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Hello.

So after a long break with miniature wargaming (40K) I am getting the itch again but this time I am seriously contemplating starting up Infinity. I've been reading all I can on the net and played through my first stumbling game yesterday. It was a cool game but as you can imagine I struggled with the rules, especially since my opponent had only two games under his belt.

Even though I had read about how cool orders and ARO are it took me with surprise and I found it extremely difficult to shake my 40K-ways. Even to the point that it wasn't until half way through the game that I really picked up on the fact that - yes! I can move just this guy here, several times in fact!. I really loved how that allowed us to zoom in on the action in certain parts of the battle. Very cool, but you know this of course.

I won by the way. Which leads me to one of my questions that I have been unable to really find an answer to yet (despite the many beginner threads here and elsewhere). Both of us played PanOceania and my opponent fielded a Military Order sectorial list with about 5 "knights" and one TO and I fielded a vanilla list with four fusiliers, one Orc, one Akalis and one Croc. What really made me think was the ease by which I won. I am sure there are plenty of reasons for this (the Akilis in particular won the game as he swooped in on one flank) but regardless of this my Fusiliers for all their lack-luster are not far behind.

So, why aren't I seeing more spam armies? I realise that TO playes a great role in this game and that there's a ton of other specialist but I could quite easily get 25 fusiliers in a 300 points game with an assortment of weapons (HMG in particular seems effective). What's the catch?

I am still quite overwhelmed by all the rules and picking a faction is providing very difficult but it's a sweet problem I guess. In general my play style is pretty straight forward and I usually do not handle special cases or fragile/nuanced units well. I am not sure I should wait to see what the Tohaa is all about or go with one of the readily available factions. Right now I am leaning towards PanOceania with a lot of armour, or a Qapu Khalqi list built around the Druze Shock Teams. I'll get back to you on that but feel free to give me any points. From what I have read so far everyone recommends us noobs to just go by feeling and what we like the look of so that's what I am doing. I'll be playing games with proxies for the forseeable future in any case.

Another question I have is about the books. As I understand it the rulebook and human spheres will only give me fluff. Everything else is officially online. With my iPad and the pdf:s and the wiki I really do not see the appeal of a physical book (although it does look gorgeous). Is the background well written or on par with most other game's backgrounds? Why did you buy a book, or why didn't you?

The book to get seems to be Paradiso because the campaign will not be released online, only the rules for Tohaa etcetera, correct?

Thanks in advance!

The catch is that combat groups are capped at 10 models - so whilst you CAN field 25 models, it would be 2 groups of 10 and one of 5 for 3 groups.

Groups cannot share orders - you cannot spend all of group A's orders and then use goup B's to give that group more things to do. So you would have three order pools - and one would be short of orders (and also because spam just isn't fun to play with OR against. It also tastes like crap.)

Each order spent is a potential ARO. The more orders YOU spend, the more chances you give your opponent to beat your ass down.

I got the books because they weigh less than my laptop (and I can't be arsed reading a pdf when a book is soooo much easier to read - and with no net access where I game, a wiki is less than useful. I'm old and I LIKE to read books. An Ipad for me is less than a glorified etch-a-sketch (my hatred for fruit-company products comes from having worked in their service department). I print my pdfs so I can read them wherever I go - whether or not it has POWER.

The rules for Paradiso will be available online (some time after the book is released. It took a few months for the others to go to free download pdf, too). The campaign rules and missions will not be - but OTHER missions WILL be available as downloads as well.

+1 here.

Spam forces are usually one trick ponies you can only use on an opponent a few times before he figures out how to play against it. Then they will loose more than win. One thing about this game: "It's not your list! It's you!" This game has actual strategy and tactics. There's no making the unbeatable list here. So it's up more to you the player to make good decisions on where to place a model, who you place, who he's going to back up, etc. Since your opponent was new too he probably did some basic tactical errors. Like keeping a man in back, looking back, who would have seen the Akalis and used an ARO against him. Yes sometimes you can make some tough lists but eventually your opponent will get your number and will able to exploit some of the weaknesses.

How would I counter an all Fusilier force? Being Yu Jing, and Fusilier being pretty squishy, I'd take some Heavy Infantry with basic weapons. No need for Armor piercing or anything fancy. There would be a lot of guys on the field so some grenade launchers, mines, and flame throwers would be good too.

Another thing is the Mission. This should not be a game of just killing each other. If anything It should be about killing a particular thing like a Lt. or TAG. Hopefully when the Campaign book comes out there will be good missions for you to try out. That fusilier armies might have problems with particular missions where others would have it easy.

That's interesting. I've been hearing that this is the game were even a lowly grunt can really make a difference, which is why I figured that an army of grunts would be pretty cool (I generally prefer basic grunts in most games I play).

So, I take it that they would lose out on camoflage, right, and hacking.

What else is there that they fall short on? I assume they would have a tough time dealing with a skilled sniper as well.

One of the main appeals would be, I imagined, the web of AROs they could set up.

About missions, yea, I agree completely. It's alright to just kill eachother one and again but a few solid missions are needed. However, so far there hasn't been any for Infiltration. Hopefull that'll change with Paradiso as you say.

I am not trying to be argumentative, I am sure you guys are right (otherwise I would be seeing more spam lists which I am not), I am just trying to understand why. Mines and flamers you say, well they shouldn't be to hard to counter - just stay out of their way? Grenade launchers with indirect fire would be deadly against a mass of grunts though. As far as I understand HI goes down almost as quickly as any other unit in Infinity, bar the more extreme TAGs or the like.

A spam army would outright lose to most Haqqislam force, which takes light shotguns even for the basic loadouts. And Naffatuns. Also mines.

The thing with mines is that it's not just "stay out of the way" kind of thing. Most are deployed by camo'ed troops with infiltration which can lay them out on key corners or even lay it out with LOS on you so that if you ever even commit an ARO or an order, it will detonate. And remember that your opponent can also put all of his/her orders on their flamer guys to get up to your face, so it's not easy to say that you can just get your troops "out of the way". Well-placed suppression fires can also lock your army down.

HI can also take punishment and are more survivable but that doesn't mean a lowly grunt can't kill it. Killing one in ARO while it's shooting back is kinda hard, though.

All grunts can do well certainly. I like the Zanshi's myself. But after a while of playing them an opponent can figure out how to counter it. And spam lists are certainly out there. There was guy at the Gen Con tourny who had two Cameronians, and the rest were Volunteers. He had 19 orders mostly used on the two Cameronians.

If you want to do heavy on the Fusiliers, go for it. Fun first I say, just not at the expense of others fun though When you get better with the rules you can try doing Link teams. Fusiliers in a Neo Terra can Link. Their already high BS will get even better and make them very though to deal with. You can have more that one potential Link team on the table but only one team can actually Link in a turn.

I made a list below that's full of Fusiliers with some support. It has three potential Link teams and 10/9 orders. I'm not sure I'd want to go up against it!

NEOTERRAN CAPITALINE ARMY
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 (Regs: 10/Irrs: 0):

FUSILIER Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
4x FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
FUSILIER Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (22 | 0.5)
FUSILIER HMG / Pistol, Knife (19 | 1)
FUSILIER MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife (24 | 1.5)
FUSILIER Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (15 | 1)
FUSILIER Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife (26 | 1)

GROUP 2 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 0):

MACHINIST Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife (15)
2x PALBOT Electric Pulse (3)
TRAUMA-DOC Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (14)
SIERRA DRONBOT HMG + E/M Light Grenade Launcher / Electric Pulse (34 | 1)
PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse (21)
4x FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
FUSILIER (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (14)

300 Points | SWC: 6

ARMY CODE: eNozMlE1UrNQM6wxUjMAk6Zg0hBMmiCJG4FJYyQREGloCaSMagzNIJQFCg9oCIgyAPOMcJJmakYA34cd6A== Army Infinity v.3.0.

Fusiliers are only AVA 5 in Neoterra though, but you could still a main link team of fusiliers! Even at low points it could be fun.

NEOTERRAN CAPITALINE ARMY
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 (Regs: 8/Irrs: 0):

3x FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
MOV:4-4 CC:13 BS:12 PH:10 WIP:12 ARM:1 BTS:0 W:1
Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube, Linkable

FUSILIER Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
MOV:4-4 CC:13 BS:12 PH:10 WIP:12 ARM:1 BTS:0 W:1
Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube, Linkable
Lieutenant

FUSILIER Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (15 | 1)
MOV:4-4 CC:13 BS:12 PH:10 WIP:12 ARM:1 BTS:0 W:1
Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube, Linkable

2x AUXILIA Combi Rifle + AUXBOT_1 / Pistol, Knife (14)
MOV:4-4 CC:13 BS:11 PH:10 WIP:12 ARM:1 BTS:0 W:1
Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube, G: Synchronized

AUXBOT_1 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse
MOV:6-4 CC:8 BS:10 PH:8 WIP:11 ARM:0 BTS:-3 W:1
Regular, Not Impetuous, G: Synchronized

SWISS GUARD HMG / Pistol, AP CCW (67 | 2)
MOV:4-2 CC:15 BS:15 PH:14 WIP:13 ARM:5 BTS:-6 W:2
Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube
CH: TO Camouflage


150 Points | SWC: 3

ARMY CODE: eNozMlE1UjNQM6yBkRZg0ghIGoJFIKSpmiFMDQAU2Qr0 Army Infinity v.3.0.

The fusiliers provide a fireteam firebase, the Auxilia can initially protect your fusiliers from AD troopers with the bots heavy flamethrowers and the Swiss Guard provides some HI oomph with the HMG.
And the new Spec Ops would make a sweet looking fusilier.

Thanks for the lists guys! That's very nice of you though it will be a while before I can even contemplate to use all the rules. Link teams seem especially complex. I've got another demo tomorrow with an experienced player (The CF from these forums no less). We're playing 150 points and I'm bringing one list of 13 fusiliers with 1 HMG and 1 Light Grenade Launcher (one group of 8 and one of 5). I am also planning to bring one other list with a T.A.G. and the rest fusiliers. 'Tis all to learn the rules as I haven't even been able to pick a faction yet.

Wow my bad on that Neo Terra list! I don't know what I was thinking.

Hindenburg is right though you can still have a lot of them compared to others.

if you like good light troops though you CAN do it with the Shock army. Since I messed up with the fusiliers I did a shock one. Regulars are the same stats as Fusiliers but have Jungle Terrain, no HMG, and no ARM.

ACONTECIMENTO SHOCK ARMY
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 (Regs: 10/Irrs: 0):

REGULAR Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
6x REGULAR Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
REGULAR Spitfire / Pistol, Knife (17 | 1)
REGULAR Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife (15 | 1)
REGULAR Hacker (Hacking Device, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (23 | 1)

GROUP 2 (Regs: 10/Irrs: 0):

MACHINIST Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife (15)
TRAUMA-DOC Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (14)
2x PALBOT Electric Pulse (3)
SIERRA DRONBOT HMG + E/M Light Grenade Launcher / Electric Pulse (34 | 1)
PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse (21)
REGULAR (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (13 | 1)
3x REGULAR Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife (10)
REGULAR Spitfire / Pistol, Knife (17 | 1)
COMANDO AKAL Combi Rifle + E/Mitter / Pistol, CCW (25)

300 Points | SWC: 6

ARMY CODE: eNqNyrsNACAMQ8FpcB0b8duN4QmhQjQ09xQ5UiI6OAn7UCHD4sp80OQ4aVf8eYfnQg7tUa5QoQWN/R8u Army Infinity v.3.0.

 bladerunner_35 wrote:
Thanks for the lists guys! That's very nice of you though it will be a while before I can even contemplate to use all the rules. Link teams seem especially complex. I've got another demo tomorrow with an experienced player (The CF from these forums no less). We're playing 150 points and I'm bringing one list of 13 fusiliers with 1 HMG and 1 Light Grenade Launcher (one group of 8 and one of 5). I am also planning to bring one other list with a T.A.G. and the rest fusiliers. 'Tis all to learn the rules as I haven't even been able to pick a faction yet.

Spoiling your own plans, eh? Or are you trying to give me a false lead?

 The CF wrote:
Spoiling your own plans, eh? Or are you trying to give me a false lead?

Oh noes!

See you tomorrow!

 bladerunner_35 wrote:

 The CF wrote:
Spoiling your own plans, eh? Or are you trying to give me a false lead?

Oh noes!

See you tomorrow!

Indeed! You can find me by in the nearby Burger King if you show up a bit early btw.

You guys do know we're all expecting an in depth bat-rep now!

The CF wrote:Indeed! You can find me by in the nearby Burger King if you show up a bit early btw.

Alright, a strawberry milkshake sounds like the perfect start for an evening of Infinity.

Emperors_Champion wrote:You guys do know we're all expecting an in depth bat-rep now!

Ah! Only if I win!

Emperors_Champion wrote:You guys do know we're all expecting an in depth bat-rep now!

I'll see what I can do

bladerunner_35 wrote:
Alright, a strawberry milkshake sounds like the perfect start for an evening of Infinity.

Great! I'll be there around 17.30 I believe, to get some food after my school day.

Would definitely be interested in a battle report, and seeing how you guys get on!

 Pacific wrote:
Would definitely be interested in a battle report, and seeing how you guys get on!

Alright, so The CF and I managed to play through two battles at 150 points this past Thursday at Playoteket in Lund (Sweden). In short I brought two lists of PanO against his Nomads; one list with only fusiliers and the other with a SQUALO and support troops. I’ll see about putting up my lists later (first I’ll need to find out how to give them the nice format from the armybuilder that everyone is using). Naturally I realised that the lists aren’t very good, it was just a way to learn the system and get experience. That was the main reason behind choosing two drastically different lists.

I am not going to go through the battles in any detail. They were pretty quick and simple affairs. I’ll just highlight a few things that stood out to me and perhaps The CF wants to chime in later and give his side of the story as well.


In both battles I set up on the left with my main force behind the building while The CF set up on the right with his main forces behind the building on the far right in the picture. In both games he infiltrated a trooper to the small tower in the middle. And yes, I am aware that we need more terrain. In the bottom by the picture you can see the trooper that obliterated my flank. The suppression fire is against a door in the ruins from where my troops could attack.

One thing that hit home early in the first battle was the fact that without the right equipment or soldiers with the right training it will be much more difficult to counter your opponent’s tactic. I’ll be the first one to admit that this is not exactly an Eureka moment. However, I have a hard time absorbing rules and theory without grounding that in practice and experience.

Therefore I had the idea that I was going to advance aggressively along one table edge and outflank him. I had a trooper with clear line of sight and figured that would be enough. Unfortunately his soldier with ODD (I think it was, I do not remember which unit it was) and HMG made very short work of almost my entire flank, in effect putting my plans on their head completely. My fusiliers simply lacked the equipment to deal with the situation.

I did manage to kill of this threat later in my own turn when he overextended himself by pushing too far into my lines.

In general I played aggressively and threw away the lives of my poor fusiliers with reckless abandon, mostly because I couldn’t figure out what to do and luckily it paid off. I won the game and I think the turning point was when I advanced a fusilier right into the line of sight of his two camouflaged troops in an effort to draw their fire. A couple of turns after that the nomads were in retreat.

Now, I do not want to give you the impression that I won easily. As I said I didn’t really know what I was doing and got lucky several times. All in all I think The CF played a little bit to defensively and allowed me to deal with his force piece meal. That I could afford to throw away my cheaper troops also helped me breaking any stale mate that arose (for instance with the camouflaged troops mentioned above). We didn’t play through the retreat but instead started with the next battle right away.

In the next battle The CF played really well and did everything he could in order to take down my T.A.G. but unfortunately lacked the right equipment to deal with it, which gave me an easy win. I have to say that I fully expected to lose on the first turn as he charged one of his troops straight through the house blasting away at my supporting troops killing two right away (one being the engineer). He also tried blinding me with a flash grenade and didn’t manage to do any damage at all with about 5 volleys of spitfire fire!

Naturally this too hit home the importance of coming prepared for most basic tactical situations and my goal now is to build as a balanced list as possible. Taking into account which tactics I want to be able to prevent, which tactics I want to be able to execute and which tactics I will struggle with.

I had a great time, The CF is a cool dude and I hope to play many more games with him. I really liked how fluid the game feels like and how credible it felt to plan and play through a battle. Maybe because I just don’t know the rules but I didn’t feel like I had to make use of this rule or that rule – instead I thought more in “real-world” tactics and strategy which was cool (not sure if you get my meaning here).

Hah, I agree with you completely. But there's one k too much and one f too little in every instance of my name
And I agree that I might play a little too defensively, I am a very defensive gamer sadly very few games of war are won defensively.
Either way, god that TAG was tough. I shot my Blitzen, tried to flash it and eventually put five consecutive spitfire-bursts into it, and it didn't even budge!
Oh, and just like both of my zeros to reveal their positions and miss!

Great to see that the games fan base is ever expanding, Infinity is fast becoming my favorite game.
With every game of infinity you learn how to play against different tactics.

I too have been in the situaion where an AD trooper jumped in behind my line and gunned down half my force that were looking the wrong way and pretty much ended the game for me in that one turn, you learn and adapt the next time my opponant tried this tactic it didnt work out too well for him and I always make sure that I have all my models covering each other especially with all the TO camo tricks my friend uses.

 The CF wrote:
Hah, I agree with you completely. But there's one k too much and one f too little in every instance of my name
And I agree that I might play a little too defensively, I am a very defensive gamer sadly very few games of war are won defensively.
Either way, god that TAG was tough. I shot my Blitzen, tried to flash it and eventually put five consecutive spitfire-bursts into it, and it didn't even budge!
Oh, and just like both of my zeros to reveal their positions and miss!

Doh! Sorry about that!

I think it all comes down to your refusal of when in doubt asking yourself the simple question:

"What would Arnold do?"

Then again, you should give that door-kicking and gun-blazing trooper who opened up the second game a posthumous medal of valor....

 El'Johnson wrote:
Great to see that the games fan base is ever expanding, Infinity is fast becoming my favorite game.
With every game of infinity you learn how to play against different tactics.

I too have been in the situaion where an AD trooper jumped in behind my line and gunned down half my force that were looking the wrong way and pretty much ended the game for me in that one turn, you learn and adapt the next time my opponant tried this tactic it didnt work out too well for him and I always make sure that I have all my models covering each other especially with all the TO camo tricks my friend uses.

The extreme paranoia and pshychological warfare is fast becoming my favourite part of Infinity!

I agree it's definitely a fun process learning how this game works! I too have been victim of the AD trooper killing all my guys, firing squad style, the one hard-ass running rampant and killing everyone. Next game you try and change your tactics to counter it, while trying to come up with vicious schemes of your own...

Enjoyed the battle report Blade Runner! Of course fusilier's lives are there to be thrown away casually, that's always an important lesson to learn!

Great post. I'm glad you are liking it. I hope to see more like this.