Monday 23 May 2016

Just Play's ITS.


So I am back after a two week hiatus. A quick bit about myself as I never really introduced myself on this blog. I have been unemployed since last November so have had all the time in the world to do all of the Infinity related projects, build a table, paint a table, do two entire factions fully painted up, go to every tournament I can get to and of course keep on top of this blog. In fact, to post every Friday was this new year's resolution and I am normally pretty good at keeping to them. I am currently in the recruitment process of joining the Royal Navy's diving squadron. I quit my last job working at Yorkshire Water in November 2015 so I could train for my diver assessment, but didn't hit it hard enough and on the trip away to sunny Scotland I failed my BFT ( Battle Fitness Test ) by 13 seconds god damn it! I totally blame the 3 week holiday to Japan right before. Japanese eat pretty healthy but being the big stupid giajin that I am, I was having about 5 meals a day so it didn't really balance out! Anyway I got my papers from the MOD through in the post and my next assessment is in October. Being so far away I went and got a job. My previous employment was shift work so I still got a lot of free time but this new gig is 9 to 5. HOW THE HELL DO PEOPLE DO IT?! Its an alright job but does not leave much time for Infinity between working and the gym. I have also been playing as much Infinity as I can recently as I seem to have stumbled onto some good tactics and am doing quite well on the international rankings. I keep getting 1st then this Epsolon921 keeps snatching it back. I will find you Epsolon921 and I will settle this once and for all! Anyway, point is I am back and will hopefully be getting a post out every Friday if I can. I have lots of things to talk about, new Morat force I wish to discuss, lots of events planned including a tournament I am putting on myself, new units and of course all the new rules.

That's me with my new book.
Back to the recent event we went to. I went to Liverpool with Laina and Pete. Also known on the forums as . . . Laina and Lilith. This was a small event put on by the guys who run the gaming store Just Play. A few familiar faces and really good tables. They had been in contact with some of the guys who are putting on the Northern Open and decided to run the same missions so we could practice. I was in two minds about this as I will never turn down practice but this did also mean that if anyone went to both events they would see my list. But kind of didn't matter as most of it is in camo anyway and I am also really predictable so what ever.

Missions:
* Seize the Antennas
* Cold Sleep
* Emergency Transmission


As you can see all these missions are about grabbing objectives, so a lot of specialists are needed. Normally I would post pics of my list but as I said don't want no sneaky sneaky research by the enemies of the superior Aradinian empire snooping about.

Game one: Seize the Antennas

First game was against a lovely chap named James Hilton-Scott with a rather nicely painted force as you can see in some of the pics. I had seen him about before at other events but not had a game. He was running a fun list and using the original pain train, that's right 5 Brigada stomping about as if they owned the place. James chose to go first so I chose sides and set up. This was perfect as I pretty much always want to go second in a mission like this so I got everything I wanted. His set up was short. 3 wild cats and 5 Brigada all behind a building. Simple enough, he was going first and knew no templates could hit him right away. I had a lot of camo so did the standard thing of having all my line troops hidden at the back covering every approach, few snipers on rooftops and about a bajillion markers scattered about the board. James' first turn was not surprising really. He moved his 5 man link from hell up the table. The hardest part for me was holding back and restraining myself from shooting back. He took out my grunt sniper quick time with his HMG, then wasted an order to try and discover one of my markers but failed. Realizing I was not going to  be silly and reveal everything at one time, he dropped his Tomcat onto the board now that the sniper was not watching certain sections. I did get a free shot with a metro and missed. He then tried to run away and he was getting dangerously close to my LT so I had to pop out a Chasseur and blast that bad guy away. After this failed attempt at taking some orders away the pain train moved forward but this time I was ready. I waited until he was right in the open. A mine triggered two hard cases shot, a Chasseur and a Cateran. The mine took off a wound, the two shot guns did 3 wounds with their spray and the Cateran missed. Now he was standing in the open facing 4 ARO's and two more camo markers still hidden. After this his LT broke away from the Link to try and take down the Cateran but I was lucky and got a crit and took him out with one precise shot to the face. 

Next it was my turn and to cut a long story short I ganged up on the brigade with my Spetsnaz. I say ganged up even though it was 4 against 1 because the Spetsnaz is probably the most powerful unit for his points in the game full stop. OK, a Swiss Guard or Charotnid are better but this dude comes in a 38 points and is one of the few guys who can take on a link all by himself. And he did. And it was beautiful. 
To cut a long game short not much happened for a few turns, but in my next go Uxia ran up the table dropping smoke, then her buddy Chasseur ran up behind her and dropped mines right in front of his few remaining Wildcats. I had all the objectives but one brave wildcat ran at the objective and made a WIP check in the last order triggering the mines but getting the objective anyway. 





I couldn't even get onto the objective with these guys in the way.


That's it step into the open for me!
"Not so tough now you are all by yourself huh Mrs Brigada"

Game 2: Cold sleep

Well game two was interesting. I played a chap named Mark O'Brien, one of the local players and on top of that one of the good ones, so I obviously had to beat the pants off of him. We played on a new themed board that was a sort of supply pick up on a train line. Something rather reminiscent of the first rail roads in the wild west. I lost the roll and Mark decided to go first. He was using vanilla Aleph so lots of hard line troops backed up by two total reaction HMG remotes. 1st turn was awesome for me. I stripped him of two orders and hid like a coward. Except for one unit, my Cateran half way up a church roof. It worked really well as I could see the entire board and having mimitism negated the no cover for climbing up a wall. He literally couldn't do anything. It cost Mark 3 orders trying to spot him and failing. Add this to the 2 he was denied that was half an order pool gone on literally nothing. He did manage to get his Myrmidon with a Spitfire right into my line and took out a 112 and grunt sniper on his travels. After that he went into suppression in cover so I was at -12 to hit it. The mission was very objective heavy but we both put down two camo markers either side of the two main objectives so were both afraid of moving in close.

My first turn was pretty good. I took an Imrandhino to this event. I am really not a fan of extremely impetuous. Yeah you get a free order but you have no control over it and don't ever get cover so whats the point? People kept telling me to try this guy so for 8 points I though I would give it a go as he is an engineer. I was lucky enough to roll for an AP rifle on the booty chart so used him to take out some net rods. I didn't want to lose a specialist but on the same merit I really did not want an ODD Spitfire wielding baddie all up in my deployment, so decided to sacrifice the Imrandhino to chain rifle him... except it wasn't a sacrifice as he got one hit from his suppression that I passed and he failed his ARM roll to a chain rifle and died. GREAT SUCCESS! I then took out one of his total reaction remotes with my Cateran on the roof and got rid of a few order monkeys. I figured out who his LT was right at the back but didn't want to try and brave getting him as he had a remote next to him with a heavy flamer.

Mark was out for blood after this. He had lost a lot of orders to the superior Ariadna gunishment, pumping pretty much everything into his total reaction remote he pushed up the board and took out 4 of my guys. Its all good, plenty more where they came from. After that two guys moved closer to his nearest objectives and secured them.

Ok I did it again. Was so angry at myself the entire way home. My Imrandhino ran over to the Myrmidons corpse and scavenged his spit fire. It really was his lucky day - he managed to get himself an AP rifle and Spitfre for free. I am sure they will fetch a pretty price on the black market. He then ran forward and took out a total reaction bot and another Myrmidon. Next the Spetsnaz burst onto the scene and i'm telling you now HE REIGNED DOWN FIRE! Just destroyed everything in his sight! The idea was to keep a few things alive and just completely mop up in last turn. I had 17 orders left and 6 specialists on the table. One was Uxia right next to an objective. But you know what I did it again. I DID IT AGAIN. I put the enemy in retreat... by 2 points. It was the saddest day ever. 2 points. That was all she wrote. His softec scooted forward and nabbed the main objective putting him in a major victory. Now not to say Mark was not a good player, but he had very few orders and I had 17 regular, 3 specialists in camo by objectives, pretty much complete table control as what he had left was hiding and I also had all my big toys left. When will I learn, right?


Man of the match for the opponents he took on.
Dr. Useless did nothing again except die.
This little guy was pinned down for the entire game by a T2 sniper.
Game 3: Emergency transmission

Having lost and not being put on the top table my last game was chill. I was playing a Pan O player called Andy Phizacklea, who I think had literally played about 5 games before. He worked at the store and was getting into Infinity, so most of the game was us taking it slow and going through rules. I wont call him a cheesy bastard as he was very new but he did run a Cutter, Father knight and Croc man. His cutter legged it right into my lines. and I mean basically touching my back line. He then blasted his HMG over and over and over into 4 of my line troopers and they repeatedly dodged every single shot.

In my first turn I ran a Chasseur behind him and let rip with the flamer. He did pass 4 dodge saves in a row, but as soon as this failed and his bloody TO was gone my Spetsnaz popped out and hit him 3 times. Unfortunately for Andy he failed all 3 rolls and the mighty war machine collapsed. It was pretty cinematic as after this my Imrandhino engineer ran over and pulled all the cybernetic cables out the back of his neck and got me my data card of Coupe de grace. I like to imagine both the Chasseur and Imrandhino standing in front of it scratching their heads then the Imrandhino saying "Sod it yank em all out" then proceeding to pull out every wire in sight.

Andy's next turn was slightly eventful. His father knight ran out only to be confronted by a Cateran. Being new to the game he did not know that in the active turn when you dodge you don't get the 2 inch move so he was stuck in the open staring down a superior warrior! He did fall but made a good effort passing one save and one dodge but eventually falling to the T2 ammunition.

We were running out of time at this point so in my last turn with nearly 20 orders just nabbed all I needed to to get a major victory and we called it a game. I hope to see Andy at next month's event and see how much he has gotten on with the rules, especially as HS3 has just dropped. I didn't get any pics of my last game as we were spending most of the time going over rules and units but I did manage to get some cool shots of others games. I managed to come second in the end. Best loser isn't bad I guess but I am hungry for that Krakot model as I am just starting my Morats and they are AVA 3 so want to scoop up as many as I can!