I played in the Australian infinity championships over
the weekend. My first Infinity tournament! It was a fantastic event. Prize
support was incredibly deep (pretty much everyone got something), terrain was
lush, and pretty much everyone got 100% on sportsmanship for the tournament. I
went 3-1-1 without making any catastrophic errors, which I was very happy with
for my first event. My friend on the other hand walked away with the champion’s
trophy in his first tournament. Assault subsection is a bit much eh?
The tournament was a little unusual for the ITS. You could only take 1 list. Specialists could secure primary mission objectives by spending a short order—no roll was required. LI/MI/HI/REM and warbands could also secure primary objectives without a roll, but needed a long order to do so. However, the points allocated to classified objectives were changed to always be 2 each, which made it quite important to bring specialists with decent WIP. The missions were all oriented towards killing shot and moving forward rather than pressing buttons: annihilation, supplies, frontline, seize the antennas and quadrant control.
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| Big bad himself. The character on the newspaper means 'crime' |
The tournament was a little unusual for the ITS. You could only take 1 list. Specialists could secure primary mission objectives by spending a short order—no roll was required. LI/MI/HI/REM and warbands could also secure primary objectives without a roll, but needed a long order to do so. However, the points allocated to classified objectives were changed to always be 2 each, which made it quite important to bring specialists with decent WIP. The missions were all oriented towards killing shot and moving forward rather than pressing buttons: annihilation, supplies, frontline, seize the antennas and quadrant control.
I ended up playing a vanilla Yu Jing Hsien smoke
shooting all-rounder list, mostly because it is what I am most familiar with,
but it’s also damn good:
GROUP
1:
Hsien (lt.) with HMG and MSV2
Hsien (lt.) with HMG and MSV2
Celestial
Guard with Kuang Shi Control Device
Kuang
with Chain Rifle
Kuang
with Chain Rifle
Kuang
with Chain Rifle
Kuang
with Chain Rifle
Guilang
(Hacker) with combi
Tokusetsu
Eisei (doctor) with combi and Yaozao servant bot
Oniwaban
with boarding shotgun
Raiden
with heavy rocket launcher
GROUP
2:
Yuriko
Oda (Engineer) with panzerfaust
Guilang
(minelayer) with combi
Rui
Shi with MSV2 and spitfire
Lu
Duan with MSV1, holoprojector, mk12 and heavy flamethrower
Shoalin
Monk with chainrifle
300
points, 6 SWC
There
are four main attack pieces (in order): the Hsien, the Oniwaban, the Rui Shi
and the Lu Duan. That’s one too many I think, especially as you also have the
Raiden. There are three specialists: the doctor, Yuriko and the Guilang Hacker,
but the hacker can complete all of the forward observer’s objectives and I
figured I could usually trade them out for secure HVT. This indeed turned out
to be the case. The other guys are there either to throw smoke (Shaolin) or
provide cheap orders (Kuang Shi). Most of my turns went like this:
1. Shaolin impetuous order moves 4 to the edge of building where he is still out of site and throws smoke in front of the Hsien.
2. Kuang Shi move 4 out of LoF then dodge anyway so as to never move into LoF ever.
3. The Hsien moves 8 to cover while being blocked by the smoke. He then caps everyone he can see through the smoke.
4. The Shaolin irregular order sees him move 4 and then throw another smoke grenade
5. The Hsien kills another dude using the second smoke template and then retreats to avoid getting bum-rushed. (Never use AROs aggressively unless you have good snipers)
6. The Celestial Guardsman lobs a smoke grenade
7. The Rui Shi uses it to kill one or two dudes
Turn 2 I would typically go nuts with my Oniwaban now that people are in range of the shotgun. If my opponent had deployed very defensively then I would sometimes use turn 1 to just capture objectives with my Hacker and Yuriko.
1. Shaolin impetuous order moves 4 to the edge of building where he is still out of site and throws smoke in front of the Hsien.
2. Kuang Shi move 4 out of LoF then dodge anyway so as to never move into LoF ever.
3. The Hsien moves 8 to cover while being blocked by the smoke. He then caps everyone he can see through the smoke.
4. The Shaolin irregular order sees him move 4 and then throw another smoke grenade
5. The Hsien kills another dude using the second smoke template and then retreats to avoid getting bum-rushed. (Never use AROs aggressively unless you have good snipers)
6. The Celestial Guardsman lobs a smoke grenade
7. The Rui Shi uses it to kill one or two dudes
Turn 2 I would typically go nuts with my Oniwaban now that people are in range of the shotgun. If my opponent had deployed very defensively then I would sometimes use turn 1 to just capture objectives with my Hacker and Yuriko.
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| Lu Duan |
If
I could have my time again I would cut the Lu Duan, which I never used all
weekend, and replace it with a celestial guard lieutenant and either a second
Shaolin and second Yaozao for Yuriko, or more likely, a Pangguling baggage bot
with minesweeper while the minelayer guilang gets upgraded to forward observer. The bot would have been very useful in frontline, annihilation
and quadrant control, and if I had faced someone played mono-mines (Aleph Nagas). I didn't find that the minelayer was very useful but perhaps I was positioning badly (in the one game where it was positioned well I think my opponent just said he could see it when he couldn't). A second infiltrating specialist would have been more useful for grabbing objectives late game and on first turns where my opponent dug right in. The deployed repeater might have been fun as well. The main reason for this change though is that I went Rambo with
my Hsien all the time but had to be a bit conservative through turn 2 because
he was lieutenant. A CG lt. would have fixed that. I thought I needed the Lu
Duan as an extra attack piece and as a way to kill snipers without exposing my
Hsien. But smoke-shooting with the Hsien did the job just fine. That
would have been doubly true if I would have felt comfortable taking wounds on
him. The Raiden also worked pretty well with his extra dice. A second shaolin wouldn’t have been useful for much more than piece of
mind. In my early days I often lost my monks to bad positioning and aggressive movement, but now I know how to deploy to be able to lob effective smoke from a hidden spot and I often use the irregular order to get into a similar position for turn 2. If he does somehow die then the Celestial Guardsman could always run backup
firing on angles. I would have liked a bot for Yuriko to do all her d-charge
objectives, but she managed them pretty comfortably without.
On
to the games! Sorry for the lack of pictures. The shots throughout this article
are of my own miniatures, which aren’t the best painted things but I think
they’re alright. I used a lot of pure washing techniques, which is where you
basecoat white and then just use inks. I find this is the most straightforward
way to handle the crazy level of detail on Infinity miniatures in many cases.
Drybrushing can work too but often the edges are smooth and rounded rather than
hard, which obviates against good drybrushing effects and against
straightforward edge highlighting. I also used gloss varnish on hair to give it that glossy black shine. In any case, I am satisfied with how my bros
look and will focus my painting efforts on my Blood Angel’s models.
Round
1: Annihilation vs. Neoterra
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| Guilang Hacker and Minelayer |
His
list from memory was:
Father
knight with MSV3, HMG
Father
knight hacker
TO
camo sniper
TO
camo sniper
Auxilia
with auxbot with heavy flamer
Auxilia
with auxbot with heavy flamer
Bulleteer
3
fusiliers, one of which was the lieutenant.
This board had a huge, impassable, line of sight blocking
building in the middle with quite a bit of junk to the left as well. On the
right you could get around and there was a kind of strongpoint with a hole that
you could hide in if prone. My DZ had a bunch of walls to hide behind but not
much else. His had a few buildings and a great sniper nest building with a
parapet. I won the roll and elected to go first, which was probably a mistake
given the terrain. He dug in extremely hard, placing everything way out of line
of site.
I deployed my HVT in a hole in the central building
not realising that this put it in range of being grabbed from the other side.
If I had placed him on the very edge of my DZ then my opponent would have had to come
round to take the HVT. This was costly for me.
I had generally the correct approach to this game but
didn’t execute as well as I could. With him dug in I figured the best approach to my
first turn was to just score objectives and move into good positions. So my hacker got telemetry on the HVT
through a wall and I spent the rest of my turn pushing my troops forward, but I
didn’t do this so well. I should have sent my Kuang Shi straight up the middle
instead of up the left flank. I should have sent my Shaolin up the right to
bait be ready to bait snipers next turn (Pan-O snipers don't have MSV2 for smoke). More importantly, I should have done a better job of clustering
units at the corner so that if the father knight came to get me I would have 6
guns waiting for him. Even more importantly, I should have re-camoed my hacker
and sent him to sit in the hole in the bunker, which would have meant that if
the father knight tries to come round that corner he comes into my assault
hacking WIP14 range for an immobilisation. I figured (correctly) that his snipers had the hole covered from the nest,
hence the camo. If he tries to discover then I can go prone as an
ARO to remove LoF. My Hsien can then come round the corner to smack the sniper.
His first turn was very uneventful, simply moving a
few dudes around and bringing the HMG knight a bit further forward. I still
couldn’t even see about 130 points of his list. I wasn’t expecting a Cutter
because he didn’t have the orders, but it was a possibility. My second turn I
inched forward the Hsien and he tried to take a shot with a sniper, forgetting
that I had MSV2. I won the roll pretty comfortably then retreated prone into
the hole.
The rest of the game was pretty much a standoff. His
father knight came out and killed some of my linemen but then I healed them with the doctor servant. I went one-on-one with my raiden on ARO, which was a bad idea. I should spent my first turn hiding everything that cost more than 5 points after I saw his deployment. On the other side I set up a defensive line and my
shaolin died to the second sniper when he eventually impetuous moved into the killzone. My Hsien then killed that sniper and had a one-on-one against the father knight, which I won because I had active turn and got maybe a bit lucky on the close range HMG dice. My Hsien then moved behind a barricade and into range of the HVT. Unfortunately he died to a heavy flamer from an auxbot and my opponent had just enough orders to get his bulleteer over to secure both HVTs. In the end it was 5-5. I could have gotten it to 5-3 with better HVT placement, and perhaps even more if I had done a better job crowding the corner against the Knight. I was happy with the result though, and for not having made any catastrophic errors.
Game 2: Supplies against Corregidor
My opponent's list was something like:
Intruder Hacker
Iguana with HMG
missile launcher wildcat
HMG wildcat
Wildcat number 2
Wildcat
Wildcat specialist
Mobile Brigada with multi rifle
Clockmaker
Something else
He had ten orders with a TAG and a link team of Wildcats. Unfortunately for him he didn't have an MSV2 that could tango with my Hsien, so his first turn went really badly, but then he brought it back pretty well.
This table was really open save for a few buildings at either end. There was a kind of park in the middle and we decided to make all the bushes low-visibility zones to prevent huge massacre by long-range troops.
I won the WIP roll and decided to go first. He deployed second and went second, and gave me what I thought was the better deployment zone (though I suppose his was better for hiding. Going second is often critical in infinity for taking objectives, so sometimes you do it even though you are deploying first! I held the Hsien in reserve and deployed my Ninja by my HVT. I put the raiden in a window where he could see the whole table with the doctor next to him in a corner prone where she could heal him without exposing herself to fire. I had Yuriko on a flank where she could run to a building for the demolitions objective surrounded by the Kuang Shi who I figured would survive there the longest. I had the Rui Shi and my smoke launcher over on the other side. He deployed his wildcats in a 3-man link in the middle in good cover and everything else out of the way on the side with my Rui Shi.
First turn was a bloodbath. Shaolin threw smoke. Hsien took a shot and my opponent was like, "so I'm at -6 for the smoke, -3 for range and -3 for your cover and you're hitting on 14s?" Yep, that's about right. Hsien killed the entire Wildcats link team of 3 and another Wildcat, then opened a supply chest and went prone behind a long pot so nobody could see him in return. I didn't do much else. His turn he only had enough orders to bring the Iguana around who shot at the Shaolin but I smoke dodged it. My turn I shot a smoke bomb with the Celestial Guard then killed the Iguana and put a wound on the pilot with Hsien, got demolitions and opened a second supply box with my hacker. His turn he burned all his orders to grab the third supply box with his Iguana pilot and leg it away. I messed up here. I had forgotten all about my Raiden, who could have at least prevented him fleeing by requesting orders to be used killing him. Turn 3 I messed up a bit as well by fixating on the HVT and killing the Mobile Brigada guarding him and thereby not getting my supply boxes to safety. I got a bit unlucky not to land telemetry with 2 rolls, which would have made secure HVT redundant. In any case, he managed to kill my Shaolin (failed my smoke 16 roll), which meant that we only had 1 box each at the end. I won 7-2. As a general theme of all my games except the last one, I think I could have gotten more points if I had been a little bit smarter. No catastrophic errors from me for the weekend (well, maybe 1 in game 3), but a lot of little ones like this.
Game 3: Frontline against Tohaa
Line infantry with sniper rifle
MSV2 guy with sniper rifle
Doctor/Engineer
Nikoul with viral sniper (sapper)
Keesan Hacker
Neema HI
3 Makaul's with flamethrowers and smoke
Chaksa with HMG who was actually some holoprojecter 1 dude with super jump
diplomat
one of those guys with symbiomates
The table had channels running up the middle that you could move through. The very centre of the table was pretty open save for a truck, which I deployed my ninja on behind some crates. I won the roll again and decided to go first. He set up his 2 snipers in a fireteam with the doctor on a container in the middle of his DZ all prone and the Nikoul off to the side on a helicopter. Everything else was out of sight.
Turn 1 I dropped smoke and then triumphed over the MSV2 sniper in a firefight (4 dice needing 17s against 2 dice needing 9s...yep), then killed his Nikoul. I put two wounds on his other sniper but she passed both her saves! She then failed her guts check and retreated, leaving me unable to see her because she was prone. She would come back later to haunt me. I then revealed my Raiden to fire a blast rocket at the corpse of the MSV2 guy. The blast caught the doctor and she died! Good turn.
His turn he advanced with his fireteams throwing a lot of smoke. Neesa, Aelis and a Makaul entered the room on my left, with one of them coming to the door to kill my Raiden. pooh. Then the Makaul shot over the truck with his flamerthrower, killing my Rui Shi and Lu Duan who killed him in reply. A strong reply from him. Bloody fire teams.
My turn I moved my camo dudes around the side of that building into a different building where they could patiently wait out the frontline result. And I revealed my ninja! Man I love ninjas. She shot the Aelis in the doorway in the face. She managed to survive because of her symbiont and guts out of there, so I went around to the other door and shot Neesa in the face. She went down. Then I went around the corner and died to Aelis' nanopulser, but not before shooting her in the face twice. She passed her saves with 19 and 20! This was the first of a few tight rolls that would cost me this game. Had she failed I could have performed the coup de grace I needed to do with my hacker on Neesa and then focused on frontline. I then moved my Hsien too close to a Makaul and managed to take 3 wounds from his ARO heavy flamer! Dough! This would put me in loss of lieutenant next turn, which was devastating (but I would still have won if it weren't for some bad rolls!). I had to kill the Makaul because he was stopping my engineer from coming over to fix the Lu Duan, which I needed for frontline. With the Makaul did I spent the orders from my second pool to achieve this goal.
His turn 2 was pretty uneventful. He spent most of his orders forward observing my HVT through the building doors and moving his diplomatic delegate up to his own HVT. He then stood up the sniper from earlier and took 1 shot at each of my engineer and my Lu Duan. I needed a 14 to hit with my Panzerfaust and rolled a 13. Looking good! Then he criticalled on an 11. So shit. Then he managed to also beat my Lu Duan despite me needing a 15 and him needing an 11. I think I missed from memory. This was game changing. I only needed 1 order to move my Lu Duan 6, kill the diplomatic delegate and secure the HVT. I could have done it in loss of lieutenant easily.
My turn 3 I was in lol. I used the hacker's irregular order to try to telemetry his forward observer. I rolled a 1 (needing an 11) and he rolled a 2. That was a deep burn because it meant I really needed coup de gras. I used my 2 remaining command tokens to make my Ninja regular. She shotgunned the lineman who was standing in the doorway so that I could finally get a coup de gras off. The bitch made her saves! I then had to use another order to kill her and my final order to do the coup de gras. Here I made a pretty big error. I had enough movement if I was smart to execute Neesa and then get back to my deployment zone, but I got a bit fixated on the middle zone so I dug my ninja into the room in a doorway out of sight. I figured there was no way he could reach the area in front of my DZ and he had too many bodies for me to contest the area outside his zone, so the action was all about the middle. If I had been a bit more familiar with the points cost of Tohaa units I might have realised that he would struggle to take the middle regardless and I needed my DZ. Maybe not though. I am doing the calculations in hindsight. I think it was almost certainly the right thing to do because it would have protected my HVT
Turns out that his Chaksa with HMG was actually a very mobile holoprojector guy. He burned all his orders to reach my HVT which also happened to be the area outside my DZ, giving him 2 points for the HVT and 3 points for frontline. This swung the game to end 9-4. I was a bit sad because I thought I had played well and gotten quite unlucky in the final stages, especially with Yuriko and the Lu Duan, which was huge. But I didn't think I had made a catastrophic error. The Ninja positioning thought only came to me later. I should also note that he was on 84 points for calculating retreat on his last turn, so if I had killed that sniper it would have been 7-2 for me no problem.
So I was 1-1-1 and on exactly 0 points for day 1. I wanted to go 2-2-1 or better on my first tournament. It would all come down to day 2.
Game 4: Seize the Antennas against Pan-Oceania
Aquila with HMG and MSV3
Father Knight with spitfire maybe, or perhaps he was a hacker
Fusilier x2
Something with an auxbot
Dude with basic hacking device
Bulleteer
Total Reaction bot with HMG
TO camoflaged dude with shotgun
TO camoflaged forward observer
This was a really dense table with lots of steampunk style industrial terrain. I can't quite remember how the WIP roll went. I seem to recall failing, but I definitely had first turn, which is bad for this mission and I couldn't do much damage with my first turn either. I think perhaps he chose to go second and so I chose to deploy second and take first turn. He bunkered down easily so I hid most of my attack pieces and just captured objectives on the first turn. My Rui Shi went forward under some smoke and killed the TR bot blocking the approach lane, then retreated. Hacker ran to the button under smoke cover, pushed it, and then ran back to his hiding spot and re-camoflaged. Pan-O has a TO snipers and I didn't want to leave anything hanging in the wind.
A huge moment came at the end of his first turn when he discovered my Raiden and I won the first face to face roll against the HMG, taking a wound. He had one order left, with which he used his bulleteer to kill my Raiden, but this left both the Bulleteer and his Aquila exposed to my Rui Shi smoke shooting next turn. The bot killed them both. That was another instructive lesson in managing face-to-face rolls. The Bulleteer has ODD and spitfire; the Rui Shi has MSV2 and spitfire. But smoke means it has both ignores ODD and its own ODD, so I had 12s on 4 dice against his 6 on 1 dice. That's how you win infinity. The reactive turn is so overrated. Unless you have a really good sniper (like Agema) don't bother. Just smoke up and hide.
The next big thing in this game was when my Ninja turned up. Looking at his deployment I saw a juicy cluster of cheerleaders in a corner and I decided to risk superior infiltrating my Oniwaban. I called a guy from the adjacent table to witness and rolled exactly 15. Sick. To make things juicier, on his first turn he moved all of those guys up the table so I could get behind them. Sick. The boarding shotgun did work, killing 2 fusiliers and the big knight with no more than a combi rifle shot in return, at -9 because of cover (he got +3 for range but I got +6, so it was 2 dice 17 against 1 dice 5 - that's how you win infinity). I think he should have called alert with the second fusilier (who was facing the right way when he got a face full of buckshot) instead of shooting. He couldn't change facing with the knight because I was 9" away. Muwahahahaha. Rest of my orders this turn I pressed the button in my deployment zone and moved my minelayer forward.
His turn 2 he had something like 4 orders left so it was pretty uneventful. One of his TO guys revealed itself and promptly shotgunned my minelayer in the back. His other orders were spent moving a fusilier to press the button in his DZ.
My turn 3 I made mistakes. I should have used combined orders to press my entire army up the table and push the button in his deployment zone, but I forgot that skirmishers were excluded from the long order rule, so I went on a rampage with my ninja instead. She shot the hacker, cut the fusilier's head off and coup'ed the bulleteer for my classified objective. But then when I realised she could press his button I didn't have enough orders left to grab that objective. My monk whacked the TO shotgun guy in close combat with a critical on a 15 (martial arts level 3 is better than a shotgun). I spent my final orders putting guys around the central objective to protect it while scoring secure HVT. His turn he revealed a TO camoflaged specialist right next to the objective. My monk cut her head off while she pressed the button, but he couldn't stop her pressing it. So the game ended 6-4 when it could have been 8-4 if I had been smarter on my last turn.
Game 5: Quadrant Control against the Haqqislam sectorial with Jannisaries
Jannisary with missile launcher
Jannisary with boarding shotgun
Jannisary doctor
Jannisary with HMG
Jannisary with something else, maybe number 2
Mercenary Tag (2 mk12s, flamer maybe)
Engineer (the TAGs friend)
Some lineman with holoprojector level 1 masquerading as an MSV2 sniper
Total reaction bot with HMG
Camoflaged hacker with infiltration and d-charges
He won the roll and chose to deploy second. I opted to go second so that I could respond to his quadrant placement. This was perhaps a bit cheesy as we were playing on a mat that made seeing the quadrants super easy. My deployment was ridiculously defensive. The table had a big garage in the middle that could be accessed from the side but not the front or back. It had a walkway connecting it on high where my hacker was. On its right where some shipping containers that obstructed line of sight to most of that side of the table so you had to go round for a firefight. On the left was pretty much open ground.
His opening turn he moved the Jannisaries forward and put the TAG next to a container with a decent line of fire. His camo guy moved forward and scored his demo-charge classified objective.
My turn I did the usual bullshit. Shaolin through smoke to block the TAG. My Hsien then went one on one through the smoke with the MSV2 sniper, who turned out not to be a sniper and so died very easily. My Hsien then pumped the TAG down 2 wounds. He chose to fail guts and moved back behind the container. But he hadn't counted on my Raiden, deployed on a roof, who promptly popped up and burned old mate to a crisp - no engineer recovery for you! He was a bit unlucky with saves but I had heaps more orders to keep firing. My other order pool I used to hit the TR bot and front Jannisary with the shotgun with my Rui Shi through smoke. They both went down pretty easily but the Jannisary was healed by the doctor (to full wounds!) next turn. Still, that ate orders. He used his remaining orders to put the Jannisary team in the garage from where they could defend themselves and threaten all four quadrants.
My turn I had two options and I think I took the correct one. I could have moved my hacker over and burned an order pool trying to immobilise the jannisaries. Had that worked I could have waded in with Hsien and shot them to pieces. Instead I played for points. I smoked the entrance to the garage so that I could get my Ninja to a hiding spot still as a marker and Yuriko forward to d-charge her objective. On the other side my hacker took care of telemetry and then joined my Lu Duan in taking took up scoring positions. Then everyone else hid in anticipation of turn 3. I miscalculated the points slightly and so we drew for that turn, but then on turn 3 he did more or less the same thing and I was able to get all four quadrants for a 9-2 win. Good way to end the tournament.
Wrap up
I came 12th overall, which was right on the knife-edge between the top 25% of players. I thought I would have done better with 3-1-1, but it seems my wins weren't big enough. As I said, I was happy with how I played because I made at most 2 big errors and no catastrophic ones, but I could have squeezed more points out of all my games. I think I was unlucky not to win game 3, which ended up being a pretty bad loss (5 point difference).
I was happy with the list other than the aforementioned issues with the Lu Duan, though its speed did come in handy in the last game. I was surprised at how unprepared most opponents were for a smoke-shooting Hsien. Many people seemed never to have seen that tactic before. I certainly think having it with the Rui Shi as a backup attack piece is great because it means you can hit both flanks and the Rui Shi is cheap as chips. I was also surprised at the number of people using bad tags like Iguanas. If it doesn't have ODD, TO or MSV2+ you can't use it as your primary attack piece. The Hsien is a monster because he often has both MSV2 and the equivalent of TO Camo, though note that member of 4+ man link teams ignore the penalty for firing through smoke.
Link teams are a bit much I think. I think the 4 man bonus should just be sixth sense L1, and the 5-man bonus should not affect the reactive turn. In fact, I don't think any of the bonuses should apply on the reactive turn, but maybe I'm just sour because I don't have access to link teams. Perhaps I will change my mind once I start playing ISS more. My attitude at the moment is that a full 5-man link team with a good mix of weaponry and a specialist basically has no chinks in its armour. It has the right range band. It doesn't care about smoke shooting. It can go toe-to-toe with the best BS (5-man Jannisary team has 17BS base). With BS17 and a decent range band it can run overwhelm on its active turn. With five guys in a spread you can't approach them without taking 10 shots. Good players spread out enough to avoid templates and even if you hit its usually about a 13 to dodge and then you still have an armour save against a 13. That's no big deal. And other people's flame thrower links can't come at you because their link leader dies every time they try to shoot you. The best I can do is run 3 Kuang Shi over with a combined order and throw chain rifle pies. An Oniwaban Shinobu with smoke and a sword would do the job, but that's pretty niche. I suppose Jannisaries are expensive and you can't afford enough specialists, but they bring the orders and the protection to get their own doctor to where he needs to be.
Speaking of link teams, my playtesting buddy walked away with the trophy playing Steel Phalanx, which combines the above link team bullshit with ODD on everybody to utterly dominate face to face rolls. They are a little bit weak at range but Atalanta with the spotbot and MSV2 gives them enough stopping power in that department for the link teams to get forward. Thorakite links with 360 visors also seem a bit too point and click to me. It is pretty hard to make mistakes playing steel phalanx.
My next army will be ISS with a Hsien and 8 Kuang Shi and controller in one pool (smoke rambo!), a link team of MSV2 Bao snipers and some quality specialists in the other. I think it is going to be nasty. For missions that don't need specialists except for classifieds I will retain the ninja hacker and sophotect but bring a Rui Shi and go up to a full 5-man Bao link (base is 3 dudes).
Game 2: Supplies against Corregidor
My opponent's list was something like:
Intruder Hacker
Iguana with HMG
missile launcher wildcat
HMG wildcat
Wildcat number 2
Wildcat
Wildcat specialist
Mobile Brigada with multi rifle
Clockmaker
Something else
He had ten orders with a TAG and a link team of Wildcats. Unfortunately for him he didn't have an MSV2 that could tango with my Hsien, so his first turn went really badly, but then he brought it back pretty well.
This table was really open save for a few buildings at either end. There was a kind of park in the middle and we decided to make all the bushes low-visibility zones to prevent huge massacre by long-range troops.
I won the WIP roll and decided to go first. He deployed second and went second, and gave me what I thought was the better deployment zone (though I suppose his was better for hiding. Going second is often critical in infinity for taking objectives, so sometimes you do it even though you are deploying first! I held the Hsien in reserve and deployed my Ninja by my HVT. I put the raiden in a window where he could see the whole table with the doctor next to him in a corner prone where she could heal him without exposing herself to fire. I had Yuriko on a flank where she could run to a building for the demolitions objective surrounded by the Kuang Shi who I figured would survive there the longest. I had the Rui Shi and my smoke launcher over on the other side. He deployed his wildcats in a 3-man link in the middle in good cover and everything else out of the way on the side with my Rui Shi.
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| All your smoke grenade needs |
Game 3: Frontline against Tohaa
Line infantry with sniper rifle
MSV2 guy with sniper rifle
Doctor/Engineer
Nikoul with viral sniper (sapper)
Keesan Hacker
Neema HI
3 Makaul's with flamethrowers and smoke
Chaksa with HMG who was actually some holoprojecter 1 dude with super jump
diplomat
one of those guys with symbiomates
The table had channels running up the middle that you could move through. The very centre of the table was pretty open save for a truck, which I deployed my ninja on behind some crates. I won the roll again and decided to go first. He set up his 2 snipers in a fireteam with the doctor on a container in the middle of his DZ all prone and the Nikoul off to the side on a helicopter. Everything else was out of sight.
Turn 1 I dropped smoke and then triumphed over the MSV2 sniper in a firefight (4 dice needing 17s against 2 dice needing 9s...yep), then killed his Nikoul. I put two wounds on his other sniper but she passed both her saves! She then failed her guts check and retreated, leaving me unable to see her because she was prone. She would come back later to haunt me. I then revealed my Raiden to fire a blast rocket at the corpse of the MSV2 guy. The blast caught the doctor and she died! Good turn.
His turn he advanced with his fireteams throwing a lot of smoke. Neesa, Aelis and a Makaul entered the room on my left, with one of them coming to the door to kill my Raiden. pooh. Then the Makaul shot over the truck with his flamerthrower, killing my Rui Shi and Lu Duan who killed him in reply. A strong reply from him. Bloody fire teams.
My turn I moved my camo dudes around the side of that building into a different building where they could patiently wait out the frontline result. And I revealed my ninja! Man I love ninjas. She shot the Aelis in the doorway in the face. She managed to survive because of her symbiont and guts out of there, so I went around to the other door and shot Neesa in the face. She went down. Then I went around the corner and died to Aelis' nanopulser, but not before shooting her in the face twice. She passed her saves with 19 and 20! This was the first of a few tight rolls that would cost me this game. Had she failed I could have performed the coup de grace I needed to do with my hacker on Neesa and then focused on frontline. I then moved my Hsien too close to a Makaul and managed to take 3 wounds from his ARO heavy flamer! Dough! This would put me in loss of lieutenant next turn, which was devastating (but I would still have won if it weren't for some bad rolls!). I had to kill the Makaul because he was stopping my engineer from coming over to fix the Lu Duan, which I needed for frontline. With the Makaul did I spent the orders from my second pool to achieve this goal.
His turn 2 was pretty uneventful. He spent most of his orders forward observing my HVT through the building doors and moving his diplomatic delegate up to his own HVT. He then stood up the sniper from earlier and took 1 shot at each of my engineer and my Lu Duan. I needed a 14 to hit with my Panzerfaust and rolled a 13. Looking good! Then he criticalled on an 11. So shit. Then he managed to also beat my Lu Duan despite me needing a 15 and him needing an 11. I think I missed from memory. This was game changing. I only needed 1 order to move my Lu Duan 6, kill the diplomatic delegate and secure the HVT. I could have done it in loss of lieutenant easily.
My turn 3 I was in lol. I used the hacker's irregular order to try to telemetry his forward observer. I rolled a 1 (needing an 11) and he rolled a 2. That was a deep burn because it meant I really needed coup de gras. I used my 2 remaining command tokens to make my Ninja regular. She shotgunned the lineman who was standing in the doorway so that I could finally get a coup de gras off. The bitch made her saves! I then had to use another order to kill her and my final order to do the coup de gras. Here I made a pretty big error. I had enough movement if I was smart to execute Neesa and then get back to my deployment zone, but I got a bit fixated on the middle zone so I dug my ninja into the room in a doorway out of sight. I figured there was no way he could reach the area in front of my DZ and he had too many bodies for me to contest the area outside his zone, so the action was all about the middle. If I had been a bit more familiar with the points cost of Tohaa units I might have realised that he would struggle to take the middle regardless and I needed my DZ. Maybe not though. I am doing the calculations in hindsight. I think it was almost certainly the right thing to do because it would have protected my HVT
Turns out that his Chaksa with HMG was actually a very mobile holoprojector guy. He burned all his orders to reach my HVT which also happened to be the area outside my DZ, giving him 2 points for the HVT and 3 points for frontline. This swung the game to end 9-4. I was a bit sad because I thought I had played well and gotten quite unlucky in the final stages, especially with Yuriko and the Lu Duan, which was huge. But I didn't think I had made a catastrophic error. The Ninja positioning thought only came to me later. I should also note that he was on 84 points for calculating retreat on his last turn, so if I had killed that sniper it would have been 7-2 for me no problem.
So I was 1-1-1 and on exactly 0 points for day 1. I wanted to go 2-2-1 or better on my first tournament. It would all come down to day 2.
Game 4: Seize the Antennas against Pan-Oceania
Aquila with HMG and MSV3
Father Knight with spitfire maybe, or perhaps he was a hacker
Fusilier x2
Something with an auxbot
Dude with basic hacking device
Bulleteer
Total Reaction bot with HMG
TO camoflaged dude with shotgun
TO camoflaged forward observer
This was a really dense table with lots of steampunk style industrial terrain. I can't quite remember how the WIP roll went. I seem to recall failing, but I definitely had first turn, which is bad for this mission and I couldn't do much damage with my first turn either. I think perhaps he chose to go second and so I chose to deploy second and take first turn. He bunkered down easily so I hid most of my attack pieces and just captured objectives on the first turn. My Rui Shi went forward under some smoke and killed the TR bot blocking the approach lane, then retreated. Hacker ran to the button under smoke cover, pushed it, and then ran back to his hiding spot and re-camoflaged. Pan-O has a TO snipers and I didn't want to leave anything hanging in the wind.
The next big thing in this game was when my Ninja turned up. Looking at his deployment I saw a juicy cluster of cheerleaders in a corner and I decided to risk superior infiltrating my Oniwaban. I called a guy from the adjacent table to witness and rolled exactly 15. Sick. To make things juicier, on his first turn he moved all of those guys up the table so I could get behind them. Sick. The boarding shotgun did work, killing 2 fusiliers and the big knight with no more than a combi rifle shot in return, at -9 because of cover (he got +3 for range but I got +6, so it was 2 dice 17 against 1 dice 5 - that's how you win infinity). I think he should have called alert with the second fusilier (who was facing the right way when he got a face full of buckshot) instead of shooting. He couldn't change facing with the knight because I was 9" away. Muwahahahaha. Rest of my orders this turn I pressed the button in my deployment zone and moved my minelayer forward.
His turn 2 he had something like 4 orders left so it was pretty uneventful. One of his TO guys revealed itself and promptly shotgunned my minelayer in the back. His other orders were spent moving a fusilier to press the button in his DZ.
My turn 3 I made mistakes. I should have used combined orders to press my entire army up the table and push the button in his deployment zone, but I forgot that skirmishers were excluded from the long order rule, so I went on a rampage with my ninja instead. She shot the hacker, cut the fusilier's head off and coup'ed the bulleteer for my classified objective. But then when I realised she could press his button I didn't have enough orders left to grab that objective. My monk whacked the TO shotgun guy in close combat with a critical on a 15 (martial arts level 3 is better than a shotgun). I spent my final orders putting guys around the central objective to protect it while scoring secure HVT. His turn he revealed a TO camoflaged specialist right next to the objective. My monk cut her head off while she pressed the button, but he couldn't stop her pressing it. So the game ended 6-4 when it could have been 8-4 if I had been smarter on my last turn.
Game 5: Quadrant Control against the Haqqislam sectorial with Jannisaries
Jannisary with missile launcher
Jannisary with boarding shotgun
Jannisary doctor
Jannisary with HMG
Jannisary with something else, maybe number 2
Mercenary Tag (2 mk12s, flamer maybe)
Engineer (the TAGs friend)
Some lineman with holoprojector level 1 masquerading as an MSV2 sniper
Total reaction bot with HMG
Camoflaged hacker with infiltration and d-charges
He won the roll and chose to deploy second. I opted to go second so that I could respond to his quadrant placement. This was perhaps a bit cheesy as we were playing on a mat that made seeing the quadrants super easy. My deployment was ridiculously defensive. The table had a big garage in the middle that could be accessed from the side but not the front or back. It had a walkway connecting it on high where my hacker was. On its right where some shipping containers that obstructed line of sight to most of that side of the table so you had to go round for a firefight. On the left was pretty much open ground.
His opening turn he moved the Jannisaries forward and put the TAG next to a container with a decent line of fire. His camo guy moved forward and scored his demo-charge classified objective.
My turn I did the usual bullshit. Shaolin through smoke to block the TAG. My Hsien then went one on one through the smoke with the MSV2 sniper, who turned out not to be a sniper and so died very easily. My Hsien then pumped the TAG down 2 wounds. He chose to fail guts and moved back behind the container. But he hadn't counted on my Raiden, deployed on a roof, who promptly popped up and burned old mate to a crisp - no engineer recovery for you! He was a bit unlucky with saves but I had heaps more orders to keep firing. My other order pool I used to hit the TR bot and front Jannisary with the shotgun with my Rui Shi through smoke. They both went down pretty easily but the Jannisary was healed by the doctor (to full wounds!) next turn. Still, that ate orders. He used his remaining orders to put the Jannisary team in the garage from where they could defend themselves and threaten all four quadrants.
My turn I had two options and I think I took the correct one. I could have moved my hacker over and burned an order pool trying to immobilise the jannisaries. Had that worked I could have waded in with Hsien and shot them to pieces. Instead I played for points. I smoked the entrance to the garage so that I could get my Ninja to a hiding spot still as a marker and Yuriko forward to d-charge her objective. On the other side my hacker took care of telemetry and then joined my Lu Duan in taking took up scoring positions. Then everyone else hid in anticipation of turn 3. I miscalculated the points slightly and so we drew for that turn, but then on turn 3 he did more or less the same thing and I was able to get all four quadrants for a 9-2 win. Good way to end the tournament.
Wrap up
I came 12th overall, which was right on the knife-edge between the top 25% of players. I thought I would have done better with 3-1-1, but it seems my wins weren't big enough. As I said, I was happy with how I played because I made at most 2 big errors and no catastrophic ones, but I could have squeezed more points out of all my games. I think I was unlucky not to win game 3, which ended up being a pretty bad loss (5 point difference).
I was happy with the list other than the aforementioned issues with the Lu Duan, though its speed did come in handy in the last game. I was surprised at how unprepared most opponents were for a smoke-shooting Hsien. Many people seemed never to have seen that tactic before. I certainly think having it with the Rui Shi as a backup attack piece is great because it means you can hit both flanks and the Rui Shi is cheap as chips. I was also surprised at the number of people using bad tags like Iguanas. If it doesn't have ODD, TO or MSV2+ you can't use it as your primary attack piece. The Hsien is a monster because he often has both MSV2 and the equivalent of TO Camo, though note that member of 4+ man link teams ignore the penalty for firing through smoke.
Link teams are a bit much I think. I think the 4 man bonus should just be sixth sense L1, and the 5-man bonus should not affect the reactive turn. In fact, I don't think any of the bonuses should apply on the reactive turn, but maybe I'm just sour because I don't have access to link teams. Perhaps I will change my mind once I start playing ISS more. My attitude at the moment is that a full 5-man link team with a good mix of weaponry and a specialist basically has no chinks in its armour. It has the right range band. It doesn't care about smoke shooting. It can go toe-to-toe with the best BS (5-man Jannisary team has 17BS base). With BS17 and a decent range band it can run overwhelm on its active turn. With five guys in a spread you can't approach them without taking 10 shots. Good players spread out enough to avoid templates and even if you hit its usually about a 13 to dodge and then you still have an armour save against a 13. That's no big deal. And other people's flame thrower links can't come at you because their link leader dies every time they try to shoot you. The best I can do is run 3 Kuang Shi over with a combined order and throw chain rifle pies. An Oniwaban Shinobu with smoke and a sword would do the job, but that's pretty niche. I suppose Jannisaries are expensive and you can't afford enough specialists, but they bring the orders and the protection to get their own doctor to where he needs to be.
Speaking of link teams, my playtesting buddy walked away with the trophy playing Steel Phalanx, which combines the above link team bullshit with ODD on everybody to utterly dominate face to face rolls. They are a little bit weak at range but Atalanta with the spotbot and MSV2 gives them enough stopping power in that department for the link teams to get forward. Thorakite links with 360 visors also seem a bit too point and click to me. It is pretty hard to make mistakes playing steel phalanx.
My next army will be ISS with a Hsien and 8 Kuang Shi and controller in one pool (smoke rambo!), a link team of MSV2 Bao snipers and some quality specialists in the other. I think it is going to be nasty. For missions that don't need specialists except for classifieds I will retain the ninja hacker and sophotect but bring a Rui Shi and go up to a full 5-man Bao link (base is 3 dudes).
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