Friday 15 January 2016

On the twelfth game of Gamesmas...

...an exciting game of Infinity!


You'll remember from an earlier blog post that we Magpies indulged in a game of the Infinity RPG well, this is the tabletop wargame from Corvus Belli that the RPG was based on.

It's the far future and man has reached out to the stars. The Human Sphere encompasses countless worlds, all controlled by various mega corporations who are nominally overseen by the AI, Aleph. In addition to the human corporate factions there are also 2 alien factions: the Combined army and the Tohaa and a group of rebellious humans who hate the idea of toe the line to an AI - the Nomads.

For those not familiar with the Infinity game, here's a very quick summary :)

Infinity armies usually comprise around 10 figures, one of which is your Lieutenant. Each figure generates an order, with an extra order generated by your lieutenant. These orders, with the exception of the Lieutenant special order, can be used by any of your models and a model can use more than one order in a turn. So you can activate all of your models once or one model 10 times in a turn!

A single order is broken down into two parts, generally you can have one move part and one action part (there are some exceptions but you'll have to read the rule book - you can download it for free form the Infinity website linked above - nice people these CB guys :) ) When you declare the first part of your order - the move or action part can be used in either sequence,  move-shoot or shoot-move for example - any opposing models that can see the model can declare a response action - an ARO. the ARO can be to shoot at the active model or dodge an attack or a number of other actions. 

Well, onto the game. We set the table up at Tank's and Scotty and I organised our 300pt armies.




we used Tank's Mars Attacks road tiles to give the board a bit more life - I really liked the effect so I think I'll be looking for a 4x4 road mat soon though preferably one where the roads are not parallel to the board edges. I just think it looks better that way :)

We chose the Annihilation scenario from the main rule book and rolled two classified objectives each. The main scenario was to kill as many points of models as possible of the enemy force whilst preserving your army.

the classified objectives are kept secret from your opponent, mine required me to perform one Coup de Grace against an enemy model and my second was to use my hacker to hack an enemy model. Scott turned out to also have the Coup de Grace objective and also a demolitions objective.

The scenarios last 3 rounds. this doesn't sound a lot but, with the ARO mechanic, you're always engaged with the game and a hell of a lot happens!

I went with my usual Japanese Sectorial army:

Domaru butai with Chain rifle (lieutenant)
Kempai (chain of command)
Raiden with Spitfire
Keisotsu with combi rifle
Ninja Hacker
Ninja Sniper
Ninja with combi rifle
Tokusetsu Eisei Doctor
O - Yorio TAG (big red stompy robot and his two little Krazy Koala bomb bots :))

Scotty used his Nomads, I can't remember exactly what he had in there but there was a Sin eater with a Spitfire (nasty piece of work) a Reverend Moira a Mercenary and a load of dudes :)

well we kicked off. Scott elected to choose board edge and I chose to go first. 

After deployment, my first order of business was to drop my Ninja Sniper out of TO Camoflage and take a shot at the Merc standing on top of the building. The Merc tried a dodge ARO but my sniper rolled better and drilled the guy where he stood :) Yayy, a great start to the turn.

the Merc is just at the end of the far walkway :) (if anyone can figure out why Blogger ignores the rotation correction I put on my images and how I can get around it please comment below! :( )

the rest of my turn involved moving my O-Yorio and Domaru Butai up my right flank and the Kempai and Keisotsu up the left whilst moving my still hidden ninjas over the roof tops towards the enemy. My ninja with the combi rifle took a shot at the demolition guy and took him out. I had just enough movement to get to him but not enough orders to deliver the Coup de Grace.. next turn...

In Scotty's first turn, his Sin Eater ran to the three storey building, up onto the roof and hosed my sniper with his Spitfire!!!

Not a great start - my ARO was particularly ineffective and I'd managed to move the rest of my models into positions where they couldn't see him.

Scotty moved his reverend Moira onto the low roof with my Ninja standing over the unconscious demo guy..


and proceeded to blow him away! She managed to cause 2 wounds to the ninja, killing him instantly and denying Scotty the opportunity to Coup de Grace him.


Scott was starting to get ahead on points..

My turn 2 started with me moving back my O-Yorio to hose the Sin Eater with it's HMG, but I'd forgotten that the Sin Eater fires at full rate of Fire in ARO, not the single shot like everyone else! He was a priority target sitting up there but I rolled some appalling dice and Scotty didn't and the O-Yorio went down in a burning heap!!! I was seriously behind in points now!

It was getting late and the remaining turns are a bit hazy but essentially my Domaru butai wasted a couple of orders trying to throw grenades up onto the roof with the Reverend Moira before he remembered that he had a chain rifle that auto hits and 2 woulds so was likely to get the better of her anyway! He did and was able to deliver the Coup de grace to the demo guy before retreating along the walkway. After his final turn, one of Scotty's grunts took a shot at him but was still in range of his Chain rifle's template - the Nomad missed then failed his armour roll and another one bit the dust.

in the centre, the Sineater moved away from the edge of the building to get a better bead on the Domaru but then I noticed my Ninja hacker had LOS and managed to get an ARO shot off which killed the Sin eater! 

My medic earned his keep on my final turn by running up the building to the Ninja Sniper and reviving her!

on his last turn Scotty moved his sniper and tried to put my sniper back down  but the ninja got the better of him with the ARO and dropped the Nomad sniper instead!

A real game of ups and downs, we ended up both killing roughly the same number of points of each army - just under 150pts. this gave us 1 Scenario point each. Scotty was unable to achieve either of his classified objectives but I managed to get my Coup de Grace in for a second scenario point and a win! BANZAI!!! :)

A great game and I'm really looking forward to playing more infinity this year...





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