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Other systems - Infinity & Hordes of the Things
OnlineI fancy a bit of non-GW gaming, so for the next few weeks I hope to bring along some starter forces for a couple of games.
Infinity is a Manga/Ghost in the Shell inspired SF skirmish game with very tactical and fast-moving gameplay. It's also far more shooting oriented than 40k - any gaps between terrain more than 10" tend to turn into killing zones... In effect, all models are always on overwatch but can choose to do things other than fire as a response, for instance moving toward the firer or ducking behind cover etc.
Corvus Belli have put up some quite good intro videos:
Rules 1/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogtjm7UspSQ
Rules 2/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24DJrs3b9p4
Rules 3/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCfmOAGWAUY
Plus a slightly older version of the rules is available as a PDF.
I don't find the background universe all that interesting and the figures have a very specific style, so to start with I'll be proxying with figures from 40k and other SF ranges.
Time for a smaller game is about an hour, so should fit in quite well before or after a 40k/Warhammer game.
Hordes of the Things (HOTT) is a fantasy wargame for almost any scale and any figure range, I've run games very successfully using Warhammer figures in the past. Rather than individual models, everything is done by 'elements' which is a bunch of figures on one big base (or in our case on a movement tray).
In your turn you get d6 points which can be used to move elements or groups of elements (an army has around 10-20 elements), summon gods, rally fleeing forces etc. If you're thinking that sounds a little like Warmaster, there are quite a few bits of Warmaster that were inspired by HOTT.
Each ranged element gets to fire and each element in close combat gets to fight even with no points spent on them. Opposing elements in a combat each roll a single d6 and add a few modifiers which sounds very simplistic but the result depends on the types of element fighting and whether the winning side just won or doubled the opposing score.
For example Blades (close-formation fighters such as Roman Legionaries, Greatwords etc.) get +5 against foot while Warbands (wild Celts, bigger Orcs etc.) get +3. The Blades will almost always win making the Warband retreat a bit, but they need to get double to kill them. The Warbands just need to win to kill the Blades. This leads to a nicely convincing series of pushbacks by the Blades but the Blades eventually get overwhelmed. In the same way Heroes and Magicians are your best bet against Dragons or Gods. Behemoths (Giants, Steam Tanks, big units of Trolls or Ogres) on the other hand tend to stomp all over Heroes.
Horde elements (Goblins, Clanrats, Zombies, Skeletons etc.) are truly hordes - you can spend your d6 points to bring back dead elements, hence the name of the game.
Playing time is about 45m so again a good time-filler game and you can even play a short campaign in an evening. I need to dig out the link to the free PDF version as it's now out of print.
Ian
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HOTT sounds good for me at some point. Probably won't be for a few weeks as snowed under with work at the moment (meetings in Salisbury and Cheltenham next week), but definitely will give it a go.
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I wouldn't mind trying out infinity with you next week. I will check out those videos when I get home later :) I an a but partial to ghost in the shell kind of things...
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HOTT PDF (watch out, it's about 16MB because it's a scan):
http://www.wrg.me.uk/HISTORY/HOTT2.pdf
To give you a rough idea of how a Warhammer army would convert:
High Elves:
Spears for Apearmen.
Blades for Swordmasters, White Lions and possibly Phoenix Guard.
Shooters for Archers.
Artillery for Bolt Throwers.
Knights for Silver Helms & Dragon Princes.
Riders for Reavers.
Skaven:
Either Warbands for Clanrats & Hordes for Slaves, or Hordes for everything.
Blades for Stormvermin.
Behemoths for Plague Furnaces, Abominations, Doomwheels and maybe for a bunch of Rat Ogres.
Artillery for WL Cannon, Poison Catapults & units of Jezzails.
Lurkers or Sneakers for Runners & Globadiers.
Beasts for Giant Rats & Swarms.
Empire:
Warband, Spears or Shooters for State Militia depending on equipment.
Blades for Greatswords.
Behemoth for Steam Tanks.
Knights for Knights.
Aerial Hero for Karl Franz.
Vampire Counts:
Hero, Magician or Paladin for Vampires.
Hordes for Zombies & Skeletons (reanimate, reanimate, reanimate...).
Warbands for Ghouls.
Knights for Blood Dragons.
Blades for Grave Guard.
Etc.
Ian
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Main Infinity site:
http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity_ENG/
Rules PDFs (translated from Spanish, not always easy to read)
Much better rules PDF that someone put together on the Infinity forum.
The one Infinity model I have that is nearly finished is a six-legged mini-tank, it did have a dedicated thread in the old infinity forums, best place to see it now is in the Warseer M, P&T forum.
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70062
Ian
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Gonna have me a look at the infinity rules- the way you describes them last week made it sound like alot of fun!
Looks like I won't have time to sort out figures for HOTT by tomorrow so I'll only be bringing along stuff for Infinity. Having had a few test games now I've discovered which bits of the rules needed a more thorough reading... ;-)
Ian
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That went quite well this evening - Dom's already decided to buy a starter kit for an Infinity Aleph force. :-)
Next week I'll be bringing along infinity models and HOTT forces.
Some more Infinity links:
Deployment tutorial, very handy for getting an idea how to use different models.
Jaw-dropping Infinity demo table from the Salute convention.
Long Warseer thread from a guy who makes paper terrain, including lots of plans for downloading and printing.
Ian
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Indeed I have, and its on its way! Just to let everyone know, ordering from that site, they dont appear to mention shipping (if they did I missed it) until they are actually billing your card. It took the price of that starter set up to 45EUR, but in real money that was only £35 which I feel is a pretty good deal for 6 metal models (compared to the price of getting 6 metal models out of GW at least).
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Take a look at Maelstrom before you order any more, they appear to stock almost everything Infinity-wise.
Ian
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ooo, good point, I didn't even think of checking maelstrom!
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Nor did I until late last night. :-(
Ian
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if you ever get up there for an event, maelstrom do 15% off for all tournament competitors
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Which reminds me, there's a 1750pt 40k tournament there in March...
Ian
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Yeah, looks good. Think I'll be doing it!
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So Domo has the Aleph starter set on the way for Infinity, which is about 180 points. Standard games are 250-300 points so it's a good chunk of an army.
I've ordered robots. LOTS of robots! It cost quite a bit more than the equivalently-pointed Aleph force, though - a Nomad remote army has quite a few figures which are expensive to buy but not many points. The Zondbots, for instance, are 3 points each but cost about £4 each...
Here's my working list:
http://www.infinitycreator.com/users/3/army_lists/print?id=5957
Ian
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Found the list of points values for the Infinity starter sets.
Faction Starter Packs
PanOceania 113
Yu Jing 124
Ariadna 125
Haqqislam 119
Nomads 114
Combined Army 180
ALEPH 175
Sectorial Armies Starter Packs
Japanese Sectorial Army 115
Shock Army of Acontecimento 121
Caledonian Highlander Army 126
Hassassin Bahram 139
Shasvastii Expeditionary Army 153
Ian
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The remotes turned up this morning. Oh my, there's a lot of tiny parts...
Ian
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All:
Lunokhod:
Two Tsyklons:
For scale, those are 40mm bases in the box.
Ian
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Just to let everyone know, I'll be putting together a few more small Infinity forces for next week, including a some more specialists like medics and remotes.
Ian
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My Nomad painting blog over on the Infinity forum.
Ian
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My starter set has just arrived :D
The models look gorgeous but are in a suprising number of very small fine pieces... :S I think I can assemble them completely before painting though, after looking at the poses on the box.
On a side note - It doesn't affect me much as I only ever use the "latest forum posts" page, but maybe we should look at different sub forums for the different games now that the club is branching out?
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The forums might need a reshuffle anyway, if I manage to setup Clive's whiteboard idea for organising games.
Ian
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Unfortunatley it looks like I might not be able to make it to the club for the next couple of weeks :( sods law really now that my models have arrived. However, in turn I will leave you with these images, first assembled and unpainted and second primed black :) Enjoy! (also, just for Honsou if he looks at this thread - proof that my IG are being worked on in the background!)
I have to say I am rather impressed with the quality of the models. Much much less flashing to clean off the models, and on the whole the pieces fit together almost perfectly, only 2 of the 6 models requiring a small bit of green stuff to fill in the seams!
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That's a shame if you can't make it. On the other hand that gives me more time to look up how all the special rules for your models work...
Ian
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Yeah, I have all the rulebooks / errata etc all printed out and in a folder that I plan to keep at work and slowly make my way through on my lunchbreaks and when I am generally feeling lazy :P
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I got Richard & Paul playing an intro game this evening, this time some lists without many heavy weapons - apart from a basic grunt with a sniper rifle, who in Richard's hands turned out to be remarkably good at rolling criticals. :-(
Ian
P.S. I now have nine of the cardboard buildings made up plus the two containers, and the wheels on the cars are all glued in place.
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Yes I joined in and enjoyed my game. The sniper was man of the match for me. His sustained burst of fire annihilated Paul's elite soldier. Quite a surprise considering how difficult to kill the sniper had proved to be earlier.
It's not a fast game but definitely fun and very tactical. Masses of scenery is essential. Our scenery drive just got another 'to do' list I think.
Thanks again Ian for supervising the game.
I also liked the way our make-shift D20s worked.
There's certainly a strong tendency to analysis paralysis compared to most GW games, just because there are so many possible actions you can take.
The scenery drive definitely took on more urgency for me after playing a couple of test games of Infinity.
Ian
P.S. Just packed my d20s in the dice box. oops.
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Makeshift d20's sounds like fun! :p
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Not only did he kill, (I think), two of my 4-man team, but I just couldn't harm him in return!
It didn't improve much with my game against Ian; not only must my medic have lied on his application form as he couldn't save anyone, but I could not roll a single dodge at all!
Both games were fun though, and thanks again Ian.