Continuing our look at Infinity and it’s newly released Operation: Icestorm starter set, OC takes his first steps into Corvus Belli’s universe and writes about his thoughts on the boxed set and his first experiences of playing the game.
The Operation: Icestorm set.
14 Til’ Infinity
As you may know, few things stop me spending money on boxes and blister packs of plastic and metal toys, but in the past a few things had put me off getting into Infinity. While the near impenetrable complexity of it’s vernacular (Sectorials, Tohaa, Reverend Moiras) was a stumbling block initially, the main issue I had was the aesthetics and design of the models. A few cultural milestones like Akira and Ghost in the Shell aside, anime has never been something I’ve overly immersed myself in, and I find many of the aesthetics commonly associated with it quite distasteful, and on the whole, seeing those aspects carried over into model design very unappetizing. Observe:
Sigh.
Now, hopefully if you are reading this blog, I don’t need to explain why the concept of “sexy wargaming minatures” is totally abhorrent, and if you genuinely aren’t sure, perhaps Corehammer isn’t the website for you. So as Infinity approaches it’s third edition (which Operation Icestorm is the first part of), have Corvus Belli rectified this? Err, not entirely, sadly. As “gamergate” is currently showing, there are some fundamental issues in nerd culture involving the objectification of women that I sadly feel won’t be going away any time soon.
The release of Operation Icestorm has at least dealt with my first issue, in that it provides an easy jump in point, with everything you need to play a game of Infinity. Well, kind of. While the box does contain, the models, scenery, tokens, templates and D20 dice you require, the rule book only contains a set of starter scenarios that gradually introduce a basic set of rules that allow you to play starter Infinity. This was one of the things that initially disappointed me in the box. While the full rules are available for free on the website, flicking unfamiliar pages of text on an iPad in the middle of a game isn’t going to be particularly conducive to it’s flow. Even the evil empire of Games Workshop include the full rules (minus army lists) in their starter boxes like Sanctus Reach and Dark Vengeance.
The box itself also had a few other disappointments, in that the quality of the included materials was disappointingly poor. The gaming mat is a poster, the card used for the buildings is barely cereal box quality in thickness and the templates and counters are printed on even thinner card that will unlikely suffer more duress than a single play through the starter campaign (indeed, when packing the buildings away for transport before my first game, I managed to drop one of them and in the act of catching it ripped the tab that holds the roof up clean off). When you look around at the boxes produced by the competition (hard plastic templates from GW, a mousemat material playmat and hard plastic buildings from Mantic in Deadzone, thick card counters in Fantasy Flight games and Space Hulk), you can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed. The bright almost neon aesthetics of the buildings are eye-catching and a far cry from the dour grey futures we normally battle in, and you get this feeling it could have been so much more.
While the 64 page rulebook is nicely layed out, again, there is a pang of disenchantment when you realise that half of it is the exact same rules and passages, but in Spanish. It does at least give you an introduction to the factions in Infinity, and include a nicely structure narrative led campaign that as I mentioned earlier, gradually introduces new aspects of the starter ruleset mission by mission. This is a great approach, and one I’ve enjoyed since the 2nd Edition of 40K, but even once you’ve played it, you still wouldn’t be able to play a full game of Infinity, or be familiar with whole sections of the rules (such as hacking), which I can’t help but feel could be improved upon.
The models themselves, sexiness aside, were actually very impressive. As far as i’m aware the recent trend for Infinity sculpts has been a move away from oversized guns into more realistic and seriously proportioned models, which can only be a good thing. They are characterful sculpts and feel quite unique compared to the more generic approaches of a lot of other companies. Again though, only including 15 troops in a £75 boxset (or 14 once the limited initial run is gone) is something that GW would get crucified for. I get that you need less for a game, but does that really make it ok? The models are well cast and assemble surprisingly easy (fiddly helmet antennae, and a knife blade I mistook for flash aside) for their spindly nature, thanks to a clever use of triangle sockets, which takes away the frustrating guesswork of whether components will line up.
Bit of flash or original knife this Spektr came with? I’m pretending not to care.
So in summation, while there really are a lot of things I like about this boxed set, it didn’t blow me away either, there were just too many areas that I felt below the levels I have come to expect. Wayland Games said that the pre-order sales for O:I were some of the largest they have ever seen outside of a GW product, and the launch was delayed by a few weeks to enable to Corvus Belli to manufacture more. I get the feeling that as a small company they had to play it safe with their costings, whereas if they’d been able to invest more initially, they could have ended up with something up there with the best.
Calculating Infinity
OC, as fragile and spindly as an Infinity model, sets up the first game.
The vantage point turned out to be a disadvantage.
We found the speed of the game pretty fast, the basic one wound troops died pretty quickly, and I think that impacted on our decisions for the next game, where as you can see a more cautious approach led to my troops covering eachother from supporting positions while hugging the cover.
The work of a tactical genius.
Even as highly seasoned gamers, we found some of the rules and their descriptions confusing, and our first game took about three or four times as long as it should as we struggled with the wording. This reached a zenith in the face-to-face shooting rules, where shooting at a model that can see you allows you to shoot back, and various combinations of dice being higher/lower can cause them to cancel other dice. Once we finally had settled on an interpretation (that cancelled dices set off a chain reaction meaning that they can’t cancel other dices themselves), we recieved a message from Duggan informing us it was actually the other way around.
The other aspect of the rules that I found most challenging was that the dice rolls varied almost randomly between rolling over or rolling under various stats, which when you were applying a series of modifiers routinely meant we had to start again and follow everything through a bit slower. I imagine this improves with familiarity though.By the time we played our second game, things were running a lot smoother, and as mentioned, we had a better grasp of the tactics. The terrain contained in the box was well suited to balancing a characterful environment while presenting a functional gaming environment with fire alleys and high areas you could dominate from. The cover also led to you having to keep in mind where obscured models were, as Boardie found out after he killed one of my Alguaciles from behind, only to find himself being shot in the back in my following turn.
The smug PanO fusilier about to get his comeuppance.
Once we had the basic mechanics of the game down, we had a real blast playing it. It doesn’t play as smoothly or as intuitively as our current favourite X-Wing, but it does present a different tactical challenge to other skirmish games, that forces you to think, perhaps in a similar way to X-Wing, more realistically about what could happen in the future. Your models are very fragile (both in and out of the game), so one mistake could lead to half your team being taken down in a turn, so not allowing someone to appear behind you after outflanking your team is vital.
Calculated Infinity
So after my initial disappointments, i’ve got to say I really enjoyed playing the game, and have pre-ordered the N3 rulebook for it’s release at the end of the year so that I can get further into it’s world. I’m still not keen on a lot of the model designs and aesthetics (and confused about which ones can go in which factions), but if I’m being honest, anything that stops me buying more models is a positive. Would I recommend the game to others? Yes, but with the hesitance, as it’s a big investment for what you actually get compared to other systems’ starters. Well, and that some of the models are “sexy”.