Don't Panic

update: played in a very interesting narrative event last saturday! i played shasvastii and was joined by a MAF, ONYX and vanilla CA player. pretty much everyone in our group was new-ish overall or at least to their sectional. The event was a blind event, but with some hints as to what you would need. Said you were required to have an engineer spec ops with bts9 was only requirement, but hints were to have a few engineers/docs and multiterrain. list was pretty close to what ive been running lately: Shasvastii Expeditionary Force ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 110 NOCTIFER Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 30) ASWANG Lieutenant Combi Rifle, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 26) MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23) SHROUDED (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) SHROUDED (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) SPECULO KILLER Boarding Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Monofilament CCW, Knife. (1 | 34) Corax Spec-Ops (12 XP) (BTS:9, Engineer) Combi Rifle, Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14) E-DRONE Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 28) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) GROUP 22 NOCTIFER Missile Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32) MALIGNOS Hacker (EI Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 41) 5 SWC | 299 Points Open in Infinity Army The fun of this list is it looks like I have a sphinx and honestly I could switch the 3 TO for a sphinx if i felt like it(kinda like how id switch garuda and dasyu/proxys). this event we all got about 9 random secret cards and would keep getting an additional one after each round. some were terrible while others were good and some were secret objectives. First game was against a newer bakunin player, but one that is really really striving to be competitive. He did pretty well in the league. He brought a very cheeky ARO heavy list that utilized double custodiers with TR bot, koala bot, 2 feuerbach bots?, 2 sniffers and one zero. he had like 16 orders so im missing some crap obviously but those were the things that popped out that werent cheerleading. he was using the evo overclocking idea with repeaters/feuerbachs/flashpulses. Objective was to get 2 different things to essentially data scan but at a -3(they would be constant throughout each mission and doing it revealed secrets) and also get guys in an objective room. The surprise was after 30 minutes and grumbly to me as it was right when he finished his first turn we were told the entire field flooded and became aquatic terrain while everyone had to get into the objective room or die at the end. so basically, everything in my army was going to die except what had multiterrain. he suckerpunched my malignos, but i was able to get one shrouded, a noctifier and a baggage bot in while keeping him out. so 5-1 me as i was able to scan one thing. found out scanning these 'nodes' reveal parts of a pw that would be needed after round 3. so i told my teammates to concentrate on scanning those as it seemed important. next i played against a vanilla yu jing player. he had hsien hmg, the 2W HI combi guy, panzer engineer girl, a tiger hacker, hac tao hacker and cheerleaders/doctors. this one was tricky as it was basically 'the floor is lava' mixed with biotechvore. so at beginning you'd make a roll and add your bts, +3 for high ground, +3 for multiterrain. if you beat the death level number on the table you dont take a wound, if you beat the radiation level(higher) you dont take a radiation marker. 2 radiation markers equals a wound. soooo yeeeea good things most of my guys have multiterrain and bts! i was afraid dr worm would perish but luckily he didnt. only one who took damage was a shrouded FO who i just automedikited back up. the mission was to connect antennas in 3 of 4 quadrants that would get you one point. you can do this up to scoring 4 points coordinated or at end of a round for a freebie try. catche 22 is you have to pass a wip roll on all of them. sooo yea i never passed it and he did twice. i did chew him up pretty good though and was manage to destroy 2 of his connectors that got me 2 points and killed his spec ops which got me a bonus as well. i failed too many wip rolls this game though sadly and couldnt get the info from the nodes. ended up being a tie 4-4. i only lost a slave drone that i left in the open for his hsien to waste an order on killing if he felt like it(he did surprisingly). we had a few more info and were starting to get closer to figuring out the pw but still had no idea. so the final one was you had to get inside the objective room to flip the switch and then either d charge it to death or try and pass a wip+3, wip and then wip-3 in consecutive order to give a shot at trying to figure out the code at the end. you get 13OP for code, 4 for blowing it up. also the room is lava and you have to roll on that radiation chart EACH ORDER you spend in there. i decided blowing it up was the safe route and most people did the same. i played against NCA. He had a bolt team, swiss hmg, locust, peacemaker and an auxilia along with his spec ops. i placed speculo on a rooftop watching over his spec ops(oh engineers get base wip to that roll while every other specialist is -6... so yeaaaa) and also his bolts. he put his locust and swiss on one side. bolts middle, peacemaker other side along with auxilia. i hid like shasvastii do and he went first. he activated the bolt team and decide to go around the corner. i cringed a bit as i revealed my noctifier ML and the speculo. 3 of the 5 bolts perish from templates. he then tries to go for the speculo on the roof with one bolt but i smoke dodged. he shot at the noctifier ML with the swiss but had some pretty poor dice and wasnt able to dislodge it. i basically ignored the swiss and went for the objective with senor worm. he wriggled into the room and discoved the code and laid a dcharge. sadly he perished while trying to get out of the room and blow it up. my opponent was smart and pushed a bulleteer spitfire(derp forgot about that) to kill my spec ops that hatched so i had no engineers to blow it up. in anger my speculo responded by going down the roof to lightsaber his only engineer lol. so we were engineer less and i had my last turn with literally nothing but nodes to scan(which i already did) and give the shot at the code at wip-6 plus the other mods for 3 straight wip rolls each order. i burned 6 orders but got it on my last order haha. so i figured out 2 words but had no idea what the first was. last 2 was 'will prevail'. so i went with f' it and said EI will prevail. i was wrong obviously. yu jing guys(most were the muse on minis guys from des moines area) got it and took 1st while we took 2nd. the tournament raised funds to get the zone 186 from TDT. the next one is LI but i cant make it as im moving that day grumble. I still want to play a LI sooo badddd. oh well. jeremy is running a second soon it sounds like and it was a blast. think they will do a muse table for their next one is what i heard.

Hey Eric, Is it even remotely possible to purchase one and have it shipped to me? If not no biggie but I'd looove to somehow get one. My poor Ordo sticker finally lost its stick-ness to my alpha bag last week :'( . Luckily the one on the kegerator still is there haha.

im in a position where basically i have to say im not going to make it this year... 'sigh' This sucks! I did post it on Iowa Infinity fb page. I just have too many expenses(house...) to fly, not enough PTO now as i burned through too much being sick for a week along with a week long fishing trip my dad snuck in this year(haven't been able to go the past 3 years). Also, I could possibly snake it in if those cases werent such, but it would take a lot of 'points' as this is the third year in a row it is on either my wife's bday or our anniversary lol. Whoever does the dates please not july 19th or 28th next year *fingers crossed*. I will make a vow to save for it for the next year and try to persuade a team to come with me to the PNW for a vacay. I miss PDX sooooo much....

that is a damn good list!

this is totally me too lol also, i make more wip rolls with shock army than aleph...

'sigh' you know marriage too well lol

After playing against tohaa a lot lately, they are the beez kneez off infinity right now imo. If i wasnt on gamer probation i'd grab it lol

yup doing inspection this week and hopefully things go smoothly! Has an unfinished workbench in the basement I'm quite happy about...

whaaaat.. well yea it is a play style for sure. IMO its a bigger fear tactic that good players will overreact to even moreso than the speculo, let alone when you combo it with a speculo you can funnel your opponent pretty well. Noctifier ML is all about timing. I think a mistake I see in BRs is people tend to pull the trigger too fast OR they do it in the active turn(I honestly see very few situations where that is beneficial than alternatives... wasting an order on B1 is not something id prefer to do). Always wait for a moment to trap your opponent when they think the odds are in their favor for a shootout or they present you with an easy pickings(moves out of cover, shorter range weapon and in long range band... or a link team/dude runs by one of their camo markers, etc). Sure it misses about half the time but when it hits it is game changing. And just the fact of making your opponent split burst can swing it in your favor. its 32 points for a dogged TO ML, I dont see what is not to love lol. I always put it in second group and max the first which is just a style preference. Half the time it lives and i move it to first group to max orders for fallen first turn dudes. Both noctifier profiles(spitfire/ML) have been the reason why i've won ANY games with them lol. But to the point, shas can be played very differently and to success I think. My list is not very spammy mostly because I only have 2 shrouded models but will probably use corax's(picked up the dire foes one in a trade now!) for the max shrouded fun proxies. I just looked at the rankings since I missed the prize stuff. Finished 14th which im quite happy about, especially with this 'challenge army'! All 4 of my opponents placed top 15 and 3 in the top 7 lol. Makes me feel good that I got to play against some darn good opponents!

Shasvastii Expeditionary Force ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 110 SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) SHROUDED (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) E-DRONE Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 28) GWAILO Lieutenant Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 21) GWAILO Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 21) GWAILO Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 21) MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23) GWAILO (X Visor) Heavy Rocket Launcher / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 23) CORAX HASHT Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 34) GROUP 23 NOCTIFER Missile Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32) CADMUS-SOLDIER Boarding Shotgun / Assault Pistol, CCW. (0 | 22) Q-DRONE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army Shasvastii Expeditionary Force ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 110 SLAVE DRONE Electric Pulse. (0 | 3) SHROUDED (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23) SHROUDED (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25) MALIGNOS Hacker (EI Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 41) MALIGNOS (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 36) SPECULO KILLER Boarding Shotgun, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Monofilament CCW, Knife. (1 | 34) NOCTIFER Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 30) ASWANG Lieutenant Combi Rifle, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 26) SEED-SOLDIER Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) GROUP 21 NOCTIFER Missile Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32) 4.5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army Hey everyone giving an update on the regular board :P. So went to my first big event in vegas for LVO. Was a good time. went 2-2 with 6TP, which getting one W was good enough to me with my lack of experience with shasvastii and the extremely good players! The two lists i made are for specifically different missions. We had antenna field, comms center, cold sleep and engineering deck as missions. so 2 of them had exclusion zones and i used the gwailo list for those. First game I was talking(and drinking) with the TO the previous night and said if challenges were allowed I wanted to challenge who he thought was the best player as I wanted to get a beatin' lol. So that apparently was this amazing gentleman named Michael(Barakiel on forums). He won the previous day 3 game LI tournament with NCA and was playing that day with ASA. We got antenna field on a high skyway table but not much in the middle so it was kinda just an overwatching nightmare situation. Both our lists were pretty well equipped to play that though... Its just unfortunate because that meant that the game was basically going to be decided on who could control the overwatch turn 1. He won the roll and chose deployment. I chose second. I think Im just going to choose second all the time now as my record with it is solid vs first haha. So using gwailo list. I held back the HRL to counter his regular snipers and to be able to double up AROs with the ML and hope for some luck. He actually was running imo a very solid ASA list. After seeing it it actually has answered a puzzle i had in wanting to have the bagh mari hmg, but not feeling the haris. He ran it solo! Along with a ton of regulars, drakios red fury, 2 nagas and 2 sappers(yes two lol). ASA turn 1: He starts by challenging the the HRL gwailo with his sapper. Does some great prone work with nagas and regulars this game. I reveal the ML noctifier that everyone knew was there. He put all burst into the gwailo HRL and prayed the noctifier missed. he beat the gwailo with one but the ML hit. Gwailo brushed off the DA and his regular sapper bit the dust. He re-upped the link with the other sapper but didnt approach it in the same way. Used a CT and moved up the nagas to drop mines near objectives and re-camoed. Used one of his last orders to bring up the HMG bagh mari who put all burst into the gwailo(Noctifier missed) but the gwailo crit and he burst into flames... So that pretty much set the tone for what was going to happen this game! He did prevent AROs from the Q drone though. Shas turn 1: I was in a good position but still didnt really want to deal with the other sapper yet. I dropped the cadmus next to his trauma doc in the back. Then decided to pump orders into my favorite 9 point bot out there. Ran it up and flammed down the naga along with his mine behind it(yay human shields!). Then exiled the regular link(He spent all his CT turn 1). He failed his naga KHD ARO on my EVO with redrum... so yea, dice going my way big time. Not too much except controlled 2 consoles to score. set up suppression fires. supportwared the TR bot. ASA turn 2: he decided to engage the corax with the naga khd. she beat him in aro and he died( yea failed both armor saves too...). He killed the exile bot with drakios. brought on a sikh that i knew he had(i know my shock points lol). he finally started winning some aros and was able to knock the TR bot unconscious and pushed a pathfinder up near his sikh. Think he killed the cadmus too. Shas turn 2: brought on the second 9 point bot to deal with the sikh and pathfinder issue. killed the sikh but not the pathfinder i think? repaired the Qdrone for an objective. put marksmanship back on it. Think I brought the one shrouded up into the middle room to take the middle console. pushed guys up and setup suppression fires to hopefully slow down the obvious drakios rambo about to happen lol. ASA turn 3: he pushed orders into drakios. knocked EVO repeater out. Then got to the room and killed shrouded. So put some pressure on me scoring the final round as he got a specialist on his side. I went with dr worm as the unlikely hero. Ran him into the room(they allowed you to go prone as a 'gate whatever' to fit through... had to ask TO about that but you can do it to fit through if prone) and dodge the flamethrower like a squiggly worm ftw! Summed it up pretty well dodging with Dr Worm to say how the dice went this game! I was happy to play against michael but honestly I wish the dice were more even so we could have had more 'mind games' about this mission. His dice were absolutely atrocious which kinda made him have to go in desperation mode. Super nice guy. Ended up being 9-0 me. My second game was against the overall winner of that day which was this nice guy named George who was playing pretty close to 'that vanilla ariadna list' lol. I mean it could have been more spammy for sure, but it was an absolute uphill climb for my poor shasvastii. Didnt help that it seemed like I borrowed Michaels dice from the first game haha. This game I got a pasting and deservedly so. I tried to think how i would approach this game differently but I think the only thing i'd do differently is not worry as much about the obvious spetz hmg in the back and try and rely more on my AROs and stay back. Problem is he had uxia and just smoked everywhere(dont think he missed a roll with her...). I got first turn and it was comms center. Failed 5 straight attempts at discover shoot on different targets to try and thin the camo down with the HRL gwailo(my best bet at discover with WIP13+3). He chewed me up with the spetz against the link team but I held on pretty well. Didnt lose the full link until 3rd turn but was able to pass 3 of my remaining 8 wip rolls on objectives to keep it close. Missed with the Noctifier ML shot. cadmus got eaten for his objective by antipodes... yea it wasnt a good time for the shasvastii haha. he 10-1'd me and was a good sport. Sorry getting tired so rushing... 3rd game was against Steel Phalanx. The board confused me quite a bit and I put some guys in stupid locations since we both misinterpretted what the objectives were... I went second. Put speculo next to agema ML(that thing has got to go lol). He was running thrays thor team and a dactyl team with acmon and *drumroll* achilles patroclus shenanigans. So I never really looked it up but just hoped that he revealed the two so I could deal with it haha. Noctifier ML killed the entire dactyl team in one shot ARO(wowwww). Killed it with Achilles. I locked but didnt kill the agema with speculo. Then brought out malignos hacker and after a few attempts isolated achilles to put him in l.o.l. He repaired it, but I was able to thin him out to just achilles and patroclus left and got all my objectives, consoles and threw a malignos in last turn to neutralize achilles. Burned my last orders trying to kill him with noctifier spitfire but achilles was slappin those bullets away like a pro. 7-0 me Last game was against a friend I made there who played a spammy tohaa list. Probably the LAST thing I'd want to play when trying to rush a game so I can make it to a cirque de soleil thing i signed up thinking id have enough time to make but things were running quite behind... This was the closest game of them all and Obi played an amazing game. I just couldnt punch him or have an answer for all the tohaa shenanigans. He had like 16 orders or something? Had the bombs, mates and even a preceptor with the bigger pokemon. He put the mates on the gao rael sniper(msv2) and the sukiel ML. Then had bomb guy right next to them. They could see pretty much the entire board... Couldnt punch the gao rael off with noctifier spitfire. ML missed and died stupidly. he flash pulsed and blinded seemingly 3-4 guys haha. speculo couldnt kill the sukiel but at least tied him up. brought malignos on turn 3. dropped some mines and prayed he couldnt get the middle antennas, but he did on his last order and won 4-2. Well played game by him and utilized the tohaa tricks very effectively. Also he's an amazing painter/sculptor... I had to dip out on awards to get to the show we bought tickets to, which saddened me a bit. It was a good time and playing against the two guys who won both days along with two other tough opponents was a treat in itself! Think I'm probably going to drop the cadmus and an ikadron for a speculo though in the gwailo list and give that a shot. I was pondering it before, but think it's a good idea to add some punch across the table that's more reliable.

pretty awesome. but why not put the Grunt LGL in the first group? That way you can potentially link it up if you want to(you can spec fire out of links now hurray!) without spending an extra CT. Love the list. Its creepily similar to the list that I was messing with for USA... grunts, marauders, bikes, camos and van zant are pretty freaking tough to deal with!

im so buying those models... my robot army will be complete and destroy all humans(and space bugs/apes/artichokes)!

im kinda saddened by it initially. id say, imo, it promotes more predictable lists. can you imagine going second against an avatar or marut or heck 'anything with strategos' list in LI let alone not being able to use strategic use? hector and friends *shiver*. 11 orders of death, coming right up! ill have to play it before i judge it too hard(although by my words it sounds like i already have lol), but im a little skeptical that this might make first turn too good... which is a direction i dont want to see this game going as i liked the strategy between the choices available. as for the pilots. some are awesome, some are 'why on earth would i waste an order to place a wip 10 specialist outside this killing machine'. yes thats an exaggeration, there are uses but wip 10 is literally a coin flip which with 10 orders to start with is not something id preferably ever do... i can barely make wip 15 rolls ha. yup negative nancy over here lol.

TBH it's really weird that REMs are disallowed yet a giant robot is not lol(TAGs). Congrats on the win! I actually played against a similar list to what you played(non sphinx list) and really like it! Also ditto with drinks......

'sigh' i cant. made a promise to emily after purchasing Kingdom Death that my spending is taking a 6 month break as we are saving for a house. 'life priorities' grumble... lol

seriously? 2 days after i go on a hiatus from gaming spending and literally the ONE thing that's on my list to buy.... f&*%!

Top down terrain just dropped their inserts. Just an FYI the makers are local people(he supported OFCC) so support them if you are looking to have an organizer!

Thanks RD, Haqq is a rrrreallly good faction, but also a tough one to learn as well. Going from nomads to haqq though I think is a nice soft transition as they share some properties yet are quite different as well. The haqq remotes are my favorite basic remotes in the game. Love those chicken bots. also nice that most have that rifle shotgun combo too. Barids are stupidly good. Quite envious of those models. As for remote presence, yeah I met sean and talked to him quite a bit at iowa infinity. He's a really solid guy and entertaining. Just signed up for his huge tournament in June if any of you guys are looking to road trip to Minnesota(I recall you lived in minny right RD?) for... .... well infinity i guess. Drop the wives off at mall of america to have them enact their revenge? lol jkjk. This is the first time I've talked about it in public, but I'm in the middle of putting together something. I feel that infinity is definitely a visual game and watching the quality of the GMG videos showing interactions on the table got a spark from me as I realized there really isnt a 'visual/video tactica' out there showing interactions in the game beyond BRs. So I'm going to fuddle with that and see if i can pathetically put some stuff together... Still have a lot of logistics to figure out so might be a while(I've never edited video before...). Also in the process of buying a home so kinda busy in general! Hope all is well! PS: It's 15 degrees colder in iowa and our winter wind is worse(trust me id rather be in oregon right now lol).

LOL EXCELLENT!!! just go all in RD...

if you arent feeling the fraacta, thing i was thinking when i first looked at it was dropping it and the flash bot for a malignos FO. adds a specialist as well as a great tactical infiltrator.

second that. think that is close to my favorite onyx style list ive seen yet! niiice

idk if i told you but i have the bikes, shinobu, saito, karakuri.... im honestly just waiting until they get a new keisotsu and ill actually do them. they are my 2018 army :P i loooove the domaru models. soo beautiful...

nope. only one that has a model is the feuerbach. its a really interesting profile imo. id totally run this link team if it had models... look at it on army. lots of profiles! here's a code with one for you to look at it: GwBgzAPmIhHAUgKzEQJhARkwgAvoA===

1. naga boarding shotgun 2. proxy mk2 assault hacker 3. caliban(link team without models.........) 4. shrouded.

love those 'chicken bots'. honestly might be my favorite remotes haha.