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A game of Infinity takes more thought into strategy and tactics than a game of 40k. I sold my Imperial Fist "ARMY" and got two infinity ARMIES and some Warmachine stuff.

It's not about the size of the force, it's about the game. I now how two playble, full size forces for Infinity and the game is more rewarding for me. (That part's subjective, btw.)

Also, I like the mini's more. I like the realistic scale, the detail and the dynamic poses and character that some of the Infinity models have.

One thing to definitely keep in mind about 'skirmish' vs 'army' games as a discussion is that aside from modelcount, there's certainly the matter of UNIT count.

What do I mean by this?

10 Soldiers in Infinity are 10 Hard Units. As in, each one is an independently maneuverable game entity ,that does stuff like shoot, open doors, jump off ledges, throw smoke, hack cyberspace, etc.

In Warhammer 40k, 1 Commander, 2 Tanks and 30 Tac Marines are actually only 6 hard units. You have a Hero, 2 independently maneuverable tanks, and 3 squads of troopers who are pretty much just hitpoints for the unit, that contribute additional attacks, possibly from marginally different ranges. This is more extreme even in Fantasy, since you could have 100 figures being '1 unit' easilly, and their only game function is to provide a footprint for the unit, and act as a hitpoint counter.

In Warmachine, you could have 1 Warcaster, 3 Warjacks, and 1 squad of 10 guys.
This would be 5 hard units, one of which is consisting of 10 'soft' units.
This is because in Warmachine, the infantry unit that activates together as a unit, actually moves independently each with little interaction, can choose independent targets, and serve as individual blockers on your maneuvers and enemy maneuvers


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Why does tihs matter? Because well, there really isn't a difference in pure gameplay of what constitutes an 'army'. Every one of these examples had similar numbers of units. Only some games have a lower physical modelcount, and have rulesets that require less models for an engaging game.

The other chunk is, how many armies can you make with your combination of units? In 40k, 1500 points may well be a playable list, but how much can you vary with that? In Warmachine, swapping out the Warcaster alone changes the game immensely. In Infinity, swapping out 3 or 4 individual soldiers turns your list into something very different.

So yes, those games are much cheaper to play than 40k. Individual models may be as expensive, but the games themselves are played with the same numbers of 'Units' (or more), but less physical models typically. While this does allow for an increased variation in the number of armies one can field for the same cost, as well.

 Killionaire wrote:
One thing to definitely keep in mind about 'skirmish' vs 'army' games as a discussion is that aside from modelcount, there's certainly the matter of UNIT count.

What do I mean by this?

10 Soldiers in Infinity are 10 Hard Units. As in, each one is an independently maneuverable game entity ,that does stuff like shoot, open doors, jump off ledges, throw smoke, hack cyberspace, etc.

In Warhammer 40k, 1 Commander, 2 Tanks and 30 Tac Marines are actually only 6 hard units. You have a Hero, 2 independently maneuverable tanks, and 3 squads of troopers who are pretty much just hitpoints for the unit, that contribute additional attacks, possibly from marginally different ranges. This is more extreme even in Fantasy, since you could have 100 figures being '1 unit' easilly, and their only game function is to provide a footprint for the unit, and act as a hitpoint counter.

In Warmachine, you could have 1 Warcaster, 3 Warjacks, and 1 squad of 10 guys.
This would be 5 hard units, one of which is consisting of 10 'soft' units.
This is because in Warmachine, the infantry unit that activates together as a unit, actually moves independently each with little interaction, can choose independent targets, and serve as individual blockers on your maneuvers and enemy maneuvers

That's a really good way of putting it. I might use this in the future (as opposed to a vague "immersiveness" or whatnot).

Basically 40k has a higher model count, but the models are often meaningless as actual game elements. The game element (or hard unit) is the entire squad. In Infinity every miniature is a game element/hard unit. In Warmachine/Hordes you have a hybrid where some effects target the entire squad while other mechanics (like actually making attacks or being subject to damaging attacks) are done on a model by model basis, so you get the 1:1 model:element ratio on the soft units.

The end result is that 40k, despite being an army game, actually has less tactical depth per miniature. And the larger footprint of the squads and large vehicles means you also can have way less maneuver and tactics than Infinity. You cram more models on the table, but actually get a shallower experience rather than a deeper one.

And now I desperately wish I didn't have a mortgage to pay because I want spend ALL THE MONIES on ALL the Infinity stuff.

I have handed out many Exalts here on this thread. Some things are just too funny or true not to.

I myself do not own an Infinity force but I am looking in to it, once I get a job.
The thing is 40K is dying for me. I have a small IG force but it has cost me through the nose (Around £4-500) for such a small (Barely normal game level) force when compared too the Warmachine Cryx army that has cost me.... less than £100 for an entire 35PT tournament legal army with two caster options. I also enjoy Warmachine more, and find the rules have less flaws.

Or the £100 I spent on a 750PT Darkage Forsaken force with a few options that is also at tournament level, and contains a special character (Saint Mary) for the commander. The equivalent in 40K would have bankrupted me.
The rules for Darkage are, once again, also free to download.

Non of these would be regarded as true armies by the OP's standards, with the IG having around 100 models plus 2 Chimera's, 1 Hellhound and 2 Sentinel's, The Cryx having 19 models and the Forsaken having 14 models.

Hell, my ancients early Carthagian era navy contains only 6 ships so far, with a 7th on its way, 2x Triremes (one is the command vessel) and 4x Biremes and a Pentacoster merchantman with another Trireme on its way along with another Bireme.

The OP seems to be a form of whiney child that does not why others like things that he does not, and seems to believe that his view of the TT hobby is the only one that it right and all others should bow down to him.
Its sad really, and rather pathetic but if he gets his kicks from 40K and is willing to keep on throwing hundreds of pounds at them then good for him.

Just a heads up for those who were reading this thread and getting interested:

Infinity has a two player starter box in the works. It will most likely be out in the fall.

Im in. By then I will hopefully have a job

[edit]

I also need to fully remove myself from the over bloated and massively expansive Skirmish-game-that-is-trying-to-be-a-large-scale-Battle-game that 40K has become.

Also, third edition will likely clear up most of the complaints that I, and others have had with the game.

First and foremost doing a better job on the rules writing. The latest version of the rulebook was a huge step forward, but there was still plenty of things that needed fixing.

Well, at least I hope they do something better with link-teams, keeping the concept of them, but making the implementation better.

Link Teams aren't being touched as far as we know, since they are a Human Sphere piece.

It's an entirely new edition, unless they've specific said they aren't redoing it, then there's no better time to redo a rule that has as many issues as link teams does.

 Vertrucio wrote:
It's an entirely new edition, unless they've specific said they aren't redoing it, then there's no better time to redo a rule that has as many issues as link teams does.

They've said they aren't.

N3 replaces, rewrites and fixes the second edition rulebook. It's designed to seamlessly work with Human Sphere and Paradiso and later Acheron Falls.

Content from later books will not be in N3. They went over this at Ficzone.

Well, that makes me a lot less interested in the new version then.

What's wrong with Fireteams?

Yeah, I gotta agree - what's wrong with fireteams? They're represent a leader and a supporting fireteam really well. Leader is covered by his buddies. The more cover he's getting, the better he can aim and concentrate his burst (represented by the +1 burst and +3 BS), and the better they are at covering him (represented by the Sixth Sense level 2).

I do admit I was hoping they'd do a 'one book to rule them all' deal with N3, but that's only because I get irritated lugging 3 books around with me. There's nothing wrong with the rules in Human Sphere or Paradiso aside from needing, like the main rules, a little cleaning up.

All they are doing is tightening up the interactions and how the main rules work (since apparently a lot of ex-WM/H players don't like them).

NOT rolling HS and paradiso into the main rules, not redoing fireteams (all versions of the rule - standard, Haris, Enomotarchos and Tohaa versions).

Just a reworking of the main rules. Maybe some new art, too (because some of the main rule artwork is ... dated)

You don't have to buy them if you don't want to - they WILL be released as a download later on.

 -Loki- wrote:
Yeah, I gotta agree - what's wrong with fireteams? They're represent a leader and a supporting fireteam really well. Leader is covered by his buddies. The more cover he's getting, the better he can aim and concentrate his burst (represented by the +1 burst and +3 BS), and the better they are at covering him (represented by the Sixth Sense level 2).

I do admit I was hoping they'd do a 'one book to rule them all' deal with N3, but that's only because I get irritated lugging 3 books around with me. There's nothing wrong with the rules in Human Sphere or Paradiso aside from needing, like the main rules, a little cleaning up.

After seeing the rules for link teams, they are unnecessarily complex, a product of taping the concept of a squad into an individual skirmish game after the fact.

I don't argue that the concept of a squad or fire team is needed in the game to make basic troops better to offset the power creep of later expansions and miniatures, but the implementation is junk and overall indicative of Infinity's inefficient rules, layout, and writing.

The best way to make it better is to make link teams as part of the core rules as a concept that is more interwoven with the core rules. This is why I think their decision not to combine the basic rules into 1 new edition is idiocy, and a bit money grabbing. They're so afraid of missing out on some paltry book sales that they refuse to solidify their rules. The sad thing is, Human Sphere and Paradiso are probably still just as valid if they combined the rules into the new edition, since those were campaign and expansion books that added more to the game than a few rules.

Warmachine players have every right to complain because, regardless of what people may think about Warmachine as a game, it has a very tight set of rules. Although these days I think Flames of War is written better now.

 Vertrucio wrote:
After seeing the rules for link teams, they are unnecessarily complex, a product of taping the concept of a squad into an individual skirmish game after the fact.

I again disagree. They're no more complex than the base rules of the game, and once you actually get the hang of them, they're a pretty simple mechanic. The problem is the usual one with Infinity - pages and pages of rules that could be summed up neatly on a single page, but due to the flowery nature of the Spanish language and the fact that they often reword translations to make them needlessly complex.

Link team rules really aren't complex - you learn this after actually playing them. Much like the game itself isn't really complex, which you learn after playing a few games. Simply making a judgement after reading them doesn't really work with Infinity because of translation issues.

 Vertrucio wrote:
I don't argue that the concept of a squad or fire team is needed in the game to make basic troops better to offset the power creep of later expansions and miniatures, but the implementation is junk and overall indicative of Infinity's inefficient rules, layout, and writing.

This shows a lack of understanding of the game. There is no 'creep'. Line infantry from the core rulebook are still 100% as viable after Paradiso as they were in the initial rulebook before Human Sphere. In fact, some factions basic line infantry are often cited as downright nasty, like Haqqislams Naffatun.

I won't argue about the layout and overall writing of the rules. It's bad. That's the reason there's a fan edit that modernises the way the rules are written. And you know what? This is why 3rd edition is being released. To have a better, more coherent framework to hang expansions off. It's not going to be a gameplay shakeup like a Games Workshop edition, and it's not going to roll all books into one. It's going to rewrite and retranslate the core rules and give them a better layout, while also doing some refinement and adding a few new things.

It's about fixing the very thing you are complaining about, though yes it's unfortunate that it's not touching later books. The fact you are 'less excited' for something that is purpose built to fix your greivances makes no sense.

 Vertrucio wrote:
The best way to make it better is to make link teams as part of the core rules as a concept that is more interwoven with the core rules. This is why I think their decision not to combine the basic rules into 1 new edition is idiocy, and a bit money grabbing. They're so afraid of missing out on some paltry book sales that they refuse to solidify their rules. The sad thing is, Human Sphere and Paradiso are probably still just as valid if they combined the rules into the new edition, since those were campaign and expansion books that added more to the game than a few rules.

They already are core rules that are interwoven with the core mechanics. They're not an optional supplement. If someone uses a sectorial list, they will have access to link teams and those rules, with no need to agree with the opponent. All of the interactions made by units with link teams, or link teams with units, use the core rules from the core rulebook. The link team rules only limit the actions that can be performed by the link or apply bonuses to the link and cover how to actually form a link.

This is why they aren't touching link teams. The link team rules themselves are fine. Because the basic link team rules are really quite simple. It's how they interact with the core rules that causes questions. The idea is fix the core rules to fix the questions coming from later rules that use them.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Warmachine players have every right to complain because, regardless of what people may think about Warmachine as a game, it has a very tight set of rules. Although these days I think Flames of War is written better now.

Who brought up Warmachine players complaining? This is the definition of a strawman. The only Warmachine comparisons have been about hard vs soft units and overall cost.

edit - a bit of rewording for clarity

 frozenwastes wrote:
Ancient historians were terrible. Herodotus basically just took down tales and legends as if they were facts. Pretty much everything the ancient stories tell of the battle was likely at least partially wrong. The Persian & Greek numbers definitely were. There was likely around 1000 Theban & Thespian hoplites present there as well as the 300 Spartan ones. And probably an equal number of sling and bow armed non-citizen/slave warriors. Herodotus' telling is pretty much no more believable than a movie rendition of it with war rhinos.

Herodotus said there were thousands of Greeks and hundreds of thousands of Persians with many more Persians uncommitted to the battle but in the region. This is entirely plausible. Achaemenid Persia had a population of 70 million people and the Shah sent everything he had at the Greeks because they menaced his empire and instigated rebellions in some of his most important territories in Egypt and Anatolia. His standing army was like 300,000 soldiers plus noncombatants and it at least doubled in size for the campaign which gives them over a million soldiers once the noncombatants are accounted for. The Greeks didn't defeat the Persians, defense in depth and the reality of logistics did. They ran out of supplies after Thermopylae and the vast majority of the army departed (conscripts) leaving a few hundred thousand (presumably the professionals) who faced a hundred thousand Greeks (Athens we know could field about ten thousand based on Marathon), the entire aristocracy rising up against the invaders at Plataea. The Greeks won the battle.

Likewise the Greeks had several hundred ships at Salamis (Athen alone could float 200 ships) and the Persians had well over a thousand ships drawn from every Mediterranean and Pontic port city under their control from Egypt to the Caucasus.

I don't know why this is so hard for people to believe. Herodotus is consistent with itself and other sources. Its just clearly describing something very large which some people want to doubt happened. Earlier armies didn't have the manpower of Persia on their side and later armies knew better than to send so many more men than you could supply long term. It was a fairly unique campaign with lasting consequences.
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Anyhow, on the topic of army size, 40k is a squad based skirmish game and Infinity is a soldier based skirmish game. Rather than treating ten models as a unit like in 40k you use a single model in infinity. So a ten model Infinity force is the same as ten squad 40k force. That's all there is to it.