The Pen of Penemue

I recently had the chance to square off against Century (who will be running our terrain tournament in early July), playing Mission 401 in a duel between my Ariadna forces and the hated Aleph minions. My primary goal was to get as many expensive units off the board as possible.  Only specialists can take the magic elevators, though, so I had to create a list focused on forward observers, engineers, and...yes, even a costly Lieutenant.  Since Ariadna can't upgrade their heavies into Hackers (like a number of other factions ), I had to be a little judicious with my unit selection - I didn't want to take specialists that would be easily shot to pieces, but I also didn't have as many options as other factions might. This way of thinking led to a fairly large pool of specialists to interact with objectives and scram off the board as soon as the elevators were active: Irmandinho (Mono CCW) - because of some careful positioning on my part, my Irmandinho was able to re...

Just this past Friday, the Ottawa Infinity Association held our Paradiso One tournament.  We only had four players due to a wide variety of reasons, but everyone fought hard to take their place in the winner's circle! Our four players were as follows: Endalyon, running Tohaa; Henshini, running the Imperial Service; Robock, running Bakunin; and yours truly, running the Imperial Service as well.  After three rounds, the smoke cleared to reveal a resounding Imperial Service victory, with me and Henshini taking first and second place. Here are some photos from the day: Table 1 (side view) Table 2 (side view) Table 3 (side view) Table 3 - ISS vs ISS Table 3 - Sforza Holos! Table 1 - Tohaa amasses! Table 1 - Bakunin lines up! Table 1 - Moderator Link in Shadow Table 3 - half-painted Kuang Shi Table 3 - Husong waiting for prey Table 3 - Celestial Guard link awaits... Table 3 - Sforza takes a dirt nap Table 1 - Modera...

This past Friday, I squared off against Endalyon yet again, this time in Mission 302.  We've both been noticing that for whatever reason, we almost always end up paired off together after the initial round.  This must mean something, but I really have no idea what. Anyway, on to the mission!  We rolled a very reasonably scattering of Crash Coffins, with only one side being slightly favoured.  Endalyon won the initiative roll, so I quickly snatched up the "better" side to dull the inevitable pain of the first turn advantage.  And what a pain it was... With his first turn, Endalyon blitzed his Sophotect and her Yudbot forward, intent on discovering as much as possible.  It helped that Endalyon's dice were on fire, because he revealed 4 Assistants and the Delegate almost immediately.  The turn ended with Sophie synching up with the delegate (on her second attempt - thank you, -3 synch penalty!) and running behind a building. Cue my first hero of the...

A few days ago, I squared off against Bayruun in Mission 301.  Now, our local group is playing at medium difficulty (15 minute turns, the ship explodes on an 8+), so our game didn't last all that long. In fact, the ship exploded just before either of us got a third turn. As a result, there's really not much to say about this mission.  Most of the units we took sat there and did nothing while specialists zipped around, trying to make sure that everyone could board the escape pods just in case the ship didn't blow up at the very first opportunity.  That didn't happen, of course, but that doesn't mean we didn't try... My side. His side. My side, behind the wall.  Lego dropships! I ended up running two combat groups.  One (Task Force Red) was made solely of Infiltrators and included Uxia McNeill (Covert Action version); the other (Task Force Blue) consisted mostly of fire support for an Irmandinho and a Kaplan Engineer.  I went into thi...

I love Ariadna. In fact, I love it so much that it is my adopted homeland. Every time I take to the field with my low-tech tough-guys (and gals), I get a little more confident that Ariadna is a faction for the skilled and the gutsy. That said, I absolutely can't wait to play another faction in Campaign Paradiso. Argh . Corvus Belli has done a great job of making sure that we want to take previously-unused loadouts and models, specialists and baggage-bots, in the campaign. This seems really cool until you realize that the distribution of these fancy toys isn't quite as even across the table as you'd think. Infiltrating Hackers, for instance, are available to every other faction except Tohaa. Combined Army and Yu Jing even get three, while Haqqislam (our low-tech buddy) gets two. AD Hackers are available to every other army as well (barring Tohaa), and in some cases the drop-troop hacker is a real badass like the Ragik or the Tiger . That's just o...

Because we have a few people that are coming into (and leaving) our local Campaign Paradiso, I had the pleasure of playing an extra match this week.  Endalyon and I squared off again, only this time I brought my ISS force to the field. I was initially planning on playing regular ol' Yu Jing, but all the negative comments about the  Bao  really made me want to try them out for myself.  While they didn't really impress me, a lot of their performance woes came from the way the dice fell.  I'm more than willing to give them another chance, because cheap and mobile and plentiful MSV2 models seem really awesome to me. This week, Endalyon and I played Mission 204, and he brought his much-feared Aleph to the table.  Once again, I had to face off against the   Asura and Sophotect objective-taking team , and this time Endalyon added a Myrmidon Officer Lt. to the mix.  I really had my work cut out for me.  This time, at least, I had a few visors...

Ariadna Impressions 20 5 I'd vanquished Overlord in 203, and managed to come face to face with the player who had scored a big zero in the very first chapter: Tevesh.  Now, whether you like him or hate him on the Infinity forums , Tevesh is a great guy to  game with.  He's full of energy and craziness, and he's more than willing to roll with the punches.  And punches were thrown...oh yes, they were thrown. Tevesh's main faction is Haqqislam, one of the main factions I fear in the hands of a skilled player.  It doesn't cheat with extra wounds and fancy crap like ALEPH, but its versatility is staggering.  When preparing my list for this mission, I felt like I had to be ready for just about anything. In the end, Tevesh managed to beat me 2-1 after some nail-biting maneuvers.  We both discovered, though, that our biggest opponent was Lady Luck, not the guy standing across the table - we both flubbed a number of very key rolls, and they were (in...

I have very recently found the time to play some more Infinity!  I managed to crank out a few Paradiso games (against Ottawa's Overlord and Tevesh) and a non-Paradiso game (against Ottawa's Robock).  I'm going to start working on some game summaries now, and I'll (hopefully) have them out by next week.  This includes Missions 203 and 205 for Campaign: Paradiso and my "Ariadna Impressions" series! Stay tuned!

Ariadna Impressions 201 This mission was over in a flash. In fact, it was over so quickly that it's honestly not worth giving highlights or unit achievement summaries, except for maybe presenting the order in which my troops died to an order-fueled Marut. I don't think that this will really help the matter, though... Endalyon opted to go first, and proceeded to jam his Lieutenant Marut down my army's throat. I managed to slow it down with multiple AROs and some careful advance positioning, but it kept doing its thing and I kept losing troops. By the end of the rampage, I was done to around 5 orders (out of a whopping 17, including 2 Irregulars), and there was very little I could do when my turn rolled around. There were a few bright shining moments in this turn/game, though. I managed to hit and wound the Marut with my Briscard, as the Aleph war machine rolled something like 18, 18, 19, 20. We later realized that it was in a harsh environment and that i...

Ariadna Impressions 103 I threw down with Endalyon the other day to play Campaign: Paradiso's Missions 103 and 201. Endalyon usually plays JSA, but he's chosen to run his chiefly-vedic Aleph army for our current campaign. As you might have gathered from my posts so far, I actually fear playing Aleph, so I went into these two games with a bit of trepidation. In the end, I managed to squeak out a 1-0 win for 103. We got stuck with opposite corner deployment, and while Endalyon struggled to put together a 250 Aleph list, I found it difficult to split my orders in such a way that the destruction of one group wouldn't outright screw me. On top of that, I put together a list that breaks one of my fundamental rules of campaign play: I didn't take more than one actual multi-wound ARO weapon. Normally I find this to be really useful, but it seems like a necessity against Aleph (with their fast “2 wound” specialists), but for some reason I decided to take a d...