This weekend was a beginner Infinity tournament at Titan Games. It was a small affair. 7 players but one dropped and ran the tournament. I want to first say that the store was nice. It wasn't as big as Dropzone but felt about the "right" size. I was reluctant to go to this store because I always think of it's location as being "too far". It is 2/10ths of a mile further than Dropzone from me.
Chris was the guy who dropped and ran the tournament. He came up with some cool scenarios and made the event pretty fun. Wilson from Beltway Gamers came as well and won the honor of pummeling the n00bs. He had 6 games or so prior experience. I went 2-1.
I will explain the games but I don't know much more than the army names for my opponents and I didn't take any pictures because only two people had painted armies and the scenery on all but one table was good looking for Infinity. This is not a knock on the store. They actually just setup a table of TME Scenery but it was unpainted and looked like a white hell. They had one setup table that looked great but I didn't get pics of it
My list:
YU JING
──────────────────────────────────────────────────
GROUP 1 (Regular: 9/Irregular: 0):
KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (5)
KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (5)
KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (5)
KUANG SHI Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (11)
CELESTIAL GUARD (Kuang Shi Control Device) Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 13)
CELESTIAL GUARD Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (13)
SÙ-JIÀN Spitfire, Light Flamethrower, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CCW. (2 | 56)
GŬILÁNG Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (25)
ZHANSHI Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (15)
2.5 SWC | 148 Points
ARMY CODE: eNozMlRVNTSxUDXSM1U1UjNUM6xBJYF0jbGaGZi0AJKGZhAJiLyhmrmaoWqZCQAI2Q80
First Match
The first game couldn't be called a game. We just got out of turn 1. I had played 1 game previously and my opponent played 1.5. We were slow as hell asking about rules. We were actually the reason why the game time got extended. He played Ariadna and was pretty cool. I lost this match 1-0 due to him needing to heal a guy for the secret victory condition. My list was not setup for the missions and I will get into that in a bit.
Second Match
My second match was against a Haqqislam player. I felt more comfortable at this point knowing my list and how the pieces fit. I won the roll and decided to go first. He made me deploy first. I deployed middle and he deployed in a building with the exception of a guy with impersonation. He deployed that guy on the corner of a building in my zone. My Guilang was not in camo because I just noticed he had it.
I move up my Kuang Shi. Then I try discovering his Impersonator. First with the Lieutenant and then with the Zhanshi. Lieutenant fails but the doc succeeds. I then camo the Guilang and make my way in view of the impersonator. I make my discover and then spend an action to make him die. I completed my secret objective of Coup De Grace. I then kill a dude with the Su-Jian and move up. I make a lot of attempts at my opponents sniper. He does a wound to me but not much else.
His first turn is taken shooting at my Su-Jian and trying to complete his secret objective which is to heal a guy. He fails and kills his dude. I lose the CG with the controller but not much else.
Second turn I move my Kuang Shi and lose most of them. I then start moving guys into cover. My Su-Jian is ineffective at shooting but it doesn't matter cause he's still alive.
His second turn is about him killing another Kuang Shi and not much else.
My third is more finding cover and taking shots. His turn three is moving the sniper in place to kill my last Kuang Shi and the Su-Jian. I win 1-0.
In hind sight, I played the Kuang Shi too close for what they needed to do. I should have played them further back and kept them out of harms way.
Third Match
This was against another Haqqislam player. He used a sectoral army with link teams. This was a bloody fight. The mission was two secret objectives and a center object we needed to carry off the board. I won the roll and went first. He made me deploy first. I deploy center with the Kuang Shi on my left and right at the board edge. My Su-Jian starts in combat form with two major fire lanes covered. My Guilang starts cloaked.
He deploys opposite me. He has a lot of link teams. I am sure they are good but my fire power is brutal. More on that in a second.
First turn I go after his Link team on the left of me. Two orders worth of fire kills the two visible model. I try to throw a smoke grenade and die. I move the Su-Jian into view of another guy and we exchange fire. He does a wound and I drop a guy on high ground. It was also his link leader and breaks his final link team. The Kuang Shi don't do much but that is good.
He sets up suppressing fire in a lane by the objective. He moves his third model from the link team on my left and we exchange fire. The model dies.
My turn two is spent burning orders to not have two of the Kuang Shi run into the fire lane. I then setup my own fire lane with the Su-Jian.
His turn two involves moving around the building and into view of a Kuang shi with a boarding shotgun. He fires as they fire on him. He survives and kills all three remaining models with the shot. I win 1-0.
I often heard that this game isn't like 40k in the fact you can't lose because of setup. While it's mostly true, it's not always the case. I have also heard that you can't really have a bad army. Not exactly true either. You can deploy badly and either lose a ton of models or lose because the opponent can easily with by the mission. Your army list can easily not have anything to handle the mission. My army list was geared toward tabling an opponent. Very good for 40k but will lose most times in Infinity.
We had one rule issue I wanted to bring up. I had to switch my medic to an engineer the final match because you need one for a remote. I didn't know that and didn't have an engineer or a hacker. The issue is I also didn't have a remote. Chris thought the Su-Jian was a remote. In the description, it basically says it's remotely piloted but is the greatest achievement in HI technology. It's a HI troop.
I learned that missions need to be planned for. If not, you probably already lost. If the event lets you take multiple lists, have them ready. It takes a lot more strategy than one would think for a skirmish game.
For a learning tournament, it was a blast. I learned a lot and was able to understand the rules much better. My first match not ending round 1 in an hour was an issue but my last two matches ended in 30 minutes or less. There was also a lot of times during those matches we would ask questions or just talk. I actually went home and immediately started painting my guys. It was a lot of fun.
I will end this with something The Mik said, "I've found that Infinity does lend itself to more bad-@$$, cinematic movies such as that than compared to 40k". It really does.