#HVT

Hi guys,

I'm aware it's been a couple of weeks, I've been busy playing N3 (Went to a doubles tournament last weekend) and assembling miniatures for my Haqqislam (Now have enough to field everything in Qapu Khalpi at full availability)

I have however been slack in my duties here, I've been having so much fun assembling/painting/playing that I haven't really spent any time updating.

In addition I've jumped in with some friends in starting another blog which will be authored by the five of us and on it we'll be detailing the progress of our infinity forces (all 5 of us are pretty much painting up lists from scratch)

If anyone is interested the combined blog will be here: http://highvaluetargets.blogspot.com/

I'll likely include interim pictures here on an ad hoc basis, and get back to random posts, but the pressure of keeping to a schedule has led to me not really bothering to update at all as I haven't got a battle report etc. to post.

Keep reading here for random posts on a random basis, but there won't be a fixed schedule as such.

Also I seem to have lost my appetite for 40k at the moment so although this may include random musings on my Dark Eldar and progress updates, for the time being it's likely to be strongly infinity focussed.

Thanks,

Rich

Infinity N3 Book Review and Thoughts

Hi guys,

Apologies for the late post as I did say I'd get something up yesterday but held off hoping to do a bit of a review of the N3 rulebook.

I haven't really had much of a chance to do that though so I thought I'd throw done some quick thoughts here and sum up my feelings so far on N3.

I think it's a great game and that CB are a great company, but I'm going to try and remain as objective as possible through this and prevent any fanboy sentiments seeping through.

The Physical Book

Two softback books in a hardback slipcase, glossy pages and full colour throughout

The good - Seems good quality inside and I'm happy with the print quality and text size, the text size is slightly bigger than what I'm used to from 40k books and it's really nice to read, silly little thing but it makes a difference.

The bad - I would have preferred them to be hardback books and paid a little extra, There also seems to be a thin plastic covering to the books and the back of my rulebook has started to peel off now. Also on a minor point as I generally have mine separate with the rules in my case, but when putting both books in the slipcase they stick out slightly as pictured below; surely they should have been made to fit in the slipcase fully? A small issue but it struck me as odd.

The Fluff

I really enjoyed the fluff I've read so far, I've not finished the book yet but I read the intro pieces and then read through the Haqqislam and Nomads factions and it's a really interesting setting to be playing in. I like the fact that it's not a "Grim Dark" setting like 40k, and that the games that you play are generally around small elite teams performing undercover operations. I much prefer the, to me, more realistic sci fi setting and although there is a credible threat in the form of the EI, it's not a sense of inevitable doom with a dying race like you get in 40k. In fact humanity is still relatively new to the stars from what I can tell and it's an exciting setting for me.

I won't put any spoilers here but I enjoyed reading it and the stories in it sealed Nomads as a second faction for me alongside my Haqqislam.


The Layout

Seems great to me, I like that they have the basic rules first which I believe are the same ones from Icestorm from what I can tell, this means that for a beginner they can jump in without worrying about the advanced rules that despite what anyone says can get quite complicated due to the various interactions of ARO.

I like the tables at the back and the fact that there's an index, everything seems to be in the place I'd expect it to be and there's a good amount of art / text / examples throughout

The Rules

As above, I like how it's split into basic and advanced and for me, the way in which the examples are done for the rules are fantastic. They really provide a load of examples for pretty much every rule you'd have questions about which was priceless to me when reading through and trying to understand them for the first time.

I would generally read through the advanced rule and think, "hmm, I wonder how that interacts with X or Y" only to carry on reading and see not only how it interacts with X, and interacts with Y, but potentially how it works with X and Y, and hey, let's tell you about Z too.

For me, they are well written rules with good explanations and whilst I'm sure some bits will need an FAQ (e.g. Being able to speculative fire outside of LOS means being able to make a grenade magically appear inside a locked bank vault as it doesn't state you need a path to target) I'm also sure that they will be clarified quickly and that for now, common sense rulings will prevail. (No, your bike can't ride up that ladder, I can see why you think that's cool, but... no)

The Art

Inconsistent I'd have to say if I was being honest with my opinion. I'm sure that some would argue it's all great, and there are some fantastic pieces in there, for example I love the Haqqislam piece with Tarik. However some of the unit pics in the faction breakdown's are not of the same quality and although some of these are great, others are average (Of course, I'd never be able to so anything like these, but they're not the same quality as the others in the book)

Conclusion

I certainly don't regret buying the book because I like having a physical copy and I want to support the company, particularly as they're giving the rules out for free on their website.

I do however have some reservations and wouldn't say I'm ecstatic with it to give my honest opinion.

Good Points

• Good layout makes it easy to find what you're looking for
• Some great artwork in the books
• Decent print quality and full colour throughout
• The background (fluff) is great and makes playing in the setting much more fun

Bad Points

• Expensive for two softback books at just over £40 (I know it comes with a limited edition model, but for the purposes of this I'm not counting that)
• Some of the artwork is not of the same quality as the rest
• Slipcase doesn't fit the two books in
• My impression is it's not very durable so may not last

N3 Games so far

Had about 5 games now I think of N3, 3 against Yu Jing, 1 against Pan O, and 1 against Combined Army so I'm starting to get the hang of it a bit. I never really played N2 (just a demo a few years back) although I did do a few games of N2.5 to get used to the new weapon ranges etc. This is my views from the games I've had so far:

• Deployment vs First turn is now a tough choice
• With the ability to take away two orders, or limit to one command token if you go second, I now prefer to take Deployment most of the time, I really like that this is now a real choice though and makes it a tough decision.
• Suppressive Fire is... just right
• I think it's powerful and makes your line troops even more dangerous, but it does have limitations and takes an entire order to do. I like it.
• Co-Ordinated Orders are a thing of BEAUTY
• These are my favourite thing right now, as I'm sure the guys who I've played or who've watched me play will attest to. I love being able to move 4 guys forward and get them into position, or lay a bunch of mines down for one order. 99% of the time I will use 2-3 of these first turn and Mov-Mov Supp Fire with 4 guys, or Mov-Mine, Mov-Mine, Supp Fire with Zero/Spektrs to have 8 mines down and 4 Camo/TO Camo guys in Supp Fire in midfield, come get me :)
• New Weapon Ranges - I'm a big fan of these and I like the fact that each weapon now seems to have their own sweet spot of domination. For example being able to shoot at a HMG with a Sniper from 32" to 40" or with a Combi Rifle from within 16" makes them less of an auto include for me.
• Shotgun - As a Haqqislam player I can't let it go without commenting on these as I find it great that there's now a real advantage to packing both weapons, we pay for it at 12 points, but I like the option of the Light Shotgun up close and it makes my Ghulam feel very versatile being able to step up to 8" and hit at +6 range.
• Boarding Shotgun - Now a very useful discount option and on infiltrators I can see this doing a lot of work, I've had a couple of shots with it on my Zero's and I think it's priced about right. It's a good option for what seems to be a 1 point discount on most profiles, but it's not an auto include because I then lose the ability to put down suppressive fire. Well priced and useful.

In conclusion I'm having great fun playing Infinity now and I recommend you try it out, we've managed to rope a couple more of our friends into playing and they've bought the Operation Icestorm box and split the contents, which I can't recommend enough if you're just starting out.

I'm working with those friends on a new blog at the moment which should be going up shortly which will involve us each pledging to paint one model a month for our infinity factions and post them up online to try and motivate each other.

Will post the details of that soon when we've put our first posts up with the figure we're going to paint in Feb and a quick intro paragraph for each of us. Currently it looks as though there'll be 1 Haqqislam, 1 Nomad, 1 Combined Army and 2 Pan Oceania projects, although I might try and do both Haqqislam and Nomads.

Thanks for reading,

StokieRich

Christmas Goodies // Infinity N3 // Terrain // Painting Progress

Hi guys,

Trust everyone had a good Christmas and New Year, I enjoyed spending some time with family and friends and found a little time for hobby in there but not as much as I was expecting.

Popping a quick update today of the bits I've received / got done over Christmas and a couple thoughts on the games I've had.

First of all, this is my Christmas loot, I traded a lot of this in for my Tyranids which I sold most of just before Christmas but thought it'd be nice to put the new bits away until Christmas and save us a bit of money.

I also got some extra bits since then as I sold my Pan Oceania from the Op Icestorm box, adding some money to it and buying:

Kasym Beg

Tunguska Interventors

Intruder MSR

Zero Hacker

Zero

2 Wildcat combi's

That should round out my Nomads for now quite nicely and give me plenty of options while I had to get the new release for Haqqislam as it looks awesome :)

Over Christmas then I got all the above assembled except the Bounty Hunter and the Scourges for 40k. I've also assembled some of my other Nomad bits I had yet to do and started on the new bits by assembling both the Zero's.

Some work in progress bits below:

The 3 Story building now has a floor on the bottom level as well, I forgot to put it in before I'd put the 4 walls on so I had to cut the tabs off two sides and then glue it in, which wasn't difficult and it seems plenty sturdy enough now. All floors have internal walls for a playable interior and should look nice once painted up.

I also spent a bit of time thinking about my board which is still to arrive having originally been estimated for last May (Such are the pitfalls of a Kickstarter) I've been pulling together some scatter terrain to see what I've got currently and whether any additional purchases may be required. This is what's currently available:

I figured I could do with more as Infinity really is pretty terrain intensive so I've got a few extra bits coming, namely:

Zen Terrain

Guard Booth and Barrier x2

Military Outpost

Food Stall

Conversion Kit

Warsenal

Commanche Barracks

Spetsnazs Tower

Angled Planter Island

Square Planter Island

Hopefully that should be me entirely done for terrain once this is added to my Micro Art mdf kits and Deadzone terrain. (may need more scatter, but I'll assess this once I've got the board laid out)

Also got some work done on Tarik and I'm reasonably happy with him at the moment, I'm quite chuffed with the freehand faction symbols on the newspaper and his chest, but I don't know how to do his sword as I'm useless at power sword style effects but I want to make it stand out. Potentially going to have a go with the airbrush but still thinking on this atm.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, once I've got some finished bits I'll take proper pictures but at the moment I'm just snapping quick progress updates with a crappy mobile phone camera.

In terms of gaming I got in two more games of N3 and used Nomads for both of them which I really enjoyed. I'm now split for the Winter Challenge event as I'd love to use my Nomads but my Haqqislam list would be completely painted wheras I haven't started the Nomads.

The list I used was:

Intruder LT

Grenzer Sniper

Spektr Hacker

Zero BS

Alguacil

Alguacil

Alguacil

I won one game and lost another and overall I really enjoyed the Zero so the list I'm thinking of running now is taking that theme further:

Intruder MSR	43	1.5
Spektr Combi	31
Hellcat Combi	22
Zero BS	17
Zero BS	17
Alguacil LT	10	1
Alguacil	10

Has a decent sniper with MSV2, a TO infiltrator with mines and two Camo infiltrators with mines. A drop troop, and 2 line troops. Hopefully just good fun to play with and using co-ordinated orders with the mines to be a pain.

Apologies for the lengthy post and variety of topics, wanted to catch up on everything so I can spend Wednesday popping down some thoughts on the N3 book and on 3rd edition Infinity generally. Hopefully getting another two games in on Tuesday night and then perhaps a practice evening on Saturday ahead of the tournament the week after so I'll need to start to nail down the list I'm taking.

Random Wednesday // First game of Infinity N3 last night

So I went down to the Exeter Inquisition club last night for some infinity and although I was disappointed not to get the new N3 rulebook yet I still got a game of the new edition in using the pdf.

We played a 200pt game using the Annihilation mission in the rulebook however as we were both pretty new to the game (never mind N3) we played with open objectives instead of classified ones.

Overall really enjoyed it and loving some of the changes in the new edition, figured I'd just slap some random thoughts down here.

• The "Strategic" use of the Command Tokens are awesome, this went completely unnoticed by us until we got the pdf and read through. My opponent chose deployment zones and made me deploy first, then as he was going second he used one of his Command Tokens to make me lose 2 regular orders on the first turn. Really makes the choice of first turn a choice rather than automatic now in my opinion
• Co-Ordinated Orders are fantastic, you can get around the board so much faster which opens up a lot of new possibilities. I used all 4 of my tokens on these orders and they were great, you get to activate up to 4 guys for the cost of 1 regular order and 1 command token, I didn't use them for attacking so much as repositioning and getting 3 Ghulams with their shotguns into advanced positions so early in the game was great.
• Hacking seemed a bit meh to be honest although we may have been playing it wrong. It was great to have all these options and I had a TO hacker in range of a glut of targets, with a TR HMG Remote, an expensive HI, and a Hacker and was planning to go to town. I looked at my options and I had loads of choices, eagerly rolled the dice and succeeded (after a couple of orders) and then went to re-camo, only to find that as I was still inside his ZOC (obviously as I had hacked him) he could ARO anything I did with a "Reset" which meant on a normal roll of 13 he just ignored anything I'd done to him.
• Suppression fire - we basically didn't use this all game. It looks good, we just didn't think to use it and as he had 2 total reaction HMG remotes he probably didn't need it!

In the end the game was a draw at 4-4, he beat me 2-1 on kills, 2-1 on surviving, but I had secured the HVT for 2 Objective Points so we ended equal which seemed about right for the game.

In case anyone is interested the list I used was:

Ghulam lt

Ghulam

Ghulam FO

Ghulam FO

Naffatun LFT, grenades

Naffatun LFT, grenades

Hunzakut FO

Hassassin Ragik Spitfire

Tuareg Hacker

Jannissary Doctor

I also picked up some more goodies to flesh out my Haqqislam and complete my scenery collection:

MAS human consoles
MAS Objective Room
MAS 3 story building
MAS Roofs/Floors
MAS Interior Walls
Nomads Hellcat HMG/Hacker
Saladin
Hassassin Farzan
2 Hafza
Odalisques boxed set