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http://www.beastsofwar.com/infinity/3rd-ed-rules-revealed/

They just announced the changes to these, rules and I gotta say, it addresses a lot of the weirdness that I didn't like when I first tried Infinity. 3rd edition is turning out really well.

I know some local players who do Infinity were really not a fan of the old infiltration rules, the new ones punish you a lot more for failing, putting you back in your deployment zone, coming in off a table edge. The horror stories I'd heard was a common meta to have a powerful infiltrator with camo and a template weapon, so you had super deadly, auto hitting, infiltrator in your midst on turn one, and he gets to go first. Now, that's still possible, but if you fail, you're not scattering to a potentially better position, you go way back.

The big one is that Lieutenants are now drastically changed. The LT order, when spent, now reveals the LT, and can only be spent on the LT. Also, loss of LT status now only makes all your troops Irregular, instead of reducing your entire army to 2.

A new system added is Command Points, separate from orders, that will do things that the LT order did previously, and also let you as assign a new Lt.

Apparently they want to let you use certain models that should appropriately be an Lt, as your Lt despite how obvious it was and the potential to lose it. The whole loss of Lt severity was a huge reason why I never went that far with Infinity the first time around.

Yeah, the loss of lieutenant rules were always one of the hardest bits to get around. In most cases they were a death knell that you had lost the game unless your opponent did their best not to capitalize on it (or you lost it on your turn).

This will allow all factions to play a potentially aggressive LT option.

Command points sound very interesting and I'm always a fan of stacking a resource management system on top of my resource management system.

I'm also loving the new MSV rules. MSV1 is less niche than before, the MSV2 was fine as is and remains so, and the MSV3 gets toned down considerably while removing the funky rules interactions created by being able to fire on an un-revealed model. Overall the progression along them is less janky and it seems a much smoother transition along the spectrum instead of a meteoric shift in capabilities as one goes up the chain.

The way infiltration is being handled is a nice way to prevent turn one do-or-die assassination runs (not that those are really going to be a thing in the new edition with LoL getting toned down). It also makes Inferior Infiltration (presumably) a lot less suicidal. Daylami may see play as an actual threat since they will either come in on target or get set up in the back. Kind of neat.

And I think making camo more interactive was a good idea, especially if the simplified rolling progression stays the same in QSR (ties cancel each other out, crits cancel crits regardless of level). Though a lot of limited camo units probably just got a lot cheaper now that they basically have a one-shot version of Mimetism (unless things have changed of course). And it nicely nerfs some of the worse interaction (camo'd template-toters like the CRAP SAS and Chasseur) while leveling out results and allowing weedy light skirmishers to successfully engage heavies without eating the retaliation shot and dieing. It also means that DTWs (as found on a lot of heavies, warbands, and TAGs) are a great general anti-camo weapon and camo units will have to think twice about going in for some CQB.

Overall, I'm liking the changes and, more importantly, the philosophy behind the changes quite a bit. It is nice that they seem to be fixing and changing a lot of the things in 2nd Edition that were causing the meta to stagnate (camo and MSV primacy, the best plays being to avoid FtF rolls at all cost leading to the otherwise interactive turn system becoming non-interactive, etc.).

This has definitely made me feel a bit less jaded about Infinity, so much so that even though it will be a 2nd Edition game, I'm excited to play it again this weekend (man, it's been months!).

I wonder how they are going to handle the CA "nope, you didn't kill my LT, he's over there now" ability. It's probably because of that little crutch that I never really worried so much about losing my LT and avoided a lot of the problems I'm seeing about the rule. If it was really that bad for other armies then it's probably a justifiable balancing of power level.

CA will still benefit from their rule, somehow.

The whole LoL thing might have still worked the way it is, if not for Infinity, at heart, being less of a realistic game, and more of a crazy anime kind of game that just happens to have some realistic elements.

In a realistic military game, people would be fine with sitting their Lt in back or safely away from the fighting.

But in an anime game with crazy camo, powered armor, battle nuns, and more, you want that vulnerable leader right up front as a centerpiece more often than not.

 dementedwombat wrote:
If it was really that bad for other armies then it's probably a justifiable balancing of power level.

If it was bad?

Put it this way. It's your active turn. You are given a choice. You have 2 regular orders. You can spend them as regular orders, or use them to elect a new Lt.

Yes, it was bad. Game endingly bad. It basically meant you lost an entire turn. Some armies had an easier time - Religious heavy, like Hassassins or Observance heavy Bakunin, for example, basically performed how the new LoL works, as it made anyone with Religious essentially Irregular for a turn. As you said, CA had a mighty fun time thanks to Mnemonica. But for the vast majority of armies, losing your Lt meant the end of the game, unless your opponent went easy on you.

My main concern now is Religious was an expensive skill. 4pts, which means in a 10 model combat group list, like Hassassins, you basically spent 40pts on Religious, which had the sole purpose of giving you an advantage on LoL. Now they're given it to everyone. So I really hope either Religious gets reworked into something else worth 4pts, or every Religious unit gets a point drop and the skill just leaves the game.

I like their idea that they want Lt's to be more of a choice. In the past, it was basically anyone who could take some punishment, like a HI, with a CoC backup is available, or someone who could sit in the back line in a bitch hole and either perform his function from there (like a hacker with markers) or was a basic cheap grunt. Still with CoC backup, if available. Easing up on LoL means models like Tarik should become viable as Lt's, since them dying isn't so bad.

Rumor has it religious will have you completly ignore LoL. Your army will just stay regular during the process.

 NuclearMessiah wrote:
Rumor has it religious will have you completly ignore LoL. Your army will just stay regular during the process.

No one really knows for all we know it could give them a bonus when your Lt goes down. With any luck it will be in the Quick Start Rules coming out in September.

Religious probably won't be in the QSR.

It's never before been in QSR (2 previous versions).
The QSR are designed to get you playing "the basics" and religious was one of the rules that was considered "more advanced" and not used in that set.

It will undoubtedly be in the FULL 3rd ed rulebook, though.

Noir wrote:

 NuclearMessiah wrote:
Rumor has it religious will have you completly ignore LoL. Your army will just stay regular during the process.

No one really knows for all we know it could give them a bonus when your Lt goes down. With any luck it will be in the Quick Start Rules coming out in September.

We've not heard any rumours at all about Religious, as far as I'm aware.

And as Chromedog says Religious is very unlikely to be in the QSR, especially as it's not in the Icestorm booklet which is likely to be more detailed than the QSR.

Ok I should say it is speculated that perhaps it may.....be what I said above

Anyways I am curious to see the changes when we see N3 in its full glory and hope my Morats going from being subpar to at least decent

Finally got around to watching the entire thing. I will say the only thing I don't like is that combat jumpers always scatter 16" now regardless of how much you fail by. I like the separate direction roll, since it never really made much sense that higher PH models physically couldn't scatter in certain directions.

I actually liked the system where the amount you fail by influences how far off target you are. I wonder if parabolic fire weapons will be the same 16" distance. Honestly i want something looked at about that, like in Warmachine where a marker can't scatter more than half the distance to the target. Any system where a shot can scatter back over the shooter's head and end up behind him annoys me (sure you can justify it as bouncing off a building, but it still seems dumb).