|
Infinity is a skirmish game, for one. Turns are not "I move each of my units, shoot each of my units, assault, now you do the same".
Each model in your army generates one Order (give or take, there are a few special rules involved). You put those into a pool of orders. You then spend those orders in your turn to do stuff, and you can spend it on any model in your army. You can even spend all your orders on one model and have that one model run around and kill stuff (it's commonly called Ramboing). However, every time you spend an order on a model, every enemy model in line of sight gets an Automatic Reaction Order (ARO). They can shoot back at you, dodge behind cover, etc.
So while you might be able to take one super-powerful model, your opponent can deploy carefully so that every time your awesome dude moves, he gets shot in the face a dozen times. And unlike 40k or Warmahordes, everything is killable. There are no invisible rerollable 2++ units that can't be killed. A couple of hot dice rolls and even the weakest of models can kill the strongest. So Ramboing is dangerous against a good opponent. You also want lots of orders, because the more orders you have, the more stuff you can do. There's a balance between taking expensive powerful models but having limited orders, vs taking lots of weak dudes but generating tons of orders.
The missions are also much more objective based than 40k. They're more like Warmahordes, where there will be objectives and you need to run out and claim them, and if you can control them you can win without killing a single model. 40k is much more "kill stuff until the end of the game then grab objectives", though maelstorm and ITC missions do allow you to win by racking up objective points as well.
Factions are also balanced differently than in other games, in that everyone has pretty much the same gear. You don't need to know what a tessaractwhachamacallit carried by a Obelisk of Death in an Eternal Lords special detachment using the Black Scars special rules allied with a Nova Marines character while casting the Wrathful Gaze psychic power does. No, that dude over there is just a guy with Mimetism and an HMG. That other one is just a guy with a Combi-rifle and FO. There are definitely specialties between factions (Haqq has good doctors, Pano shoots stuff, etc), but the majority of the rules are commonly shared.
|