Infinity - Your thoughts?

[Spiketrap]

Id like to know what people think of Infinity. It looks super inexpensive, fast paced, tactical, and for lack of a better term, bad ass.

I started on 40k, switched to fantasy, then fell in love with war machine/hordes. I like smaller games because I love painting, and playing with more than the simple die rolls, where terrain, position, etc. are important.

What is everyones consensus on this game?

[JeanyVixen]

Infinity is inexpensive, fast paced, tactical and bad ass.
Inexpensive in the way that you don't need more than a handful of models. Mostly people don't play more than 10. As far as I've experienced, it's also hard to make an over powered army/warband. It feels very balanced in that way.
Another thing I like with it s that it's very action based. Since you get to act on any enemy move from an action that brings your opponents model in line of sight, you're never really unactive through the game.
And of course, they have a large selection of cool miniatures to pick from.

[Klajorne]

Probably should have started a new thread, but it was related:

Gameplay-wise, how do the factions differ?

All I know of Infinity so far is that you walk around in a lot of scenery and shoot each other. I get that there's some factions that are more shooty, and more melee-y, but a quick explanation of how factions play would be appreciated.

[Intrepid]

PanO's main claim to fame is their Knight heavy infantry models. Yu Jing has the highest technology, most specifically camouflage. Ariadna has the lowest tech (not the drawback you'd think it is) and a "guts & glory" attitude. They were popular with the milsim crowd at my LGS. Nomads have the edge as computer hackers at the expense of proper soldiers, so they're more of a challenge army. Haqqislam comes closest to the Russian army idea of floods of cheap infantry. (Although it's Yu Jing that does the actual convict-fodder.) And the Combine is the powergamer's choice. They're the army with so many special rules, exotic equipment and exceptions to normal play you can't hardly fight them.

Not sure about the other factions. I think Aleph has the best leadership but could be mistaken. The books' layout confuses me and I haven't seen Aleph in action.

They factions are similar enough that you can't go far wrong choosing your army by the coolness factor. PanO's holy knights, Yu Jing's ninjas and godlike Hac Tao, Haq's assassins and medics, Adriadna's... um... Scottish Highlanders in kilts. The Combine's super-soldier (I forget its name) was actually banned from our store for being overpowered.

Unlike 40k, don't obsess over melee. The rules favor modern combat and, even with thermoptic camo, knife fights don't happen every game.

[Klajorne]

Yeah, been giving it a good read-over at work this time. I'm thinking about buying a couple starter kits (Haqqislam and Yu Jing) so that I can get my skirmish fix, especially since I'm going to be picking up some Infinity-based terrain soon. While I love me some 40k, I like my games to be infantry focused (like the intro to Dawn of War) instead of about tanks and planes. I feel like I should be playing tank commander these days, especially with the more competitive groups.

[Spiketrap]

I played my first game. I love it. This game feels like CoD the Miniatures game. Its not a game to just sit down and chill. You have to get up and go look through your models eyes to shoot stuff.

[Certs]

Definitely a fun system, very tactical and swat-style, much more preferable than 40k killteams. Like Khajorne, I prefer a focus on infantry tactics compared to 40k's current mech-spam theme in most competitive lists.

A big highlight for me in the game, I love how customizable the list composition is, being guided mainly just by what models you want, since infantry units have options to perform multiple roles if required. When I first started looking at the online army-builder, I just didn't know where to start with all the options. So eventually, I just threw in the units I liked and thought I might need (mainly just a trauma-doc w/ palbot)... and now I have like 9 lists I plan to play with eventually.

And with just the PO starter pack and shock army pack (and a Cutter because they're cool), I have access to enough models and variety to proxy for just all of those lists, which is encouraged by the company too so there's no pressure to get a model just for wysiwyg purposes in games (need to check on what NOVA's stance on this is for their Infinity Tournament).

For gameplay, would highly recommend that each person has a quick reference sheet detailing all the special rules any of their units have to help streamline gameplay as well as stats for their army list and weapons. Also, for you're true line of sight needs, a laser pointer (like the one GW sells if you already have it) is great for determining LoF without continuously having to bend over the table and squint your eyes.

Also, as I play Malifaux, I felt compelled to buy this already but for anyone looking into Infinity but short on LoS-blocking terrain when transitioning from 40k games, I'd highly recommend checking out the Terraclips series for extensive use of their walls/sniper nests in filling out the space between what terrain you may already have.

The complete set can be a little time consuming to make and the clips can be a little obtrusive to look at, but if you skip clipping all the floor tiles together (or even using them) and just clip the walls to each other than you forego most of the negatives. The only floor tiles that need to get clipped are any elevated floors/balconies that you choose to put in. The Streets and Sewers set w/ 2-3 boxes of clips (pending on if you want to clip the complete layout or not) is about enough by themselves to break up an entire 4x4 tabletop even before throwing in other terrain.

After we initially learned the correct rules (trouble in the beginning as no one knew them and the person teaching us ended up having an incorrect interpretation of the QSR), a fun map layout we began to use is 100 point games in a 2x3 table (deploying on short ends), with a ton of the walls thrown up to make a maze of hallways and a couple sniper nests, I like to call the set-up 'kill-house' after the mock-up buildings swat/spec ops use to train with as it helps us get 'train' with getting use to the rules and infantry tactics.