AVA’s not? the Angle
The Set Up
I was super stoked to play TheDiceAbide in a game of infinity, it was my second game of infinity in the last year! I had painted a whole bunch of Aleph. A link, of Daikini, a spitfire deva, and I really wanted to take them out, so I decided to ignore the bromad mission and just take what I wanted to take. (Ha, take that WiseKensi).
My list looked like this,
GROUP 1
10
DANAVAS (Hacker, Hacking Device Plus [UPGRADE: Oblivion (+1B)]) Combi Rifle, Pitcher ( ) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 22)
PROXY Mk.2 (Hacker, Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 25)
PROXY Mk.4 Heavy Rocket Launcher, Submachine Gun, Nanopulser / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 21)
PROXY Mk.5 (Forward Observer) Submachine Gun(+1B), Flash Pulse, E/M Grenades / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 13)
TRISHA Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, D-Charges, E/M Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 26)
ARJUNA Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 32)
KIRANBOT E/Marat, Cybermines / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 4)
SHAKTI (Lieutenant, Hacker) Mk12, E/Marat / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 41)
CSU (Specialist Operative) Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 11)
DEVA (Multispectral Visor L2) Spitfire, Nanopulser ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 33)
DAKINI Tacbot MULTI Sniper Rifle / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 20)
GROUP 2
LAMEDH Rebot Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)
NAGA (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 28)
6 SWC | 292 Points | Open in Infinity Army
I got to take my newly painted Daikini Link, which had a good striker up close, and good long range firesupport.
The Danvas is a good reasonably priced hacker, and I really wanted to throw out some pitcher to be annoying
The spread of post humans encompassed my personal favorites. The hacker very powerful for the price, the MK4 HRL is the definition of an expendable road block, and the Mk 5 is a good budget specialist.
I like Shakti, she’s a flexible specialist, good swc free gun, emarats can be a terror and pretty resilient.
Naga mine layers are always solid.
In my sole concession to Jon’s hipster instincts, Arjuna are AVA 2, and usually I don’t take any, so taking 1 Arjuna definitely counts as a “high” number.
Adam and I hadn’t picked a mission in advance, my wife had absconded with my cell phone charger so before going over to Adam’s I printed of a list to save my battery life.In retrospect I left some points on the table, but I just wanted to get out the door and play so didn’t sweat it much.
When I got to Adam’s I told Adam to pick a generic ITS mission, and Front Line was selected.
Adam’s list was something like this, I have no idea about initial combat group disposition;
GROUP 13
2
GROUP 2
UNKNOWN RANGER AP Spitfire, Chain-colt / Heavy Pistol, T2 CC Weapon. (1 | 47)
ROSIE Light Rocket Launcher, Light Shotgun, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22)
MARAUDER (Lieutenant) Rifle, Heavy Flamethrower / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22)
BLACKJACK AP Heavy Machine Gun, Chest Mines, Panzerfaust / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 38)
FOXTROT (Forward Observer) Rifle, Flash Pulse, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 18)
DESPERADO Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Assault Pistol(+1B), Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 6)
DEVIL DOG Heavy Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / AP CC Weapon. (0 | 33)
K-9 ANTIPODE AP CC Weapon. (0 | 6)
GRUNT (Infiltration) Heavy Flamethrower, Light Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 11)
5.5 SWC | 298 Points | Open in Infinity Army
The Game
Adam won the roll off and picked deployment. (I had to choose to either go second so I had the last opportunity to place models before scoring and too ALSO let Adam counter deploy me AND go first, OR I could go first, get order doc’ed and let Adam have the last scoring opportunity.) I decided to go first even though I didn’t really want to because being counter deployed and then alphaed is the worst.
During deployment our two links ended up being roughly across from each other with some shipping containers in long lanes and a comanche landing pad between them.
During my first turn I shuffled around, the MK 4 HRL took a long bomb and killed the dog part of the antipode team, and bounced some hits off a grunt that went into cover. Then ended his activations elevated and yelling for peeps to come get him. The Arjuna removed one grunt in the shipping containers. The Mk2 handled a foxtrot on top of the comanche pad. The naga walked forward and walked back while dropping a mine that covered another grunt.
Adams turn was an exercise in frustration. One bike advanced and threw some smoke, then the dog warrior advanced, and got wounded by a HRL instead of throwing smoke, Adam passed on the other bike’s impetuous due to HRL fear. Adam spend some orders eventually getting smoke and moving the dog warrior close enough to double barrel the post human with the heavy shotgun, thought the dog died in the process. Adam then spent a majority of his turn engaging the naga with a grun, the black jack, and the unknown ranger, failing to kill him with all his attacks, he finally removed the naga with a suicidal biker.
During Adam’s turn he killed a naga, and a Mk4, while losing the biker, getting a grunt isolated from a kiran bot. Critically Adam had moved the Unknown ranger into the mid-field
During my second turn I moved my link team along my back table edge clearing any AROs adam left out with the Daikini sniper once intervening AROs were removed the link moved into the mid-field and the MSV Deva was able to remove the Unknown Ranger, both removing Adam’s best striker, and taking his link down from 5 to 4. I had a few extra order so I reshuffled the link to optimize ranges for ARO, while at the same time the Daikini sniper was able to take shots at the Blackjack. Adam lost the first FTF with the Blackjack, took a wound, and chose to stay put, so the Daikini obliged him to put the Blackjack down for good.
Adam attempted to engage the link with Rosie to remove models with the blast, she shot at the sniper and caught another model in the blast, unfortunately it was the Arjuna, not actually a model in the link.
Rosie landed two hits, but the Daikini matched her highest roll, so nothing happened… other than the Arjuna burning to death. This shot was a very poor tactical decision.
| 49.52 | 23.94 | 26.54 |
Adam then moved to trying to force the issue with the remaining Molotok Marauder, which is an improvement but not great. On the second try Adam managed to kill himself, and promptly resigned.
| 40.52 | 24.70 | 34.78 |
What went wrong?
Luck certainly didn’t shine on Adam, but I’m not entirely willing to chalk this one up to being diced.
If we look at the game state at the end of round 1 I was down a HRL Mk4, and a Naga mine layer. Which is 49, points worth of dudes, 2 swc, and 1 order. Both units are arguably taken to act as expendable road blocks.
Adam was down a devil dog, a foxtrot, a grunt, and a desperado. This is 68 points, .5 SWC, 2 regular orders, two irregular orders, and 2 impetuous orders. The losses also consist of units which are “expendable.”
Our remaining order pools, and units left of the field were pretty equitable. Sure Adam didn’t get a devastating counter strike during his first turn, it was pretty meh, but my first turn wasn’t all that great either. The game didn’t really start to turn until our CORE links engaged.
The key engagement of the game was this face to face roll.
| 49.84 | 27.78 | 22.37 |
Yes both units were in the open, Adam had left the Ranger in total cover, but once an angle was made it was in a position where cover was easy to deny, the Deva was in the open as well it would have costed two or more orders to move safely and engage in cover, and with the order pool I had I decided to chance it and take a shortcut in the open to make the engagement, with the option to get cover in subsequent attacks. The ranged died in one attack, which was fortunate for me, but not exceeding unlikely.
In retrospect I think the biggest mistake made in the game was being overly aggressive with the Ranger. Yes, you need to move forward to score point in front line. Yes Adam had a bad first turn. Adam still had time to play his hand, going second is a big advantage for scoring in this scenario, I would argue that at the end of turn 1 time was on his side, his position would have been improved by keeping the Ranger in his deployment zone and forcing me to waste a lot more orders engaging, while conserving his strength.
Once the Ranger fell, Adam probably was done, or at least his spirit was. I really question why he decided to let me keep shooting the Blackjack with the Daikini Sniper, this is a really bad engagement for him, and he decided to keep throwing away points by letting me just kill it, instead of gutzing into cover. (The irony being if the Blackjack ended up wounding the Daikini, with the panzerfaust Trish would patch it up and score me a secret objective).
| 59.89 | 29.69 | 10.42 |
AnywayI think there are dual lessons to be learned here. One is to keep track of pacing, time was still on Adam’s side, he didn’t need to press hard into the center and expose himself, doing so gave me an opportunity to pull ahead. Second is to keep your head in the game, even without 5 man link bonuses the marauders, and blackjack solo are threats, but they need to choose targets wisely. Both of them decided to go after the hardest part of my force, in sub optimal positioning, instead of softer targets.
Thinking about pacing and engagement positioning might even be good ideas for future academy missions.
Arjuna
In honor of the mission of the Bromad Academy, which is to learn something (and to be a hipster), because we haven’t learned anything yet, we can think about the Arjuna.
During the game, the Arjuna KOed one grunt, and the kiran bot isolated another grunt, which could no longer go all rambo on the Naga, which forced Adam to reposition more guys to (eventually) deal with the Naga. The Arjuna also ate/lost a FTF roll with a molotok marauder and fell into cover (then eventually later died from Rosie).
It wasn’t a stellar performance, he “didn’t earn his points,” but I don’t think that’s a fair way to look at it. The SWC free mid range gun was helpful, it allowed me to pluck out a grunt in a good engagement. The Kiran bot bled more orders out of Adam. Overall if you can force your opponent to chew through the Kiranbot(s) before engaging the Arjuna you’re probably going to end up ahead in the exchange, even if the arjuna eventually bites it. They still feel expensive to me for what you get… but worth looking at more.
Missed Opportunities
I do wish that I had a chance to try a few things out more. I did really want to try to bog things down with spotlight. Most of those face to face rolls would have been even better against a spotlighted target. I had a posthuman hacker near/above Adam’s marauder link, and kept forgetting to spotlight ARO, I get the impression that would have been very oppressive. Similarly it would have been nice to get a pitcher out to further gum things up.