Friday 20 January 2012

First Game of Infinity

It's been a pretty busy January in terms of gaming, I've played four separate miniature games, two of which I hadn't played before. I played a game of Cold War Commander last week but unfortunately forgot my camera and I always disliked AAR's without pictures, so I didn't post about the game. This week I tried my first game of Infinity. It's a game that our club all jumped into a year ago but never really played.

In this game there was a combined Haqqislam and Yu Jing force attacking a fortified stronghold held by the Combined Army. To keep a long story short we were caught out in the open and were devastated by the sniper fire from the tower and hidden positions in the bunkers. In hindsite we should've had an advantage in points when assaulting a strongly defended position, but this was our first game so we didn't really bother about the scenario game and wanted to focus on getting the mechanics right.

As far as my impressions of the game, I think it has a lot of cool factor to it. There lots of different toys and tricks to play with and you have to be very judicious in the use of your forces. While I like the premise of the game and how quickly it flows, and I absolutely love the miniatures and the fluff, I think the rules could be a little more streamlined in terms the number of weapons and abilities available. I can see that this game will take a little while to get the hang of, as opposed to Lasalle which I pretty much got on the first try. Having said that, I think skirmish games work well in the sci-fi setting because you can have all kinds of neat weapons and toys that give it a lot of flavour.

Picture showing the heavily protected position of the Combined Army

Hassassin and Yu Jing forces take cover ready to assault

Snipers in the towers rain down some damage on the attackers
The Yu Jing remote is taken out early due to sniper fire
The Hassassin Ragik tries to land on the tower but misses and lands in open ground under fire.
On the other flank 'Hassan' the Haqqislam infantry support hears some rumbling on the buses behind him
Too late for Hassan, as he is hacked to pieces

To add insult to injury the infiltrator impersonates Hassan

Meanwhile the Yu Jing Lieutenant makes a bold and aggressive move on the bunker, and is shot down

Hassan's brother, Ali, sees fire from another bunker and puts his Panzerfaust to work

And blows it up! He has yet to learn of the fate of his brother
There was quite some more action that I didn't capture, the Haqqislam/YuJing forces. The YuJing infiltrator got past the main line and caused some havoc behind enemy lines but was cut down.  Despite their progress in knocking out the some of the defendors the cost was too high and the sniper fire prevented effective movement. The Combined Armies held out on this occasion and we called it a night. All in all it was a fun game, the game tends to produce some really cinematic sequences that are fun, the brutal death of Hassan being one of the examples.

3 comments:

  1. Hey 'JJ',

    Happy to introduce you to the game! Sorry it was so one-sided. We should have used the two end-boards of that table and taken out the big bunker, as I know from experience how dominant that terrain piece can be.

    Keep in mind though that the game turned into a fortification assault because of the special infiltration and camouflage rules that many of the Shasvastii aliens enjoy. Half of those guys can deploy right up to the middle of the table, and some of them even deeper than that! With that defensive line right across the middle of the table, it made for an easy static defence.

    I think the next game we play will have less tall terrain, but even more of it, and no obvious bisecting fortifications.

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  2. The one-sidedness didn't really bother me at all, it was a game for us to learn the rules and if anything the bunkers and towers helped in that regard. Thanks for being patient with us during the game, we definitely need to play again. I'm going to hopefully pick up a few more blisters this weekend.

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  3. Ooh! With that kind of tall bunker in enemy hands I'm not surprised you were cut to shreds. In general I think you could have piled on a lot more terrain - shooting is deadly in Infinity so being able to mitigate it is important. Haha! :)

    There are a lot of different abilities and equipment in Infinity but once you learn the basic ones that will see the most use the rest will come naturally. To me it's simply the best miniature skirmish game I've played. Hell, the best miniature game period! I hope you'll keep at it.

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