The CF times - Orcs Must Die, Apartment 5 and the hardships of HDF terrain.

Hey everyone!
Sorry for not updating last week, dunno what got into me.
Either way, I've been pretty busy with playing Orcs Must Die! 2 and getting together two sets of Apartment 5 from Micro Art Studios, as well as getting some gaming in. Had a grand total of four games of Infinity yesterday too, which felt great!

Either way, first thing's first, and that's Orcs Must Die!

So, I recently bought this game, and it's simply a blast!
Basically, you play as either The War Mage or The Sorceress, and run around shooting Orcs FPS style... While you place traps! Basically, Orcs Must Die is the bastard child of FPS and Tower Defence, and for any TD lovers out there, you'll love this too. The story isn't rather involving or deep, you don't get much diversity in your gameplay, but you get A LOT of traps to put out in the best possible way, given the map you're playing on. And since it's 3D, traps are placeable on both walls, floor and ceiling. You see arrows flying out of walls against the oncoming horde of Orcs as some of them flies away due to your spring traps whilst you pepper them with blunderbuss fire, listening to their screams of "ALL MY LIFE IS FILLED WITH AGONYYY!".
In layman's term, I love this game and recommend it to any player who know that they love playing Tower Defence.

Now, let's move on to Infinity. Sadly I haven't been able to paint more, which I really ought to be doing, but anyway... Instead I built some terrain!

No, sadly, that's not mine. I'm not that good. I just wanted to discuss HDF terrain a little with you.
First, these apartments are amazing! Really beautiful, love 'em and they're perfect for Infinity. However... If you get these, you might find these tips useful:
Make sure you've cut everything out good, and that when you put them together you put them ALL THE WAY together. It's really easy to just push it 1 cm too short and it has some bad effects. Also, make sure you know what parts of the house are supposed to be up, and what parts are supposed to be down. I didn't make sure, so heh. Eh.
And finally, painting the damn thing. You need a real primer, so GW spray won't do. Also, even a primer might be insufficient as the house is made out of wood, and wood absorbs liquid. So my advice is to first spray it with some kind of varnish or a thing layer of PVA glue perhaps, anything that'll coat the wood in a layer for the paint to grip on to. And if you want it white, spray it grey first. That'll get you good. If you don't, well, joke's on you as you'll be the one redoing the spray more than you want to. I know I did.
But I've gotten them good now! They're not painted, but all roofs and doors are sprayed grey and everything else white, so they're good to go when it comes to gaming! Sadly I cannot upload pictures at the moment, but I'm sure to do that when I'm able to!

Hope this was informational, and until next time...
Happy Gaming!

The CF weekly - Basic Infinity Tactics, Tips and Strategies

Hey there!
So, this week I haven't been making much progress. Or well, I kind of have as I finished painting my first Shasvastii Seed-Soldier and Shasvastii Shrouded Pioneer.
But anyway, I felt like that was too little to speak about, so I figured I should talk about some basic Infinity tactics instead!

Now, these tactics are nothing professional, nor facts. These are just the things I've learned are useful to think of when you're playing. All in all, it's only my advice with my own experience.

So, to keep some kind of order, I will give my Tips & Tactics coming in the order of the game, beginning with list-writing.

List-Writing
Alright, so the main important things with your list are:

The Balance.
Make sure your list is balanced. Putting all eggs in one basket or doing a one-trick pony is generally a bad idea. It might work once or twice if your enemy himself doesn't have a truly balanced list, and you get a slight upper hand as you surprise him... But once he figured out what you're doing, you won't be at an advantage anymore.
Simply put: Include a little bit of everything. You need your long range offensive, short range offensive, stealth support, the tank etc etc. If you spend many points on one units, such as a TAG or a expensive HI, make sure you've got a backup plan should he fail.
Once you've covered all the bases, you should have an answer to everything your opponent can throw at you, and you'll be in a position where you can change tactics on the fly to better suit your position.

Deployment
This is the phase that wins games, seriously.

The first thing you do is look. You have to thoroughly analyze the battlefield. Where are the firing lanes? Where are the choking points? Where are the advancement routes? Where are the fire towers? Where are the defensive positions? Note that different positions on the battlefield aren't exclusive, they can be many of these types at the same time. For example, a long narrow corridor would be a firing lane, an easily defended position, a choking point and, with sufficient cover, a good advancement route.

To easier understand, let describe these positions for you:

Firing lanes:
These are the long, open routes of the battlefield where your men are able to get a clear view of, well, a lot. These places are good to place your units that are good in the reactive turn (Total Reaction, Snipers, Fireteams etc).
My own experience of this comes in placing a Noctifier with Missile Launcher in cover, overlooking a street that almost stretched across the whole battlefield. My opponent tried to push it, and lost.

Choking Points:
These are the narrow positions where battle is likely to commence. For example, an alley between two houses could be a choking point because your opponent is likely to want to push through it, and so are you. That means there's going to be a conflict there, and there are two good ways to deal with these; Either reinforce it, or go around it. The first option is the most straightforward. The second option costs you orders to do, but could take you opponent by surprise since he most likely reinforced it. However, if you leave the choking point unguarded your opponent might advance too easily.
My own experience of this involves setting up camo'd troops, mines and Suppressive fires on a door... and the walls beside the doors covered 2/3 of the width of the table.

Advancement Routes:
These are often synonymous with choking points and/or firing lanes, but measure how smart it actually would be to take this route. It mostly depends on how much cover is placed on the way, both ordinary and total cover. Actually, pretty much everywhere you can walk is an advancement route, but you need a good eye to locate the good ones and the bad ones. By doing so you can easily plan on how to maneuver and predict your opponent's moves.

Fire Towers:
These are the high towers that trace LoF to a grand part of the battlefield, and you know there's gonna be a sniper in it. Your options are either to use the, or avoid them. Or, well, actually they might have no impact on the game if no one brings anything with infiltration, but if someone does... Well, a well-placed sniper is dangerously lethal. So, you should always just take these positions into account when planning.

Defensive positions:
Another simple concept, these are the areas with cover that are hard to reach, yet have a good firing lane in front of them. Your job is to reinforce your own and find ways to break through your opponent's defense.

In addition, take note that if you have first turn, you don't need to deploy all your dudes in cover. I'm sure you'll know which guys to advance with and which to hold back. The one's you're going forward with are best placed on the deployment line so they can reach their positions ASAP. The other guys should stand in cover.

If your opponent has the first turn, then you need to make sure that he either cannot or does not want to be able to trace LoF to your guys. Simply put, hide as many as you can and/or put some in a cluster so that your opponent will fear their ARO.

Also, if you're deploying second you should consider the possibility of only deploying on one half of your deployment zone. That will give you a strong flank to work with as well as rendering some of your opponent's force too far away to be used efficiently.


During the Game
Now, after deployment you should have a pretty good idea of your game plan. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'd bother writing this section. Just for completeness, I guess.

Ramboing:
The act of only using one powerful model to totally decimate your opponent's force. This is a really common gameplan, and it is likely to fail once our opponent gets himself a good defense. What you as a rambo player has to do them is to make sure you've got support to back the powerful guy up with.

Shepherding:
A term I just invented to refer to the acting of trying to shepherd your opponent. Basically, you do not want your opponent to go around the house to the right. What you'll do is spend orders to place mines and suppressive fire corridors there. It doesn't take much to seriously intimidate your opponent into taking another route. Also usable with infiltrating troops.

Cheerleading:
Another common thing, it means having a few Line Infantry whom only provide orders for your big guys. I only included it here to mention that a unit with AD: Combat Jump or something of equal effect will seriously hamper the guy using cheerleaders if he's not careful. If you manage to get in there and kill the cheerleaders, then you'll be in a good situation.

Outflanking:
This is a seriously big tactical advantage. If you place a strong unit on one side of the table and manage to the flank, then you've seriously hampered your opponent's options of advancement and can plan ahead accordingly.

Lockdown:
Similar to the Shepherding trick, but this involves doing the trick in both sides of your opponent's force. It only works if his force is really centered behind a building or equivalent, but it means that he won't be able to move.

Over-extending:
This is a bad side-effect ramboing might have. If you forget to pull your rambo back before the end of your turn, he will most likely die. Don't do this unless you're very certain that your opponent cannot bring your big guy down. As such, this paragraph is not a trick or a tactic, just something I want to stress that you should not do.

Surgical rambo:
One of my favorite tactics, it involves going rambo with one unit with the sole intention of removing some unit critical to your opponent before withdrawing. A few surgical strikes and your opponent will only have basic grunts left or guys in a bad position of the board.

Defensive advancement:
This is basically the opposite of ramboing. Instead, you move most of your units forward to good defensive positions and set up suppressive fire corridors and garrison your chosen firing lanes with 2 - 3 guys.



All in all, I think that concludes what I consider to be the basics of Infinity tactics (and to a pretty big degree, the tactics of many other games). I hope it has been helpful, and would love to hear your thoughts and comments!
Until next time.
Play safe!

Getting back into things.

So, having gotten everything back to normal, I'm starting to get back into things. I have brought out my paints again, getting hyped for the Paradiso book and finally figured out a colour scheme for my Shasvastii! And I might also have motivated a few members in my group to take part in the Relic Knights kickstarter...

So, first things first. Let's begin with me showing you my own, reposed and converted Dragao, Acontecimento Dragoon!



Oh yeah, I know. He's big, he's imposing and he's coming for you!
So, the story about this one. I, as many others, consider the Dragao to look absolutely ridiculous the way Corvus Belli made him. Shoulder-mounting a Hyper-Rapid Magnetic Cannon while wielding a puny flamethrower and having a ammo feed that insists on defying gravity... No, just no.
So I decided to try and fix it. I'm only decent with greenstuff, can't sculpt anything, is a little impatient but able to pin decently. I knew it was a risk. But I started cutting him apart.
I think it took me three days to get him right, and even then his left arm is slightly misshapen, but it was worth it.

Then, a little preview of what my Shasvastii will turn out like:


Naturally, the models in the picture aren't finished it's all base colours there, and a little highlighting. Gotta highlight/shade all the model, and paint the unpainted areas. Then I might add some OSL and blending... Might. We'll see what I'll do, as I'm still not completely sure myself. Seriously considering changing the way I highlighted him.


And now, let's talk a little about Relic Knights.

So, if you watched the video before reading this, you might just have got a pretty good idea of what it's about. If not, let me tell you.
Relic Knights is a miniature wargame based on over-the-top manga. Yes, you heard me. Over the top manga.

So let's break this down. I'm gonna talk about aesthetics and about gameplay.

Regarding aesthetics, well... You can see it yourself. There's mechas, there's half-naked chicks, there's demons and awesome weapons. Soda Pop miniatures did not go easy on the manga inspiration. And to be truthful, I enjoy it. It's a nice, refreshing breath of air in all the seriousness of most other wargames. I actually look forward to painting these, as you can go pretty much as crazy as you want because frankly, if you're playing Relic Knights as a serious game then you might just be doing it a little bit wrong. Plus, manga chicks is always a bonus.

And now for the crunch. Note that I have not read the rulebook, only looked at the video put out explaining gameplay mechanics, so I might have gotten something wrong. I have to say though, Soda Pop Miniatures seems to have captured the feeling of manga and anime battles quite well. But basics first!
The thing that pops out to you is that the game does not use dice, it uses cards. Every player has an Esper deck. Esper is basically mana. At the beginning of the game and at the end of each turn, each player draws/discards so that his/her hand contains five cards. The most common cards have one big coloured symbol and one small coloured symbol. You get to play (read: Discard) any card in exchange for either two esper of the big symbol or one of the small. These are then used in order to activate the specialy powers of units, such as Pounce (and attack) or Shield Wall (a defense).
The game also features alternating activations, and a card for each of their units. Basically, both players have an "Idle pool", a ready pool and an active pool. The active pool is where you place the card of the active unit. In the ready pool lies two cards of the upcoming activations (so you have to plan some steps in advance!), and as soon as the card in line becomes active, you have to fill the empty ready slot with one card from your idle pool, which is where all the other cards lie.
When you activate a card, you get to move it and (if you've got the esper) to use an ability. For example, Agha (demon-wolves) may attack with their pounce or render a ready opponent idle using their howl. Knights may attack or use their shield-wall for defense. Aghas have no defense however, so they're... defenseless! Another example given was a knight piloting a giant mecha who had the power to teleport six inches and the blow away every unit close to him (read: jump into the middle of the action and land with a deafening sound causing a shockwave that sends every foe flying).

That pretty much sums up the rules.. At least as we know them for now!
Until next time!
Oh, and don't forget to comment!

The CF Times: P3 pinning set review, Bat Swarms, Infinity peak!

Hello guys!

So, I've been awfully inactive at hobbying lately, but that took a turn just recently! Yesterday I had two wonderful games of Infinity with a guy I've never even met before! And at his home, too boot (internet sure brings people closer).

And when I got home today, I noticed a thing I've been watinging for for over a month lying in the mailbox: A pinning set.

This above is the P3 pinning set. While I'm not a good reviewer, and I've only used it for like two hours, I'll tell you my impressions.
First up: Appearance.
I like the way it looks. Never liked pinning drills with balls on, so this is a nice option. Monocoloured silver. I like.

Feel:
Great! Lies down real smooth in my hand!

Ability:
Drills like a boss. Easy to spin too.

Extra pluses:
Good size for the brass rods included. Extra drill included, should the one you use go slow.
Also, it's cheap. Real cheap.

Con:
There's one bad thing... After using it for about 1.5 hour, the back of it (the part you rest in your hand) stopped spinning smoothly. Don't know why, but it started 'grinding' against the drill itself. I don't know if this happens to all the P3 drills or if mine just was a bad one... But I figure I'll just oil it or something!

But for the cost (as I'm living on a budget), worth it. I wouldn't say REALLY worth it, or exceptionally worth it. I just consider it to be a good buy, and I don't regret it. But if you have the cash I might suggest to try your luck on a slightly more expensive drill, if this 'grinding' issue is common. However, if the problem I encountered isn't common, then I strongly recommend the P3 pinning kit!

Now, can you guess what I've been doing ever since I got the drill..?



Working on my Bat Swarms obviously!
As you all may know, GW doesn't produce good bat swarms. They look... hideous. So I decided to search around for the best option, and found...
http://www.splinteredlightminis.com/1518mmswarms.html
Splintered Light Miniatures!

Now, they're an unknown company. Or perhaps it's just a single person, I'm not even sure it's a company. Either way, it's unknown and small. There were no reviews or words about their credibility or quality of minis. But I bought three bat swarm bags. So worth it!
For $8, you get 24 bats, size shown in my pic. I used one bag for two bases. I bought three bags, enough to fill six bases, or only four and then I'll have 24 to throw around my army (place around characters etc).
What I did was simple really. I drilled a hole in every bat's belly, super glue'd the brass rod, drilled a hole in the base, super glue'd other side of brass rod. Rinse and repeat. A little tedious, but well worth it. Didn't cost me much money, only time, and a great way to get a feel of the drill since the bats are very expendable. Highly recommended for you Vampire Counts players out there that don't like the looks of GWs bats!


And finally, remember I mentioned I played two games of Infinity? Well, I took notes during both battles, whilst my opponent (I'll call him Mr. M for now) snapped of random photos with his system camera. Don't be surprised if there's a batrep or two coming this way...
A little preview of how the terrain was set up for the first game:

Collected thoughts from the CF.

Hello everyone!
Sorry for not updating in such a long time, I just haven't been in the mood. But for this post, I'll discuss a but of everything I've been doing and thinking about since last time!
These will be, in order:

-What has happened with my Vampire Counts since last, as well as some talk about alternative miniatures.
-Beastmen. You will see.
-Infinity, both Nomads and... Shasvastii?

So, that's my Vampire Count. Sir Novkaer I've named him, basically an arrogant ex-bretonnian (now Vampire) roaming the lands.
The conversion in itself is rather simple. The Horse is the Gamezone Mournful Knight Hero, the body is Reaper's Judas Bloodspire, and the sword is the sword from GWs Zombie Dragon / Terrorgheist kit. It turned out pretty if I may say so myself! My usage of Greenstuff is subtle enough, but I need to put a little more work into his face someday -cough cough-.
I also have 5 more Mournful Knights ready to be painted... Just not in the mood.
Oh, and a word of advice for anyone thinking of buying the Mournful Knights - Be careful, they're tricky. And wide. Ranking them up is very difficult, believe me.

And I've gotten my hand on the best bat swarms around! They're 15mm, but as they're small animals, that doesn't matter. And everybat is the same, but at that size that's not a problem. I bought three small plastic bags of them, which totalled 72 (!) individual bats... Sad thing is I can't remember the manufacturer! It wasn't a big company. In fact, it might not even be a company at all (that's the feel I got). If you search around the web, I'm sure you'll find them.
The main problem is that I have yet to figure out a good way to place them on a base...

Now, what's this? Could it be... Yes, it can very much be!
As of late, our dear Erik, The Tomb King started up his second fantasy army - Empire, and this got me thinking: "ME WANTS MOAR PLASTIC CRACK TOO RAWRGH!"
So I looked around a little, and something crossed my eyes that I missed before it was the Gors.
There is something special about the Gors. Something very... primal, raw and manly. I find that very attractive and a bit beautiful in a very, very bestial way.
Then I looked up beastmen tactics. They're Leadership-dependant, something that would be a nice change from the Undead. They tend to use many diverters and chaff units, which I love. They've also got ace models (Go check the Beastlord model. Do it now. It's probably one of GWs best, despite age!), and they have some sweet monster stuff (and who doesn't love that?). The last icing upon the icing on the cake was that Lore of Beasts is a viably, well-used lore withing Beastmen. And I love the Lore of Beasts.

But I'm not just gonna jump in and start a Beastmen army. No, this will be slow. I've got my Fantasy army that I can play with, so I might as well take time to do this. A lot of time. I want to make a themed army.
Now, Beastmen are the Children of Chaos. Mutation and whatnot all day erry'day. But yet... They all seem very goat-y. Meh.
So, what animals do I like?
...
Insects.
Yeah, really. I love insects. And there came my idea. Gors will have legs of spiders. Centigors will be spiders or centipedes. Minotaurs can be truly gigantic Stag Beetles! The Ghorgon will be kitbashed with the Arachnarok and harpies will be flies! I can really see the awesome yet creepy army before me... But it will take a lot of time, and a lot of money.
But soon enough, I will surely get around to do it.

So, for those of you who doesn't know, that's the symbol of the Combined army in Infinity. But I will get to that later.
First up, I want to tell you that I've finally tempted an opponent in the FLGS into playing Infinity. And now that I've planted the seed of corruption, soon shall the whole shop fall AND ALL WILL PLAY INFINITY FOREVER!!!
However, so far I've only gotten one game with him. We can call him Mr. W. And the game was pretty much introductory to us both, because even though I know the rules well, you can't know them well enough until you've played with them.
It was my Nomads against his Haqqislam. Basically, we both spend our first turn moving towards each other. I drop one of his guys with my Grenade Launcher, and he then drops two of my guys... And that's a lot when you're only running 7 guys.
Then in comes my airborne doctor, promptly kills one of my guys (stupid doctor failing his checks) and starts to advance towards the enemy. I set up an defensive perimeter around a very critical door opening. I get some good shit going, and start to wrestle myself back into the game.
The rest of the game is spend by Mr. W. spending half of his orders to penetrate my defensive perimeter and the mine my Zero placed to well. The other half of his orders is spend on his doctor to climb up a wall where an injured Sniper lies bleeding. The doctor fell down every time, and when my well-armed Lieutenant reach the frontline, it's game over. She guns Mr. Ws Lieutenant down, and I chase him off the board.
Overall a good game. Got a better grip of the game, and learned the importance of tactics in this game. Defensive positions might not give a bonus when it comes to stats, but the tactical advantage is huge.

But that's not all. I wanted to start a second Infinity-army too. And Shasvastii was my choice. I just love Camouflaged and Hidden Deployment. And the Noctifier Missile Launcher... Oh god how I love it, it's beyond words. The mini is as ace as the ace of spades, and a TO Missile Launcher... It's like it's christmas!
So, I bought the Shasvastii starter and three more Shasvastii dudes just now, as well as some reinforcements for my Bakunin. Also waiting for both the rulebooks in the mail!

*phew* Wow, that was a lot more than I thought it would be! Perhaps I shouldn't procrastinate as much, haha!
That said, here's hoping that I get this blog rolling again!
Alea iacta est!

The Cornerfag

The Cornerfag Paints again! (AKA Not so very weekly)

Hello everyone!
Sorry for my lack of updates lately, I decided to take a little break from most things related to gaming in general, except my gaming evenings. But I'm back now, and I've brought some pictures of what I've managed to do since last!
First up, my skeletons.
These were with speed in mind, as I had promised myself to make at least ten of them per day, which made speed a necessity. The colour scheme goes as follows:

1: Spray white (Army Painter spray, the dull white).
2: Fill up areas where the spray missed with skull white.
3: Paint cloth in a thinned down Hawk Turqoise. If it's thinned enough, it will act like a thick wash and sink into the cloths' recesses, letting the white shine through where it protrudes and effectively create an automatic highlight.
4: Paint the rest of the fudging mini. (Essentially, I just randomized colours. For metallic areas I varied between Boltgun metal, Mithril silver, and Shining gold. For wood I used Scorched Brown, and for other things like scabbards and such I went with more Turqoise / Grey / Brown.
5: Paint shields as you'd like (I actually painted the Turqoise on the shields while I had Turqoise on my brush, and the black whilst there was black). Outline with w/e metallic.
6: Apply god liqui-- I mean Devlan Mud.
The result:






I'm pretty satisfied with them, actually...

And now
I'm sorry, but I just couldn't help myself
For some reason, I've gotten into another Infinity hype.
I just can't help myself because IT'S SO AWESOME
...
Well, either way
I painted up my Reverend Custodier (She is the sweetnoodles, dat mini).
It's done differently from my Tomcat when it comes to colours, and to be frank, I like Miss Custodier more. So she'll be the model for the rest of my "army"'s (well, not really an army since it's a skirmish-sized game...)colour scheme.
I didn't really have any technique when I painted her, it was more of a "paint this area, paint that area, highlight this area..." approach. Which, combined with the sweetness that is Infinity's detailed minis, ended up in quite a time-consuming project.
The main colours are: Space Wolf Grey, Warlock Purple and Blood Red. A mix of Chaos Black and Codex Grey made the cloak, watered down skull white stood for the Highlighting, and then some codex grey on the gun.
Turned out like this:




And that's all for me this week!
Keep rollin' 'em dice!

Infinity, infinity, infinity!

Guess what has been on my mind the last few days?
That's right, INFINITY!
So I thought I could as well spend some time writing up a more in-depth analysis of Infinity for those of you interested.
So, here goes. Let's begin with the main fluff!



It's 175 years from now. Humanity has taken to the stars, and through wormholes have begin populating planets. Through the first wormhole went the ship Ariadna, to the planet Dawn, and that happened not too far in the future. It was a ship meant to settle Dawn, to be followed by others. It's crew consisted of, well, Scots (Highlanders), some Americans, and Russians (Kazaks). And they landed, made their best, and waited... and waited... For a ship that never came.
Meanwhile, back on earth, they had sent their second ship. But due to this field never having been researched before, they accidentally made the wormhole collapse, and the other settling ship disappeared. And if I'm not mistaken, this resulted in some very heave political and economical shifts on earth. The Asian alliance known as Yu-Jing, and the Oceanian new superpower of PanOceania rose up with the fall of Europe and USA. Even all of the Arabic/Islamic countries united under a single banner and became a greater power on earth, the Haqqislam (meaning New Islam, a new philosophical view that managed to unite the arabic nations of our time).
Meanwhile, the population of Dawn, calling themselves Ariadnan was busy surviving.
Then, back on earth, they advanced in the science of wormholes, and used it to populate the 11 more planets, for a total of 13, in what they call the Human Sphere. Indeed, the human technology advanced far. And with such a large area to keep check of, monitoring trading and such, how was it going to work out?
Well, no human was going to do that work. A supercomputer was going to do it. The ALEPH was going to.
The first true AI created by man, tasked with keeping check of the whole human sphere.
Meanwhile, the Ariadnans were busy surviving. Though I believe it was around now that they were re-united with the rest of humanity. Though by everone elses standard, these are no more than crude savages. Not even any hacking tech, no Thermo-Optical camouflage, pft... Anyways, they were back in the Human Sphere, with other humans and space travelling once more.
However, meanwhile the whole ALEPH-deal had some citizens upset. A supercomputer supervising them all and controlling their society? No please! These free people decided to leave the ALEPH-controlled planets, to travel the stars as free people in three spaceshipfleets, namely Tunguska, Bakunin and Corregidor. These are the nomads.
And then, some previously unknown alien federation attacked the borders of the Human Sphere. They are the Combined Army.

And that brings us to where Infinitys storyline currently is. And the factions are, as you might guess:
PanOceania, Yu-Jing, Haqqislam, Ariadna, Nomads, ALEPH and Combined Army.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, let's have a little short introduction of the different factions!
PanOceania:
Usually referred to as PanO, and it's the big #1, the world's greatest superpower.
In the game, PanOceania has a higher than average BS skill (which, in a shooting-based game is a pretty important thing), but having a lower than average WIP (rendering them more prone to fleeing, and worse at hacking / discovering etc).
They also have quite good tier of tech, and the best of T.A.G.s, that is, big and heavily armoured big mechasuits (think Warjacks or Dreadnoughts... Or just, let's say, a japanese mecha, lol).

Yu-Jing:
Ah, the second greatest superpower, always seeking to take the grand seat from PanO. The Asian Alliance.
In the game, these guys have superior CC-skill (PanO's contender having the opposite skill as primary skill? Coincidence? I think not.), together with a big number of good Heavy Infantry. Also, they come with samurais and ninjas and shaolin monks and other cool asiatic things.

Haqqislam:
Not as big as the previous two, but still a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.
The New Islam has the higher Willpower, meaning that they are better doctors and engineers, as well as better to discover camouflaged units and less prone to shitting their pants. They also come cheap and with Hassassins (Did you know that the english word assassin came from an arabic word?), impersonators that'll easily do what assassins do best: Assassinations. Pretty sweet, eh?

Ariadna:
Next up, these guys! The settling ship who lost contact with the human sphere, and having problems surviving and getting along on their new homeworld, they tech did not advance. Alas, they are the low-tech faction of Infinity.
However, surviving has granted them better Physique than the other factions, and their bad tech renders them unaffected by Eletromagnetic grenades and Hackers, plus having cheap troops and a good deal of guys with camouflage! And not only that, but Scots and Kazaks are there too! Kilts!
And they've also got a huge variety of weapons, I have noted.

Nomads:
Ah, the guys I chose. These guys left when ALEPH took over in three ships/fleets. Tungiska, where the best hackers and infowar specialists thrive. Bakunin, where you trade in anything and everything legal and illegal, conducting experiments with and without moral standards. And finally, Corregidor, the former prison ship, where everyone is a hard worker! These three are the nomads, travelling around in space and doing their shit, not abiding by the will of ALEPH.
Their stats don't seem to go up anywhere special, but instead they are th infoward specialists of the game. Hackers and repeaters (mobile hacking zones) and remotes is their main thing.

ALEPH:
Ohyeah, the sentient computer has it's own army. Consisting mainly out of zonds and remotes, more than any other faction. I don't have much else to say than that. Sentient computer. Robots (really good looking too). SEXY SENTIENT ROBOTS.

Combined Army:
This is, to me, the most vague faction. It seems to be an elite army, with higher costs than usual (but with high costs comes good statlines), and they've got some unique armoury, being alien and all that. Unique weaponry with unique effects, and it being affected in other ways of the human weaponry and such.

However, it is important to note that unlike other wargames, your faction DOES NOT define your gaming style. You can go almost any gaming style with almost any army.
And also, this game is balanced. Very well balanced. You do not have to worry about bad units or bad army, because you're not going to find those.
That said, you may very well decide upon army based only on looks and background in this game. Keep that in mind.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lastly, I'll speak briefly of the game system.
If I were to describe it in one sentence... I'd say "Involving cinematic skirmish-sized wargame."

Let me explain it from scratch.
Like I said, it's skirmish-sized. Which means between 8 - 15 models, ranging in point values from 150 (small) to 300 (large), and unit costs range from 8 (standard crappy soldier) to 120 or something (a good T.A.G.).

It's based on a D20-system. Basically, roll less than your skill score, +/- modifiers, to succeed. Need to shoot something? Roll under your BS. Target far away? Apply a minus modifier to your BS, then roll under that. Target has Camo? More minus modifiers.
However... Every action has a reaction, and so, if the target sees you shooting him (which he in most cases certainly will), or perhaps even just see you wálking by, or placing a mine, or jumping between roofs... In short, if he sees you doing any action, he get's a short skill reaction (I'll get to skills later). And is allowed to react. In most cases it'll be shooting, by he can dodge, or go prone, or anything like that. That's why I called it involving.
Involving, because both players are active. The one doing the actions, and the one doing the reactions.
There's one thing called Face to Face rolls though, and that's when two models are acting against each other. Like Action - Shoot, Reaction - Shoot. Or Action - Shoot, Reaction - Dodge. What happens is that both try to roll below their relevant skill (with due modifiers), and the one succeeding by the smallest margin cancels all successes of his opponent. Simple enough, eh?

Now, to explain actions, reactions, long skills, short skills and orders.
Long list, but I'll try to be brief.
Actions: This is what the active player, the player whose turn it is. He who leads initiative.
Reactions: What the reactive player does, i.e. the player who reacts... to the active players... actions... yeah. I think you get it.
Long skills: Actions taking one complete order to consume. Cautious Movement is among these, but there are more.
Short skills: The most common of skills. Move is among these, shoot, CC, hack, dodge, climb and jump, among else.
Orders: Now this is the big one.
For every miniature in your army you recieve one order. These can be used to activate ANY miniature once. So you can go completely rambo with only one miniature if you want to... Though it might not be the best tactically (although it's a good T.A.G. tactic).
One activation consists of either two Short skills (one movement, and one of any kind) or a long skill. Movement skills are for example move, climb, discover, prone, jump, etc. And doing two move skills consecutive is allowed, though two non-move skills consecutive is not valid. So a Move-move (that's why the movement skill is split in two) is allowed, but a Shoot-shoot is not.
And that's why'd I call it cinematic. So many skills. You can go prone and crawl behind a hedge past three heavily armoured men (who'd shoot you if they saw you) to get up behind the enemies leader (who won't see you, therefore can't react), and shoot him. However, his armour might save him, and he reacts to the shooting by turning around. You decide to load another burst at him, but he too levies his weapons and fires back at you... Placing a bullet between your eyes.

I just find the image in my mind of it all so... beautiful, I think is the word for it.

And that sums it up for a beautiful game. Good fluff (though it takes a while to get used to it after all the OTT in Warhammer), good rules (involving, realistic), very balanced (Corvus Belli seems to know how to make a good game fair) and superb looking models, something I did not have the time to adress in this article.
So, a really great game overall!
Until next time, roll safely!
The CF.

Weekly update 9/06-2011

Hail!
This week we tried out Infinity (See: Infinity by the Cornerfag). With the exception of no-one knowing the rules really well, it was fun and I will consider getting some of the awesome-looking Infinity minis and start playing it for real. We also played some Warhammer fantasy, Warriors of Chaos vs. Vampire Counts. It was a great, even match. There will be a batrep of it soon...

In addition we played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E (AD&D2e) , a campaign I'm currently DMing. A lot happened during the session, but it ended up with the party killing a weak Demigod. I might bother writing about this in greater detail in the future, but not now...

And the gaming related picture of this week...



And that's it for this week, next week the summer break will be in full effect, so there will (hopefully) be lots of gaming done.

Ave Victoria!
/Hate

Infinity

Hey there again.
Yesterday, I had my first game of Infinity (fully proxed for the ultimate testing experience!)
And I just wanted to say that I liked it. It was a nice variation to always playing Warhammer as the miniature wargame.

I've chosen Infinity because, well... Games Workshop are not acting the best way they could right now. And Privateer Press will most likely act the same way once they can, so I tried to find a alternative. One that doesn't require you to buy tons of models and such, and the result was Infinity.


As a skirmish-game, games only require you to have 10 - 15 models for a medium-sized game... Which felt really nice. Way less time spent on moving things around. And it will be way easier getting everything painted, meaning you can actually use your painting skills on every model without feeling that it will take years for you to move on to that next unit to paint.

The drawback of this is that Infinity solely use metal for their miniatures. As we all know, it makes glueing harder, the paint is more likely to get chipped off, and the miniature is waaay more fragile. They should really, like GW just did, move over to resin, or some equivalent. It would do them good.
Oh, and did I mention the rulebook is ALL FREE?!
Really, that was sweet.

As for the game itself... The first game really took time, since neither of us knew the rules. Usually when getting into a hobby someone you know will know the rules already, but not here, so much time was spent on rules-checking, and the rules were not easy to find at points.
But the rules we knew, the basic system... Was, in my opinion, reaaaally great. Basically, you get a number of orders per turn, and with these orders you can command models to do things (like move, shoot, climb, jump... discover hidden troops, go into camouflage... Really, there were many things to do. REALLY many). Also, the dice system was rather original and refreshing.
The dice system utilized D20s, requiring you to roll below your skill to pass. However, if you roll in face-to-face, then you want to succeed by the smallest margin possible, preferably rolling exactly on what your skill was.
And also again, for every action you did during your turn, your opponents models who could see the acting model each got a reaction. Usually this was shooting at your model. So the dense cover utilized was really important to use well!
The order - reaction system really makes the game require some strategy. I lost two models before realizing that I had to minimize the amount of reactions my opponent got (by taking out that really irritating sniper positioned up in a tower. Damned thing killed off almost 60 pts of my 300 pts army).

So, all in all, infinity was a great game, and I will surely start buying the minis and get into it. I'm not saying that it's strictly better than warhammer, but it is a really different game, providing some much needed variation.
That's all from me for today!