A Trio of Infinity Figs

It's been quite a while since I posted anything about these guys, last time they were assembled only and left in a state of limbo.  I painted them longer ago than you'd think, but Infinity kind of faded away and I never took a proper pic of them finished.  Still not proper, on the paint desk with a camera phone, but proof of life nonetheless.

Infinity hit the table the other night, as in 2014-the-other-night, so expect to see these guys again, next time hopefully in action.  I made it a goal to get figs on the table in 2014, and so far so good.  Looks like Hordes and Infinity are getting the nod to move up to the front, and we've already played games of both, great news!  

There's a beast of a 15mm sci-fi endeavor lurking in the depths as well, but best let that stay in lurk mode for now.  Until then, enjoy the above; a jump pack equipped melee monster Rasyat, a sneaky, shapeshifting, infiltrating Speculo Killer, and finally a sniping, crouching, camouflaging Noctifer.

Infinity Round Two

Milton Bradley Town; a land of villainous dice and lost games - mezzwargames

Maybe it's my old laptop that is annoying me right now but I gotta say, I'm not a big fan of the new Blogger interface.  I push on nonetheless.

I push on because we played another test round of Infinity this week.  I have to put test round in there because Infinity can be quite fiddly to the newcomer and we were stopping often and looking up rules, writing questions down, and the like.  In the end, however, the game felt more like what I thought an Infinity game would feel like, and we had a lot more models on the table to boot.

Militant knights advance across a side street

For this battle we used the basic Infinity starter boxes, statted out as is.  The were my Combined Army aliens versus Jeff's Pan Oceania Militant Order.  Jeff's models looked great, and were almost finished, which always makes for a nice looking battle.

The terrain on the other hand, ahem, not so much.  Just like in the old minis rulebooks where they show photos of textbooks on the kitchen table to act as hills, we kept it very low budget this go-round.  Yup, we used boardgame boxes.  Let's face it though, Infinity just doesn't look right on blasted, neo-gothic ruins of the 41st millennium.  You need skyscraper-choked neo-Tokyo.  Ironically enough, terrain guru Ironworker Miller, has just posted some effective and low-cost Infinity terrain tips.  I will be checking those out.

Also, I know I just complained about the new Blogger interface, well, I admit I do like the new caption option.
 

A Dāturazi Witch-Soldier skirts a rooftop with the massive Charontid bringing up support not far behind

Infinity, here's their link for posterity, is a great skirmish level sci-fi game.  It does feel quite unique too given all the other samplings out there.  The gorgeous figs instantly set it apart, but the rules help as well.  There's a sort of perpetual over-watch going on that every eligible model can take advantage of when it's not their turn, the ARO (automatic reaction order).  You have a fair number of ARO options as well, depending on what you want to do.  The ARO not only keeps you 100% vested in the game during your opponent's turn but makes those lines of sight all the more important too.

This time around our biggests hurdle was mastering the ARO.  How to use it, when to use it, who could use it, you name it.  For one, we were using the quick start rules, which were understandably skimpy in explanation, and two, it's just a new concept for us in this scale of a game.  Understanding this element is going to be key to how quick you assimilate the rules.

Morat Vanguard Infantry bunch up hoping for safety in numbers

The Dāturazi is taken down by a headshot from two blocks away

This Pan-O sniper had a commanding view of the streets

Another fun component of the Infinity rules is the large role that camouflage plays.  Lots of models have camo, ranging from a simple woodland pattern poncho to sophisticated thermo-optical spectrum based technologies.

The models with active camo use tokens on the tabletop to represent their blip, but that's it.  In order for an enemy to engage them they have to first perform an action to actively 'discover' the model.  Based on the level of camo the model has, this isn't always easy.  Models using active camo also get a surprise attack, allowing them to shoot at a target while 'cloaked'.  If they eliminate said target in one shot they don't have to fear that target using its ARO to shoot back.

With the ARO issue coming up seemingly every time we used it, I wrote down the instances with how we thought it was supposed to work.  I then shamelessly emailed them to Fire Broadside! care of Martin.  If you haven't been to Martin excellent blog, I suggest you do so...as soon as you're done reading here of course.  Anyway, Martin has advised in the Infinity realm before and he came through with all of the clarity I knew we were lacking originally.  Next game will go a lot more smoothly thanks to him!

By the time game began to wind down, the Combined Army had made a rousing comeback.  Once they got their heavy hitter, the Charontid, into the fray the final stone had been cast.  This monster held his own in both ranged and mclose combat, and was heavily armored enough to shrug off many incoming hits as well.  It's also one of the more expensive models to field, points-wise anyway, so once we start policing our army lists more thoroughly he may not be making too many appearances.

All in all it was a good game.  The terrain was a little lacking but it did feel good to get some painted figs on the table and give them a proper go of it.  Infinity round two was a success, here's to the next one.  Until then, enjoy!

Sunday Rucht Hour: The View from Dragon*Con - Gaming Edition

So, last time I talked about Dragon*Con and showed off some of the cool costumes. What about the gaming?

Well, because our gaming panel track expanded this year, I didn't get to game as much as I would have liked. Still, got in a playtest of Alpha Wolf Pack with some of the crew at Epic Games. That was very much fun. Those guys are already big fans. It was pretty neat to sit down with the president of the company, their lead level designer, one of their lead developers, and one of the founders of the Escapist website and roll some dice with them.

I also got to hang out with Darwin Bromley, one of the fathers of modern board gaming. He's largely responsible for bringing Settlers of Catan over to the United States and turning board games from monopoly into something akin to what we have now. He taught me how to play Seven Wonders, and we played a game of it. Seven Wonders was the big hit in terms of board games that year. It was like Argricola in scoring, but had a neat mechanic where you passed cards around to your left or your right. You had to pull cards to make runs or matches, but you had to pull cards so that your opponents to your left or right couldn't make runs or matches.

Jason Bulmahn, the lead Pathfinder designer, hung out with us quite a bit as well. He even taught us a few drinking games.

Jason Morningstar was there, heralding the indie spirit, and ran a fantastic panel for us where everyone got to participate in some indie game techniques through live participation. He helped run the Games on Demand tables, so if you came, you could have played in a game with Jason Morningstar. Clint and Jodi Black showed up as well (the folks who run Savage Worlds). Eloy LaSanta, one-may publishing house was present as well, being the jack of all trades.

The big coup, of course, was getting Monte Cook and Tracy and Laura Hickman. Monte was there to talk about his TSR days and to hear about his new project Numenera. Tracy Hickman ran our charity event, which was a role-playing session with the Guild. The cast of the Guild played a table top RPG with Tracy and we auctioned off one seat at that table for charity - our annual drive for Lou Geherig's disease.

Anyhow, I'll leave you with a few pictures of our panels and the Warmachine tournament which ran in the gaming basement.

Jason Morningstar, Tracy Hickman, and Laura Hickman do a panel on Storytelling through Roleplaying

It's the Legion of Everblight vs. Trollkin! Both sides were exquisitely painted. 

Great shot of some Trollkin on the move.

Two warbeasts slug it out. 

He wasn't used in the tournament, but he made for a great picture - the Trollkin Mountain King. Amazing model and paint job. 

A size comparison of that Mountain King.

An exquisitely painted Deathjack and support squad.

Infinity! Check out that awesome Infinity terrain! 

And here's the big panel! Tracy Hickman runs an RPG with the Guild playing the game! 

Infinity Reinforcements

Not much to this one, as the title states I recently received some reinforcements for Infinity. My buddy Jeff recently headed out to GenCon, had a blast of course, and in addition to getting himself the Pan-O Military Orders box he snagged me a free copy of the starter rules...much better than the printout I've been using!


One of the back pages of the starter rules had a sheet of counters. Unlike the color printer ones last time, these were printed on the nice, glossy-slick paper that the whole rulebook is printed on. Like last time however, with barely any effort, I cut them out and glued them down to spare slottabases effectively doubling my overall counter count and giving me some badly needed thermo-optic camo markers.


Finally comes the real meat and potatoes to the reinforcements segment; more models for my Combined Army. Nothing too outside of the box, not knowing the game well enough I could've pondered troop choices 'til the cows came home. I just went with what the main site suggested to add to flesh out the starter box to a full three hundred points. I figured just adding three models got me to 'regular' sized games? Sign me up. It also helped that two of the three suggested figs were already on my 'must have because they look too cool' list.

Up first would be the jetpack-equipped and heavily armed/armored Rasyat. The ultra sneaky crouched Noctifer was next; lots of stealth and decent firepower, not to mention a great sculpt put him on my must-have list. Rounding out the trio is the shape-shifting Speculo Killer, maybe not my third choice, but she (it?) works out points-wise and has some kind of neat (weird?) egg laying capability.

As with my last Infinity post, I snuck in Ray's Ariadna at the end. This time is no different as I am sneaking in one of Andy's troopers too. Jeff was on a snagging frenzy at GenCon and picked up this alternate sculpt variant of one of Pan-O's basic line troops, the Fusiliers. If you haven't seen Andy's Fusiliers so far you need to check them out here.

That's about all I have for now, until next time!

No-Frills Infinity Markers

The Infinity momentum continues. The other night during our test game we found that markers weren't just handy, but necessary. On the flaps of the box of my starter set there were four markers printed and on the main website you can get all the markers/counters you could ever hope for. I cut out the box flaps and the downloaded ones were printed in color on cardstock. For all of these it was simply a matter of cutting them out with scissors and using white glue to stick them to the tops of round slottabases. That's it, easy cheesy.


As a bonus I snagged Ray's Ariadna starter box the other night and got a quick group pic of it. Ray does what I cannot, well, besides paint to a very high degree he is a stalwart studio scheme kind of guy, and his stuff always looks good. I've been gaming with Ray on and off since I was sixteen, so going on almost thirty years now. Over that time we've done a lot of trading and bartering figs so I'm lucky to have a lot of his stuff in my collection. As for these guys, it's just always nice to play against figs that are painted well.

Infinity Drive Around the Block

"The mean streets of Milton Bradley." -mezzwargames

The other night we got in a trial-run of Infinity using the free quickstart rules. We had one goal and that was to get down the basics of the turn sequence, the mechanics, and the like. I haven't been the most prolific in posting, but as I may have said, there is growing interest here in Infinity. There were four players; myself and Ray both with painted starter sets, Andy who had figs just not completed, and Jeff, who I'm guessing will be picking some up soon. This was a trial run mind you, so it was kind of slow-going, and as you can see from the impromptu "poor man's urban terrain" it was kind of bare bones.


Look! Freshly painted figs, in action...in a new game! Very exciting! Yup, I'm excited if you couldn't tell. Apparently the starter box I have, the Combined Army, has about 75 more points worth of troops in it than the other boxes so a couple of my line troopers sat this one out.


We proxied a Pan-Oceana starter box as well as a duplicate Ariadna starter box and played two on two. Here you can see Andy's proxied Orc Troop get taken out by the enemy Ariadna troops using their effective AROs.

We're no strangers to Two-Hour Wargames around here, so the reactive type phase of the turn wasn't entirely new, but it was still refreshing to see it in action again in a skirmish game. It's basically overwatch, is your opponent moving across your line of sight? Well you can do something about it now, shoot them! There's a ton of actions you can do in addition to shooting however, and having all those options broadens the gameplay.


Camouflage plays a big role in the game. There are different levels of camo too, from basic fatigues to thermo optics and light bending materials. You move markers around until your model is 'discovered' by the enemy, then you put the fig on the table. Here you can see my Malignos skulking about, he just took a shot at a target, who survived, so he lost his camo for the turn. I like how the figs in the game don't just have combat stats and guns only, you have support equipment and skills that are useful for other things, like bypassing doors and what-not. My Malignos lurker here also has an automedkit as well as some other neat skills and equipment, all of which escape me as of this writing.


Another thing we discovered rather quickly is that the model that costs about four times as many points as any other given model on the table...well, he's pretty good in combat. My Charontid wasn't the fastest guy around but his combat stats and armor seem very high compared to everyone else. I only have the free rules, not the rulebook with all the fluff so I was a bit disappointed to find out that this model is more of a 'ghost in the shell' type character than just a buff alien in power armor. It's still a cool concept mind you, just one I hadn't considered. I am the kind of gamer that likes the fluff, them, story, what-not. It's not 100% for me, but it weighs heavier on the scale than mechanics and the like.

Showdown between the Charontid and an Ariadna Chasseur

Near the end of the test game we weren't playing exactly by the turn sequence but were putting models in situations to test the rules further. Sticking two guys in close combat to see how that pans out, moving a medic in contact with a fallen comrade to work through that, and so on.

I had boldly stated early on that I would learn the rules and handle the workload in that department to facilitate getting everyone on board. In full disclosure I have not, in fact, made a whole lot of progress on learning the rules, ahem. Needless to say, our first foray went over positively so expect to see more. I can't really give an impression of the rules just yet, other than it is more than just skirmish scale, I would call it hero scale, where every model on the table has as many stats and doohickeys as a light RPG character, and once the fast playing rules are learned you will be able to do all kinds of varied and cool games.

Looking at the rest of the way to three hundred points with the Combined Army, it looks like I'm just three models shy. From there, I don't know, I thought of amassing lots of CA models to have options and varieties but I'm second-guessing that now. Infinity is the kind of game where it is very feasible to have multiple 300pt armies without investing too much time or money either way. With all the gorgeous models, it's hard to resist. You can have your cake and eat it too, or in my case, have my aliens and ninjas too. Until next time, enjoy!

Infinity: Combined Army

Obviously inspired to paint up some Infinity models due to the strong buzz it has generated locally I also got a chance to end my horrendous half year painting slump. We've yet to play our first game ironically, but that didn't stop me to dust off the brushes, the paint pots, the lamps...well pretty much everything was dusty. When it came down to picking a faction I went with the alien menace, the Combined Army. As their name suggests, they are a conglomerate of many different alien races, all with the singular goal of haranguing mankind.

That's not why I picked them, I picked them based on models alone, as they have a large variety of different aliens, and they just look 'cool', plain and simple. I haven't painted in quite a while so I was admittedly rusty, and these pics came out a tad blurry, but nonetheless it was an invigorating restart at the hobby desk. To start out with Infinity I looked no further than the starter pack, six great models ready to hit the table. Perfect for learning with the quickstart rules. Enough of me, on with the models.


Morat Vanguard Infantry

These guys are the backbone of the Combined Army, and one of the main reasons I picked the faction overall. Their crazy hair, their beards, big guns, and decent torso armor all lend a very familiar but decidedly alien look.

I usually will paint a color scheme in anything but what the box shows the models as. I'm not a big fan of studio paint schemes, I like making my own. However, in the case here, I did decide to go with the bluish-white hair and the red skin.


Malignos

Not having played any Infinity at all, I actually can't tell you what these models do. Not having the official rulebook with all the army fluff in it, I can't actually tell you who these models are either! The Malignos, I believe, are masters of infiltration and stealth. Not much in a stand-up fight they use their thermo-optic camouflage to get in close and open up with their combi-rifles.

Speaking of rifles I decided to do all of the Combined Army weapons in a purple and blue color scheme. Normally not a regular choice to paint weapons in, it seemed suitably alien and with the tan/red color schemes was a nice contrast without being too garish.


Daturazi Witch Soldier

I have no idea what this guy does, but he has one of the coolest titles in the whole army. He looks the same, more or less, as the Morat but his armor is slightly different and he is dual-wielding an axe and a short sword instead of sporting a rifle. So I'm guessing he'll be good in close combat.

I think the 'witch' part of his name might be human superstition as I can't imagine any psionic or "magic" powers being associated with him. He did have these ribbons coming off of his ear-horn things, but I didn't like those at all and tried to hide them in the paintjob.


Charontid

Rounding out the starter box is the heavy hitter of the bunch. I was never crazy about this model, mainly because they had him painted in yellows, purple, and other zany pastel colorfulness. The figure is in a pretty dynamic pose too, but in the end I was happy with the somewhat muted color scheme I gave him and it still ties him in with all of the other models. I never knew if this was a robot, or A.I., or what. No, it's just a guy in heavy power armor with a big, ole gun arm.

For the bases, on the Charontid and the rest, I tried to go for a more urban rubble feel. Not unlike Spacejacker's bases on these freaky mutant-hot dog beasts. I just took my clippers and cut chunks out of an old CD and glued those to the bases first, then added ballast around the chunks, hoping to get it to look like broken concrete. I also added some base decoration courtesy of Secret Weapon miniatures and their excellent conversion bits.


I should also mention that I never realized just how large these figures were until I saw them in context. Shown here for scale is a GW Cadian Trooper. As you can see the Morat is easily taller than the human and the Charontid towers well above him. The Infinity range isn't all over-scaled though, most of their human troopers are about the same size as the Cadian here. The night my buddy Ray and I glued these together his Ariadna were about the same size as the Cadian. It's kind of nice to see such a variety in size among the same scale.

That's all I've got for now. If you've been following me on Instagram (cygnus46) or just paying attention to the photo reel over on the right, you'll have seen tons of WIP images of these guys along the way. I will probably be showing my WIPs like this along the way in this manner as it frees up more space here to post the final product. Well, it's been a while, enjoy!

Workbench WIP

I know, shocking, there's stuff on my desk that's in a state of...being painted! This part's probably not as shocking, but you may have guessed these Infinity models aren't anywhere remotely close to my Projects HUD that I have hyped so much in the past either. They're not done but as you can see, they're very close.

I'll get some proper pics up with a real camera soon, right after I paint the bases and go through the finishing touches stage. I am breaking my 'one post a day' rule seeing how Thor's Day Hero will be here in a few hours but this is kind of breaking news I guess. Also, if you haven't figured this one out either (but I know you have) as a group we are looking down the Infinity barrel, in fact consider it a done deal, so more on that soon as well. I do want a give a shout out to Jeff who sent me an email just last week, encouraging me to get those painting numbers up and to put the "minis" back into Mik's Minis. Hope this filler helps!