First Painted Space Monkeys and Spec Ops!

  So I received my Combined Army miniatures last
week and quickly assembled them within hours of receival.    They had very little flash on them and I was very happy with the quality, although I knew to expect lovely miniatures from Corvus Belle.  I decided to assemble my Sogarat differently to the 'at rest' pose displayed on the Infinity webpage.  Instead, as you can see in this picture, I made him hoisting his HMG one-handed, in total contempt of his target, nonchalantly blazing away at them.


  Here is a group shot of my Morat force.  The total is 282 points at the moment.  Not sure how often I will use all four Yaogats, but as there is no Morat Aggression Force starter and I wanted a pure Morat army, I had to buy the full box of them.  I do love the Sogarat and can't wait to use him in a game this coming weekend.  I look forward to having Cohen and Lowie trying to work out how to crack open this ARM 6, W 2 beast.

  Anyway, I have begun painting.  Now I am not a great painter or a fast painter.  I have over 20,000 points of 40k miniatures and barely 3,000 of them are painted to a gaming standard at best.  But with starting Infinity and the smaller army size, I decided I would paint them fairly quickly, so I can play with a fully painted force.  No excuses.  I'm happy with having gotten two done in a week with a busy schedule including trips to the city to see Ice Hockey (but that's another story).  So here is my finished Sogarat and Yaogat with Spitfire.  

  I've gone with a dark blue (old GW Regal Blue), with light blue highlights (old GW Enchanted Blue + Skull White) and green underarmour/patches (old GW Goblin Green) for the armour itself.  I painted the Sogarat's helmet in a stylised Morat scheme, with the white crest to simulate their white hair and red faceplate.  I will continue this helmet scheme with the other Yaogats who have enclosed helmets.  Their guns have a darker look with a lot less colour on them, but I like it as a contrast to their stark white hair and bright faces.  I'm happy to hear what you guys think, or any tips on painting these guys.

  As I was writing this post, I also saw Corvus Belle has release pictures of the new Spec Op miniatures.  I am not really smitten with the Morat one.  I think it's the pistol.  Although apparently it comes with alternate weapons.  If that is the case, he wouldn't be a model for a Vanguard Lieutenant.
  But I really like the Haqqislam and Ariadna ones.  Intel, the Ariadna Spec Ops, looks particularly bad ass, as though his about to use that combat blade on some poor unsuspecting sap.  Also the alternate heads for the Nomad and Aleph ones look awesome as well.  I may have to look into expanding into an Ariadna force later...

Tokens, Templates and Tents... Well, Kinda

There are a couple of things you need a lot of to play Infinity, or so it seems.

The first is the biggest one, and that's terrain.  If there's been one thing that has stood out in those first few games, it's that open sight lines will kill you.  With that in mind, I've had some corkboard lying around the house for some time, and with a quick trip to the general store to buy the smallest nails they sell, I took the time to carve it up and make some buildings, watched by Master Cohen, my son.  He avidly used my few Space Marines as scale markers and fought an epic last stand on the bombed-out building once it was complete.  I'm proud to say: my son is a wargamer in the making.  I win.

Cork is an interesting material to work with.  It is perfect for carving ruins out of, since the crumbling of the edges looks great when painted.  But I also think it's good for more solid constructions.  I have some more ideas I'm looking forward to trying out, like an L-shaped building a little taller than the ones in the pics here.  The debate this arvo was whether or not to make the roof removable to facilitate thru-play in the buildings themselves.  I'm still undecided.  What do you think?

All in all they turned out well, playable at the very least.

The second thing you need lots of is tokens and templates.  I ordered a lot of 100 25mm slotta bases from eBay (some seller in the UK... it was a great deal!) and they arrived very quickly, quickly enough that I now have 50+ tokens for wounds and camo and the various other things one needs.  I got the rulebook printed, spiral-bound, at a local printer, and with that I also acquired the tokens sheets printed on 100GSM gloss paper.  They looked really purdy once printed, but cutting them out proved almost their undoing.  The gloss paper and the printing on it peels off if not careful.  I was also to get a permanent marker and redo the edges; they've turned out alright and will certainly be functional (and certainly cheaper than 'official' ones)  I used some old CDs to support the explosion and smoke templates and laminated the flamer ones.  I'm waiting for some 25x50mm cavalry bases to mount the Suppression Fire tokens on, but they're on their way.

The other thing that is visible in the picture is my ol' faithful Focus markers from my Warmachine/Hordes days.  These will stand in as order markers for the time being.

The question remains though: do I have enough?

Time will tell!

First Games, Part 2

  So as Cohen said, we played a couple of beginner games this weekend.  My game was 150 points with my Combined versus Lowie's PanO.  With only a quick run over the rules this was a very much, hands-on learning experience.  I found the idea of cover and the requirement of being in contact with it to get the bonuses, difficult at first.  I am use to True Line of Sight cover rules from other miniature games, so we decided to play this first game using True LoS.  Afterwards we decided to play the rules as written, and to give it a chance despite any apprehension.
  So I used my 150 point list I mentioned in my last blog.  A Yaogat Lieutenant, another Yaogat with boarding shotgun, three Vanguard Infantry and a Kurgat with autocannon.  Lowie infilitrated his Specialist Sergeant with a clear bead on my Yaogat Lt. which was a bad oversight on my part straight off the bat.  My Lt. managed to survive Lowie's first turn, so I quickly moved my Kurgat across the street that seperated them, to get a shot at the enemy sniper.  The Kurgat struck straight, taking out the Specialist but was in turn shot down by Lowie's Teutonic Knight.
  Our lines seemed to turn on an axis, as I took out the PanOceania's right flank, as they smash me on the left.  Sadly though I lost my more expensive troops, my Yaogats going down to Lowie's Teutonic Knight and Magister Knight, despite putting up a brave fight in melee.  With my Lieutenant gone and down to one Vanguard Infantry against Lowie's two Knights and one Order Sergeant, the battle was all but over.
  In hindsight, I made a few grave errors in this first game.  Moving my Kurgat out to take out the enemy sniper wasn't really a good trade, I should have moved my Lt. and reduced the sniper's targets, forcing him into my fire lanes.  I also shouldn't have let the Knights get into melee.  I was confident in my high CC, but with them both having two wounds, it was an uphill battle (one I nearly won with some lucky rolls).
  All in all, it was a good game, and I look forward to getting my revenge soon.  I'll have some pictures of my Morat Aggression Force up soon!

Doom!

Hey there!

Just a small update today.  I went shopping at the local Kmart and found some interesting things...

These two bags held some interesting stuff.  I'd been keeping an eye on them (read: coveting...) for ages, mainly the construction set one, and mainly for a game called Pulp City (which can be found here: http://pulp-city.com).  It's a great little game, smaller than Infinity in terms of both model count and board size, since you can play with 2-4 minis on a 2x2 board and still have a decent game.  Finally I've caved and bought the two bags - it's cheap Chinese plastic stuff, but there are things in there that will fill a board.

I divided the two packs into stuff I could use and not (see the pics below; usable on the right, unusable on the left).  There was almost a whole bag of stuff that was the wrong scale or just too bad to use.  The mountain in the right picture is pretty cool, or would be if it was made of sturdier plastic.  But, for the price I paid, I didn't go too badly!  (Mrs Cohen might disagree!)

This should be enough to further populate our tables with some LoF blocking items, meaning that the units in the battle will be able to move around a bit more freely.  There are a bunch of brick walls, sandbag walls, rocks and some objective-like pieces, like the artillery cannons and the missile launchers.  I think we can come up with some decent scenarios to make use of them!  There were also a bunch of tall lamps and traffic lights which might be useful on urban tables.  I've got some cork tiles that I was thinking of using to make buildings from... now's the time!

I thought I should save the tanks, though, for my Flames of War playing colleagues.  What say you, guys?  Are they good enough for Flames of War?  Okay, so maybe not!  The other amusing items were these two feet.  I couldn't actually find the figures they belonged to, so I'm assuming they are there for scenery use... maybe to mark mines or something?

'Til next time!

First Games, Part 1

First games have taken place, one with the starters from the Quick Start Rules (QSR) with Lowie and myself, and then a 150pt game between Skorpious and Lowie.  I'm sure there were things we missed, forgot, did wrong, etc. All in all though, "a good time was had by all."  (And the barbecue lunch helped too, I'm sure!)

Initially it was a matter of setting out the terrain.  The first picture is the table in its entirety.  Sadly, we were using all the terrain available to us, and I have a feeling that it would have played a little differently if we'd used more stuff.

The left side of the board is pretty open, and there are lines of fire (LoF) that stretch from one side of the board to another!  This obviously has repercussions on how figures move and fight.  Playing Ariadna, I had two figures that could Infiltrate (start anywhere in my half of the board, further if I wanted to make a Physical (PH) roll... I chose not to) and so positioned a Camo'd sniper on the double-storey building in the middle of the table (just inside 24").  The other was my SAS trooper, who deployed near the giant tree stump, also Camo'd.  This advanced threat helped enormously.  The other two are visible in the pic in the lower right quadrant.

When Lowie deployed, he put a sniper in the two-storey building in the top right of the pic, and then the rest of his minis spread out across the table.  No infiltrators though, so that was a plus for me.

As we were playing, I've got to say I found the QSR very limiting.  We're all quite well versed in miniature wargaming, and so the lack of options presented was tough to work with.  But we managed, with input from Skorpious who can be seen here leafing through the rulebook on the right.

One thing we questioned early on was the line-of-fire and cover rules.  True line of sight has been a part of our gaming for a long time, and so we opted to use it rather than the 'you must be in base to base contact with a scenery item to gain cover.' This became one of our first debates - could the Acontecimento Regular on the board see my sniper when she came out of camo? Only partially, but enough to take the shot through trees to an elevated position, so we agreed that true line of sight meant that she gained cover.  Having since read through the forum threads on Cover, the way it makes most sense to me (as written) is thinking about cover in a target-oriented way (if you're not hunkering down, actively making the most of cover, you're exposed) vs. a shooter-oriented way (if you're looking down the sights at someone and there is a bit of house, a bus and some bushes in the line of fire to the guy in the middle of the street, he's harder to hit).

We'll have to have a try at the rules as they are written next time, with a target-oriented mentality.

The game ended with an Ariadnan victory, with the SAS and Kazak HMG left on the board.  PanOceania went into full retreat after that.

I'm going to leave it there, and hopefully Skorpious and Lowie will post in a bit with their first thoughts.

Cheers!

Starters, Assemble(d)!

Hey there,

A couple of days back I said the minis had arrived, and Lowie's progress has been evidence of that!  Now to show off my 'evidence'...

First up is the Haqqislam mob.  My 150pt list is two Ghulam Infantry; two Halqa, one a hacker; one Janissary; one Naffatûn with a light flamethrower; and a Hunzakut with sniper rifle.

Putting them together was a task fraught with danger... well, super glue, anyway.  A couple of the minis were a real pain.  Although you can't really tell from this angle, the sniper's rifle is too high, and looks a little awkward from the other side.  A couple of the joints didn't fit correctly, and the Janissary's gun-arm was a pain - the tag from moulding was too big for the joint.  Took a bit of carving to get it to sit right.

I'm looking forward to using the Mechanised Deployment skill on the Halqa, especially if we're going to play scenarios other than just shooting one another!  And the flame template looks like it will be enjoyable too!

I do still need to tidy up all the bases on the models, and that goes for the Ariadna troops too.  I noticed on Lowie's last post that he'd used greenstuff (from GW?) to fill the gaps in the bases.  Honestly, that had never occurred to me to try, so I'll have a go, along with filling in gaps in the minis themselves (which are only small but if I neglect them, I'll be kicking myself when I start to paint.

Then the Ariadna minis.  I'm torn with these guys.  I like their poses better I think, and I like the underdog status they have when it comes to their technology.  It's going to be harder to slog it out with the other factions in the short term, but I bought an HMG along with my 150pt force, so I should be fine!

The 150pt list is this: 3 regular Line Kazaks with rifles, and another with the aforementioned HMG; one Veteran Kazak with a T2 rifle; one Chasseur with rifle and flamethrower; and a Foxtrot Ranger with sniper rifle.  I was a little disappointed with the sniper - she's pencil-thin.  I can't imagine her firing her rifle; it would knock her over.  Mrs Cohen's comment was, "Why do the girls always have such weird butts?"  And I had to agree... it was odd.

These guys were less tricksy to put together, which was nice.  Although the Highlander Grey was 5 pieces, they all came together reasonably easy.  The picture above shows the 10-man crew hanging out together. I've since been given another Ariadna mini, a Caledonian Volunteer, which Skorpious had in surplus, after buying a blister to get the chick with the grenade launcher for his 40K Imperial Guard army.  Thanks, Skorpious!  (Although he insists the guy is a girl, due to the fact he's wearing a 'skirt'... someone Scottish will kill you one day, mark my words!)

We might have some initial thoughts about the rules and game-play after Saturday afternoon ('arvo' in Australian), but for now, that's enough.

Cheers!

Coeli Lux Nostra Dux

Fresh out of the green-stuff and superglue encrusted fingers of their overlord the newest recruits in the PanOceanae Christi Militum Ordo have made past their ordinations and are ready to defeat the enemies of gods chosen. Man and Woman alike will purge the infidels from our rightful lands.

Anywho enough crusader speak take a gander at my new Starter set assembled along with a Nisse Sniper whom I will use in Shadowrun as my PC but will paint up so she still fits in with the rest of the army. Until next time.