Infinity N5 - Initial Plans and Vibes

 

The new edition of Infinity, N5, released earlier this week. There's a lot to absorb as a player, and its going to take a while before I think I've got there. Now, I own quite a lot of factions, so I had a bit of a think about what I'm going to do first...

Our club has an escalation league starting up, and after writing one test list, I've decided to start N5 with my Shasvastii. There's not a huge amount of changes, but one of the more powerful profiles, the Speculo, has had some of its rules made a little less powerful, while half a dozen less used profiles have all had an overhaul. Seeing how a familiar faction has changed will be a good way for me to get a handle on the new edition.

I do want to shuffle into vanilla Combined Army in the future too. I'll have more models to paint up for that faction so it'll be Shasvastii first. However, we're still in the first few days and there may be some errors - the fireteams in particular look a bit odd, so I'm waiting to hear back if they can take a Haris team or not.

So, the Combined Army will likely be a bit of a painting project coming up. I've got some half finished bits to finish up first, and will likely get some Shasvastii profiles done to round them out after that. So it's probably a next year thing, but it shouldn't be too hard to get the basics knocked out pretty quickly.

I had a test game of N4 Druze and they seemed pretty good. I don't think much has got worse for them. They'd be fun to run out for six months or so at some point, and I don't need anything painted for them. A few profiles have changed or got a nudge up, which is a bit of a theme, really. I miss Druze, it'd be good to get back to them. There's a bunch of their N4 upgrades I've not gotten to trying out properly yet.

A lot of the Dahshat staples have suffered a bit in the new edition. Their loss of Ghulam snipers hurts a core part of the N4 build I was using for them, and fireteams getting downgraded on top of that is rough. McMurrough isn't as tough, either. There's only a Cateran sniper to be added model wise, and that's not really going to hold me up from giving them a go.

Ikari are sitting in the "some time in the future" box right now. I basically have them due to a big crossover of the models from Druze, and some discounted models. I ran them on a whim once at an N3 tournament without any practice and got absolutely ruined, and they do deserve better.

Qapu Khalqi also need a few bits before I can get them going, but I think they're ahead of Ikari in my brain. I like Haqqislam as a faction, and "QK" have picked up a few new and interesting profiles. Another future project, but one I think I could really put some time into and have fun with.

I've been playing my White Company for a good bit at the end of N4. There's a bunch of new character models that have been added to the faction, which I'll need to get painted up. I'm going to take a break from them, but I expect I'll start to miss them in a bit and want to come back to them soon.

Nomads are the faction I really want to get back to at some point. I want to get them painted first and that's been the real blocker so far. I think they're pretty much queued up after I get vanilla Combined Army done, but that might be a while. So, one for the future...

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 2

 

Day 2 of the LGT, and the mission was Frostbyte, against my buddy Riker playing Hassassin Bahram. I ran the ten order list again, as it had more models capable of surviving the cold.

I split my fireteams at the far ends of the table so it was harder for a Fiday to assassinate everything in one go.

Unfortunately, Riker successfully worked out who my Lieutenant was, and got the hit in, meaning I spent the first turn in Loss of Lieutenant.

My Guija tried to clear the ARO pieces but ended up stunned and damaged. Things didn't improve from here, and I got handily dismantled.

Once McMurrough got into my lines it was pretty much all over, but the game finished 10-1 to Riker, with 251 of his points left up to 0 of mine. Oh dear.

We had another Resilience Operations mission, and this time I was up against vanilla Haqqislam. It was back to the "two John Hawkwoods" list to see if that fared any better.

My Chaksa Longarm got taken out by a Haqq gun fighter, and the Kunai Ninja had to try and stop it. Was this the sole point it was useful? I sadly don't recall.

Weirdly, Taowu went on an absolute tear and took out a whole flank of the Haqq force, pretty much on his own.

I tried to take out a few more Haqq forces, but it was ineffective and my force basically collapsed. The score ended up being 10-5 against me. Could I get a second win for the event in the last game?

So, last game, and a Firefight against Nomads. Time to try and regain some honour...

... it did not go well. An initial attack by the Uberfallkommando damaged the fireteam, but I was able to take out the Chimera to stop being completely overwhelmed. Unfortunately, I just couldn't land a solid hit on the Nomads to take out more points.

In the end, the Gator went on an absolute rampage through my lines, and while I tried to get some points back by taking it out with a shotgun, it managed to stay up, meaning the Nomads finished ahead 10-3.

After five losses and one win, I ended up solidly winning the Wooden Spoon. It turns out taking all the weird profiles that no-one takes leads to you discover that people don't take them for a reason... Still, it was a good way to see off N4, even if N5 has been a little bit held up since.

LGT Infinity Tournament: Day 1

 Back at the end of September, I went to the two day Infinity tournament at the LGT. With it being towards the end of the fourth edition of Infinity, I decided I wanted to take a lot of the more 'fringe' profiles from White Company so I'd had a chance to use them. At the time, it wasn't clear if White Company was going to be continuing into the new edition, but it's since been confirmed they're still available.

I was running two lists - the first used a Chaksa Longarm to lead a small fireteam, had John Hawkwood as Lieutenant and Taowu Holomasked as a second John Hawkwood. The second list ran the Guija TAG, and kept to a single combat group of ten models.

Game 1: Unmasking vs Tunguska

First up was Unmasking, and I was paired against a club mate who I'd not played before who was running Tunguska.

My Tiger Soldier dropped in to neutralise the Grenzer sniper who was dominating the field to stop me advancing.

I sent the Chaksa, Hawkwood and Valerya to hit the first console, but as the team approached, a Heckler with a Jammer revealed and isolated Valerya, leaving the team a bit hamstrung. Worse, this was the real Hawkwood, and he got taken out the following turn, leaving me in Loss of Lieutenant.

To try and swing the game back, I sent the Kunai Ninja after the Vostok, but he got caught by another model's ARO, and I didn't really have enough orders left to get to the consoles and the targets. In the end, it was a 9-0 loss for me, but it was good to get my first game ever with a friend.

Game 2: Resilience Operations vs Corregidor

Next up was Resilience Operations against another club mate, running Corregidor. This is a mission where you get your objectives by random card draw. You have different objectives from your opponent, and you don't know what your opponent is trying to do.

The typical Maasai Morans blocked up the centre. I was able to clear some of the Koalas by getting lines of sight to them, but had to be a bit cagey about getting close to the Morans early on as I didn't want to get targeted and hit by guided missiles.

The Tiger Soldier went for the model I suspected was the Lieutenant, but got some unlucky rolls and he got taken out. One of my squads over-extended a little bit and ended up getting completely exploded by the Vostok.

I had trouble pushing forward, and ended up making a run to try and control the centre with Hawkwood, but couldn't get enough points into the zones I needed to score. This left me with a 9-3 loss. I got thoroughly outplayed on positioning, and my opponent really earned his win.

Game 3: Countermeasures vs Druze Bayram Security

The last game of the day was Countermeasures, and I was up against Druze Bayram Security. I decided to take my list with the Guija and a single combat group.

My fireteam got a Repeater onto the Druze remote, immobilised it, and got into cover to try and make it through the next turn...

On the last turn, I sent my ORC Lieutenant up to clear the reaction pieces, but he got shot down... It was all down the the Blade Ops Engineer.

The Blade Ops managed to get the job done, getting some nanobots onto a Doctor to score some of the objective cards.

The Guija then got into gun fight with the Triphammer, and rather embarrassingly lost... But it wasn't enough, and the White Company managed to win the game 6-2.

So, having won one of the three games on the first day, I headed home for some sleep before returning for Day 2. Could I improve my win record on the second day?

White Company Reinforcements

 

Those folks who know Infinity well may correctly identify that these models aren't available in White Company... These are models that can be taken by NA2 in the Reinforcements option - Contracted Backup.

From left to right, we have Miranda Ashcroft, Lucian Sforza, a Wardriver and a Monstrucker. I've not played Reinforcements yet, but I'm curious to see how it plays in future.

White Company Expansion

 

I got another batch of White Company back from Tesseract Miniature Studios. First up is the Guija, the Yu Jing TAG that White Company has access to. It's a pretty standard TAG, with the advantage of Super Jump, to allow it to get some good firing angles.

I've not tried using the Guija with White Company yet. It's a little pricey, so using it would mean using less Heavy Infantry and other expensive pieces. It'll be interesting to see what compromises I need to make to make it work.

I've also got the Jujak box painted up. These Heavy Infantry pair with the ORC Troops to form fireteams. They have a slightly different profile to the ORCs, so you have a good opportunity to mix and match for the skill set you're after.

Finally, there's a few individual pieces. First there's the production model of John Hawkwood, the leader of White Company. I already have the limited figure of him painted up from Defiance. I've got two as White Company has a Holomask profile so I can deploy two "Hawkwoods". In the middle is a Beasthunter from TAG Raid. White Company can take two, and I also have an Ariadna Spec Ops I'm using for the other one. Finally, there's a Nokk Spitfire, who is a midfield piece who doesn't have Camouflage - its an aggressive attack piece that's quite fragile and needs supporting with other midfield pieces to prevent it being take out before it can attack. 

Infinity Battle Report: Firefight: White Company vs Torchlight Brigade

 

As I was pottering about the Interwebs last month, my friend RattlerNXT from the US mentioned he was in the UK for a few days, and was looking for games. I originally challenged him to a game of Resilience Operations, but we didn't have two decks of cards needed, so decided instead to go for a game of Firefight.

I was running White Company, while RattlerNXT was running Torchlight (although with proxies as the models hadn't arrived before he left)...

I opened the game by dropping a Tiger Soldier down behind Torchlights lines and opening fire on the Silverstar Prime - but sadly wasn't able to get through the armour.

I managed to reveal one of the Moonraker "Forward Remotes" that are basically Regular robot Libertos miniatures. I used a Pitcher to get it into my hacking network and Immobilised it.

My ORC Feuerbach got a bit unlucky trying to clear a Beasthunter, and wasn't able to withdraw very far, so I left it out as an ARO piece instead. Sadly, against Torchlight firepower, he didn't last very long!

My total reaction remote was swiftly taken out...

And the Silverstar Prime was able to loot a Panoply on top of everything else!

The second Moonraker went after my Karhu, took him down, but got too close to my Repeater network, getting isolated... 

I was able to get my Lieutenant to take out the Moonraker to let my Kaplan Doctor get the Karhu up for a classified. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough orders to get the Lieutenant particularly well hidden, and a Nightshade was able to get behind them and take them out, leaving RattlerNXT with the win.

It was good to see RattlerNXT again after I first met him in Mallorca at the EIC tournament. Hopefully I'll manage to make it over to the US for a tournament over there at some point. In the meantime, if you're an Infinity player visiting the UK and are looking for a game, don't hesitate to get in touch, and I'll try and give you a game!

Infinity NA2 New Forces

 

I sent off a couple of batches of Infinity figures to Thunderbrush to get various bits and pieces I've been picking up for my NA2 factions painted up. Unfortunately, my original NA2 miniatures are on Antenocitis Workshop bases, who are now very sadly no longer trading. Fortunately, Monstrous Makings are now making some base toppers with similar designs.

On the left we have the slightly daftly named "Wolfgang Amadeus Wolff", a mercenary who can fight for the Druze. He's a punchy, tough character, which is really useful for the somewhat fragile Druze. On the right is an old 2nd edition Ghulam sniper I won at a tournament at some point. I think I already have one somewhere but I will often run a multiple sniper defensive link in Dahshat, so it was worth getting him painted up.

Both Dahshat and Druze use Monstruckers, and they also turn up as reinforcements for all the NA2 factions. I grabbed several copies of these as so many of my factions use them and they were going out of production!

Originally, just Ikari Company and Qapu Khalqi had access to Yuan Yuan, but they've been expanded out to Druze as well at some point in N4. I have the old sculpts, but the new ones are really pretty, so I got them an update...

And finally, Dahshat company gets the new Hulang. This is a bit of an indulgence as Dahshat only get one, but it was a flimsy excuse to get the new Crazy Koala models...