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So I downloaded the rules and it looks like a fairly fun skirmish game (something I very much enjoy) and Im kind of digging Panoceania. Is there anything I should know starting out?

Pano is a very shooty faction, which is balanced out be being comparatively weaker at grabbing objectives. I'm not an expert on the meta, but as I understand objectives are utterly vital in ITS. So if you're playing ITS, you might have a bit of a disadvantage, but I don't think it's such a terrible one as playing a weak army in 40k. But playing in more casual scenarios then it's totally up to you and your buddies how much you want the game to be about combat vs objectives.

Either way, orders are a big deal. You want to have plenty of orders. Deathstars don't work in Infinity like in 40k because your opponent can just kill your cheerleaders and your nasty model is a lot less scary when it only has a few orders to back it up. So there's a fine balance between taking few, powerful models and taking lots of weak models. You'll have plenty of Fusiliers/Auxilia or similar light infantry in most lists, supporting a couple of specialists and a couple of heavy hitters. You kind of just need to play around a bit until you find which models you like and what works for your playstyle/local meta.

Luckily, you can proxy easily. Get 5-6 light infantry (I'd get a couple auxilia and the rest fusiliers to start), a couple medium infantry (nisse, one of the combat jump units), and a couple heavy infantry (Aquila Guard, Swiss Hacker, etc). From there, play a variety of lists and proxy as needed. Get a couple Drones, too, there are some pretty good options there. Once you've got a bit of experience under your belt, try out a TAG (if you play with them before you really master the basic gameplay, it will screw up the balance of the game. You'll probably steamroll inexperienced opponents, and you'll learn bad habit that will lose you games against more experienced opponents).


That said, I haven't played much N3, so someone who knows more about what they're talking about could correct me.

Nope, you're good to go! You'll learn everything in time. Just read up and play a few games and you'll get into the swing of things.

Unlearn everything you've learned from other Tabletop Miniature's games.

And just play. A lot of the rules become crystal clear when you actually play the game.

If you like Pan-O then play it. The factions are very well balanced, so it is not possible to pick a bad faction.

Corvus Belli recently showed some tournament stats. There was not a huge degree of difference between the different factions. PanOceania may be slightly disadvantaged at grabbing objectives, but this does not appear to translate to being weak in objective based scenarios.

Also, I think it's a bit of a jump from starting game -> ITS.

Lots of people don't ever play ITS for a start, but even if you do by the time you've learnt the rules and got a half a dozen games you'll get a good idea about specialists and how to score tournament objectives.

Having been stomped several times by Pan O in tournaments I can assure that there is nothing wrong with them whatsoever.

There are a couple of articles here Tactical_Spam that you may find useful
http://www.data-sphere.net/tag/starting-with-panoceania/

Basically there are sub-factions to Pan O called Sectorials. You can play the basic Pan O faction, or one of the themed Sectorials which offer certain advantages/disadvantages.

Can someone help me understand "orders"?

Every model in your army is grouped into combat groups of 10 or fewer soldiers.

Each turn, every soldier in each combat group contributes an order to the order pool for that combat group. Orders can be spent by any soldiers in that combat group. There is no limit to the number of orders one soldier can spend. You could have one dude spend every order in your army theoretically.

Some types of troops have different types of orders. Impetuous Troops contribute an Impetuous Order, which is an extra order that only that model can spend and must be spent at the beginning of the turn. These troops still contribute a normal order in addition to this one.

Some troops are Irregular. This means the order they contribute to the pool can only be spent by that soldier. They can spend normal orders too though. Basically, they are selfish. They can receive orders from the normal order pool, but don't contribute to it for everyone else.

When an order is spent, you use it to activate a model. That model can make either 2 short skills or 1 long skill. A short skill is something like moving, attacking with a weapon, revealing a camo marker, or a number of other things. Long skills are more complicated maneuvers, such as reentering Camo.

Are their benefits from using just the sectorial part of an army?

From what I have gathered(also new at this) is it gets you some different options. You can mix sectorial units too.

Sectorials can limit your troop types to a smaller amount of profiles than the vanilla army, but it usually increases AVA of certain profiles to make sure you have a large enough pool of models to pull from.

Also, Sectorials get access to Fire-Teams (link teams), of 3-5 members that get bonuses for being in a linked group.
Usually you are limited to one Fire-team, but some sectorials get access to more than one type of Fire-team.

The main benefit of a fire-team is that you can activate all members of the team with the expenditure of a single action. This lets you move many models while spending few actions. It increases your order-efficiency.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Are their benefits from using just the sectorial part of an army?

Generally you can use more of certain unit types - for Pan O for example, if you go for the 'Knights' sectorial, the availability (the AVA stat on the unit profile) of Knight-type units will increase. But there are certain units you won't be able to choose.

Sectorials also allow you to form what are called 'Link Teams', which allow units of 3-5 move and fight as a single unit (but with bonuses). But, if you are only just getting into the game I wouldn't worry about that for now, just try and learn the basic mechanics first.

Most importantly, there is nothing to stop you collecting a generic Pan O force then using bits of it for a sectorial, even switching between sectorials. In fact this is what a lot of players tend to do (I mainly collect 'Qapu Khalqi', who are a mercenary-themed sectorial of Haqqislam. However, at times I play them as generic Haqqislam).

To begin with a good way to start is having a look at some of the starter sets (which contain 6 miniatures) - or if you're interested playing Pan O, perhaps even check out the Operation Icestorm starter set (you can then give the Nomads in that pack to a potential opponent). Is there anything that is taking your fancy so far?

The important part of sectorials is this - they're meant to theme your army. Outside of you wanting to run a specific theme, there's not much of a reason to run a sectorial. You lose units you might want, and gain AVA on units you might not actually want as compensation. Linked teams are a bonus, not the reason to run a sectorial.

For example with Haqqislam, whenever I run Hassassin Bahram, I miss quite a few units. Kum bikers, Al Hawwa, Jannisarys, Odalisques etc. I gain higher AVA on Fidays and Ragiks, which while fine units, I don't use that higher AVA. When I run Qapu Khalki, arguably one the sectorial with the largest selection of units, I still miss units. Kum bikers again, now Barid (hackers with their own Markers are great), Muyibs, Lasiqs, etc. I gain higher AVA on a load of units meant to run as Links that I don't feel the desire to run.

Generic lists lose Linked teams and the high AVA on units that sectorias allow, but allow you to take everything. While I can't take a link of 5 Muyibs or 5 Odalisques or 5 Jannisarys, I can take all of those in the same list, in addition to Kum bikers. Al Hawwa are great infiltrating hackers, and Barid are great midline hackers due to their markers. Generic Haqqislam lets me take both, and lets the Al Hawwa piggy back off the markers laid down by my Barid.

So it really depends on what sort of force you want to go for. Generic tends to be more competitively played because of the wider selection of specialists, but that doesn't mean sectorials are not competitive. The Interplanetary showed a sectorial (Qapu Khalki) did better than any other army.

Of course some factions want to run link teams. Like Ariadna can really abuse the link team rules due to just having lots of orders in general, so sectorial is a big advantage there.

Qapu Khalki likes to run link teams more than any other sectorial, considering they have the widest range of possible links (IIRC 8), plus Hafza that can fill in any link, plus 2 Haris options. Link teams are their thing.

Yet, when I play them, I miss not having Barids (regular hacking device with Marker for cheap), Lasiqs (Viral ammo), Kum (fast and cheap), Ghazi Muttawi'ah (lol HI and TAGs) and others.

Sectorials are a theme, and playing to that theme gives advantages and takes away other advantages. Sectorial or generic are just different ways to play a faction, neither are better than the other. It's just worth being aware of what you lose in a sectorial as much as what you gain.

How do I know who is in what sectorial? Its hard to tell in the army list thing (the official 200+ page PDF the company made)

Right at the end of the pdf army list are the pages that list the AVA of all the different troop types for the vanilla and sectorial lists.

You can use the official Infinity army builder on their website. Click the faction, and it will list each sectorial. Click the sectorial and the units belonging to said sectorial will be listed.

Is proxy bad in Infinity?

Nope.
Until they release models for every profile, proxying and converting are par for the course.

Now, in ITS, if a model exists for that profile, you are "supposed" to use that model - but that's an entirely different piscatorial vessel.

Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

Try Shae-Konnit, he does split box sales. You might be able to get the one you want without buying the whole box.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

Try Shae-Konnit, he does split box sales. You might be able to get the one you want without buying the whole box.

Thats the other thing, I dont really want all my dudes to have the same pose...

Are there any guys who has the other gear the Panzerfaust dude has?

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

Try Shae-Konnit, he does split box sales. You might be able to get the one you want without buying the whole box.

Thats the other thing, I dont really want all my dudes to have the same pose...

I misunderstood here (sorry, nor familiar with PanO). No, the only Teutonic knight with Panzerfaust is in the MO starter box. In this case, I'd suggest grabbing a box of Magister Knights, as they're equipped the same way (shoulder mounted Panzerfausts, CCWs). I don't think anyone, even at a tournament, will bat an eye at saying that those Magister Knights are actually Teutonic Knights. You'd wind up with a Missile Launcher Magister, but you could always just run him as as a Missile Magister if you needed some long range firepower.

There is a Teutonic knight with a panzerfaust in a blister by its self, it says its a d.e.p. but it is a panzerfaust.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

Try Shae-Konnit, he does split box sales. You might be able to get the one you want without buying the whole box.

Thats the other thing, I dont really want all my dudes to have the same pose...

You and every other Infinity player. We all want each mini to be unique.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Well Im saying it because they arent any "Teutonic Knights w/ Panzerfausts" outside of buying the five model pack with four models I dont want

Try Shae-Konnit, he does split box sales. You might be able to get the one you want without buying the whole box.

Thats the other thing, I dont really want all my dudes to have the same pose...

I misunderstood here (sorry, nor familiar with PanO). No, the only Teutonic knight with Panzerfaust is in the MO starter box. In this case, I'd suggest grabbing a box of Magister Knights, as they're equipped the same way (shoulder mounted Panzerfausts, CCWs). I don't think anyone, even at a tournament, will bat an eye at saying that those Magister Knights are actually Teutonic Knights. You'd wind up with a Missile Launcher Magister, but you could always just run him as as a Missile Magister if you needed some long range firepower.

Magisters and Teutonics look like the same guys

To most people, with the exception of some of the more unique Knights like DeFersen and Joan, Knights look the same from across the table. I'd say you'd be safe proxying most Knights for others.