Infinity: Just Two Noobs Trying to Learn N3 Pt. 2
John and I were back at the LGS again this week building on our previous experience. Why don’t you guys come check in on us noobs again and see if we learned anything.
Game 1
Me:
We went for 150 points again but brought along some cheaper guys for larger order pools. Since I want to expand my Pan-o army primarily into a NeoTerra force, I brought along four bolts, three fusiliers, and a Hexa. Two of the bolts were armed normally while one of them brought along some Drop Bears. The fourth I equipped with a Boarding Shotgun although this was primarily because this version is cheaper and it would keep me under the 150 limit. The fusiliers were the standard Combi loadout from Icestorm, and the Hexa was the Spitfire armed one from the Neo Terra starter.
We decided not to use the Fireteam rules yet even though their benefits are a big reason for limiting yourself to a sectorial army. I also brought along two sets of Icestorm Terrain.
John’s army was a bit odd. His big Infinity order still hadn’t arrived (our LGS doesn’t stock Infinity so we have to shop the web) and so he only had the newest models from the unboxings we’ve been doing. To get to 150 he’d taken an HMG, Sniper, and Doctor Ghulam. Additionally he’d brought along Nathan Explosion – at least that’s who Kasym Beg reminds me of – an HMG Janissary, and four Ghazi Muttawi’ah with Boarding Shotguns.
We decided to go for a scenario this time and chose to do Supremacy. To simplify things we would only worry about controlling the quadrants and ignore the additional rules about the consoles.
John won the first turn roll. In fact he has won every first turn roll in all five of the games we’ve played now. We had talked about using command tokens and even went so far as to count them out and give them to ourselves, but of course I forgot to use them to limit his order pool.
Over half of John’s army had the extremely impetuous trait, so they started their way across the board in earnest. He advanced to get better position and rolled Beg up the board before throwing up a couple of smoke clouds blocking a lot of my view of the board.
With so much of my visibility limited by the clouds and terrain, I didn’t really know what to do with my center, so I sent my Hexa up the left. He ended up being where I spent most of my orders.
Surprise!
He was in the TO camo state and John had no idea what the marker was at this point.The Hexa quickly revealed itself with a surprise shot against one of his Ghazis. We found out later that I was doing TO wrong, moving around normally rather than using cautious movement. This would have cancelled the Hexa’s camouflaged state and you must be camouflaged to use the Surprise Shot rule. At any rate, the Hexa did kill the Ghazi before moving into partial cover and putting a wound on the Janissary.
Ultimately the Hexa didn’t perform too well this game, although he did pass the one Armor save he had to take from the Janissary who had won a face to face roll. With one order left I was looking at a lot of John’s models threatening my order pool, so I decided to spend it on my Bolt and have her toss a Drop Bear somewhere I thought would hinder John’s advance. While Kasym Beg, seemed like the biggest threat, I didn’t attempt to throw the bear far enough to hit him. If you try to toss them too far the odds of failing the PH roll are pretty high. Then they’re wasted. I thought the biker would have to pass by the mine on his way up anyway and hoped that would be when it could take him out.
Beg is too fast for mines
The next turn was brutal for me. My Drop Bear ended up doing nothing to Beg. Mines don’t react like AROs. A model has to actually declare or execute an order/ARO inside it’s trigger area. Zipping past isn’t enough to set it off.
Colossal Wreck Markers make perfect smoke templates.
The Impetuous moves put all of John’s Irregulars one order away from being able to blast me with Chain Rifle and Boarding Shotgun Fire, which they did. At the end of John’s turn I’d lost my Lieutenant and had only two models, putting me in a state of retreat. I still had my command tokens which I could have used to cancel the Hexas retreat state, but I thought it would be better to start another game.
John:
Although impetuous is a carries a significant downside with proper placement and the ability to always go first it seems to have worked out fairly well for me so far. My Ghazi and Mr. Beg seem to work pretty well as a team so far. I don’t think they would be as good without each other though I will give it a try. I placed my Ghazi on the flanks and covered them with an HMG and Sniper Rifle. With the buildings and Ben’s cautious placement to avoid my HMG and Sniper it allowed me to have a fairly clear path to get my impetuous guys across the board.
Begs Smoke launcher really shines during the impetuous phase allowing him to shoot it off to obscure either himself or the Ghazi as they advance preventing a key ARO here or there. I was able to win the first game by allowing my Impetuous troops to run up the field and shotgun Ben’s Army while my Janissary and Sniper stayed relatively out of harm’s way and sniped people as they poked their heads out.
The number of crotches in this shot is a good indicator of how many people were interested in Infinity last Wednesday. It was like this all night.
Game 2
Me:
Game two I put more thought into how I set up the fire corridors in my deployment zone. John moved up again and covered the board in smoke so I couldn’t see anything on his side of the table. I had just started my turn when someone happened to pass by who politely informed us that smoke doesn’t last through into the next player’s turn. I thought John should leave all his models out in the open for me to shoot at, but he wasn’t into it, so it was time to reset and move on to game three.
Game 3:
Me:
The same player who’d noticed the smoke reminded me that models can be deployed prone and suggested I put some of my bolts on the roof in this state. I think it saved some lives, but at the end of the game I couldn’t help but wonder how things might have worked differently if I’d kept my deployment how it had been. Would I have been able to get the AROs I wanted?
John tricked me by playing his first turn more agressively than he had the last two games, driving Beg deep into my lines to blast away with Chain Rifles and limiting my AROs with smoke from the very beginning. I’d even remembered to use the Command tokens this time to limit his order pool.
John’s two remaining Ghazis killed another Fusilier and Bolt. One of them went climbing up the roof to engage the Drop Bear Bolt, and the other died by ARO. We both thought that being prone would make my bolt an easy kill in CC, but if there is an actual rule that says this, neither of us were able to find it. John was a good sport and left his Ghazi engaged despite the fact that he would have been better off shooting. No one was hurt in the ensuing CC.
MVP!
On my turn my Hexa went to town killing three models. He almost died to a Ghazi after losing his Face to Face roll against the boarding shotgun with its +6 at short range. His failed guts roll left him in cover, and I almost spent an order to recover his TO state after which the plan was to hide him. Instead I attacked again. His second order killed the Ghazi, his third the Janissary and his fourth order finished the Ghulam Sniper. Like. A. Boss. Seriously though I had some ridiculous rolls with this guy.
With my LT order I moved my new LT, the fusilier, to engage the Ghazi on the roof. It was risky, but with two of my models in the combat I’d get an extra burst. The combat was still uneventful, but on John’s turn he had lost enough of his models that it was time for him to go into retreat. He hadn’t technically lost but it had gotten kinda late at that point so he decided to call it. I’d finally won a game of Infinity owing a lot of credit to my dice.
John:
In this game I saw how well the strategy worked so I thought I would try it again except this time let Mr Beg get more of the action. Ben taking our passerby’s advice placed his guys prone on the roof which seemed like a very bad idea to me as they would most likely get shot a bunch when they popped up by the way I deployed my troops.
This time I think my strategy might have gone even better for me in the beginning. Mr Beg was able to take several chain rifle shots at a good chunk of Ben’s army. Neither one of us could figure out how that works with a TO marker, but we played it as if I hit his Hexa. I was able to take down his lieutenant which was nice early but he was able to take down Mr. Beg fairly easily during his turn.
Here is when TO: Camouflage took over the game Ben’s Hexa went boss mode and just started super soldering all over the place. When we looked back at some of the interactions in hindsight there were a few things misplayed. The Janissary had been in Suppressive Fire mode, so he should have been at -3 to hit. But even with the modifier, Ben’s hot dice still would have wrestled victory from my jaws and planted it firmly at Ben’s feet. Both games were a blast to play and there are still so many interactions we haven’t touched on yet.
I look forward to uping our points to 200 next week and adding hacking and Remotes for more headache filled page flipping.
Final Thoughts
Me:
I think John and I are both keen on taking troops with MSVs: that’s Multi Spectral Visors. The level 2 version of this gear lets you ignore both smoke and the penalties from TO camo so we both have reasons to want them in our lists.
I think the cost of the Bolts reflects the fact that they can be linked. The extra burst and +3 BS on light shotguns seems pretty nuts, and they have special weapon versions too of course… But I haven’t painted those yet.
John:
Initially I thought we were playing TO: Camo wrong because it was way too powerful. Turns out there were a few minor things we had missed that took it over the top although I think it can still be a very powerful ability. After reading ways to defeat it I learned that there are a good amount of them and that MSV are not the only option so I will have a few tricks up my sleeve next time Ben fields that little bugger.
That rule book. I love the fact that there are so many complicated interactions in the game because they allow for so much strategy. Figuring them it that’s another issue, the one good thing though seems to be once you understand the different interactions, that is it you know the game and it can’t change that much beyond that unlike other games.
I wish I had gotten the chance to use my doctor, the jury is still out on them I think they are worth the extra points but my guys either died on the other side of the field or were killed outright. I think some of that falls on Ben’s dice.
~That was a long but there was a lot to cover. Hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as you seemed to enjoy the last.
