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Hi all,

I've been toying with the idea of possibly starting a skirmish game so I was wondering if people could quickly sum up the premise around each of the skirmish games they play.

Also, feel free to recommend one to me. The main thing would be price at the moment but I'm looking for a more modern day era skirmish game if one exists, thanks.

Note: I know about warhammer skirmish games so I'm ok on these.

It's not exactly modern day, but if you are looking for a near future game you'll probably like Infinity.

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en

yeah, infinity is definitely looking like a favourite at the moment.

I'll second Infinity.

100% free online rule and army lists. A free online Army Builder with hyperlinks to a wiki for quick rule look ups. Plus some of the nicest model around.

And for the price of 2 boxs of Termy, you can get a whole force of 300pts (the standerd size games).

In that case, can anyone give me a quick run down of infinity? What's the overall fluff of each faction, etc.?

I don't know much about the factions, but the rules are a bit complex with the English versions prone to mistakes and omissions. (The company is natively Spanish)

Thankfully, the rules are free and answers can be found online, just be prepared to work at clarifying everything.

The rules themselves are written a bit complex too, not written technically, which is a problem. But they did update the official downloadable quick start rules just a few weeks ago, and on the Spanish forums they have said they want to do another revision of the English rules written more technically, so they're making progress. When I first tried this game the English rules were a stinking mess, which led to a disastrous first few test games, so make sure you read everything.

As for the game. Basically it's an IGO UGO, but with unlimited reactions from the opposing team, and long ranges on all the weapons. The unique mechanic is that as your models do their thing, if an enemy reacts to you, or you react to them, in direct opposition, you make a Face to Face roll to determine the outcome, it's not that complex to do, but it's a neat mechanic.

You have a pool of orders determined by what units you've taken, usually every model contributes 1 order to your pool, but not always. You can spend those orders across your entire army, or just keep spending it on one model to have it practically move across the table shooting all the way. How they balance this out is that because there's unlimited reactions, that one model doesn't get free reign of the table, as he's constantly be shot at if other models have LoS to him while he takes an order.

As models move, shoot, and dodge shots you have all players active at the same time, and there's a bit of extra movement from that.

They encourage you to pack the table with terrain to avoid a situation where one model with line of sight to the entire table takes out everyone as they move. So do not skimp on the terrain.

I think of the latest rules for the game are overly complex, such as the fireteams/link teams/G:synch stuff. That could have been handled much better.

Also not all the miniatures look amazing for the line in bare metal. CB has really great painters that can add on extra detail where needed, so be aware of that. Most of their later miniatures are really good though, so don't let it deter you too much. Just be prepared to try a bit of extra zenithal lighting to help make the mini stand out.

Infinity basically takes place amongst a group of planets called the Human Sphere. The Human Sphere is an area of space that encompasses Earth and all of the planets controlled by humans in the future. The planets are connected by giant ships which continually travel from planet to planet.

These planets are controlled and in some cases fought over by the various factions found within the game. Most of the factions are loosely based on groups of countries found on Earth:

Factions:
Pan Oceania:
India, Europe, the South Pacific and some South American countries. They're the most powerful faction as they own the most planets within the Human Sphere. They are super high tech and have the biggest selection of TAGs (giant powered armor suits).
Aleph:
Aleph is an AI which controls most of the computer networks of the Human Sphere. Most of its troops are robots and cyborgs.
Nomads:
Nomads have their own interstellar ships which they live on and stay off of the Aleph network. Aleph and the Nomads are sworn enemies as the Nomads believe Aleph is trying to control human beings for its own nefarious goals.
Haqqislam:
Literally meaning the "new" Islam, Haqqislam is focused on medical technology and they barter their superior medical goods to the other factions.
Yu Jing:
The second largest faction controlling two planets and most of Asia on Earth, Yu Jing is in quite active competition with Pan Oceania to be the most powerful group in the Human Sphere.
Ariadna:
Ariadna was a lost colony recently reconnected with the rest of the Human Sphere. They are primarily of European and American decent. Because they were cut off from the Human Sphere for so long, their level of technology is lower. This isolation on a new, hostile planet, also made them a lot tougher than most other humans.
Combined Army:
A group of alien races controlled by an "Evolved Intelligence", they are actively making war against humanity in order to further expand their power. Think Predator meets the Covenant from Halo.

Thanks. The nomads are sounding the most interesting to me, probably going to go with them.

The other thing is I've been reading about the aurora incident, could someone make sure I've got this right and fully explain it to me:

The first cargo ship was ariadna, they landed and began to colonise the planet dawn.

The Earth was running out of resources and so they had pored a lot of money into this colonisation so they decided to send their second ship through the wormhole as well.

This was the Aurora, however the wormhole shut on the Aurora meaning it was lost. This also meant that the whole colonisation project was lost as well as mankinds only known wormhole at the time meaning that all that money was lost and the whole world just kind of went to hell.

This is what lead to the three initial factions on earth.

Take my advice, don't THINK about making a Skirmish game, and just do it. Your never going to get it done if you just THINK about doing it.