Learning Infinity N4 - Shasvastii Starting Point

So, I've been using Tabletop Simulator to play some games of Infinity, and am starting to get to the point where I'm happy with some of the lists I'm now writing. I thought I'd take a moment to talk about this list and how it comes about.

Infinity can change drastically depending on the mission you're playing, but most missions fall into one of three categories: Push Buttons, Control Territory and Kill The Other Side. This mission is intended to focus on the first two types of missions.

The list has a strong ARO presence - the Q-Drone gets four shots in my opponent's turn, and the Noctifer can start in Hidden Deployment (I get to write down where it's deployed rather than place the model on the table), meaning it can get a shot when my opponent is at a serious disadvantage as I get to choose when it shows itself.

The Shrouded Minelayer and Seed Soldier get to deploy in the middle of the field and are placed to slow the enemy attack or possibly counter attack if left alive. The two Shrouded Hackers, meanwhile, have the job of pushing buttons and doing specialist things, although they can also do a mischief to my opponent's advance with their hacking.

If I'm going first, the Speculo is making an attack run to disrupt my opponent, if I'm going second she's placed in the most awkward spot possible to try and make my opponent spend their first turn killing her, not playing the mission.

The Caliban is a dangerous short ranged attack piece who can swing into button pushing if needed. The Flash Pulse from being a Forward Observer means he has a longer ranged ARO if I need something with a bit more reach than a shotgun.

The Taigha are cheap moving expendable shmucks to be used as problem solving wherever needed. Everything else is there to provide orders for people doing the work.

I like a few things about this list so far. It has a strong ARO presence that means I can cause my opponent to spend quite a few orders dealing with threats. The strong midfield camouflage also helps hold up advances and gives me options.

On the other hand, I think it needs another offensive gun. It probably doesn't need a Shrouded Killer Hacker as well as a Hacker, and the Speculo Minelayer broadly seems to be overkill. So my next step will probably be downgrading those units to try and find the points for some sort of heavier attack piece to add a bit more offensive punch.

The trick with Infinity is to not change everything at once. I've got a strong basis for a list here that isn't quite perfect yet. Rather than changing everything, swapping out two or three models but keeping the core of the list "as is" gives me a much better comparison for what suits my playstyle.

On the Impact of a New Infinity Classified Deck

Corvus Belli, who make Infinity, run an Elo rated tournament season from September to August each year. We've just hit Season 10, and with the new Season has come an updated Classified Deck. These are secondary missions you secretly select for many of the game's missions, scoring you assorted points. It was introduced with the 3rd edition of the game, and with the lessons they've learned since the start of the new season, it's undergone a pretty significant overhaul.

The first obvious change is that it's now two decks of twenty cards, with twenty different missions. Before, it was one deck of forty with four sets of ten missions. You can read a summary of the misssions in the Season 10 ITS pack, available from the downloads page of the Infinity website, but it doesn't contain enough information to fully use the deck.

The second deck, in red, is a new "extreme" deck where the missions are harder to complete. This is simply a different option, but it will change the decision making process about whether your chase the points for the classifieds or the main mission.

When going through the new ITS missions, we saw a couple of comments like those above - which relate to symbols on the card.

There is some level of theming to these - the one that looks like a medic's cross are usually doctor's missions, for example. I've not worked out all of the themes, though, so I've not yet worked out if there's a particular reason for the extra rules. I suspect it's intended to be a flavour thing over a competitive thing - encouraging the taking of cards that suit the theme of the mission.

I was never hugely sure about "Intelcom" - which were used for a variety of things including cancelling a model's effect on scoring or scoring some points towards control zones. The former hasn't really changed, but the latter sort of has.

With the reduction to 20 cards from 40, the numbers on the cards, used as a points substitute, have a much smaller effect. A card in the mid 30s or even the 40 could hugely sway a game as you had to be really strongly winning to have a chance of holding off a card. Now, a maximum swing of 20 points rather than 40 leaves it still potentially strong, but not quite as overpowering based on a lucky card.

Finally, the number of classified missions have risen from 10 to 20. While some still rely on specialists, others require on troop types, troop classifications, certain equipment or even close combat kills. This means that if you want to be comfortable achieving any classified you draw, you will need to think a lot more about list composition and, in theory, take a more balanced list.

All in all, I'm in favour of the new Classified Deck. Some people don't like the randomness when both players get missions that are of varying difficulty for them to achieve, but it's not a huge number of points, and Securing the HVT on the field remains a viable option for builds that are bad at Classified Missions. The greater variety also means that you can build towards those cards that don't require specialists if that's not your army's strength, and still have a chance of getting missions that suit your build.

I'm not sure of the viability of or buy to of the "Extreme" classifieds. Outside of the Highly Classified mission, where all points scored go from the deck, most missions only have one or two points coming from the deck. I suppose it actually favours those who aren't in favour of Classifieds, as by making them all significantly harder, you're reducing the chance of people spending the time completing them, meaning more emphasis is given to the main parts of the mission.

At the time of writing, I've only played one game using the new Classified missions, so can't really advise on completing them - but I hope my first thoughts on how they may impact the game are of interest to people.

Dealing with "Screamer-Star"

So, those of you who follow "the meta" of 40K will have heard a little about a particularly horrible build called "The Screamer Star".

For those of you who don't follow what particular finest cheese people are working on at the moment, the build works as follows:

- Take a massive unit of Tzeentch Screamers
- Take Fateweaver
- Take four Tzeentch heralds on discs
- The heralds all try and get the Demonic Reward called the Grimoire
- Take lots of divination magic

These all combine together to end up with the Screamers gaining a 4+ invulnerable save, which the Grimoire then adds a +2 to result in a 2+ invulnerable save - and Tzeentch demons get to re-roll and saves which roll a 1. In short, a very fast 2+ invulnerable save unit which re-rolls the 1s.

This is something which people have been having a lot of trouble dealing with, unsurprisingly. In general, people have been looking at:

• Sniping out the guy with the Grimoire
• Waiting for the turn when the Grimoire reduces the save instead of increasing (unlikely, due to Fateweaver's reroll)
• Shoot Fateweaver in the face to increase the risk of the Grimoire failing
• Putting a tough resilient unit into close combat with the Screamers to tie them up for as long as possible

So, I started wondering how else you could murder them dead. I worked out if volume of fire could do it. Well, it would take 144 lasgun shots using "First Rank Fire" to take down a fully buffed up Screamer, and 1,296 to take out a full unit. So . . . that won't work.

I then remembered the Grey Knight Banisher, who is a Henchman who forces any demon within 6" to re-roll their successful save. Yes, there are some challenges in getting him in place. But that would take it down to 24 lasguns per Screamer - much more achievable for the Guard. Why so good? Because of the rule on Page 5 which states that no-one can be allowed to re-roll, no matter the source. If the demons re-roll their successful save, they can't then re-roll it a second time..

What I'm curious about is if there are any other, more commonly available powers which also force re-rolls of successful saves. Anyone got any ideas?

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines

I have just realised how behind I am on my battle reports. I have three queued up to go, and I'm planning to go fight another battle tomorrow at Dark Sphere's 40K night (I'm writing this on a Tuesday evening).

This is from a battle I had against Chaos Space Marines with Traitor Guard allies. We had rolled up Big Guns Never Tire. I was experimenting with taking the brave and noble Captain Al'Rahem. My list was pretty standard for me, with a big platoon, some veterans, a couple of Leman Russ tanks and a Valkyrie.

The other player had a few squads of Chaos Marines, a flying demon Prince, some Chaos Terminators and a Defiler. He then had an allied psyker, veteran squad and a Valkyrie.

The early battle involved me being beaten brutally about the head by the demon prince - murdering my command HQ to death, in particular.

In the centre, my Veterans jump out of the back of a Valkyrie and murder to death a Chaos Marine squad holding one of the objectives. His Valkyrie, having dropped off his Guardsmen, starts pursuing mine with the aim of shooting it down.

Al'Rahem and his platoon rock up from outflank and between them and a Demolisher, turn the Defiler to a small smoking crater.

On the right flank, a Leman Russ encourages his Marines to stay in cover and do very little.

Meanwhile, his demon prince bears down on the Veterans to seek a bloody vengeance for the destruction of the Chaos Marine squad. This was also the hilarious moment his demon prince threw psychic lightning at the Veterans, and the telekinetic dome caused it to ricochet off the Veterans and knock a hull point off his Valkyrie.

It then all got a bit frantic on the left flank. Al'Rahem's squad got out of the Chimera, successfully used Like the Wind and melta gunned the Terminators to death before ducking back behind their Chimera. The infantry platoon caught the Traitor veterans in the open and gunned them down

The flying demon prince swept across the table in an attempt to deal with the mass of guardsmen bearing down on his flank.

A slightly blurry shot shows my Demolisher trying very hard to be inconspicuous away from the demon prince.

His Valkyrie went into hover mode in a desperate attempt to deal with the Demolisher a little too late (it survived the game, remarkably, although it was immobilised)...

The demon Prince managed to destroy the Chimera, and shortly after this last shot was taken, cut down Al'Rahem and his squad - I don't recall if it made it through the game in the end, but I was holding enough objectives to scrape a win!

This was my first introduction to flying psychic monstrous creatures, but it was not to be my last. They are incredibly dangerous this edition, and are now making my list of "things a list needs to be able to deal with".

Imperial Guard vs Ravenwing and Mephiston Battle Report

A week or two ago, I managed to get back into going down to Dark Sphere to get some 40K going again. Our local Ravenwing player was (as far as I remember) basically undefeated at this point, so I decided to see how bad it was.

The slow grow was up to 1,000 points at this point. His list consisted of Sammael, a Ravenwing Command Squad with the banner of giving bolters Salvo, a few Ravenwing squads, and an allied contingent of Mephiston and five Blood Angels assault marines with practically no kit.

We got the fortress board for our game, which was build for an apocalypse game at Dark Sphere. It is wired for its street lights to turn on, but we decided that was a bit much. Since the apocalypse game, a few more walkways and stairs have been added to improve the ability to move about it, although these are still in need of painting. We also added a bit more scatter terrain of barricades and similar.

We got diagonal deployment and two objectives, one in each deployment zone. You may just be able to pick out mine in the first photo, if you look above the weapon team next to the Chimera.

My list was a lightly equipped command squad, basic infantry platoon with the command squad in a Chimera, the Demo-Vets, a Hydra, a Demolisher and my Hellhound proxying at being a Bane Wolf to see how well that does against Space Marines. I held a few Storm Troopers in reserve.

The battle opened with the Ravenwing gunning my commander down to get First Blood and Slay the Warlord. In response, I helpfully threw a demolition charge at Sammael, along with an assortment of other pie plates and brutal shooting.

This caused significantly more casualties than expected, and hilariously led to some of the Ravenwing breaking and running due to my opponent's inability to roll anything under 11.

Unfortunately the counter attack was brutal. Mephiston charged across the bridge to slaughter the Veterans.

While a Ravenwing squad charged the troops in the underpass.

The slaughter was massive, as they broke, run, and were cut down.

The Storm Troopers arrived, and, to their credit, gunned down a Ravenwing squad in revenge.

Although they were rather exposed due to their deep strike scatter.

The Bane Wolf demonstrated to the Blood Angels why hiding in a line behind cover doesn't work when people have AP3 template weapons that ignore cover...

And then gleefully ran over Mephiston in a tank shock as my opponent, now sure of victory, decided that it was worth trying to go for Death or Glory for the amusement value if nothing else.

The rest of the Ravenwing had retreated back out of line of sight due to the brutal firepower of the Guard tanks, but without me having any infantry left (the Chimera in that shot is wrecked, and the command squad cut down by Sammael), I could claim no objectives.

We called it at this point after a couple more rounds of me shooting Sammael, as the Ravenwing had 2 Victory points already, I could only get 1 for Slay the Warlord, and in end game he'd be able to move Ravenwing up onto his objective and weather a bit of fire from the tanks.

Learning Experiences

• Don't deploy your Warlord anywhere that your opponent can comfortably gain two victory points from you in the first turn
• Ravenwing are really, really fast. Don't deploy in such a way that they can pick you off a unit at a time.
• Guard can't do close combat. That does mean that if your opponent can he will try and get into close combat. Plan for that, and don't look surprised when you get assaulted.
• Sammael tanking for a Ravenwing squad is a valid tactic and does work. Either limit his movement through board denial, and concentrate on the other squads, or find some firepower that will murder him dead.

A lot of this does sound pretty basic, but I've not been playing in over a month, so clearly I needed to start at those basics and work up...

(And yes, Mephiston and Sammael in a buddy-cop army list is horrific, but the player did have an alternative, softer list and I did say I didn't mind him going for this option. Don't internet hate him too much...)

Some early lessons about Imperial Guard in 6th

So, I've now had a few games of 6th edition, and an apocalypse game, so I thought I'd take a moment to run through my general thoughts on what I've observed so far...

• 1000 points is very different to 1500 points! That should go without saying, but the balance of what you can take and what is worth taking is fundamentally very different, especially if you're dealing with a multiple objective mission.

• Feel No Pain (ie: Medi packs) is still a huge help in keeping squads alive, and the reduction to a 5+ doesn't hugely outweigh the reduction in what it protects against - although with T3 Guard, it's not super awesome.

• I'm yet to draw any useful conclusions on psykers yet.

• Ogryns can punch tanks to death. They also take a remarkable amount of fire compared to Guard infantry. Who knew?

• Ratlings are immensely useful and awesome.

• Storm Trooper deep striking has potential, but I need to get better at placing.

• I do not have enough Troops choices painted. When I put together 3,500 of Guard, with only two troop choices? Something is wrong. Troops need to move up my painting schedule!

• Don't leave space for Deep Strikes

• Demolitions Veterans remain awesome.

• Sentinels work better when you remember to take them out of the army carry case.

• Rough Riders are faster, have a greater threat range, but remain as fragile and short lived as ever. They are only as tough as infantry, and after the initial strike are very vulnerable.

• Fliers need some getting used to.

• I've not seen much benefit from anti infantry fliers so far - need to try out anti tank ones.

• I had failed to spot the rule about taking a dangerous terrain check when you jump out of a Valkyrie and scatter. It makes it riskier, but its still a hugely beneficial boost to movement.

• Hydras do not rock as hard as they used to.

• Leman Russ do die easier than before, but are still a pain to take down.

• Manticores need to work in concert with other firepower to take out enemy armour, as they are mostly trimming hull points now, not wrecking multiple tanks.

These are just my personal observations, and your own experiences may vary. All I can re-emphasise is to keep on playing games and trying things out!

Friendly fire report form

To: Segmentum Tempestus High Command
From: Captain Rafiq, Tallarn XVI
Date: 7835912.M41
Theatre: Laxus Sector
Planet: Lambum Obscurum

5th Platoon of my company was ordered to advance into no man's land with heavy support from the available armoured units. I was doing as ordered and was on schedule when my forces were engaged by an unknown force of power armoured marines. I have since been informed that the warriors in question are actually a loyalist chapter called the "Sons of Tyr".

I am afraid that I cannot give much of an account of the incident myself as the first action of the matter was a perfectly timed and executed decapitation strike by drop pod on my position. Despite the heroic efforts of my seconded medical officer (whose name I have forgotten, but I would wish to recommend for a posthumous award of some kind - can someone senior pick something appropriate?), I was rendered unconscious by a hail of bolt gun shells.

The medical recovery teams have done an excellent job, and my force only took 97% fatalities from the 100% casualties inflicted by the excellently co-ordinated assault of the Sons of Tyr. Apart from whoever was responsible for their briefing, I would commend them as an excellent force to face the vile renegades and xenos we face in this sector.

I shall forward the requisition for further secondment of troops to my company, additional armoured support and specialist troops under separate cover once I have recovered. Once again, my heartiest complements to the medical staff who tell me that I will be back on active duty shortly, with only a few more bionics.

Report ends.

Administratum additional report into loss of war materiel
To be appended to friendly fire report form
Restricted access: Not for viewing by field officers
To: Segmentum Tempestus High Command

From: Administratum Investigative Clerk, Count Karl Bolt
Date: 7836912.M41
Theatre: Laxus Sector
Planet: Lambum Obscurum

Once again, I find myself writing an investigative report into Captain Rafiq's loss of another platoon. To the dismay of many, the investigations have found that this loss is genuinely not his fault - unlike the platoons lost to his 'disagreement' with a Wolf Lord of the Space Wolves Chapter, which has led to the sector wide prohibitions about engaging in drinking games and / or insult contests with members of that Chapter for officers of the Imperial Guard, stemming from the unfortunate 'cultural exchange' incident that has led to Captain Rafiq being constantly "accidentally" attacked by members of the Space Wolves.

The Sons of Tyr, a successor chapter to the Raven Guard, with strong stylistic similarities to the Space Wolf chapter, engaged the Tallarn XVI on the mistaken belief that they were renegades. The Librarian who led their force has been exonerated as it appears that a enumerator servitor made an error in transposing the co-ordinates for both the Tallarn XVI and the Sons of Tyr's assaults into no man's land.

It is unclear whether this is due to one of Captain Rafiq's many, many enemies among the Imperium acting in a treacherous manner, hostile enemy action infiltrating the command chain, or simple technical error.

The influence of Captain Rafiq's father means that the matter will, as usual, be quietly dropped. Please fill in the usual forms and complete the necessary requisitions to get him back out onto the front line as quickly as possible, and hopefully he will be a little less lucky next time.

Starting to learn 6th edition (and teaching the wife)

So, I finally finished the housework which earned me my copy of the 6th edition rulebook!

I was then somewhat surprised to have my wife ask me to teach her how to play 40K, as she's going to be playing the Dark Eldar we picked up at one of the Eavy Metal painting Masterclasses at an Apocalypse game at Darksphere on 25 November.

So, a short bit of maths later, Sim had a list of 400 points of Dark Eldar. It consisted of two squads of Wyches with an assortment of upgrades, and that was the lot! She seemed happy with that, though.

I picked a quick 400 points of Guard to face her. I took an infantry platoon, with the PCS having all the melta guns, and a Chimera as a ride. The two squads got autocannons and melta guns. I threw in the recently painted conscripts because they were just finished, and rounded it off with three Ratlings.

So, this in mind, we set up the terrain!

Ah.

OK, remind me to really move "terrain building" up the priority list. Yes, we're using a passing Doomwheel as wreckage. The mobile phone box is a building, the old Necromunda card barricades are . . . barricades, the pond is a pond, and the failed sample arm warmer some difficult ground that doesn't provide cover.

I suggested using the recon mission thing from the book, but Sim said she'd far rather just have us try and kill each other first game and she could move onto such complicated things as "objectives" later...

We rolled off and I deployed first.

My Conscripts are off to the left, the two infantry squads to the right, Chimera in the centre with the command squad in it.

Sim deploys her squads opposite, with the special weapons at the back with me having explained "casualties start at the front".

She then has the opportunity to seize the initiative.

Bugger.

I get my Ratlings set up on the roof of the building, and the Dark Eldar start running towards me as fast as they can...

Sim then remembered she'd taken the chaos star from the gamer's edition of the 40K rulebook, and went and grabbed her beret.

The conscripts then let off a spectacular volley of fire at the Wyches, which even with the failed "First Rank, Fire" order left Sim's numbers looking remarkably thin!

To the right, they faired better due to the amount of cover available, and my inability to roll anything useful whatsoever!

On my left, the surviving three Wyches ran into the Chimera, blew it to pieces with Haywire grenades, then ducked behind the barricade to the left. I charged in response, with a melta gun nearly taking out the squad leader, but they "accidentally" pushed one of their colleagues in the way instead.

Surely this looks bad for the Dark Eldar, you say...

I also bravely decided to take a chance at charging on the right, hoping that weight of numbers would see me through.

This was, I think, a terrible mistake.

Yup, I was right, terrible mistake.

On the left, they hacked down two of the Lieutenant's bodyguards, causing the conscripts to panic and flee.

Now realising that being outside was very dangerous with the Imperial Guard's weight of fire, the Wyches decided to run into the building before butchering the Ratlings the following turn.

The combat on the left remained pretty much equal for now, with only ridiculously jammy rolling of saving throws saving the day for me.

"Then I rolled three sixes and a five!"

On the right, my Ratlings decided jumping off the building was safer than staying in it. One of them proceeded to break his leg jumping off the roof and passed out with pain. The remaining infantry squad ran up to the building, and the melta gunner loosed off a shot . . . causing a massive explosion. All the Dark Eldar died, both surviving Ratlings died, and two of the remaining infantry squad near the building were killed in the explosion.

So, erm, building damage tables are much scarier than they used to be!

On the left, the two surviving Wyches killed off my command squad, then charged into the conscripts on their turn!

The Wyches neatly take them to pieces (I forgot to Overwatch) - they kill one and the conscripts flee a second time, but this time their officer is not holding the killer gladiators off, and they are cut down to a man!

There's not much more to report, beyond that they proceeded to run across the table to the few surviving infantrymen, and cut them all down with no further losses, even though I remembered Overwatch by then!

Imperial Guard to the right are the casualty pile spreading out onto the table.
Chimera is wrecked. They're all dead, Dave.

Well, wife is rightly pleased with her first game of Warhammer 40K ever, and my first (completed) game of 6th edition! I may post a few thoughts on this later, but for now I shall go and wallow in my extensive and terrible defeat!