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Hello fellow forumites!

I'm getting back into Infinity after a stupidly long interval, and I'm trying to rope in a few of my boardgamers friends. As such I've decided to buy a second force and some terrains to be able to demo out of my appartment. I'm tempted by either of Operation: Icestorm or the USAriadna starter set, but I'm having a hard time choosing between the two. I was hoping for any input from dakkanauts that have purchased one or the other, or any advices, really.

Operation Icestorm would actually let me field 3 different forces, although 2 small ones. But I'm only halfway interested in PanO, and I don't think I would end up expanding them. Finding someone to sell them off afterwards could be a challenge. On the other handI find the Nomad models awesome, and there would be some (tiny) synergy with my main faction (MRRF) for the hacker.

The USAriadna set would net me a 2nd faction while at the same time expanding the choice I could have under regular Ariadna. The terrain mat and boxes looks better (imho) than the O:IS ones. The one problem I have with this option is that, well, it's getting a second Ariadna sectorial. Infinity is a futuristic tacticool wargame, but I'm apparently stuck playing border patrol+werewolves.

So, stupid amuricah tacitcal bow OR stupid Catholic power sword? Anyone got any idea how I might resolve this conundrum?

Operation:Icestorm was my entry point to infinity and I like the look of most of the stuff in those factions. Theres a fair bit more than just knights in PanO too if they put you off. I personally have a thing for the auxbots, remotes and tags. The fatherknight does makes a decent hacker with D-charges and good melee if you did ever field it.

The USAriada box on the other hand didnt really interest me. I was actually strongly put off by the amount of 'murica being pushed by CorvusBelli which I feel subtracts from the game setting as a whole.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
So, stupid amuricah tacitcal bow OR stupid Catholic power sword? Anyone got any idea how I might resolve this conundrum?

Collect either of those factions and don't use those models?

As an entry point for others, the O:I box is a better bet - that gives you three forces, distinct visually and in terms of play style. The terrain is also more easily expandable; CB sell the Moto:tronica scenery set separately and Micro art Studios sell a matching 4' x 4' mat.

^^ What he said.

I play PanO and I don't have ANY of the knights. I have sufficient HI without them (and to get the most out of them, you really need to play Mil Orders anyway).

I'm just getting back into infinity and grabbed the USAriadna army pack as pan o and nomads don't really interest me plus when I played infinity years ago I had ariadna anyway. Decided to switch from the Scots to yanks though but will likely add in more vanilla ariadna and likely end up with a sectorial force for each sectorial as well.

Cant wait to get stuck back in

Terrain wise, the Navajo Outpost scenery set from the USAriadna box will be available as a separate pack any time now.

Strictly going on what is included, I feel the rules given in Icestorm are more 'complete' than what was given in the USAriadna box. I realize they are free online, but the Icestorm box is much better bet for someone totally new to the game and looking for a 'one stop' set. Strictly from a value standpoint, I don't think the USAriadna box is as good of a deal, either.

Bonjour et bienvenue. The USAriadna would combine with the MRRF if you wanted to play vanilla Ariadna. Vanilla Ariadna is very playable.

I have O:I and it is very good for getting started. The Pan-O can always be traded or sold. Or used for Demo games. Since I already had a nice Acontecimento force, the Pan-O stuff meant I could expand into Vanilla, and hopefully the Svalarheim sectorial when it emerges.

Basically, which minis do you like better? That should influence your final decision.

Bonne Chance! And pardon my French.

Dropbear Victim wrote:

The USAriada box on the other hand didnt really interest me. I was actually strongly put off by the amount of 'murica being pushed by CorvusBelli which I feel subtracts from the game setting as a whole.

Don't let Alpharius catch you saying 'Murica CB really wants to be "Big in America" because it is such a lucrative market (330+ Million people, 1 currency, 1 language for the most part...) and they apparently like coming to GenCon. I think that some of the CB'ers are mildly enamored of US pop culture too, or at least its stereotypes.

USARF actually gives you too many Grunts to run Vanilla, same with the MRRF box and Metros. Remember that if it isn't Kazaks and it's outside of their Sectorial? It's AVA 2.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 totalfailure wrote:
Terrain wise, the Navajo Outpost scenery set from the USAriadna box will be available as a separate pack any time now.

Strictly going on what is included, I feel the rules given in Icestorm are more 'complete' than what was given in the USAriadna box. I realize they are free online, but the Icestorm box is much better bet for someone totally new to the game and looking for a 'one stop' set. Strictly from a value standpoint, I don't think the USAriadna box is as good of a deal, either.

From a points standpoint?
You're absolutely correct. It's a failing of Ariadna that everything is so damn cheap, and it's a failing of that particular boxed set that rather than try to give you a viable 300 point list(you know, the points value that all the missions that come included in the boxed set you bought are set at) they gave you what will be the USARF "starter"(the 6 model set of 3x Grunts, Minuteman, Marauder, and Foxtrot Ranger), a Maverick,(people like bikes, right? right?!) and the Devil Dog.

Depending entirely upon how you equip/set up the box, you can get to around 149 points going by WYISWYG(Devil Dog can't be used for the Heavy Shotgun profile in that regard since he has the AP Heavy Pistol and the Heavy Shotgun does not have it)--a point shy of half of the required points to play the scenarios in the boxed set.
If the Devil Dog and Maverick(two kits which are likely to be VERY expensive, currency-wise) had been dropped from the army box, they could have been replaced with 4 man unit boxes for the Grunts and Marauders/Minutemen--and if the Foxtrot Ranger came with a Sniper Rifle like he was described as having in the fluff part, it would have been a wildly different story for the army box.

This, IMO, is what should have came in the box:
USAriadna Ranger Force
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

Group 1 9 0 0
GRUNT Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (10)
GRUNT Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (10)
GRUNT Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (10)
GRUNT (Marksmanship LX) Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)
GRUNT Paramedic (MediKit) Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (12)
MARAUDER Lieutenant Rifle, Heavy Flamethrower / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (21)
MARAUDER (Fireteam: Haris L1) Rifle, Heavy Flamethrower / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (1 | 22)
MARAUDER (Multispectral Visor L1) Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 26)
MARAUDER Molotok / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 28)

Group 2 4 0 0
MINUTEMAN AP HMG / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 34)
MINUTEMAN (Marksmanship L1, X-Visor) AP Rifle, 2 Light Flamethrowers / Pistol, CCW. (29)
FOXTROT Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24)
FOXTROT (Forward Observer) Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (18)

6.5 SWC | 262 Points

Open with Army 5

I wonder how well the USAriadna box sold. I admit I bought one. At least Miniature Market had too many - it was one of their half off daily deals in the last few weeks. For an army starter, you do certainly need to add a lot to get to 300.

Icestorm was around 200 per side, so you did not need as much to get there. While one could question the included units there too, it could at least be rationalized by it being a starter. That is, unit x is there because we wanted to demonstrate rule whatever to players...

 totalfailure wrote:
I wonder how well the USAriadna box sold. I admit I bought one. At least Miniature Market had too many - it was one of their half off daily deals in the last few weeks. For an army starter, you do certainly need to add a lot to get to 300.

Icestorm was around 200 per side, so you did not need as much to get there. While one could question the included units there too, it could at least be rationalized by it being a starter. That is, unit x is there because we wanted to demonstrate rule whatever to players...

Honestly, it's just bizarre that they set the missions for 300 points and gave you so little.

From all indications it sold very well, but most of the supplementary stuff has been in and out of stock almost instantaneously. Traktor Muls and Dozers with the control device have been almost impossible to find, as has the Grunts boxed set and the Hardcase.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Honestly, it's just bizarre that they set the missions for 300 points and gave you so little.

From all indications it sold very well, but most of the supplementary stuff has been in and out of stock almost instantaneously. Traktor Muls and Dozers with the control device have been almost impossible to find, as has the Grunts boxed set and the Hardcase.

Well, that could be. I know Auxilia, Interventors, and the TAGs were hard to find for a while, as they were 'recommended' add ons to what was in the Icestorm box.

 totalfailure wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Honestly, it's just bizarre that they set the missions for 300 points and gave you so little.

From all indications it sold very well, but most of the supplementary stuff has been in and out of stock almost instantaneously. Traktor Muls and Dozers with the control device have been almost impossible to find, as has the Grunts boxed set and the Hardcase.

Well, that could be. I know Auxilia, Interventors, and the TAGs were hard to find for a while, as they were 'recommended' add ons to what was in the Icestorm box.

That's certainly true but a great many shops still actually had them on shelves, because in the case of the TAG and Auxilia for PanOceania and the Iguana TAG?
They'd been out for awhile and many people had them already.

For USARF, a Sectorial list(you literally cannot play it as Vanilla without removing a Grunt from the boxed set--lowering your points value even further) that had virtually none of its Sectorial stuff out?
It was a HUGE problem.

Only half the points required for the scenarios? What blessed luxury you have! Look at the scenarios for the Dire Foes boxes and you get one model towards the 300-point force you need to play the included scenario.

Not that it matters a whit, since if it doesn't say "ITS" at the front, it might as well not be printed.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Only half the points required for the scenarios? What blessed luxury you have! Look at the scenarios for the Dire Foes boxes and you get one model towards the 300-point force you need to play the included scenario.

Not that it matters a whit, since if it doesn't say "ITS" at the front, it might as well not be printed.

Dire Foes were not advertised as an army box with scenarios "just like Operation Icestorm", now are they?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Only half the points required for the scenarios? What blessed luxury you have! Look at the scenarios for the Dire Foes boxes and you get one model towards the 300-point force you need to play the included scenario.

Not that it matters a whit, since if it doesn't say "ITS" at the front, it might as well not be printed.

Dire Foes were not advertised as an army box with scenarios "just like Operation Icestorm", now are they?

Just like O:IS should of give a clue as to the point value of the box.

Yes, they were:

http://www.data-sphere.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Schermafbeelding-2014-11-21-om-12.05.59.png

Yeah, the Dire Foes sets came with 2 models and an 'objective' and were advertised as having a scenario included on the box - not a scenario for the box plus 2 300pt armies, just listing the box contents as including a scenario. Logical assumption for someone who didn't play the game would be for what's in the box.

I'd expected they'd need a few extra models, but I was expecting them to be for small forces, perhaps specifying exactly what models to use. Not for a generic scenario that didn't even need the actual Spec Ops models in the box!

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
I'd expected they'd need a few extra models, but I was expecting them to be for small forces, perhaps specifying exactly what models to use. Not for a generic scenario that didn't even need the actual Spec Ops models in the box!

They made it clear that the Dire Foes boxes weren't intended to be standalone, just that they included a scenario.

I can absolutely understand your confusion though. They have this habit of putting information out in snippets and it gets put all over the place. You might get a piece from a seminar here, another piece from a web interview there, a comment from one of the dev's personal Facebook pages, etc.

Apologies if I'm coming across as "NAHUH! THEY TOTALLY SAID IT WAS A SUPPLEMENT PRODUCT!".

My latest bugbear is the new stats (for things like the new Mobile Brigada models) are being added to the Army 5 web app, but not to the profiles PDF.

Yeah, that feels a bit lazy, but I get the feeling that they're waiting for a month or two where they're not releasing new profiles to do a larger update to the profiles PDF. Either that or they're waiting to release HSN3, which would be super irritating since that's not until next year.

I like army 5, but I don't like making every list in it.

It doesn't cover all the models I want to use, annoyingly.

 -Loki- wrote:

I like army 5, but I don't like making every list in it.

I agree with this. I do most of my online stuff on an IPad and I am less than thrilled with Army 5 on that platform.

What I would like to see with Army 5, is it as a stand alone app rather than only as web based. This would make it much more portable.

I'd like to see a sync function

So that you can write your list on one device, and have it available on another without having to do file porting.

Like toolbox used to be able to do.

Would be nice if they made some standardised online database that app makers could connect to which has all the same information that army 5 has. Have a log in for ITS as well.

That way each app would connect to the same information for stats and equipment, but still allow things like Mayanet to use key words to do their wiki links. With a log in it would also allow saving army lists which other applications would be able to see and use.

Would take a lot of back end engineering, however, and a lot more money than I'm guessing they're willing to dedicate to it. Simply making Army 5 also have android and iOS apps would be a good middle ground. I love Mayanet for its massive utility while playing a game and wouldn't stop using it short of army 5 getting the same functionality, but I'd use an iOS army 5 to initially build my lists.

I'm sure glad they didn't stick a bunch of Grunts and Marauders in the box and be done with it. I would never have picked up two sets.

I bought two boxes of the USAriadna starter and purchased a third Devil Dog team from another player. My enemies will run with fear at the sight of my six werewolves hitting the field.

The whole USA theme isn't even a bad thing. You guys have heard of Senior Massacre right? The Deadpool ripoff? William Wallace is in this game. The Anathematics might as well be Predator. Fun pop culture references have been done since before comic books started printing.

 Arkaine wrote:
I'm sure glad they didn't stick a bunch of Grunts and Marauders in the box and be done with it. I would never have picked up two sets.

I bought two boxes of the USAriadna starter and purchased a third Devil Dog team from another player. My enemies will run with fear at the sight of my six werewolves hitting the field.
.

I just did this myself.