To Infinity...

...OK, I won't do it!

So...it seems that I miscounted a bit and this is not my 100th post, but actually the 99th, so you'll just have to wait a bit longer for that milestone. So, in this post I'd like to talk a little about Infinity, which I got to play last night. A couple of very nice gents at the G3 club in Glasgow, who play Infinity a lot, agreed to hold a couple of demo/intro games for George and I. The format was a simple deathmatch game using the contents of the starter set for your chosen faction. Happily, I bought a load of Nomad figures at the beginning of January, of which about half were painted, maybe more! The painted figures included the starter set, so I was good to go!

A Nomad Zero skulks about a gantry

I'll not give a full AAR as it a was learning game, but I'll talk a bit about the system and what I liked about it. First off, Infinity employs an action/reaction system not entirely unlike Force on Force. The significant difference, though, is that the reacting unit(s) don't fire with full effect as they would do in FoF. This means that isolating a figure and attacking with an active one will give you an advantage. Go against something significantly better, though, and the odds start to even out. This is down to the 'head to head' roll which is a pretty interesting mechanic. If you're shooting at each other, then whoever rolls highest, but under their target number, wins and hits their opponent. If you're model is attacking then you get the full 'burst' from the weapon (I think 3 seems a common burst value). The reacting figure only gets 1, no matter what the burst rating of the weapon. So, rolling 3 dice versus 1 you actually have a chance of pitting an average soldier against an elite one (in FoF, it's a lot riskier to do that, as you're likely to get your nose bloodied before you get to fire). However, if your opponent has more figures in LOS then they can all fire at you, so this game becomes one of immense positional importance. And that I like!

It helps if you can play on tables like this!!!

Sure there are some wee oddities to do with how you announce orders and the fact that figures can keep moving after they 'die', but all in all, this is a pretty solid and engaging game. One strength certainly seems to be that no figure that you take will be totally useless. Some are clearly better than others, but you pay more points for them, and with the right dice rolls and positioning, even the lowliest grunt can take out the best warriors! Last night I had a lowly Securitate (a pretty average soldier) take out a power armoured heavy infantry unit because I pushed my luck.

My Securitate hides... 

...from this!! Although luck would be with the Nomads and she would plug this guy at the end!

The starter sets gave roughly 110-120 points and both games were over in about an hour. So it is quite quick to play if you know what you're doing. If it were just George and I then I daresay we would have been there all night, so my thanks to Andrew Bussey and Andrew Paul for tolerating our newbie questions and guiding us through the games.

So, in summary, Infinity seems like a good, fun game. It's got a good bit of depth to it and I look forward to playing it more this year. There's a campaign ongoing at the club and hopefully the guys will be able to make room for a new player!