Infinity, trying again

Had the opportunity to try the Infinity tabletop game again.

A guy I work with has been slowly collecting forces from five of the factions: the Nomads, the Chinese/Japanese army, the very similar but not Chinese/Japanese ocean force, gorilla aliens, space hackers, the Islamic faction and the American/Scotsmen with werewolves.

Yeah I am not really up to snuff when it comes to the factions in this game. I know even less about the models themselves besides that the names are mostly terrible to remember and at times say out loud.

Alright right off the top. This is not competitive play.

These forces are very piecemeal. They are lower points and mostly a mish-mosh of what units he has primed and assembled. So they are probably not ideal, correct, have not the proper synergy etc. etc. etc. We don’t care and are just trying the game out to see if we want to continue to play it.

This is a chance to play a tabletop game where I don’t have to purchase of paint more models.

First game I chose the American’s from space and faced off against the not Chinese/Japanese Ocean guys. We just ran with three guys each this game and played kill I believe Annihilation. I had a heavy machine gunner, a flamethrower guy and some rifle grunt. It was a stupid fast game with only three guys each and three turns. I ended up winning by killing two of the enemy on the second turn and avoiding any return  fire the final turn.

My initial deployment 

The second game I played I used the spaceship hackers. We added a few more guys so we had five per side this time. I had three rifle grunts, a heavy machine gun guy, a medic and some lady with like therm-optic camouflage or something crazy like that. I face off against the not Chinese/Japanese ocean force again. This was another Annihilation game and it was kind of a shit show for my opponent. I killed three of his guys on his first turn as they moved from cover and I shot at them as a reaction to their movement. I was bunkered up really well with some great lanes of fire. Needless to say after that the last two turns were very boring. I did run my camo cloak lady out to see if she could do anything fun. All she did was draw fire and not get hit thanks to being at long range and mostly invisible.

So two more games played and I watch two other games played. I still am on the fence about this game.

The games are fast and stupid brutal. Being able to react to the opponent’s actions ( an A.R.O. as they call it ) is pretty cool! You are never really out of the game and have to pay attention all the time.

The amount of terrain needed is awesome and awful at the same time. If you are short of funds or lack arts/craft skills this will kill the game for you. Our table was so littered with cover and yet, it seemed like there was still not enough to keep from getting shot at.

The D20 mechanic for the game gets a bit silly. The opposing roll but my roll is under and closer to the value than your roll which is higher but not closer to your skill value seems really odd at times. Plus there is a whole cancellation of rolls when rolling to see who rolled the lower than or equal to the value. Yeah I went cross-eyed a few times during my second game. I imagine with more games this all makes sense.

The models are pretty sweet. The game setting is everything Shadowrun wants to be without the magic and nonsense.

The unit names are still just terrible. Some of them makes sense. The majority of unit names just seem like letters thrown together in a random combination. I find it really off-putting.

The rulebooks are kind of a mess. I know this game is from Spain, but was there a bad translation of the rules or do they just build their rule book to be not really user friendly. It felt like reading a tech manual instead of a typical tabletop game manual. Yes I know with time it is probably a stellar book. However, for noobie it is a bit overwhelming with all the rules, skill and such thrown in there. Hell, we didn’t even use the big robot suits or hacker that are prevalent in the game.

Another chance to play a couple more games. I am still not sold on Infinity. I know it must be really fun with the rate this game is growing. I guess if people purchase and paint the models. Have all the terrain and a sweet basement set-up to play, then I’ll stop by to roll dice and move models around. I just won’t dive into the game like I did for 40K and Hordes.

We could really use a third party to teach us the game. Maybe I’ll try a demo at Gencon to see how that goes? It still just feels a bit clunky and at times confusing with all the unit stuff and special gear.