Infinity – Making a Dynamic Story-Driven Infinity Event Pt.2
Anyone who has read Infinity rulebooks knows just how rich the story behind the world is. Last time we designed an awesome mission – now we play it!
This is part 2 of a 3 part article. If you want to read part 1, which went into the design decisions of creating a “dynamic, story-driven, Infinity, non-tournament event”, click here.
Details about the game:
Players will need 3 separate lists, a 100, 200, and 300 point list. Your 100 point list can have no more than 3 models.
The game will include very difficult terrain for the 1st Mission. Beyond that, I can’t tell you what exactly will happen because it all depends on the out come of the 1st mission. I have a tree of possible things that can happen after the 1st mission. Effectively, I get to enjoy the story as it unfolds as well.
The planet is smaller than other human inhabited planets, and as such has a lower gravity pull. The effect for this event is that successful jumping and climbing is not cut in half and damage from fall is now 2 points for every inch (instead of 2.5). Movement discrepancies for being prone or moving through terrain is still in effect, and you cannot climb or jump while prone. Models with super Jump do not get additional inches movement during their jump, but can fall 1.5 their normal distance without taking damage.
Missions 1 and 2, for the most part, originate from a combination of ITS and YAMS with less complexity. Missions 1 and 2 will be limited to 3 turns and a hard stop at 1.5 hours. There will be a notion of Specialty troops, but the benefit of taking specialty troops is that you will have an easier time completing missions, any model can complete missions, but the penalty for not taking the right type of troop can be severe (-6).
Mission 3 will have a 2.5 hour HARD STOP, no turn limit, and will mean confronting the ultimate evil.
As you move from mission to mission you will be instructed what size list to take. 5 boards will be created specifically for this event. You will unfortunately only get to play on 3 of them during the event, but I will try to leave 4 of the boards up for open game play for another 2 hours.
I have started play testing and will continue to do so. Should changes occur, I will be sure to update this thread.
Making the Event Meaningful
There is no cost for this event, but I’m asking that people take a moment to check out Hope Animal Rescue (http://www.hopeanimals.org/). While you are there, if you can donate to their cause, it would mean a great deal.
The Day of the Event
With the terrain built and the missions play tested, the one thing I could not account for was Real Life. From me having some last minute work that I finished moments before the event began to losing two people who unfortunately could not attend, it meant a lot of preparations had to be adjusted on the fly. After tweeking (not to be confused with twerking) a rule here and there we began.
The players and their armies:
- Russ, Nomads, played Infinity for about 4 months.
- Ian, Ariadna, played Infinity for about 6 months.
- Mathieu, Combined Army, played Infinity for about 7 months.
- Geoffrey, Steel Phalanx, played Infinity for about 8 months, newly converted from Ariadna.
- Scott, PanOceania, played Infinity for about a year.
- Bill, Nomads, new to Infinity.
I first explained that every capital ship that had arrived came prepared for mutual destruction. If they did not walk away with the technology, they were planning on carpet bombing the site from orbit so no one could have it. While there existed 6 ships at the start of the game, a 7th vessel had attempted to drop troops directly into the base, but some sort of amplified Rail Gun ripped the ship apart.
An uneasy truce exists among the remaining starships. They will coordinate where to drop troops in one of four quadrants around the Tohaa TAG base. The four quadrants map to one of 4 – 4×4 boards that exist at the event. I allowed each player to decide where they wanted to play, with only one caveat. None of the captains of the starships were willing to allow just one army to be by themselves for fear that they would have an unfair head start to collect the TAG technology. Due to the dense jungle on the planet surface, all starships felt that it would be safer to drop the smaller 200 point forces for the first mission.
1 of the 4 terrain tables was a base that was sinking into the earth. This was specifically designed this way without difficult terrain for newer players.
All of the other boards were natural environments with difficult/very difficult moutain/jungle terrain. All boards enjoyed the low gravity rules.
The mission for the sunken base was called “Light the Fuses”, the details of the mission can be found here. Ben and Russ’s Nomads ended up on this board. Ownership of the generators went back and forth, but Russ’s HMG Sin Eater contained two of the generators too well, and slowly Russ was able to hack the three pieces of data right before time expired.
The other three boards used the “Reduce the Debris” mission, which can be found here. Mathieu’s Combined Army went toe to toe with Geoffrey’s Steel Phalanx. The net result was that no data was collected and the Floricide engines were not activated. Ian’s Ariadna and Scott’s PanOceania and a long hard battle, however, Ian ended up both acquiring the Nomad Data drop as well as the activating all three Floricide engines to end the game just a minute before time was up.
As the Event Organizer, here was the first of the divergent paths that could have happened. The sunken base was not a factor in the next missions. However if the no army had successfully completed the primary objective in “Reduce the Debris”, they would have been forced to stay at 200 points for the next mission and one of the missions would have taken place inside one of their starships. However since they were successful, the story continued with the following exposition.
The effect of the deforestation was more extreme then it was first assumed. The jungle terrain was removed, and hills hardened (and so would act like walls that must be climbed or jumped on to). Also the earth itself began to crack with a red liquid flowing up from the ground. The planet also began releasing a red mist into the air. This mist is a virus that causes models to take a wound should they roll a 20 for any reason – shooting, armor save, climbing, etc (similar to the dangerous environment rule introduced in Campaign:Paradiso).
- Nomad spearteam – journal entry 1. It is with great horror that we realized that more than one TAG had been developed on this planet. The one the Tohaa was developing was MUCH more advanced. We can’t quite figure out who was working on the second one. But the plans show that it was light armor (for a TAG). GAME TERMINOLOGY – Armor 4 BTS -6
- Nomad spearteam – journal entry 2. When we arrived, we found two bases. The first we later determined was not what we came to find. It is as though the ground had swallowed the base, the structures sinking into the earth. Our confusion was amplified when a soil specimen testing showed that the ground had the same concentrations of elements to suggest it was similar to a scab healing over. On a related note, it appears as though my remote fell into a small patch of red gel and it’s not responding well now.
- Nomad Spearteam – Journal Entry 3 – At the second base, we found hints of a Tohaa base. Lots of threes and that sort of thing. Only, we found no actual Tohaa. It’s like we arrived on the planet 100 years too late. We did not even find the TAG they were supposed working on. But we did find blueprints that suggest that while the TAG has a form of Symbiant Armor, it’s does not have the same fire effects. I’m not even sure if fire can harm the TAG at all. (This is only partially true, Tohaa have not been on the planet for 50 years, the TAG does not have Symbiant Armor, and fire can affect it after it’s shields are down)
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Technical Specs on the TAG – It can ARO with two of it’s systems every order.
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Techincal Specs on the TAG – The TAG has 4 different structure pools. Each turn it can regenerate 1 structure point in one of it’s structure pools.
