More Infinite HATE: Infinity Battle Report vs Neoterrans

I recently pottered down to HATE again to get a game of Infinity again. This time the mission was Frontline, and my opponent was playing the Neoterran Capitaline Army.

I placed my HVT in a nicely awkward spot behind a storage container, with a Hidden Deployment Spektr next to her. He was a forward observer, in case I needed an extra specialist up there.

On the left flank, we had my Mobile Brigada Lieutenant, a Grenzer Sniper, in a much less aggressive but no less annoying position, and the ever awkward Pi-Well.

The right flank was mostly intended as area denial on my HVT - an Interventor with Killer Hacking Device and Lunokhod Sputnik should be quite capable of stopping anyone getting too close.

The Neoterrans dropped some horrible forward deploying remote with an Auxbot way too close to my Camo Prowler for me to be happy. (His bot is in the top left quarter, by the pedestrian crossing, while the Prowler skulks on the left hand side of the shipping container directly below that.)

To counter, I dropped in my Total Reaction remote half behind a shipping container, with a clear view of the PanO remote. I also had a camo token up on the roof of the building in the centre, in an awesome sniping position. The camo token was actually a mine, dropped by the Zero hiding in the big square room to the north.

After a lot of nervous shuffling, the Bolt link team opened up on the TRBot, successfully taking it out.

This frees up the PanO bot to start a murderous rampage, starting off by flaming my Prowler. I declare an Engage as getting into close combat with it is probably my best chance of stopping those brutal flamethower shots from turning me to mush.

And here's a positioning mistake veteran players will recognise - Pi-Well is too close to the Prowler, and in a straight line, so will get caught by the flame, failing his dodge and losing his ODD (although he passed his armour roll!).

Complete rookie mistake - I place the Prowler facing towards my lines for no good reason, thinking that it's close combat and it doesn't matter. The PanO bot tries to walk away, the Prowler goes to smack it and messes it up, getting Electric Pulsed and immobilised with his back to the entire PanO link team.

The only redeeming moment is that someone gets in a lucky shot and takes out the AuxBot. The main remote continues on to try and take out the Mobile Brigada (I found out later he'd correctly guessed my Lieutenant), but fortunately, a lucky face to face roll has the Brigada put a nice big hole in the bot, on the far side of the board to the PanO Machinist.

Having discovered the "sniper" is in fact a mine, and wasted a bunch of orders trying to move around it before discovering the truth, the Bolt link team introduce me to the fun of "Drop Bear" thrown mines, leaving a bunch of the board inaccessible to me until the mine is dealt with.

And finally, a couple of bots and the machinist head up the field towards the HVT. One of the two is an EVO Hacker remote. I immediately get very tempted to try out this new Killer Hacking Device I have burning a hole in my list...

My turn starts in a pretty dull fashion (so no pictures) with my Grenzer nosing around a corner and drilling some holes into the TR bot on the far side of the board (up in the top right corner, for those following along at home). I also have my Engineer run back to the TRBot and get it back up and working, much to my opponent's dismay...

The Killer Hacker Interventor then throws up a Cybermask, runs up to next to the HVT, and helpfully drops out a Fast Panda. The new hacking programmes feel like selecting from a menu where everything is delicious, and I eventually settle on Red Rum.

It seems this is an excellent choice, as the EVO Hacker takes so much damage from the hacking programme that it melts into scrap, through it's extra unconscious levels to dead - and no chance for the Machinist to repair it!

PanO turn two... A Bolt with missile launcher carefully edges into position... (The PanO HVT is nestled up in the corner of those boxes, so pretty much unreachable.)

And down goes my TR bot, for good this time.

For reference: Don't just set up your Engineer out of blast radius of your bots - don't leave them there after they've patched them up, either!

(At this point, my objective of completing an Engineering roll on the HVT becomes impossible, as I hadn't brought a doctor.)

The link team then wake up and go murder the Prowler just as he's coming around.

Then the Machinist makes a brave run across the table to repair the PanO bot to injure, then finally take out my Lieutenant...

After the loss of Lieutenant turn, I take more of a pounding, losing more and more models. I manage to run the Lunokhod up the field to cause a bit of damage and try and score some points, but the Spektr gets unlucky and goes down, meaning a loss to me...

Key learning points

• Remember to be careful about model facing, even when you think it's not important
• When healing or repairing models, remember to step away again, doubly so when you know your opponent has a missile launcher
• Start working out some better offensive plans to actually kill things - dirty tricks and defence is solid, but being ground down in the casualty exchange!

Infinity Battle Report: Nomads vs PanO

In which the author has trouble booking a table at his usual venue, attends a gaming club for the first time, and roundly gets his teeth kicked in because he hasn't played Infinity for a year...

With my Infinity figures conveniently assembled and undercoated by someone else, it was time to remind myself how this blasted game works. I laid down a challenge on my local gaming store board, received acceptance and arranged a nice 300 point Annihilation mission just to remind myself how all this stuff works. Sadly, my local gaming store is doing really well and is getting all its tables booked out in plenty of time, so I couldn't get a booking. Then HATE (Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts) had venue issues of their own causing them to move to a Tuesday, and my opponent and I changed venues.

HATE is held at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. It was very welcoming, and a little less busy than usual due to the late change of date.

We set up a pretty typical battlefield - with a mix of my scenery, my opponent's scenery and the club's scenery. My opponent won the initial willpower roll and chose his table side and that I would deploy first, and I in turn chose to go first. My side was the side at the bottom of the photo.

I deployed an invisible Spektr Forward Observer on the walkways in the middle of the battlefield. For those who don't play Infinity, I took this photo to prove to my opponent where the model was, but he didn't get to know where the model was!

On my right flank, a Vertigo Zond, Grenzer Sniper and Reverend Healer on the roof (with the healer lying down so she didn't get shot). An Interventor hid behind the shipping crate and an Alguacile by the remote.

Meanwhile on the left flank, Zoe and Pi-Well hid down the side of a building, behind the Lunokhod Sputnik. A Warcor stood openly on the roof, while my lieutenant, an Alguacile, hid behind the building by the stairwell.

My opponent had an Aquila HMG on the building at the bottom of the picture, with a doctor hiding around the corner. With a mechanised deployment, a Peacemaker Armbot deployed forward behind  the green silo with its companion robot. Further back was a baggage bot, an engineer and some other bits and pieces.

 So, the first thing I needed to do something about was the Aquila Guard HMG. I started off by having my Interventor drop White Noise - the plan was to then use my sniper rifle to take him out, but I totally forgot that the Grenzr has a visor himself, so was also blinded.

The waste of orders was annoying! I also left my Interventor standing out in the open as I forgot about her, causing her to get cut down the following turn, along with the sniper. I revealed my Spektr, who successfully targetted the Aquila Guard, but at the cost of being shot to pieces. I wounded the Guard with a guided missile, but didn't manage to get further - I used a free order to take out the Peacemaker, which I'd also managed to target before it got blown up.

The Peacemaker was then repaired by an engineering bot. My Zero Forward Observer then took speculative fire from a flamethrower. It went badly.

In my turn, I healed up my Grenzr sniper and shot down the Aquila Guard. He was healed up, then finally shot down and killed by the end of the game.

However, my game fell apart as a Cutter TAG revealed itself and rampaged up the field. My best chance was to get the Lunokhod to disrupt it's advance, but it managed to work its way around the Crazy Koalas, shoot them to bits, and storm down the field taking out everything.

In the end, the Warcor and the Lieutenant were the only survivors. The final score was a 9-1 loss. Hopefully a few reports of "unnecessary PanO aggression" might help morale in the face of this awful defeat!

Post Mortem

I was lacking in heavy hitters. I need something with a bit more punch to deal with threats like serious stuff like heavy infantry and TAGs. For now, I'm going to hold off and wait on Human Sphere to come out before I make any purchasing decisions...
 

TRO's Infinity Week: Battle Report 2: Nomads vs PanOceania

So, those of you who read yesterday's post will know that my first experience of Infinity translated as "don't stand in the open and get shot".

That vital learning experience in mind, I grabbed a list that I'd actually put together as a much earlier draft than my final list, to see how that worked.

 INTERVENTOR Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 26)
 CHIMERA Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Zero-V Smoke Grenades / Viral CCW. (24)
 3x PUPNIK DA CCW.
 REAKTION ZOND HMG, Antipersonnel Mines / Electric Pulse. (1 | 28)
 ZERO MULTI Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32)
 INTRUDER Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower, Grenades / Pistol, CCW. (36)

Again, list courtesy of the Infinity Army Builder. Enter the code below if you want to see more details:

eNozNVRVNTQxUzVWNTZWM1IzrDG0VDMEwjwjK+MaI3MQu8bQFCxjBuKolpkAABDdCvg=

This list retains the Chimera and Pupniks, which I adore the models for and want to use if I do start buying Infinity models.

I'd wanted to try a remote (cute robots), which the Nomads call Zonds. The Reaktion Zond is a cute little bot that's designed as a defence unit - it is really really good at shooting people who are running around in front of it. I also assumed it would be a bit tougher than a person, but looking at its stats now, it's really squishy, and just survives by machine gunning anything that looks at it funny.

In order to take adorable robots, you need a Hacker or a TAG (Mecha), and given the points value, TAGs were right out, so I took a Hacker, and given the available points, made them my Lieutenant as well. As the Intruder Sniper is super expensive, I compromised on a Zero Sniper, and took a very basically armed Intruder. Both of these models have Camo, and the Zero can infiltrate, which is a New And Interesting Thing.

So, this time around I went for a smarter plan. I won first turn, had to deploy first, so placed my machine gunning little robot in an open, elevated spot on the left. He may be hard to spot as it was a borrowed, only undercoated model from my opponent, but he is there. It's not in game Camo this time!

The crazy close combat team got put in front of the wall to make a mad dash for the building in the centre to give them some cover, with the Lieutenant happily cowering behind the wall. The Intruder I held back, and because the Zero infiltrates, I got to hold him back too!

Opponent's deployment complete, I put my basic Intruder with the Lieutenant to give him some extra firepower.

The Zero with the sniper rifle . . . now, I get a bit smart. He has mines as well, so I don't put him somewhere you'd expect a sniper rifle to be. The plan here is to advance my assault team past his position with him putting mines down to cover their assault, before he sneaks into a good mid or late game firing position.

Interestingly, the Reaktion Zond does it's job, and my opponent drops a cautious deployment on his left flank away from the bullet spitting defence bot. This is pretty much where I want to advance Team Stabby, so I'm pretty happy with that.

So, Team Stabby peg it forward, and use their claws to climb up the side of the building and in through the window. I then use some extra orders to have their squad leader head forward and drop a smoke grenade onto the bridge.

My Zero then heads forward and lays a mine on the corner of the Bridge to cover anyone sneaking up that way. My Hacker and Intruder make their way up to the back of the building.

This is nearly a mistake, as the following turn, the drone and handler you see top right made a run down the corridor to try and put a great big hole in my hacker, who my opponent suspects may be my Lieutenant.

This is the aftermath. The flamethrower drone mis-judges its route trying to stay out of range of being hacked and ambles into the line of sight of the Reaktion Zond and is filled full of holes very effectively. Its handler decides to try and do the job properly and rounds the corner to point blank the hacker, who turns and neatly drops a shot between his eyes and kills him dead.

I hold my impetuous irregulars back this turn, squandering an order to stop them charging into the open past the dispersed smoke grenades. I fired off some more smoke. And missed. And missed again. You can't quite see it, but there's a flame thrower remote sitting by the door of the building just off camera at the top left, so they really, really don't want to go that way.

Instead, I have them scamper down the side of the building and hide in the smoke. As a note, I later realised that smoke disperses at the end of my turn, so we got this a bit wrong, but it didn't really change the result.

Turns out the robots have a trick that lets them fire blind anyway. Flame-throwers on exposed troops hurts!

I'm pretty sure I can take out the remaining robot with my Intruder, who has advanced up while Team Stabby have been being a distraction by being shot in the face.

Yup. But it seems my Intruder misjudged how far Camo gets you around open spaces! My sniper finally unmasks to put a wound on that pesky knight who is lurking around.

He decides to return the favour by sneaking around into the building and putting a great big hole in my sniper. To end the game, my Zond shuffles to the side to get a good line on the knight, and opens up with the machine gun, putting him down, finally.

We called the game at this point as it was getting late, and the few surviving models on both sides were miles from each other, with few orders on either side to really get much done. My opponent graciously said I had the moral win given the value of the points left alive on both sides.

My (somewhat dubious) honour is restored!

A huge thank you to my opponent (who is also the chap I played at Malifaux a while back). Some people may think it rude I'm not addressing him by name, but I don't give names on the blog unless I've asked, and I didn't think to in this case. He was courteous, helpful, and gave me a ton of good advice on how to get better at playing Infinity.

TRO's Infinity Week: Battle Report 1: Nomads vs PanOceania

Last week, I was lucky enough to find someone on the Dark Sphere Facebook group who was willing to offer me a demo game of Infinity. Having done a little bit of internet research, and based off some recommendations of the other Infinity players, I came up with the following list.

 SECURITATE Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (23)
 SECURITATE HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 28)
 INTRUDER (X Visor) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 52)
 CHIMERA Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Zero-V Smoke Grenades / Viral CCW. (24)
 3x PUPNIK DA CCW.
 MODERATOR Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 14)
 MODERATOR Combi Rifle / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (9)

 3 SWC | 150 Points

Infinity has an online army builder for all the available factions, and while it's not very intuitive, it is free! You can see it in more detail if you copy and paste the army code below into the builder.

eNozNVRVNTQ1UDVWNVIzUzOsMVIzApJmYLahpZohEOYZWRnXmKgZA0VMQAKqZSYANOALvw==

The idea here was that the Securitate with the Heavy Machine Gun would lay down some covering fire, while the Intruder with the MULTI Sniper Rifle would dominate any open ground. Meanwhile, the Chimera and the Pupniks would advance through cover to try and stab people in the face, with the Moderators mostly making up points and providing some extra orders.

This was the battlefield we set up. Given that I have no idea what I'm doing, we agreed it was just trying to shoot each other up a lot. My opponent won the roll for first turn, and set up first. I then set up second.

You'll notice I'm not using Infinity figures. I'm playing some "counts as" games with proxy models while I learn the system. The Storm Trooper on the right is the Securitate with the HMG, set up in some cover to lay down some covering fire. The other Storm Trooper is the Securitate Lieutenant. The Beastman is the Chimera and the three Guardsmen with it are the Pupniks.

Just so not everything was on the right flank, the two Moderators occupied the left.

On his right flank, a single grunt trooper was in the canyon. His religious knight and some security guy who has a pet drone with a flame thrower hid behind the building.

On his left flank, a bunch of troopers lay prone in the rocky outcrop, while his other guy with a flame thrower robot were placed to flank me.

Each side gets to hold back one model to place last. In my case, it was the Intruder Sniper. Because he has technological camouflage, the model isn't placed, but a token is instead.

The skirmish started with his sniper opening up...

Which cost me my machine gunner.

The knight advances into the building, is spotted by the Moderator with the grenade launcher, but the shot misses!

... and he pays the price.

Within moments, the advancing knight has dispatched his colleague, too.

The knight then took up position (at the doorway to the red bridge) overlooking the remaining troops.

(All of that was one PanOceania turn!)

In my turn, the Chimera and Pupniks have to advance as they are Impetuous, and that costs them a Pupnik in the advance, but some smoke does get laid down.

Unfortunately, the flame thrower bot comes over to play, leaving me with no Chimera or Pupnik survivors...

Here you can see its operator, sneaking around a bit further back, out of danger.

Using the smoke, its able to advance, taking out the sniper, at which point the game was called - definitely a win for PanOceania.

This definitely shows that playing Infinity is very different to Warhammer 40K. The lethality of the weapons, even if you're in cover, can play merry hell with your plans as losing models loses you orders (actions for your models) too.

As this game had finished so early, we agreed to play a second game, with me picking a different list for my second attempt.