Infinity Practice Game: Highly Classified, Druze Bayram Security vs Nomads

I wanted to get a little practice in before the upcoming Firestorm Satellite tournament in April, so managed to arrange a game of Highly Classified with Yashar down at HATE. Yashar was playing at St Albans Smackdown last weekend and wanted to give his list a shake out. Although Highly Classified wasn't on the roster, some specialist heavy variable missions were, so it was worthwhile to shake out any problems in the list.

I lost the Lieutenant roll and got to pick table sides, with the Nomads wanting to go first. Classifieds were a veteran or elite troop making a WIP roll on the other half of the table, engineer roll on the HVT, Visor or Sensor roll on the HVT and Forward Observing an enemy troop. The secret objective for both of us was Sabotage because sometimes that's just how the cards fall.

Yashar was running the Puppetactica unit. As the models aren't out yet, he's scratch built some penguins with guns, because, well, penguins with guns frankly.

First turn was pretty  brutal, as all my flash pulse ARO pieces got picked off one by one by an Intruder Sniper. It didn't even bother spending the order on the smoke.

More dead ARO pieces...

A Jaguar got shot down by the Hunzakut who survived the retaliatory Chain Rifle. This was about the only casualty on the Nomad side all game.

I decided to send Saito Togan out to murder the Obvious Lieutenant to try and give me a full turn to just get the objectives, but it turned out the camo token I had to pass to do so was a Heckler with a Jammer, and Saito got stuck.

I tried to bring up my Sniper and Engineer to turn the game around, with most other things dead, but didn't have the orders to do it in a single turn. Yashar then neatly went through and did all the objectives in his turn as there was nothing to stop him.

With his spare orders, he took out the sniper with the visor and left multiple ARO pieces out, meaning there was no chance even of a suicidal run to complete an objective or two, meaning the game finished a solid 10-0.

I think Druze struggle a lot at Highly Classified, and my ARO choices this game were particularly poor. I simply couldn't deal with the Nomad versatility and firepower, meaning I was constantly on the back foot and being effectively countered whenever I had to do anything.

I'm definitely considering what to play next. Druze was always about getting a painted army on the table, but the regular losses are just demoralising. While I need to think about a re-written list for Firestorm, my heart really isn't in it and I'm thinking forward to what to play after Druze, not Druze lists for my next games.

Warhammer World: Some Golden Demon Entries

More from the Warhammer World exhibitions - this time some Golden Demon entries. This Kal Jericho entry by Henry South won Silver in the Unbound category at the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender in 2018.

This diorama by Michael Anderson won it's category at the Golden Demon Classic at WarhammerFest in 2018. Sadly, not really a great photo...

Another one from the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender 2018 - this time an Escher Gang that won Bronze by Matt Wingrove - oddly enough, in the Necromunda Gang category...

And finally, the Silver from the Youngbloods category at the Age of Sigmar Open Day 2018. The skill level of the younger painters who enter Youngbloods blows my mind sometimes!

HATE Infinity League 2: Frontline vs JSA

"But The Responsible One," I hear you metaphorically ask, "wasn't your last League game against JSA?"

It was indeed, but it seems there's quite a few people who've signed up to play JSA in the new League, so there will be a few games with them!

This time around, it was a game of Frontline, and my experience with this so far is that the ability to move zones in the second turn is really strong. So, when I won the Lieutenant roll I chose deployment sides, and made my opponent set up first. I had taken the Armand profile with Minelayer in the list too, so I was hoping, by holding him back, to increase the risk of deploying a mine somewhere really inconvenient for a ninja.

As it was, I was  little unlucky and Shinobu had deployed to counter the Druze link team. My sniper got a shot off as she approached, but she managed to win the face to face and while I passed my armour rolls, the Brawler failed their guts check and ducked prone, leaving the back of the team exposed.

What followed was several members of the link getting killed one by one with careful placement of smoke and so forth. The game then got even more involved and exciting and I forgot to take photos of the latter stages, so I'm going to keep the description out of line with the remaining photos of the early stages to break things up a bit.

My MSV2 Sniper shamefacedly came down from their perch to deal with Shinobu, manoeuvring to shoot her in the back. Seeing what was coming, she changed facing to face off against the sniper, but I then took the opportunity to have my Lieutenant run up behind her and shotgun her in the back. Unfortunately, I didn't quite have the orders to get her back into cover. I used my Hunzakut in the midfield to speculative fire a grenade to clear out some of the threats there, and managed to get rid of a Ryuken Unit-9 at least.

My opponent then manage to move his Lu Duan to see the Lieutenant and gun her down, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant for the second turn. My Hunzakut managed to lay a mine to take out the Lu Duan, but the damage was done.

Armand had been locking down most of the JSA advance with a commanding view of the field from a tower on the left. The first plan required a Keisotsu to run and clear out a Warcor to make space for a Kempeitai with MSV2 to get rid of him, but they ran into a hidden Saito Togan. Armand's luck eventually ran out and he took a wound from a carefully placed mine, losing his Symbiont armour and ducking prone into cover.

A quite terrifying amount of JSA then advanced into the midfield, taking out Saito and re-syncing the Xenotech with the Lieutenant order, failing to place the Multiscanner marker with the very last order.

I had a handful of orders left and had a hard choice to make. I could try and kill a lot of things in the centre and try and claim the centre, or I could try and push forward to the far zone, gaining the far zone for the win - but I wasn't sure how far I'd have to go to get that zone, and the models left who could do it were very vulnerable to crits.

I decided to go for the centre zone. One at a time, I engaged models in the centre with my Druze Killer Hacker, and even my new Lieutenant, a Brawler Doctor with a rifle. The Brawler Sniper managed to draw a long diagonal line on a Ryuken-9... Every order and every shot was a kill, taking out five models worth around a hundred points, swinging the game from JSA to me. In the end, it was a 6-0 win to me, but in reality it was a lot closer - the last turn could have fallen apart with one unlucky roll, as I was definitely on the back foot. It was a really good fun game, and a good challenge for both of us.

Warhammer World: Some Figures at the Museum

While I was at the Warhammer World Open Day in January, I took the opportunity to potter around the museum, on the grounds of it being free during events. I took a few photos while I was there, so thought I'd share for those of you who can't get to Warhammer World.

This isn't the usual set of photos from the exhibition. It's not an coherent or representative set of photos, but rather bits and bobs that caught my eye as a repeat visitor. First up were these lovely old monsters on the classic goblin green bases.

If we're talking about contrasts, the Idoneth Deepkin Avatar, with the massive cloak turning into a waterfall and clever use of negative space is the other end of the scale to the old style monsters. I hadn't realised just quite how big this model is!

There was a lovely mini diorama of a Lord of Change stepping through a realm gate.

Here, some mounted Stormcast face off against a dragon.

Ghouls versus Seraphon...

A giant having a little disagreement with a Kharadron Overlord airship.

A lovely Forge World knight. Mostly taken as I'd like one of the Forge World knights in the future but I really haven't decided which one yet.

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day: Staff Displays

Remember that New Year's Open Day I went to? There was a ton of cool staff hobby there, and I haven't posted the photos yet.

This is Andy Hoare's Space Slann army, which is rather obscure and pretty darned cool.

I think this is an early Confrontation / Necromunda playtest figure.

Some models from Jervis' collection, I believe.

Annoyingly, I didn't make a note of whose figure this was at the time, and now don't remember. It's a nice conversion I still wanted to share, tho!

CharlieTee Paints for me...

Photo by Charlie Tee

Long term readers of this blog will remember that around when I started I agreed to paint a friend’s Herald of Tzeentch. Many years later, it was still unfinished, so I resolved when I moved house I’d commission someone to finish it off so my friend could finally get her model back painted.

Conveniently, my friend Charlie Tee has set up a painting business and Twitch Channel called, surprisingly, Charlie Tee Paints. I sent it off a little while ago, and today I got this wonderful ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison.

With the herald now winging its way to its owner, I thought my readership would like to see it. I can absolutely recommend Charlie’s painting business to people, and I hear they have commission slots available at the time of writing. (If you’re reading this in six months time, who knows? Write and ask them!)

Slowing down in my old age

Last weekend I was in Birmingham for the Infinity UK Masters. This coming weekend I’m in Mallorca for the EIC tournament. I’ve still not written up CanCon in January...

While it’s reassuring I’m out having fun, I like writing the blog and getting behind is a bit of a warning sign. The hobby area in the flat still isn’t sorted as I’ve been running around Doing Fun Things...

As much as a reminder to myself as anything else, I need to remember not to overcommit to things. I’m rushing around doing immediately fun things but not committing the time to things that perhaps need a little bit more work but will be be really satisfying once they’re done. I’m not going to chance any plans just yet, but I need to be a bit more careful with booking stuff into my calendar in future so I don’t end up flat out all month. Everyone needs a rest!

Tales from the Practice Games: A Couple of Scarface Errors

Before last week's excursion to Beachhead, I tried out my more experimental 200 point list in a game of Annihilation down at HATE with one of our newer players. They were running a Corregidor list, and had the first turn.

Can you spot my initial error?

I had left Scarface looking in one direction, leaving me incredibly open to a Hellcat Airborne Deployment, which is exactly what happened. Luck meant I was at least able to get Scarface to turn aroundo on the drop, but they were armed with a Boarding Shotgun, so it wasn't going to go well...

Cordelia died in the first blast, and Scarface took two wounds before finally a lucky critical hit took the Hellcat down. But Scarface now had no Engineer, one Wound left, and had entered a Frenzy state because he'd killed the Hellcat, losing the benefits of cover.

I managed to keep him alive for a while, but then spotted an opportunity to take out Lupe Balboa, who'd entered Suppression Fire under smoke in sight of Scarface. I used the Assault special role to make a ten inch move and charge into base to base with Lupe, and cut her down.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten about two Crazy Koalas just around the corner, and they ran over and blew Scarface to pieces, costing me the game.

Lessons Learned:

• Remember that drop troops are good this edition, and stop leaving gaps for them to kill your best units

• When your opponent drops Koalas off, remember that the activation area is in all directions from them. I'd got into my head they were marking the entry and exit into a canyon, but they're perfectly capable of running over and blowing a TAG away by jumping up the canyon wall...

Hopefully my daft mistakes will have either amused or educated...

HATE Infinity League 2: Firefight vs JSA

The latest Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts Infinity League has just kicked off, with a massive 27 players! The honourable Riker is once again taking on organising duties. We're split into three groups of 9 players with one Mysterious Masked Stranger making sure everyone gets a game every cycle. I've been placed in the middle group, which at least reassures me I won't simply get my teeth kicked in for nine games!

My first game was against a player who's coming back to Infinity after a few months break, and this was going to be his first game with JSA. It being Firefight, though, I was taking no chances and took the first turn when I got the opportunity.

On the right flank, I placed my core link, with the E/M Light Grenade Launcher forward and the linked Brawlers a little further back. Saito Togan was in Hidden Deployment by the right hand Panoply.

On the left hand flank, I deployed a Duo of Hackers (Killer and Assault) to deal with any Heavy Infantry shenanigans, and also intended to advance and pick up the "Net Undermine" Classified.

The game started off pretty well - the HMG neutralised a couple of the JSA core link who'd been left out for AROs, then Saito revealed to throw smoke for the absolute classic "smoke trick" of an MSV2 Sniper shot to take out a Total Reaction remote that was pinning down much of the field.

At the end of my first turn I'd caused a good bit of damage, but there was still a lot of the JSA force left. I'd left out an aggressive number of ARO pieces because I was worried about being over-run by a swarm of effective close combat units.

Yojimbo, being proxied by some other bike model, charged into the teeth of a heavy flamethrower, but someone tanked the armour save and got smoke down.

He then charged forward through the smoke, again tanking the flame hit, to pin the Peacemaker down in close combat.

What appeared  to be a bike mounted hacker rocketed forward to take on my sniper, so I went to shoot...

Only to discover it was a Lu Duan using a Holoprojector, which had just advanced into Heavy Flamethrower range. I also utterly whiffed my shooting so the blasted thing wasn't even scratched!

An Oniwaban then revealed and jumped into Saito Togan, who was overcome by surprise and cut neatly in half by the Monomolecular blade of the Oniwaban.

And then the Lu Duan comes around the corner and sets the link on fire, taking out my Data Tracker and HMG...

The game then got very close and serious and I didn't take any more photos. The basic summary is:

• Mushashi picked up an injured Tanko and CASEVACed him into my table half for a bonus classified point
• I was over-aggressive with my Lieutenant and got them killed when I really should have left it
• The Hacker Duo advanced up and managed to Isolate the remaining Tanko to stop it going on a killing spree, before gunning it down with a Combi in my turn
• On the final order of my last turn, my Assault Hacker ran up onto a roof to shoot a Domaru hiding at the back of the field, and he rolled a high dodge. "Well, I need double crit to take him down" - and lo, did I roll a double crit, it turned out to be his Lieutenant, winning me the game.

The final score was 5-4, with 98 and 45 points of troops left alive respectively. I scored "Killing more Troops", "More Panoplies" and "Secure the HVT" for a Classified, while he'd scored two points for the extra goal on his Classified, one for killing my Datatracker and one for his other Classified.

Definitely a win due to luck rather than skill this time around, as that final double crit changed the score from 6-5 to 5-4! A really good game, and super close. Definitely need to up my game, as the club has a lot of excellent players in it.