Firefight! A space monkey's view. Part 1

  Greetings.  Sorry for the long hiatus, myself and Lowie have been busy trying our hand at the new WWII 28mm game, Bolt Action from Warlord Games, but that is a story for another blog!  Our games of Infinity have been pretty sporadic lately, but between Lowie, Cohen and myself (with most the work being done for the other two) we managed to organise a small tournament to try and garner more interest in Infinity locally, to provide more opponents for the charnel houses.

  The tournament, called Firefight!, consisted of four 150 point battles per player using the YAMS mission system.  We had 10 players and managed to cruise through the rounds quite quickly, the whole tournament taking about 6 hours with a stoppage for lunch.  We had some help from Slave to Painting, who generously supplied us with vouchers as prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions.  These guys frequently have great deals and amazing customer interaction/support.  Definately a great source for Infinity and other hobby needs.

My kilted opponent playing another player later in the day.

  I took my MAF again.  My list consisted of a Yaogat Lt., a 5 man Daturazi link team (4 with Chainrifles, 1 with a Light Smoke Grenade Launcher) and a Rasyat with Spitfire.  My first battle was against a vanilla Ariadnan force, my opposing commander even donning a kilt in an attempt to please the dice gods.  It definately worked, as I had a bad start to the day.  My link team crossed the fairly open ground to move on a Traktor MUL, Dozer and Loup Garou, but my over eager Witch-Soldiers fumbled with their smoke grenades when I tried to throw them through smoke clouds to chain a nice path of smoke to the enemy.  I ended up expending too many orders, so my link team dove into some nearby cover.  My Rasyat held off until an opening appeared.
 

The battlefield for the first battle, it had a few open
spaces that I foolishly tried to cross.

  My opponent moved an Irmandinho up, so my Daturazi dropped a smoke screen, but the Ariadna was focused and he used an intuitive shot to chainrifle my team.  My return fire killed the impetuous pup but I also lost 2 Daturazi.  This was to be the recurring story of this game.  Each time my Daturazi would chainrifle an Ariadnan, their return ARO would kill me and I was soon down to just my Yaogat and Rasyat.  Needing to get into my enemies' deployment zone and capture his flag, my Rasyat threw caution to the wind and drop down next to the Ariadnan flag but his camoflaged Chassuer flamed him to a crisp before he could react.  I ended the game with just my Lt. left and my opponent had 2 Traktor MULs and a Highlander Grey.  I lost 2 objective points to 3.  Our scoring system for the tournament used a Flames of War style system, where because I lost and killed between 33%-66% of my enemies force, I received 2 victory points (VP), while my opponent gained 5.  He was a new player to Infinity, but a long time wargamer and played very well, definantly a well deserved victory for him.

  My second battle was against another fairly new player who was running one of Cohen's Haqq-Islam lists.  It had a Maghariba Guard, Naffatun with Heavy Flamethrower and 3 Ghulam Riflemen, one being his Lt.  My objectives for the game called for me to kill his Maghariba for 2 of them, his Lt. for another and not be in retreat.  He had first turn and managed to put two suppressive fire lanes over my link team but they managed to conceal themselves with smoke.  Not wanting to activate them, I held off on my Rasyat again, and moved my Yaogat up to Panzerfaust his Maghariba.  This was where my lucky flew out the window.  My opponent decided he didnt want to give up the suppressive fire on my link team and proceeded to let my Yaogat blaze away, but with 2 Panzer shots and 4 shooting actions with my Combi-rifle, I only managed to inflict 1 point of structural damage to his Maghariba.

  

The Ghulam HMG that kept my Daturazi pinned down.

  Then in my opponents second turn, he gunned down my Yaogat and again laid suppressive fire on my Daturazi, pinning them.  I had really deployed them in a bad position.  My deployment is probably my weakest part of my game, as I seem to leave my poor Witch-Soldiers in often poor positions straight from the onset.  Anyway, I dropped my Rasyat down on the Maghariba's flank and elected him as my new Lt., then opened up on the enemy TAG with my Spitfire.  I fared better and eventually managed to kill it even with it turning and then attempting to return fire on my second shooting attempt.  Then on my opponent's next turn his Naffatun managed to get up to my Daturazi who'd been pinned for 2 turns.  It was messy.  I lost 3 Daturazi but managed to kill the Naffatun.  I then lost my last 2 Daturazi but managed to kill a Ghulam.  This left my Rasyat vs. 2 Ghulams, one with a HMG in a commanding perch above the battlefield.

The Ghulam Rifles fanned out to pick apart
the remains of my Daturazi.

  My Rasyat dashed through some open ground to get a bead on the last Ghulam riflemen who I assumed was my enemies' Lt.  His HMG Ghulam missed and my Rasyat cut down the riflemen.  When the smoke had cleared, we both had achieved 3 objectives.  Sadly, I was in retreating, having only my Rasyat left.  Being such a bloody battle (we each had less then 33% of our forces left), we both received 3 VPs.  After two battles I was on a measy 5 VP.  It was going to be a hard road to catch up to the forerunners of the tournament, one of whom was one of my follow bloggers who'd garnered 12 VPs after his first 2 games.  The results of my final 2 games and overall placings will have to wait for another blog, I must return to my command post and begin seeking replacements for my casualities!