Infinity AAR - Getting Wrecked

Infinity was brought back out last evening after a few week hiatus. It was as much of an excuse to use the new terrain bits as anything else. I used a large group of Merovingien (Ariadna's Frenchies) while Ziggy stayed pat on his Pan Oceania Military Orders list. One of these days he'll mix it up and add the droids and other models or, God forbid, finish assembling and at least priming his Japanese group. I won't be holding my breath.

The scenario was just a straightforward shoot-em-up with each of us having two secret objectives. The two secret objectives I had were Data Scan and Telemetry. Data Scan required me to get a hacker to perform a scan of an enemy model. This involved getting with eight inches of it. Telemetry had similar requirements - get with 8 inches of an enemy and perform either a Spotlight Hacker action against it or target it with the Forward Observer skill. Getting with 8 inches of PanO knights is generally not something you'd ever want to do in a game - they tend to be absolute monsters and extremely dangerous as close range.

Our battlefield du jour...

A big car wreck in the central street blocked up long lines of sight there and kept it from being too much of a death zone.

On my right, in the park. Loup Garou, a medic, a Dozer (robot controller), a rocket-bot and an HVT I had to babysit, per Ziggy's secret objectives. My HVT model is a butler I picked up a couple years a go.

On the left edge, I had a four-man fireteam, the medic in the yellow jacket and another medic - mostly obscured by the blue box. That one was a Briscard, armed with a marksman rifle - they tend to make decent "poor-mans snipers."

I also had this minesweeper bot in the middle of the central road.

The minesweeper's first order of business was locating the hidden sniper atop the building overlooking the road and park. No pics, but it worked out very nicely and in no time the lurker was located. At least now I could target him with other things. 

As was expected, the Pan O knights didn't appreciate my antics and a Knight Hospitaller popped around a corner and loosed a hail of armor piecing rounds from his heavy machinegun at the bot. It was wrecked beyond repair but had served a useful purpose.

Pan O Order Sergeants creep around the plaza. My Loup Garou sneak around to greet them.

The Garou fireteam leader yells back to the dozer, "Put that tractor to some use! They're over there behind the stairs!"

Rockets arc from the tubes on both sides of the claptrap machine. Moments feel like minutes as they explode among the enemy troopers. Their numbers drop from five down to one in no time at all.

Back on the other side, my command fire team continues to scoot forward while the Briscard medic makes his way up the building to get a good field of vision. One of my chasseurs remains hidden on the balcony. I'd have had him pop out and exchange fire with that sniper sooner but I wanted to wait until he had a bit of back-up.

The remaining Order Sergeant at the plaza shot the rocket bot to bits, unwilling to take another hail of fire it. Loup Garou and others do their darndest to take him out but it's not an easy thing.

Set up to make my move, the chasseur steps up and snaps off a burst at the sniper, only to learn that it was only a forward observer - a much less fearsome opponent. Either way, he was down and out. I had gotten my Hacker into a useful spot and got to work on the knight cowering around the corner. I was able to "Spotlight" him and then locked him down with a "Gotcha,"immobilizing the heavily-armed and armored trooper.

Running low of options on my right, my Dozer who has no business carrying a rifle, snaps off some rounds at that last Order Sergeant. The Pan O trooper is hit square in the forehead and drops like a sack of potatoes. ( read: lucky critical hit.. I'll take it! )

Right at the end of the game... you can see how I had stacked that corner, making any attempt by Ziggy to come get me unappealing to say the least. To end the game, my Briscard on the rooftop fired into the immobile Knight below, killing him and keeping things squarely in my favor.

Although we actually traded kills pretty evenly, my deeper bench and less pricey troops meant that the Pan Oceania losses each carried a heavy weight. I was also able to accomplish my two secret objectives, both scanning and targeting the Knight which I also immobilized and finally killed. Man, when I think about it, that poor dude got seriously abused didn't he? It's fine, he's killed so many of my troops in past battles... just me starting to get even.

I was happy with the way the army operated during the battle. The extra tools a gizmos were useful - I got productive results from both TrakorMul bots and even their wrangler! The Hacker was the man of the match though, his contributions were impressive.