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So like the title says, me and some friends are looking at Infinity as a possible new way to play and after paging through the rulebook I have a few questions for those experienced with both systems.

1) It seems like there are a lot of measurements and rolls for each action that each model does. The number of measurements and dice rolls just to try to lob a grenade over a wall alone seems rather astounding to me. How much time is spent measuring and rolling? More than 40K, less than 40K, about the same?

2) It seems to me that if you don't take hackers you really can't do anything in this game, is that correct?

3) The Lieutenant seems to also be really critical as well. Is this game basically won by who snipes the others Lieutenant first or can you survive losing the Lieutenant and have a reasonable chance of wining the game?

4) How many games would you say it takes to get a really good feel for the game?

Wow you really have got the wrong end of the stick with several points there. The rules can be a little confusing but it all comes clear when you start to play.

ok so to answer your questions:

1) same or less measuring than 40k. There's less models on the field so inherently less measuring in general. Lobbing grenades is just as easy as it is fireing a gun... measure the range, apply modifiers, roll the dice, and if you fail it scatters according to the dice roll. At this point you'd measure again to see where it scattered. Honestly that simple.

2) Ariadna dosn't really have hackers because they're low-tech in comparison to others, yet they do fine. Hackers arn't the do-all and end-all of the game, but they do allow for some fun when the timeing is right.

3) Your LT is a little bit of a prized target, but he should be a secret from your opponent so that he can't just hunt him. Usualy an LT is a grunt hidden from the enemy at most times so that he isn;t put at risk because if he dies you have to select a new one next turn and basicly lose the turn. If you have religeous troops for example then they can still go ahead without an LT. Some minis also have 2nd in command skills where it passes to them automatically if the LT dies. In general you need to defend your LT and not run him into a sniper's shot.

4) I'd say about 3-4 games before you really get a good grip on the basics. If you have any military background then the game's a little easier to grasp because of the tactics (crossing firezones, ambush, etc) but generally after 4 you'll be doing ok, after 10 games you'll have most of the special rules down. Don't be afraid to throw loads of different things into the mix pretty quick because there's the online wiki if you need to look it up, but start small and work up slowly in points. About 150pts is a good start.

Just to add about Leiutenants - people like to play shell games with them. You are not required to let your opponent know who is your Lt outside of showing them your list at the start of the game.

If they forget during the game, that's their fault. If you have, say, a Haqqislam Ghulam Lt, who has a Rifle, and two Ghulam Infantry with Rifles, you are not required to (and recommended not to) indicate who the Lt is, and the models are, well, just normal Ghulam with Rifles for all 3. Just make sure you write it down so you know and can prove after the game who it was.

Use this to your advantage. Yes, the Lt is a critical unit whose loss will lose you the game in some missions, and in others be a crippling loss due to LoL. That doesn't mean you have to make it easy on your opponent to know who it actually is.

Thank you Gav99, like I said was just an initial look today.

The reason the grenade thing got so confusing was it started talking about measuring the height of intervening obstacles and the distance the models were from said obstacles to determine if the shot could actually hit.

Its good that hackers aren't particularly mandatory, the mandatory wonder unit to be able to compete is one of the things we're looking to get away from

The hidden list thing is an interesting concept, so different from everything has to be obvious as to what it is and exactly what it's capable of.

Overall,w hat owuld you say the biggest adjustment for a 40K player picking up infinity is?

Jefffar wrote:
The hidden list thing is an interesting concept, so different from everything has to be obvious as to what it is and exactly what it's capable of.

Not really, proxying is very common. Just make sure your opponent knows, when they look at your list, what anything being proxied actually is. The infinity crowd seems to be very lenient, mostly because a lot of unit profiles just don't have models yet.

Jefffar wrote:
Overall,w hat owuld you say the biggest adjustment for a 40K player picking up infinity is?

Getting over the netlist mentality. In 40k, codices have standout units and terrible units, and armies tend to look the same because you just don't take the terrible units.

In Infinity, there's a popular saying. 'It's not your list, it's you'. Everything has a use. Some people might decry something as a useless unit, but that's just because they can't make it work. A few more people will pop in and share their list which is totally different and makes use of the decried unit well.

So yeah, the biggest adjustment will be to stop looking for the 'best' units in an army, and just get used to making an army list you like. This has the great side effect of being able to make an army purely out of models you like the look of and being able to figure out how to make it work, and work it will.

Well just to continue with the secret army list thing... There's a free army builder on the official site, and you can tell it to not print out who the LT is. That way you can write it down in secret and show your opponent after the battle. The game is played on the honor system so you should trust your opponent to declare when their LT goes down. One suggestion is have an envelope with you, both write down who your LT is on seperate pieces of paper (details details details, should be detailed enough so that anyone can see which exact model you chose!) and then place them in the envelope untill after the match.

As for adjusting from 40k... I'd say it's the mentality. In 40k you try to stomp your opponent as hard as possible during your own turn because they can't fight back. In infinity you have to be ever watching of what they're doing because the action-reaction system can be a killer if you just try to go all-out. The other big thing is the face-to-face rolls. Being as if you beat your opponents roll then you cancel it out completely. So instead of 5 of my guys dieing and 3 of your guys, you lose your guy and mine is left unscathed because I shot you first causing your guy to stagger and miss his shots. Criticals is where the game is truely won quickly, an auto-wound with no armor save and beats any dice score but a higher critical.

The other thing to watch out for is the order system. Not only can you shoot, fight, and throw stuff, but you can dodge, hack, place a mine and all in reaction to your opponent's order being spent. This is where it slows the game down for new players, having to try and decide what to do and if they're allowed. (if you can see the enemy at any point of their actions used during an order then you may take a reaction. If they are within 8" of you at any point of the order then you also get a reaction, though it may just be to turn and face them.)

Hi, I'm a recovering 40K addict getting into Infinity myself.

I used to play Guard and Tau for years. It is hard to adjust to a more agressive style of play. Also, having a list full of grunts with one or two specialists with heavy guns doesn't work. I'm getting to have to think much more synergistically. (Word counts triple, yay!)

And "area cover" and "intervening terrain" is stuff you need to get out of your vocabulary, as I learned last night. You're up against it or tough luck.

Concerning the grenades, I think you're referring to the "shadow" into which you can't lob it (because the course of the actual weapon is a parabola) It's really the only thing I can see and it takes, literally, 2 seconds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Are you near Montreal?

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Also, having a list full of grunts with one or two specialists with heavy guns doesn't work.

Depends on the army. Haqqislam have a huge variety of grunts with special weapons. In fact, one of their cheap 'cheerleader' options has a flame thrower.

So like the title says, me and some friends are looking at Infinity as a possible new way to play and after paging through the rulebook I have a few questions for those experienced with both systems.

1) It seems like there are a lot of measurements and rolls for each action that each model does. The number of measurements and dice rolls just to try to lob a grenade over a wall alone seems rather astounding to me. How much time is spent measuring and rolling? More than 40K, less than 40K, about the same?

2) It seems to me that if you don't take hackers you really can't do anything in this game, is that correct?

3) The Lieutenant seems to also be really critical as well. Is this game basically won by who snipes the others Lieutenant first or can you survive losing the Lieutenant and have a reasonable chance of wining the game?

4) How many games would you say it takes to get a really good feel for the game?

Answers and comments:

1) There are no more and perhaps less measurements in Infinity than there are in other similiar systems. There is NO pre-measure in Infinity, although the common gun in the game has a range of 48" you are unlikely to be out of range of anything. What does happen is you select your target then measure the distance between the firing models, this distance will define what bonus or penalty is applied to the die roll. Roll the dice, make saves as required and move on. Other measurements in the game include moving, checking deviation of parabolic fire weapons (grenades) and to see if someone has entered your 8" control area (which you can pretty much eyeball 90% of the time).

2) Hackers have more effect on the game at the higher point totals where they have 'special attacks/defenses' that come into play against heavy infantry, remotes, and TAGS (the big robots), and things like guided ammunition, where these types of models see more use As was noted Ariadna has no hackers, in fact they are immune to hackers as well, as their HI is not 'powered armor, but composed of a special lightwieght yet extremely durable metal. Hakcers offer another level of play, but honestly are in no way 'required' to make an effective and dangerous force or even to play against those that possess them.

3) Also commented on, your Lt is important but losing him/her does not equate to auto/win or lose, more like "I killed your Lt, lose a turn". Even that however can be mitagated by taking abilities like Chain of Command ("make it so number 2") which allows a model to immediately assume command with no ill effects. Your Lt is typically hidden (although an experianced player can often guess who the Lt is based on how you play the model or what your willpower roll was at the beginning of the game), but its not required to be. You can certainly overcome the loss of Lt and even win the game, it happens quite often. On a related note there is another situation that occurs during the game that is similiar but not the same, that is the Retreat! situation, and yes you can win even in this state (it is harder but not impossible). Retreat! occurs when you have lost over 60% of your total force. ( I have won games in retreat and had what I thought was certain victory snatched from my grasp by a force in Retreat!) Religious Troops can ignore situations such as Retreat!

4) 4-5 games will give you a good grasp the basics, don't be afraid to mix it up, but something that I found that makes a big difference in learning it is play those first 3-4 games with the same models, so that you REALLY understand them, what they do, and how they affect the game. Then toss in whatever suits your fancy.

This game is not 40k in 40 minutes it is it's own animal. A suggestion I have made to others and one that was made to me, play a game of X-Comm (the new XBOX title), there are many similarities in that game to the way Infinity plays, especially in regards to AROs.

Welcome to Infinity!

Alright, lot of interesting stuff said here to get me thinking. Playing Tau I'm used to some units being definitely more effective than other units . . . but I'm also used to making those lesser effective units work for me. So a 'no bad unit' system will be very interesting.

Any tips on play styles of the various forces?

Matthieu - no, I'm over near Kitchener-Waterloo,

All factions have access to about 80% of the overall abilities, equipment and weapons. The difference is in the fine tuning.

One faction, like PanOceania has a higher ballistic skill overall, but has fewer special abilities than many others. So they, overall, have fewer surprises for the opposing player. Sure they can still hide models using thermo-optic camo, but other options are less available.

There isn't necessarily a "rush army" like nids where you HAVE to swarm in. Those stereotypes don't apply here.

Best advice: Pick your first faction based on which minis look cool to you and go from there.

 bloodedcat wrote:
Best advice: Pick your first faction based on which minis look cool to you and go from there.

This is the best advice, because Infinity is a game where this advice actually works. As long as the models you pick are within the Cost/AVA/SCW limits for your list, go nuts and make the list work for you on the table.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Also, having a list full of grunts with one or two specialists with heavy guns doesn't work.

Depends on the army. Haqqislam have a huge variety of grunts with special weapons. In fact, one of their cheap 'cheerleader' options has a flame thrower.

What I meant by grunt was comparable to guardsman with a flashlight. A flame thrower is definitely not a lasgun. I load up on Fusiliers with combirifles, because that's what I have at the moment, and compared to Von Skyfury who has every Ariadna model in the range (except 5, I think), I feel definitely de-clawed. So in my mind, a Fusilier with a HMG (at almost double the points) is not a grunt anymore.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough. Do I make sense, in a way?

Now you do . When I read 'specialist with a heavy weapon', my mind immediately changes from thinking 'grunt', to, well, specialist. Looking at it from a Haqq point of view, I go from thinking 'Ghulam' (grunt) to 'Hassassin Muyib' (specialist) with a HRL (heavy weapon).

It's kind of a drawcard with Haqqislam having a lot of 'grunts' with special weapons. They're still grunts, still super cheap cheerleaders.

As has been said, pick whichever army strikes you as cool. It'll help you get your minis painted faster and to a better degree than picking X army for Y ability and never bothering to paint it.

All the factions are good and have their strengths... but those strengths depend on your play style as well as your tactics, so once you've picked a side and played several games with a well rounded force, start mixing your list up and see what works. And remember that you can swap in proxies if you want because the opponent knows what each guy has and does anyway. If there's doubt he can always ask you again what it was.

As far as buying minis goes... get a starter box for sure. It comes with several basic grunts and a few special guys. That should be about half a 150 point list. For the rest, just proxy for now to save money. Then depending on what army you like, take a couple of blisters to round out the force. Try the army builder on the official website to see what you can make, try and go for a bit of flavor but don't forget to look at those sweet sweet TO guys (thermal-optical camo that acts like the Predator's invisibility).

Reading these articles my help you a lot, with both the rules and choosing a faction:

http://wargamingtrader.com/infinity/intro1

http://wargamingtrader.com/infinity/intro2

Do take note that you are not limited to one playstyle with each faction. For example, Yu Jing has really good close combat specialists but it doesn't mean you can only field a close-combat army with Yu Jing.

Would definitely second the 'buy what models you like' sentiment that has already been posted here! Obviously don't go mental and buy 4 TAGs (the big robots) or something, but by and large a lot of people go with their favourite-looking starter set and go from there.

And welcome to Infinity! Please post any models you get and start painting, and of course any questions you might have!