Infinity AAR - Supremacy

Z and I pulled out the Infinity bits again yesterday afternoon as we reacquaint ourselves with it. Rather than a basic shoot-em-up in which I'd have had severe disadvantages, we played the Supremacy scenario from the MRB.

The four quadrants are objectives in and of themselves. The green dots are also objectives - consoles that the two groups are fighting to take control of. The scenario features a very short three-turn time limit.

The consoles were set up in and around a central square. Here's a shot of my French Ariadnans advancing up the right flank and trying to cross over to the square.

Meanwhile, the Briscards handle the left flank. One trooper takes up a position atop a building.

He quickly finds a target below and snaps off a quick burst at the PanO knight.

Oh the shame! My commander is gunned down running across the street... by an unpainted model no less!

Zouave Jacque looses a hail of lead at a Fusilier who's run up to one of the consoles. The PanO trooper is knocked out easily.

My flanking maneuver continues. Unfortunately, the Pan Oceania squad has a lot of troops providing covering fire and it's just too dangerous to pop out and engage. On the plus side, I've been racking up points for dominating the battlefield and by the end of turn 2 the score was 4-0 in my favor.

The Briscards now have a sniper and a marksman on buildings on the left. They'd soon have some company.

But back on the other side, the Knights make a run for the console! My Para Commando with the machine gun takes some shots but return fire from one of the knights' Spitfires takes him out with a critical hit! The Moblot takes the opportunity to loose a rocket from her Panzerfaust which connects squarely and takes out her target.

A PanO Fusilier came around the corner and took out my Briscard medic (not pictured). Jacque avenges him by gunning down the scum.

The tit-for-tat situation continues with another Pan Oceania fighter  rounding the corner and taking out the Zouave.









It was turn 3 and Ziggy had no order markers left so we ended the game. Final score - 6-2 in favor of the Ariadna (Me!). That was 5 from table sectors and 1 from a console to Ziggy's single console and one shared sector.

It was a nice, quickly-paced battle with loads of action. My numerical advantage really helped counter Z's quality advantage. It also helped that he held a lot of his troops back on overwatch rather than pushing forward to score domination points. We're both becoming more comfortable with the game and our forces. Looking forward to the next contest for sure!

Cheap Terrain Pickups

I found a couple of goodies in the WalMart Christmas section recently that you may also be able to pick up given the time of the year.

The first was this snazzy gazebo that's perfectly sized for 28 - 35mm gaming.

I took mine off the base and am going to repaint it so it'll be a bit less seasonal, but it was a great pickup for $7.00.

The other was this snowman-themed water tower, just perfect for 15mm.

It came off the base really easily and the ladder also detached without effort. I Dremeled Frosty's face down (it's resin) and repainted it to make it fit in a bit better with my Stardust Ground stuff.

With some 15mm army dudes

Easy work and another great, inexpensive pickup to add a bit of character to the tabletop.

This Week's Painting

Painted up another Malifaux crew this week.Yeah, yeah, I know I still haven't played the game but the minis are gorgeous and I really just like painting them. One of these days I'll try it as a game. This is the Guild "The Torch and The Blade" box.

As ever with their minis - beautiful and interesting multi-part plastic models that go together very easily.

Marines Marines Marines: Modern Spearhead AAR

Ziggy and I put on a game of Modern Spearhead after a long hiatus Saturday evening. Because my Naval Assault regiment hadn't gotten any playtime yet, it was a perfect excuse for a USMC versus Soviet Naval Infantry bash. We we back at the southern shore of the Baltic in the mid-1980s.

The battlefield. Loads of woods, two towns. The stars indicate objective locations. Ruskies enter from the left, Yanks from the right.

Turn 1. Two battalions roll up the roads. The mechanized infantry in BTR50s on the southern road (to the left) and a T-72 battalion with a couple of attached BMP-2 platoons on the right.

I was expecting the fighting around the large central town to be intense and sent the "heavier" battalion that direction. The Marines on the left were one side of a developing sandwich on that side of the battlefield.

Turn 2. The tank battalion reaches the town and begins setting up shop having gotten to the end of their arrow. A recon and AA platoon get lodged in at the turnip farm. On the other side, the infantry has nearly made it to the intersection - the end of their arrow.

Here comes trouble.  M60s with some Amtracks in support. They were exactly on the wrong side - I needed these guys to be on the coastal road!

Turn three. Some badly needed help shows up in the form of two Mi-24s! Say hello to my little friends, nasty Yankee tankers! I was surprised by the arrival of ground-pounders marching in on my left through the woods. My mechanized battalion was in deep.

M60s, with nothing better to do smash the front end of my formation. The Hinds kills one and Suppress another. In retrospect, we goofed this up - the helos should have fired before the tanks, reducing my casualties by two.

The Marines make their way through the woods, while mine dive into the woods for cover from those damn tanks.

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The Harrier shows up and takes a run at a ZSU and a Recon platoon. The Shilka forces it to abort!

Tracers and rockets fly back and forth across the clearing for the rest of the battle!

My aerial assault battalion arrives to capture the bridge! MANPADS streak out from some Marine positions but none connect.

Feeling good about myself.

The T-72 battalion receives a change of orders and advances to the next town on the coastal road.

I forgot to take pictures of their arrival, but I had some T-55s arrive via flank back on turn 5. They bagged the bridge and proceeded to cause havoc among the Marine tanks. In retrospect, I wish I'd have had them camp on the bridge, holding it.

The Marine Battalion Commander in the town gets the attention of the Harriers again which swoop down and take out a BMP platoon. If you had not noticed - I did manage to knock out the TOW teams in the outskirts and was daring Ziggy to roll a couple of M60s out to duel with me.

After nine turns. This was the intersection of DOOM.

We were both tired and Ziggy was especially tired of rolling ones. I had two bridges and the small town, while Ziggy only firmly held the large town. The intersection was contested (to say the least).

We were a bit rusty on some things - particularly timing of firing, but by midgame it was all coming back. Ziggy's dice really were atrocious and had a lot to do any success I had. My flanking arrival and airborne insertion were a lot of fun and went a long way towards keeping Zig off his game. More MSH before the end of the year for sure!

Infinity Minis and Scenery

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been painting Infinity minis recently and also cranked out some "Tiny Terrain" bits this weekend. Tiny Terrain is a resin terrain line sold by Miniature Market; it's remarkably inexpensive and a good value.

On with the pics.

The lot 

Zouave and Para Command behind a Jersey barrier 

A Metro with HMG, Moblot and Metro along with two very nice computer terminals 

Briscards 

Metros with data displays

So the Jersey barriers, 55 gallon drums, computer terminals and data displays we all nice pickups and useful for Infinity, Batman and other games. The clear components are a bit bendy and were warped when I received them. I probably could have flattened them out by boiling them but decided it wasn't worth the trouble at the time. Aside from that, the pieces are great and the miniatures were great to paint.

Infinity - The Do-Overing

So a month and a half ago Ziggy and I got to talking about Infinity. We'd given it a try years ago but it didn't stick for whatever reason and I hawked my collection. With my recent Batman minis pickups and scenery enhancements, combined with my need to buy and paint toy soldiers we decided that Infinity should make it's way back on to the table. Deciding on a team was a multi-evening affair as a waffled between Nomads and Ariadna Frenchies. I decided on the Ariadna force and picked up a starter box and some other goodies to bulk up the numbers a bit. I had a few weeks to get the assembled and painted while Ziggy was galavanting about Europe with the Air Force. Saturday evening, we put Infinity back into the rotation.

Ziggy's force being smaller than mine was the points benchmark so I matched him. We set up a battlefield with enough clutter to be useful and played a straightforward shoot-em-up to re-familiarize ourselves with game mechanics.

Metros, a Zouave and a Para-Commando (the guy with the machinegun)

Briscards - a sniper, medic and trooper

And the boss lady.

The battlefield. The goal was to find shot opportunities and keep the Pan Oceania forces on their heels.

Things heat up on the rooftops.

We heard something... better watch the alley.

The pud with the Spitfire was causing too much trouble so Souffle was sent up to silence it. A rocket  streaked across the street and the gunner was taken out! He then got to work on a rifleman with a quick accurate burst from his assault pistol.

I had sent my Moblot out to the left to flank the two Knights who'd made it across the street. She blasted both with her shotgun, but didn't fell either. One of the two ran towards her and in short order my Lieutenant had been knocked out.

Ziggy attempted the same trick again but the Briscard's aim was true and the Knight fell with a crash.

Souffle was sent to put out the remaining fire - the Knight who'd cut do the Lieutenant. A quick hustle around the corner and another remarkable burst from his trusty assault pistol and the Knight was taken out.

We called the game there - we'd each taken five casualties and it'd been a couple hours or so. The game was slow going with lots of referring back to the rules about this that and the other. Regardless, it was a damn fine way to kill an evening. I rather enjoyed having to go to extremes to silence the Spitfire gunner - it was one of those fun memorable moments - swatting the fly with a sledgehammer. It did get the job done though - the medic was never going to get ol' Humpty Dumpty back together after that!

I think that during my previous experience with Infinity, I had the wrong idea of what it was supposed to be. I expected a quick and tidy skirmish - maybe something between Song of Blades and Necromunda. Batman and to a lesser extent X-Wing kind of opened my eyes to these skirmish games. It's not supposed to be a quick-play skirmish, even though each player only has a few models. It's supposed to be a full-featured 2-hour game with loads of detail. It's the opposite of Dystopian Wars or MSH which have tons of models and little for each detail. Both take a similar amount of time to play but focus on different things. I'm glad I've given it another chance.

I'll do a photo spread on the troops one of these days. I just picked up three more to round out a 300-point force.