grief, followed by a successful Lieutenant kill, I wasn't hugely impressed with him. He's good, sure, but a cheaper drop troop could have done just fine and achieved the same thing.

The other troop I tried out this game was the Bronze HMG, which was . . . fine, I guess? It did a good job in taking down a couple of pieces, but my opponent managed to get some shots on him in my reactive turn and wear him down eventually.

I'm still in the "not sure" stage with my O-12 right now. They're proving an interesting puzzle with a playstyle I'm not accustomed to, but a few games in, I've not yet had an "aha" moment with them, or found myself super excited over any of their profiles. There's nothing bad here, but I'm finding myself treating them more as a puzzle to work out than a faction I'm excited to be playing.

O-12 Learning Game - Supremacy vs Invincible Army

 

My current "learning faction" is O-12 and I decided to get in a game at HATE, my local wargaming club. A fellow club mate hadn't played in a while and was bringing his Invincible Army, so it felt like a sensible time to try out O-12. We picked Supremacy as a nice simple mission to get back into things.

I picked a list with some pretty predictable things, and a few weird left field choices I wasn't sure about. For main hit pieces I decided to bring a Lawkeeper Red Fury and and Epsilon. The idea was that the Lawkeeper would go forward and it's Sidebot could help with any mine or perimeter weapons as I didn't want to use a Varangian on them. Meanwhile the Epsilon would lurk around the back committing acts of violence.

For the midfield, I went with Casanova, backed up with a Crusher and a Gangbuster. I feel like this is the minimum sort of investment if you're taking Casanova - he basically needs tucking away with a bodyguard on each side to guard approaches to him. In the scrambling for points, I ended up without a Katherine Cho Chain of Command, but I shrugged and decided that I'd be fine, and what's the worst that could happen?

I deployed a pretty central defensive team of a Peeler, backed up by the Beasthunter FTO who was taken to beef up the first turn ARO presence. There were mines everywhere in the midfield and the centre, and I felt pretty good about it.

However, as the game started, it became clear that I had completely missed an attack vector, and a Zhencha made a camo run past my midfield pieces, Spotlit my Raveneye Lieutenant, and dropped a guided missile on him, putting me in Loss of Lieutenant for the first turn.

I crawled my Gangbuster forward and sent out a Madtrap to the Missile Remote, who was now on ARO duty. The Epsilon then popped out, blew a hole in it and retreated. It ended up double unconscious and immobilised, but there was an engineer on hand to fix it.

I took advantage of the Oko's Tactical Awareness and some Command tokens to get a button pushed and positioned pretty well for the next turn.

I forgot to take photos for a bit, but my Crusher got shot to bits and the Guided remote repaired and unglued. I think I lost a couple of other pieces.

The Haris of a Shang Ji, Bixie, and some other special character, managed to get a button pushed...

And Bixie then got into base to base with the Lawkeeper, although she was unlucky to take a wound on the way in.

They clashed blades for a round, but then luck ran out and the Lawkeeper was Isolated and Unconscious. This pretty much put paid to it, as there was no way I had the orders to get a Doctor and an Engineer to it to get it back up and running.

Despite having spent a whole bunch of time thinking "How great is Climbing Plus in O-12", I hadn't positioned models to allow for Bixie having it. She split from the fireteam, climbed up a wall, and unceremoniously shot Casanova in the back of the head. I managed to take her out eventually, but it took a whole bunch of orders. The Shang Ji and other member of the Fireteam got shot up by the Epsilon at awful ranges and had a sad time.

I push the Epsilon forward to claim a zone in my third turn, but that's about all she wrote. We've both scored two boxes, drawn on zones for three rounds, and got our classifieds, leaving the final score a 7-7 tie. We even had surviving victory points as 138-134, so this is probably one of the closest games of Infinity I've ever had.

So, what were my learning points?

• I should have watched Rob Shepherd's YouTube video about defending from Guided earlier.
• The Lawkeeper and Epsilon are both good
• Casanova requires a significant investment to make work and I'll likely want to give him a miss while I learn more of the faction
• I've had bad experiences with a Gangbuster previously, but this time around he was great - more information needed, I think
• The Crusher needs trying again, it didn't last long enough to get a full understanding of it
• The Nyoka Parachutist also seemed really promising and could do with another look

Work in Progress Wednesday - O-12

 

With an upcoming game to start learning how to play O-12 in person, I needed to get a handful of new models undercoated ready for play.

The Nyoka Parachutist was because I was keen to include a Parachutist of some kind, and I had the SWC necessary to pick the Red Fury option. The Oko remote (the O-12 Forward Observer remote) was an obvious choice in the current ITS season. Finally, the Cyberghost is a bargain basement Hacking Device Plus, and I was keen to try him out.

Finally, while I already had a Gangbuster ready to go, I have a lot more time for the Killer Hacker profile that brings Madtraps, so got him ready to go as well.

Work in Progress Wednesday: O-12

 

The last of my backlogged O-12 models are now ready for paint. I've been putting off this work for ages, so I get to tick off an item from the half finished jobs list. Here we've got the general release of Katherine Cho and the Defiance version of Saladin. Neither need two sculpts, but as both of my duplicates came in boxes with other models, it does give me a couple of opportunities to get some practice in with my paint scheme.

Next up are some utility pieces. There's a Razor, who can provide a traditional camouflage and hidden deployment specialist in the midfield. There's a camouflage and hidden deployment sniper in the Lynx, and a forward deploying tough model without camouflage in the Crusher. The midfield pieces in O-12 lack a traditional cheap camouflage specialist, so I'm curious what, in practice, I'll end up going for.

O-12 seem to compensate for the game in infiltrators with a wide selection of Combat Jump and Parachutist models. Here we have the general release Delta Doctor, along with the two Defiance Deltas. Its very unlikely I'll ever run three at the same time, but having different sculpts for different load outs gives me plenty of flexibility.

There's an assortment of ALEPH models that you can take in O-12 because of their close ties. I picked up the Dakini support pack as part of the "ALEPH Reinforcement Pack" with the Defiance Kickstarter. This gives me some options for some cheap remotes - an HMG or Sniper that can be boosted with an EVO Hacker or REM Driver, and a fast moving Paramedic.

There were also a couple of Deva Functionaries included with the Reinforcement Pack which give some interesting options for list building. There's also another sculpt for Hippolyta, who got incredibly good when she got an N4 upgrade to gain a second wound. She's pricey, but I definitely want to give her an outing or two to try her out.

Finally, there's a couple of mercenaries - a Bounty Hunter and Armand Le Muet. Cheap line troops are always useful to have, so the Bounty Hunter may see a little play, while Armand joins quite a crowded line up of excellent snipers so may not see quite so much gameplay.

I've got my last order of O-12 for a while in. I've found in test lists I desperately need cheap orders so I needed to pick up a couple more Remotes for the seven point Kytta Remotes. To bring it up to a sensible assembly batch, I've grabbed the Alpha, a Cyberghost, Parvati, Andromeda and Hector, along with the new Gangbuster Hacker sculpt to reduce my proxying. They'll be off to assembly with Agnes the pilot (who I found sculling around the bottom of a Defiance box) once they arrive. 

This leaves me with pretty much all the utility pieces I need to swap in and out. There's an assortment of bits and pieces still to get - an assortment of mercenaries, alternative attack pieces and niche profiles - but I think I'll be able to write plenty of viable lists to learn with for now.

Work in Progress Wednesday: O-12

 

I've had a pretty hefty stack of O-12 models for Infinity that I'd got various people to assemble sitting waiting to be undercoated for quite a while now. I knuckled down in December and got about half of them sorted.

The first plan with my O-12 is to get enough painted up that I've got two fully painted sets (along with my Combined Army) I can demo Infinity with to people. I haven't decided exactly which blues and yellows to paint them with yet, so I've got some models to test paint lined up once I've dealt with the half finished project mountain.

First up we have the Knight of Santiago (left) and the Raveneye Officer (right).

The Knights of Santiago are a PanOceanian troop that can be taken in the O-12 Starmada sectorial / sub-faction. They are a powerful Heavy Infantry model choices of a specialist operative with a Spitfire or a Killer Hacker, with or without Combat Jump. He can also duo with a Bronze, but a Bronze is minimum 1 in that fireteam, so there's no shenanigans to be had with a different profile.

I'm not going to get to Starmada for a good while yet as O-12 are difficult enough for me to get my head around. The Santiago is also a hefty points investment, and a bit of a niche pick at that. I grabbed him on release from Shae Konnit's split box service as I wasn't sure how good he was going to turn out to be and there was a real potential he'd end up being a huge faff to find split out at a later date.

The Raveneye Office was another "grab him when he came out to avoid inconvenience" as he was the release model with the Raveneye book. While he'll probably get a production sculpt eventually, I didn't want to miss out.

Tactically, the Raveneye is going to see a bunch more use. He's got a cheap Lieutenant profile in O-12, and can join a Security fireteam in Starmada. Add E/M mines and the Minelayer skill and he's likely to be chilling out running the operation from a secure corner of the deployment zone in a lot of missions!

In the "civilians" assortment we have the Bounty Hunter, an NGO worker HVT, and a Warcor. I got the NGO worker in the Dire Foes box with Knauf and Arslan and felt that she was an excellent choice of civilian objective for Space UN.

The Warcor is a familiar sight on the battlefields of 177 years into the future. A 3 point irregular model with a "Flash Pulse" stun weapon, they often end up being left out to slow enemies advancing with little loss to the force effectiveness if they die. I . . . feel that narratively, the number of embedded journalists the Human Sphere's special forces are going through as they're used to slow the advances of hostile troops must be raising questions somewhere. But they're too good a profile not to have and paint up.

Meanwhile, the Bounty Hunter is a pretty standard mercenary you can take in vanilla factions, and O-12 is no exception. A cheap profile with a regular order and a roll on a random equipment table can often fill a slot if you're short on points. I picked this one up cheap on a Facebook group and am looking forward in painting him up in matching colours with the rest of the force, irrespective of how often I end up actually taking him in practice.

Next up are the named characters. Left to right: Katherine Cho, Knauf and Casanova.

Cho is a command character who can either be taken as the force Lieutenant, or a Chain of Command trooper who can take over if the Lieutenant is killed. She's equipped with a Holoprojector so I can deploy a different model in her place until she takes an action, letting her hide away pretending to be someone else.

Knauf is a mercenary sniper who was the main character in the first graphic novel set in the Infinity universe. He's an interesting alternative to taking the Epsilon Sniper. He only has a Level 1 Multispectral Visor so isn't quite as good at dealing with smoke and high Mimetism. But instead, he gains an extra burst (and Shock) on his shooting attacks, meaning he's much more reliable at taking out mid ranged threats.

Finally, there's Casanova, NOC Operative. He's a forward deploying character with Mimetism -6, No Wound Incapacitation and Immunity (Shock), but no Camouflage. This means he's able to look after himself but is still quite vulnerable to warbands and other cheap template weapon troops. He's definitely not a model to take without support, as he probably needs some Mad Traps or other similar gear to protect him until he gets to act.

Next up, the Lambda units, the generic Doctor and Engineer units for O-12 with their Yudbots. They are both WIP 14, so a little better than the average specialist. I try and take a doctor and engineer in most of my lists, but I am noticing a lot of people don't bother to do so. I might give that a go in my list building but I really like being able to fix things if a model gets unlucky.

This is the O-12 Booster Pack Alpha. It consists of a Lynx, a Razor, and Psi-COp.

The Lynx is a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model that doesn't have any deployment skill so starts in the deployment zone. This profile has a MULTI Sniper Rifle, so is a long range attack piece that can either surprise a model out of position during the opponent's turn, or go on an attack run during your own.

The Razor is also a Hidden Deployment, Mimetism -6 model, but instead has Infiltration. This leaves him with a different role to the Lynx - either as a midfield specialist, or a midfield hunter who waits for the opponent's attack pieces to pass them while they're hidden before emerging to cause some damage. Given the specialists can also do the latter, I suspect I'm more likely to take the specialist profiles more often than not.

Finally, we have the Psi-COp. This is an intelligence unit in the universe background, and this model is the Hacker profile. With a high BTS, they're really quite survivable. While they cost twice the points of the Kappa Hacker, that survivability could be quite useful. I'm pretty sure I'll end up swapping between the two profiles while list building depending on what points I have left over. The Psi-COp is also a Wildcard model in Starmada, so gives a good flexible option during fireteam construction.

Remotes are a really important toolbox for almost all Infinity lists. You'll notice there's a significant difference in how light the two models are at this stage - this is a definite downside of spray can zenithals as you get some variation. A bit of tidy up with drybrushing will bring them back in line, I'm sure.

Here we have a Peeler Copperbot and an Oko Copperbot. The Peeler has a Heavy Machine Gun and Total Reaction, making it a key defensive piece, particularly to hold off light troops or warbands. The Oko is what's commonly called a Sensor-bot, with a package of specialist support skills and equipment, including Forward Observer, making it a fast moving specialist. These remotes have also been given a free upgrade during the current tournament season (ITS 14).

Finally, we have this big lad. The Gamma is a large heavy infantry who is a bullet spewing equivalent of a half brick in a sock. He's got a bucket of armour and a big gun.

This model is from the Defiance Outcast expansion, and isn't available any more. You can get a Gamma Feuerbach in the O-12 Action Pack. That's an excellent anti-armour gun that can put a serious hole in some of the more heavily armoured units. This model instead comes with the Heavy Machine Gun, which while high damage, will struggle to get through high armour in cover, and instead does better at winning firefights against light or medium armoured troops. It's an excellent tool for clearing reaction pieces (such a Total Reaction remotes) with violent weight of fire.

I hope you found this all interesting. I'm getting quite excited about starting to understand how to play O-12, but I'm a little way off having a painted force just yet. The next thing you're likely to see is the test models crossing my paint desk, and hopefully once that's done I'll be able to get to a playable force relatively quickly.

Heresy Work in Progress, Disappointment and Getting Boring Tasks Done

 

I've now settled on the colour scheme for my Alpha Legion. It's following a Warhammer TV tutorial, with metal base, then a coat of Gryph-Charger Grey over everything, then blocking in the panels with Akhelian Green. I started trying an alternative scheme using Kroxigor Scales to block in the panels but it was far too green for my liking, so I stuck with this option.

Also, I was an idiot for fully assembling this miniature. Base coating the cloak was an absolute nightmare. I'm now going to drop in the rest of the colours to get him finish off, then move on to the Terminator.

The bases, however, I'm not loving. The crackle paint isn't as robust as I'd like, and the colours I've gone for just aren't appealing to me. I'm going to base up a whole bunch of 25mm bases and blitz a ton of colour options until I see one I like.

I was hoping to get out for my first game of 9th edition 40K, but a combination of circumstances including not being able to find one of my Deathwatch cases from where its been tidied to meant we called it off for now. It's frustrating, but it's highlighted to me how much there is still to do at the flat.

I've also started on the not at all photogenic job of tidying up the black undercoats on all the remaining O-12 I have that aren't ready for paint yet. There's a lot of half finished jobs lying around I'd like to finish up before the end of the year if I can, and this is one of the biggest.

Work in Progress Wednesday - An Errant O-12 Kappa

 

Slightly separate from the big Combined Army push, here's an errant O-12 Kappa from the Vallejo paint set. He ended up getting assembled alongside a whole bunch of aliens.

I'm definitely thinking of having a bit of a blitz of the O-12 I've got, maybe early next year after the Shasvastii are done...

Work in Progress Wednesday - Starmada

When N4 came out, I picked up the "Starmada Action Pack", as it was on my 'to buy' list anyway, and getting it in a bundle got me an extra miniature for free. Starmada are a sub-faction of O-12. They're an odd mix of units all told, missing mid-field camouflage which is a major tool for a lot of forces. I'm not sure if I'll play Starmada much, but I can also play their units in O-12.

The Lawkeeper is an awesome looking bike unit and a big motivator towards getting the box. I mean, basically it looks really cool, right?

Then we have three special weapons options for the Kappa units. The Sniper and HMG are the heavy weapons options you'll want in a fireteam, and the Hacker is a good cheap hacking option.

The Crushers are a naval demolition team. You can either take them as drop troops or a forward deploying unit, and the box comes with one of each option. They're all Forward Observers, meaning they count as specialists for missions, while also being quite shooty.

The Bluecoats are Naval Security units. They're good at spotting hidden units, are hard to surprise, and they get an interesting selection of weapons. In Starmada, they also get to join in with Kappas.

The Bronzes are a new heavy infantry option, and I'm just not quite sure what they're for? They're incredibly tough, tanky units, but simply don't have particularly powerful guns. You'd normally expect Heavy Machine Guns and so on, but it's mostly shotguns and rifles, with one light support weapon option.

Finally, Saladin can be taken by O-12 as well as Haqqislam. He's a machine intelligence grown to try and recreate Saladin's skills and personalities by an AI, installed into a cloned body. He's an excellent command option, but a bit obvious so could be open to assassination runs. He looks like he'll be a lovely model to paint, too.