"Meteoric Rise of Infinity?" Topic

Farstar, there is no "army list comparison phase" in Infinity. You can pick pretty much any models you like the looks of and make a usable force on the table.

Yes, really.

None of this, "you need to have 'Fats Dominar' and a trio of Titans to be successful" BS, or the "this army doesn't do ranged support at all" BS.

The only army list requirement is that you must have an on-table commander, the Lieutenant. Anything else is how you want to play. We make a lot of recommendations to have 8-10 models per combat group, not more than 2-3 models starting the game off the table (ie, in Airborne or Hidden Deployment), and to not have less than 7 Regular orders.

But I know one guy who is competitive (won a tournament competitive) with 3 models: Sun Tze, a Guijia TAG, and a Hac Tao Heavy Infantryman.

We've really taken a shine to infinity lately and the game [plays very good. I'd call it a cinematic skirmish with real tactic generally paying off.

I can see that many people have trouble understanding the free form of the force build, especially coming from the "GW" style of army building. The only limitations are pretty much as Lion in the Stars says, you need a LT, and must stay under the agreed upon points and are limited to as set number of Support Weapon Costs (1 SWC per 50 points).

As for it being difficult to build a force…..two days after I downloaded the PDF, I had six lists done and ready for my fist game. (I randomly drew a list for each game so I'd have to try different models each game) We managed to get in three games in three hours and had a blast.

Its a pretty simple game to get into, but I admit that as you start exploring the different rules and strategies it can take a little rule hunting to find a few, but overall that's a minimum amount of time hunting with the wiki to help. Remember….three games in three hours and every one of them was a blast.

There are no unbreakable combos (Malifaux or Hordes style) which in my opinion is a relief. I get tired of trying to keep up with the latest FAQ on those two games.

Besides, rules are free to download, and miniatures can be proxied….whats not to love.

Did I mention that after proxying the first three games that I went out and purchased a samall force of infinity models…..Combine Army……and I really like them quite a lot.

Just my humble opinion….and thats from someone who has been in miniature gaming since the mid '80s.

Skipper

You can pick pretty much any models you like the looks of and make a usable force on the table.

The version I was looking at failed to communicate even that. Even finding the listings for the two models I bought was a challenge.

When they manage to produce a rulebook instead of just a book full of rules, let me know.

link

direct pdf link: PDF link

I'm seriously confused, Farstar. There isn't much in the rulebook about how to select an army because there are four total rules about building an 'army.'

1. You must have ONE model selected at the start of the game as your Lieutenant, which model this can be is restricted to those unit profiles that have (Lieutenant) written after the troop name.

2. You may NOT exceed the agreed-upon points for the battle.

3. You have 1 Support Weapon Cost point for every 50 points that you agreed to spend in the battle. 300 point battle gives you 6 SWC points, and you can spend all 6 even if your chosen force is less than the agreed total.

4. You cannot have more of any model than it's AVA. Yu Jing Invincibles have AVA4, you can have 4 of them on the table, no matter the total points you're playing.

That's it. Those are the hard and fast rules for army building in Infinity.

Can you field an entire army of camo markers? Sure can, but flamethrowers (and other direct-template weapons) and multispectral visors counter that.

Can you field an entire army of basic grunts? Sure can, but you're likely to miss some of the specialist gear and skills.

Farstar 18 Apr 2013 3:26 p.m. PST:

When they manage to produce a rulebook instead of just a book full of rules, let me know.

CB do have a propensity of going style over substance, certainly. Reputedly there is an on-line fan edit of sorts of the main rulebook that corrects the worst chicken-and-egg problems at least.

Obviously Infinity has reached some sort of critcal mass here in Finland. It was the only really popular miniatures game (obviously Wh40k had more players in total but compared to the previous years their numbers were dismal) at the local gaming con, Conklaavi, last weekend and the guy who ran the demos reported more than half a dozen pontential new gamers -- that is, folks who actually have contacted him since. When we ran it two to three years back we had I think two guys playing and neither one followed up with actually gaming AFAIK.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of "designed for Infinity" type buildings as of late is probably a sign of increasing popularity worldwide as well.

Late to the party, again, but I thought I would add there is a growing group outside of DC consisiting of about 10 players or mroe in North VA as well as a group up in Glen Burnie, MD. So I would say it is definitely on the rise.

I'm seriously confused, Farstar. There isn't much in the rulebook about how to select an army because there are four total rules about building an 'army.'

Even with your summary, it took a bit of digging around to finally figure out what I had and how many more I might want. I did find that the "Quickstart Rules" file is not optional for a first-timer. The line about "please feel free to proxy, because we can't hope to cover all the options" helped quite a bit, actually.

As I said before, they put the learning curve in the wrong place with Infinity. That may be due to translation shortfalls, but standing in front of a rack of minis with a rulebook should not be as mysterious and frustrating as past editions of Infinity have made it.

I'm sorry you are having trouble with army selection Farstar, but overall our group has been able to pick it up easily after the first game using the starter rules. I like being able to pick the models I want to use. I recomdne using one of the online army builders to test a few 150 point lists out.

Starter packs give a pretty good beginning, then add what you want to the army. Just be careful you do not buy too many heavy weapons as they will eat up you Support Weapon points quickly (but as long as you have enough non-SWC models, even that isn't an issue as you can rotate them in and out.

Skipper

Game looks straightforward, now that I've recognized the importance of the Quickstart document.

Not a big fan of the early perceptions around the type of terrain expected, but the tables I've seen pics of recently seem far more reasonable (if not necessarily cheap) in scope.

Farstar, I strongly encourage you to check out the official Infinity forums. There are threads covering army selection, what the designers think is an appropriate amount of terrain, and some of the most insanely-gifted painters on the net.

But back to the original post, an Infinity staffer recently mentioned that the company has been seeing 20% growth annually since they launched the Infinity line back in 2005! That's pretty meteoric to me, doubling every 3-4 years.

I do appreciate the statement about proxies. "Please do. We aren't going to get to every possible model configuration any time soon."

I don't know if anybody else mentioned it, but I think the rules are written a lot clearer on their online wiki. It's really handy during games to be able to just hop on your phone or tablet and look up rules instead of flipping through the book.