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I've pretty much decided that I'll never play another game of 40K because the ruleset is beyond redemption at this point (though I continue to collect the minis, because oooh shiny toy soldiers). I do miss playing sometimes though so I've been contemplating other game systems.

X-Wing and anything Star Wars themed is right out because SW is dead to me at this point (thanks, JJ Abrams! and may you reap the greatest misfortunes that can befall a man, or better yet may these misfortunes befall those dearest to you while you are forced to watch helplessly).
I like some of Malifaux' minis, but the setting is weird and doesn't appeal to me.
Warmahordes never did anything for me, and I don't want to get into another game that involves collecting huge armies (I already have 3000 or so points of Space Marines, shelf space is at a premium).

So of the major players this leaves Infinity.

On the plus side:

- I like the setting (in the not so grimdark future there's not always war but a lot of skirmishes, which reminds me of Shadowrun somewhat).
- I like the looks of most minis.
- I like that 10-20 miniatures constitute a playable army, and a $100-$200 spend can get you playing comfortably.
- I like that terrain is all cardboard and can be put together/reconfigured/broken down in minutes and doesn't require painting.

On the downside:

- Pewter. Ohgod, I bloody HATE pewter. It makes everything so damned complicated. Conversions - fugheddaboudid. Cleaning up models? On plastic, done in minutes. On pewter, cleaning a single mold line takes forever. And don't get me started on gluing and pinning pewter.
- Rules. I tried reading them and fell asleep. Granted, it's better to play and learn while playing. Also, I think a new edition is coming out? Or something? Do new starter boxes (like Icestorm and Red Veil) signify rule changes?
- Scale creep. Heard that more recent models vs. older models have significant scale issues.
- And "state of the game" in general. Is it popular? Not so much? No idea.

Are my misgivings unfounded?

The new starter boxes don't really signify rules changes.
Icestorm did, but only because it preceded 3rd ed and foreshadowed some rules changes.

State of the game (especially in the US) really depends on your local scene and how active your warcors are. Some regions are quite active, some not so much (only so many warcors around).

Quite a few groups won't get into anything new unless they have someone to hold their hands.

It's absolutely worth getting into.
New edition's out, models are better than ever. Best sci-fi minis on the market.

Rules are solid and fun. Hope you can raise a group, it's getting more popular but of course, that still means communities need to be nurtured wherever you are.

The 'scale creep' claim is way, way, way overblown. It's literally the same two internet forum people, on every forum, flipping out on it.

No. I don't recommend it.

CB created a mess with the new silhouette rules and their "creativity". It's not unusual to hear a request to simply leave certain miniatures off table and just use silhouette to make LoF more clear. Then there is camouflage, I'm sorry, but how CB thought that it's fun to play against armies that have 1/2 + of their army represented as paper cut tokens (or just status tokens now) is beyond me. From N3 onwards they've also introduced a lot more gimmicks, I dislike what they did, the entire system dynamic feels more gimmicky and who can act first and abuse certain profiles rather than solid tactical decisions during the game. The imbalance of specialists and ITS is also entire can of worms that drove some of us to other games.

Give a game a try. It didn't worked out for some of us, but you might like it.

Infinity has been a great venture for my entire game group. I enjoy some of the same pros you mentioned. It's cheap and requires few models. The pace is great, you can finish 2-3 games in the time it takes to play a 2000 pt 40k game.

I would recommend starting with a friend and figure out what armies you both prefer. Ice Storm or red veil will be good a place to start for terrain and starter armies.

For the pewter problems, sometimes I find fresh superglue can rectify a lot hard angles and tricky joints. The real hard models will be remotes and TAGs, and you won't run into these for a bit while learning anyways.

Rules will come easier as you play games. They have starter scenarios in ice storm to teach basic mechanics in a few low model games.

Scale creep won't matter with new starter sets. If you can see the packaging you can recognize older models and wait for recasts if necessary. Look at the magahira? Haqqislam scorpion TAG as an example.

I hope this helps, and if you do make the jump, welcome aboard!

 Olgerth Istaarn wrote:
On the downside:

- Pewter. Ohgod, I bloody HATE pewter. It makes everything so damned complicated. Conversions - fugheddaboudid. Cleaning up models? On plastic, done in minutes. On pewter, cleaning a single mold line takes forever. And don't get me started on gluing and pinning pewter.
- Rules. I tried reading them and fell asleep. Granted, it's better to play and learn while playing. Also, I think a new edition is coming out? Or something? Do new starter boxes (like Icestorm and Red Veil) signify rule changes?
- Scale creep. Heard that more recent models vs. older models have significant scale issues.
- And "state of the game" in general. Is it popular? Not so much? No idea.

Just some thoughts on your negatives.

Metal models. Conversions really aren't much of a thing in this game. You get profiles without models and sometimes a unit might take a while to get a model at all, but the community is pretty relaxed about proxies for this reason. The only reason to convert up missing profiles or units is personal preference of not proxying. It's not a game like 40k where you want lots of repeated troops, and on the few units where you do, CB release boxed sets with about the amount of models you'd want anyway. The newer models are very free of mold lines. A quick scrape with a knife or file is all you need. I've personally never pinned an Infinity model, and I've built remotes, TAGs and oodles of Infantry. I've had one break, and that was my fault for mishandling it. Newer models also have really well keyed joins, so pinning isn't necessary. The ony that broke was an older model with flat joins that I didn't score.

Rules, yes. The game is very, very complex. Best way to learn is to play with someone who already knows the game. Once you've got the basic down, reading the rules becomes easier since you get an idea of when things kick in.

Scale creep really depends on the models. For the most part, it's not even noticeable. For some, it's very noticeable. Depending on the faction you choose however, it's pretty easy to avoid old, outof scale models.

How popular it is depends entirely in your area. At my FLGS it's pretty much dead. The store is all CCG's and historicals, though they do stock Infinity and other games. At their other store about an hours drive away, it's flourishing.

in my opinion operation ice storm is a great place to start.
it gives you two nice starter forces and a rules set that introduces new rules across several introductory missions.

Next choicees could be:
Bolt Action
Beyond The Gates of Antares (havent played but I understand similar mechanic to Bolt Action)
Dropzone Commander / Dropfleet Commander
Kings Of War / 9th Age
Other Warlord Historicals
Sails of Glory
Flames of War
Just saw "Team Yankee" looks intriguing.
Battletech

Cool, thank you very much for this information.

I guess I'll pick up an Icestorm and give it a go!

 Olgerth Istaarn wrote:
Cool, thank you very much for this information.

I guess I'll pick up an Icestorm and give it a go!

Depending on how much of a hurry you are in to start, there's also Red Veil coming in about a month and a half. Some concept (two player starter with packed in cardstock terrain and the same introductory missions) but with different factions. So it might be worth reading up on Nomads and Pan Oceania (the forces in Icestorm) and Yu Jing and Haqqislam (the forces in Red Veil) to see which set you'd prefer.

Do we know if red veil will come with the nice intro rules though?

Corvus Belli wrote:In addition, Operation: Red Veil introduces the 3rd edition of Infinity with a full-color 80 page rulebook (English/Spanish) containing five tutorial missions that make the Infinity core mechanics easy to understand.

It comes with some kind of rulebook. Intro rules or not; this is what it includes.

Sure does sound like the same or at least similar rulebook.
It would be cool if it introduced additional new / different mechanics.

I've always collected the models I liked for years...

Now that N3 has more organized rules I'm in.
Hacking seems way cooler than it used to.
I'm starting my first force with PanO they have the most models with bits I like. Even though converting plastic is much faster I can still convert with metal and the smaller for size just means I'll take more time with each model I can't wait to get my hands on this Uhlan.

You should see which model ranges you prefer between PanO/Nomad and Haqqislam/Yu-jing to choose either Ice Storm or Red Veil respectively. Don't worry about not having an up to par ruleset/codex, Infinity can be pretty balanced.

So from here, it is Rule of Cool man. What models do you like and what to field?

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
Do we know if red veil will come with the nice intro rules though?

Apparently, it has the same Intro rules as Icestorm and pretty much the same intro missions.

Same size play area, same way of introducing new troop types as you progress through the missions. It even has the limited edition miniature stood on the roof of the central building for the final mission, just like Icestorm.

The choice purely comes down to which of the two choices of army one prefers.

Obviously you have to have people in your area who play - I got lucky and there is a pretty healthy community within an hour of me. But for years I was living in an area with zero Infinity community...wouldn't have been worth getting into.


That said, I love the game. I was similarly disillusioned with 40k (I'd been playing for over 20 years) and have found Infinity to be far more enjoyable. The only barrier to play is terrain, and you can make that work for you relatively cheap if you're willing to build stuff. You definitely need new terrain for it though - 40k terrain just doesn't cut it since the rules are completely different.


Infinity has a much better "combat" feeling than 40k - in 40k you bend your opponent over for 20 minutes, then turn to receive for the next 20 minutes, over and over until someone is done. In Infinity, the dynamic is far more interactive. The mix of active and reactive turns is phenomenal - In plenty of my games, the reactive turn player kills more of his opponent's models than he loses. That's a big deal - it truly encourages real tactics like deception, covering fire, reserves (they don't just randomly arrive, which is a main problem I have with 40k), rushing your opponent, covering your movement with smoke, etc.

It's also nice that there aren't too many "auto includes" in the game. Many strong lists include a healthy dose of basic line troopers but even that is entirely unnecessary - you can play a very elite army with zero cheerleaders if you want.

Finally, I like it because your purchases are always useful. I'll give you an example - for 40k I bought 9 Obliterators back in 5th edition and they made it into every list. This was ~$200. In 7th edition, they made it into literally 0 lists. That's $200 wasted, because (1) 40k is incredibly unbalanced, (2) the meta constantly shifts, and (3) you buy *units* rather than models. In Infinity, the largest number of guys that can form a unit is 5, so that's a box (~$35) and a blister ($~10). For under 50 bucks, you can run them all together, you can mix and match the loadouts, or you can run those guys individually. Also, many models fit into "sectorials" which are basically different armies, so you can use 1 model in probably 3 armies within that faction, plus any sectorials he can join. In other words, you don't ever really throw your money away since every model is useful.

Rules are kinda complex, even when you know them. There are lot of question, okay, I get this rule, but in that certain situation that arose, I don't really know what happens now...

Watch few battlereports to get feeling of rules, although be carefull, because even there they make mistakes.

See what your community plays, ITS scenarios or not. BEcause in ITS scenarios, basically what you wanna have is 15+ models on table, and lot's of specialists. Orders win the game, simple as that. So your list will look quite different than list you might take in normal kill mission.

Scale size, don't bother with old models, because when some of them are put next to new one, they look silly. And they will get resculpted, so you will be stuck with out of scale, 'uglyer' models.

Don't listen to those that say every model is good. It's not, some models are clearly better than others. There are quite a lot of models that you never wanna use, because , there are so much better alternatives to them.

Decide do you wanna play sectorial or vanilla, since sectorials limit what you can use, but some are really powerfull with what you get.

CB does what they want. For example take new USAriadna, all they had to do was release box of minuteman or marauders for players to make more viable lists, they still haven't . But they are releasing models that people don't need that much, because they do what they want.

It's a great game! But all depends what you wan't and expect from it. And no, 20 models is not enough. You will want variety, and if you play scenarios, you will easily use 15 models if not more. It can get $$. Not to mention, that soon after, you will wan't to branch maybe in antoher faction/sectorial/vanilla depending what you chose to start with, meaning more $$. Still far cheaper than 40k though...

 smurfORnot wrote:
Don't listen to those that say every model is good. It's not, some models are clearly better than others. There are quite a lot of models that you never wanna use, because , there are so much better alternatives to them.

Also don't listen to this, because this is wrong as well.

There's units which are pretty universally good, and there's units which are situationally good, simply due to combinations of rules, either because of terrain makeup ot just personal playstyle. Experiment yourself, and find what works for you.

Every unit may be useful but not every sculpt is going to appeal to everyone.

I'm on the side of not every unit is good. There are a few units that are overcosted or have a different option that performs their job better.

HOWEVER! The amount of units in which this is true, are VERY few. So few, that unless you do some pretty indepth analysis of your faction, you may not even realize there was a better option in your faction. To really throw confusion into the mix, not even every faction has bad units! So, overall yes there are a few bad units, however they are few and don't worry about it so much.

Also, this is the type of game in which an 8 point model has a chance of destroying a 120 point model.

 Talamare wrote:
I'm on the side of not every unit is good. There are a few units that are overcosted or have a different option that performs their job better.

HOWEVER! The amount of units in which this is true, are VERY few. So few, that unless you do some pretty indepth analysis of your faction, you may not even realize there was a better option in your faction. To really throw confusion into the mix, not even every faction has bad units! So, overall yes there are a few bad units, however they are few and don't worry about it so much.

Also, this is the type of game in which an 8 point model has a chance of destroying a 120 point model.

Can you cite a few examples? Maybe it's just the factions I play, but I am not familiar with a unit that is bested in every situation by another, cheaper, unit.

That's still not something I agree with. The only way a unit is outclassed by a cheaper unit is if that cheaper unit does what you want and the expensive unit has superfluous additions. Units in Infinity have a very generic baseline and then have weapons, skills and equipment piled on top.

For example, Doctors. In Haqqislam, we're spoiled for choice. If all you want is a Doctor who can get people back up, then the Ghulam Doctor Plus for 17 points is really hard to beat. Give them a Nasmat and they don't even have to be put in danger. But what if you want a Doctor that can push buttons? Well, the Ghulam Doctor still can. But he's not going to get far.

You could pay 10 points more and get a Muyib. Slightly better stats, Dogged so if you get clipped you can still keep trucking and get to that button. Better gear loadout to be worthwhile in combat.

You could pay 16 points more and get a Tuareg. TO Camo and Infiltration means you'll be right on top of the button and get to push it quite safely and WIP 15 means you're more likely to succeed or evn deploy right near an enemy HVT for a quick HVT Incoulation, but you're in a lot of danger once revealed so you're not really looking at this for actual Doctoring.

You could pay 24 points more and go for the Jannisary Doctor. This guy will push through to objectives with much better ARM and W2, and can contribute to a fight with an AP rifle and LSG. Pair him with a Nasmat and it can get into position and heal people while the Doctor kicks ass.

But if you just want to Doctor someone, the Ghulam for 17 points, 20 with a Nasmat outclasses them all. But that doesn't mean it's the toolbox you always want or need. If you don't want the Doctor to contribute to combat, or don't want to make an early, likely suicidal grab for Inoculation then the Muyib, Tuareg and jannisary are going to be paying points for something you don't want. But if you want more than a Doctor, there are choices depending on your playstyle.