"Infinity Miniatures Question" Topic

I have been reading the Infinity game rules. A game is approximately played between two opposing squads of figures; with forces consisting of 4 to 10 miniatures per side.

Scrolling through the Infinity miniatures catalog I notice while there is a lot of unique miniatures, there are only a few sculpts of any given type of trooper.

For example if a force was made up only PanOceania ORC troopers there is only one sculpt for the multi rifle armed trooper, only 3 ORCS troops total in the catalog.

The skirmish level of the game combined with the rich quality of the miniatures would seem to suggest a board where each figure was unique. So how to people build their armies?

Do folks focus on one troop type from a nation with duplicate sculpts in your army, or does the army represent a sample from the various troop types and regiments. Being unfamiliar with the background I am unsure how mix the armed forces of these nations are.

I was just wondering what the norm was in the Infinity crowd.

Thanks

I found this beginner guide:

infinity-ireland.org/node/13

And, of course these are some of the starter sets:

I don't know how helpful this was… but those are cool minis

I play Aleph Myrmidons with a couple of uniques like Achilles, etc. Myrmidons come as a set.

No idea what "the norm [is] in the Infinity crowd" but while the rules do posit some limitations on the force regarding what you have to take and how many of a certain troop type you can take, they are few and far between (this latter in the sense that they rarely come into play in practice). So if you want to use a given mix of troopers as your force you generally can do so. The fluff reason for this IIRC is that your force represents a small elite task team so it does make sense in its way, but the mix-and-match force construction obviously also well supports Corvus Belli's choice of a "k00l new toy for everyone, every month" sales model.

The skirmish level of the game combined with the rich quality of the miniatures would seem to suggest a board where each figure was unique. So how to people build their armies?

Do folks focus on one troop type from a nation with duplicate sculpts in your army, or does the army represent a sample from the various troop types and regiments. Being unfamiliar with the background I am unsure how mix the armed forces of these nations are.

I was just wondering what the norm was in the Infinity crowd.

The basic concept seems to be that your force is a sort of special operations squad, with members drawn from various different units and regiments. Think along the lines of the Dirty Dozen or the Avengers, rather than a cohesive military unit.

All the starter sets have three basic "line infantry", a heavy infantry in powered or heavy armour and a couple of other specialists; usually some sort of recon/infiltrator and a specialist.

There is no information in the background covering military organisation in anything other than very broad terms. What is a normal squad size? how many riflemen, special weapons, etc? are hackers and remotes organic to squads or assigned from a higher level? No idea.

You could field something like a squad of line infantry, and with the Link Team rules from Human Sphere it would be more effective than their points cost and stats would suggest, but you can't do the same with the more elite units. For example, presumably the heavy infantry units also have some sort of company, platoon, squad organisation, but they all tend to be AVAilability 2, so you can't field a squad of them

The recent campaign book and the latest tournament rules have put a higher focus on specialists – hackers, engineers and doctors – so you might see duplicates of these in army lists.

Any miniature can transfer his "turn" to any of his mates: this is why you will always want some inexpensive units mixed with your heroes. At 300 points I play with a 10-man team, but many players prefer to use two 7-man teams instead.

ORCs and other heavy troopers are slow and expensive, and you wouldn't deploy more than 1 or 2 of them even if you could. However, a few heavies like the Domaru Butai and the the Riot Grrls can form nasty units of up to 5 minaitures using the Link skill.

Multiple troop types give you a selection of 'special abilities' to choose from in your turn. Multiples of the same troop type do not have as many options (if basic Lt Inf, they may not have any) and on the occasions where it has been tried they were decimated. Last occasion was YuJing basic infantry vs Pan O mix.

The skirmish level of the game combined with the rich quality of the miniatures would seem to suggest a board where each figure was unique. So how to people build their armies?

Almost always one of this trooper, two of another, one of this third type, and so on. Each unit has an AVA (availability) that limits how many of that model you can bring. This number ranges from AVA Total down to AVA 0 (zero). AVA zero is a special case, where you can have one AVA zero trooper for every 200 points of army, rounded DOWN. You can't take your second AVA zero troop until you're playing a 400pt game, and most people game 300 points.

This AVA varies between the 'vanilla' army list, and 'sectorial' armies, and the monsters created by blending 3 factions together in a Mercenaries list.

Sectorial armies trade a variety of models for theme. The Vanilla Yu Jing StateEmpire army can take a big variety of troops. The Japanese Sectorial army can only take Japanese troops, but can take a lot more of them than Vanilla YJ. In the JSA, I can play a game with 5 Haramaki, 3 Domaru, and the Domaru character 'Neko' Oyama; but I can only take 1 Haramaki and 1 Domaru (plus characters) in vanilla.

I was just wondering what the norm was in the Infinity crowd.

Imagine you're building a special ops team on short notice, so you can only pick what's already in-theater.

As a consequence to the special ops concept, you should know what mission objectives there are and what army you are facing before choosing your troopers.

For example, my Yu Jing forces have been assigned to 'rescue' a diplomat, who is currently staying in the Haqqislam caravansary. I know that my opponent is bringing Haqq models, but I don't know if he's using Hassassins, the 'Guardians of the Door' (Qapu Khalqi), or the basic list.

Thank you for the replies.

A composite team of specialist, with a few common soldiers to support does seem to make sense for the genre. It feels like military team built for a Hollywood movie.

I think I get it

Sorry to come late to the party. As the above posters mentioned you usually field a team of folks with very few limitations on how many different types you need. In my local area, a typical build is 10 or so models in a single group, usually consisitinf of 3-4 grunts who mostly provide orders and for this reason are known as cheerleaders. The rest of the force would be a mix of specialists and heavier troops with better abilities.

Also you will sometimes see a TAG (walker) in the group, which is usually a big point sink but can be lethal. Another build you might see is the "swarm" build which has two groups and up to 20 models. The point of this build is usually to have the second group consist mostly of impetuous or irregular troops that are cheap and can act to outmanuever and out-order your opponent.

There are many other builds, as well. As mentioned above there are also "link teams" in the game which can make the "cheerleaders" pretty strong as they operate as a unit. Sometimes the link teams can be the crux of an army, like a 5-man Haramaki team uncluding a missle launcher guy. These are only available in the sectorial armies from Human Sphere or to special armies like the Tohaa.

There are a lot of possibilities, which is why even though you only need about 10 models to play, you will want many more!