Thinking about getting in, got some questions

[jesselowe]

I'm thinking about starting Infinity, 'cause I don't have enough toy soldier games to spend money on. So here are some questions:

 

How steep is the learning curve? (For comparison, assume Warmachine is "steep" thanks to model-specific rules and, say, Kings of War is "shallow" thanks to a very straightforward rules set and not a lot of model-specific rules.)

 

How do the following factions play on the table, what's the best starting point for each one, and how much could I expect to spend in $$ to get a basic full-size force?

 

Aleph

 

Combined Army

 

PanOceania

 

Last and most important, how healthy is the player base in Portland? I'm mostly looking at Infinity because I live close to Red Castle games, and being able to sneak in a weekly game there will be a deciding factor on whether I pick this game up.

[NakedPanda]

Wow, That is a range of applicable questions/answers!

 

 

The learning curve is greatest when you try to apply the conventional wisdom of other systems. Give infinity thought and consideration within its own rules and you'll be golden after a few games!

 

Fractions and their play? I would seriously just buy the models ya like, and proceed from there.

 

On these forums I think dontpanic will be able to help you tons for aleph.

 

CA the official forums, or a helpful volunteer from ordo, would be a great set of minds to pick at.

 

Pano pulls rudra to mind, for military orders at least!

 

As far as player base, I am not sure. It all starts and speeds from someone, somewhere. If you like what you see, run with it! The game has been on a serious and meteoric rise for a few years now, so some forward effort will surely see you land games

[Raindog]

1. Red Castle has a nice community. Ordo has a eight players. Fate and Fury has another group.

 

2. $120 buys a nice force. You only really need 15-18 models for decent squad.

[rudra34]

The learning curve for Infinity is interesting.  The basic rules and mechanics are very easy to learn and play with, then there are a large number of rules that come into play on rare occasions.  It takes 5-10 games before you are really comfortable with the system, and after that the rules will all make sense when they come into play.  Luckily, the entire ruleset is free and posted online, so you don't have to commit to paying for them before you begin playing.   All-in-all it's not hard to pick up, especially if you are familiar with other game systems.

 

 

 

How do the following factions play on the table, what's the best starting point for each one, and how much could I expect to spend in $$ to get a basic full-size force?

 

Aleph

 

Combined Army

 

PanOceania

 

 

How the factions play is an interesting question.  In the end it comes down to how you build lists, but for those factions I can make a few generalizations.

Aleph - The super-elite of the Infinity universe.  All of their troopers are highly trained and have high stats, but pay a premium for it.  If you play Aleph then you will have a small, elite force, but you will have to play them carefully.  Even the lowliest soldier can bring down the greatest elite in this game. 

Combined Army - In most cases, this will also be an elite force army.  The combined army has a lot of different play styles to bring to the table.   Morats are the most basic, being a solid force of shooters with solid leadership abilities and semi-elite units.  Shasvastii are camo and subtlety experts who, if played properly, will dismantle an opponent before they know what happened.  The vanilla combined army is a mix of incredibly strong elites and access to all of the high-tech tools you could ever hope for.  Like Aleph, you pay a premium for extremely powerful, yet fragile, troops.

Panoceania - A little more diverse than the other two, but still mainly an elite force.  Infinity is mainly a shooting game, and Pano brings the best shooters.  Consequently, they trade off having supreme firepower for having weak specialist who have a harder time grabbing objectives for game scenarios.  They bring top-notch tech to the table, and have access to more TAGS and better REMS than pretty much any other faction in the game.  If you play them then prepare to base your tactics around shooting first and then claiming objectives later.  They are NOT SUBTLE.  

Hope that helps a bit!   It's a great game, and you should play it.

[indytims]

For me, Infinity had a pretty steep learning-curve, mainly because I had other systems burned into my brain. With the way orders are spent - and the way your opponent can respond to them, this is not your typical "I-GO-U-GO" system. Yes, it might be your opponent's turn, but you can still do certain actions during your opponent's turn. With that in mind, the -basic- rules are fairly straight forward, but there's a large chunk of 'special rules' that come into play, not just with special rules for various models, but with various rules that apply to many. I've played games with vets who have played the game regularly for several years, and they -still- need to look up the occasional rule. This game is -very- deep. I think it would be hard to find someone who would say Infinity is 'easier' to pick-up than Warmachine or KoW, though. I picked-up KOW literally in 30 minutes. I picked-up Warmachine over a few games. Infinity has the depth that will have me 'picking up' stuff for -months-, probably -dozens- of games. Heck, just 'Hacking' in the game is almost an entire game itself, and I haven't even touched it yet. :)

 

With that in mind, I highly recommend finding someone to give you a 'starter' game or two - 120-150 points, to show you the ropes. The starter rules in the Operation:Icestorm box are very good as well, and it even includes two starter forces: but if you're not interested in Nomads or PanOceania, then it might not be that attractive. I know some will argue that tossing a noobie into a 300 pt match to 'learn under fire' is a great way to learn the game, but that hasn't been my experience for sure. I would bet money most of the guys here would be more than happy to give you a demo game if you can meet them on their normal game nights. I'd be happy to if you are ever on the north side of the river.

 

$125-$150 would get you a really good starting force for any faction, pretty much, then you can go from there. I agree with those folks who say the 'rule of cool' is king. So many figures do so many different things, finding the ones that you 'connect' with is very important, and for me at least that includes models that LOOK awesome. I've always said that if a player loves the look of his/her army, they'll be far more likely to paint it, and play it. That being said, as others have mentioned, even the lowliest grunt can inflict pain and suffering on the best models in the game, and as such, it's hard to find a completely 'useless' model.

 

The player-base in the area has certainly grown quite a bit, even just in the past six months. There are many of us in the area who didn't play this game at all before June/July, buying our first figures then. If you're in the Portland area you have several options, including Red Castle and WOW. On the Vancouver side of the river, we have a group at F&F on the east side, though I've been told some people also play at Dice Age.

 

Just my 2 bars of tesium. :)

 

-Tim

[Kremmet]

Infinity is pretty comparable to Warmachine as both systems have simple base rules with all the complexity being held in a bevy of specific rules and their interactions with each other.  Basically you're looking at simple executions using complex parts.

 

Most of the factions in the game play very similarly with only small differences between each other such as a bumped stat here and there and/or greater/lesser access to specialist troops such as scouts or robots.  As mentioned before Combined and ALEPH have a few more elite troops and slightly better equipment than the average person, but they also pay for giving all those baubles to their grunts.  Pan-O is a nice compromise faction if you're looking to have access to all the toys as they don't feel the same way about giving Joe Shmoe the latest and greatest in goggle technology.

[Don't Panic]

yea infinity is a very interesting game.  pick what models you like is probably what you should lean to, but each faction does have a somewhat unique play style.  sure you can have some very similar builds between factions, but some excel/give you more viariability in a unique manner.  for example, aleph.  super elite very similar yet still different than combined army.  aleph utilizes a ton of 1W NWI which is like a pseudo 2 wound model with very high statlines and most models have decent guns and nanopulsers so you can always use a template.  they also have some very good yet expensive camo/TO options that are super hard to kill.  ghost sync flame bots with devas being their premier light infantry.  asura is one of the scarier hacker plus options.  they have greeks(steel phalanx sectional) which most have ODD, smoke and are decent CC specialists.  greeks have lots of rocket launchers but very few hmgs(think only the ekdromoi has it?).  if you like robots, aleph is great and have line trooper bots.  also a drop troop robot.  nomads still probably have the cooler bots, but i like aleph's a lot.  same way with specialists that aleph have amazing ones but so do nomads for cheaper prices.   downfalls are each bad roll you will feel 2-3x worse than say an ariadna player.  you have good stats and equipment to give you good dice roll odds but a person can neutreulize a lot of your advatanges numerous ways.  so i wouldnt exactly call aleph the most 'user friendly' because you have to know a bit about what you are up against equipment/ammo type-wse but they are fun to play.  

combined army plays like aleph with elites but a different twist.  they have super strong hackers and unlike aleph they have more hmgs rather than spitfires(one big difference).  they also seem to ignore leuitenant issues that aleph has.  with shasvastii they have some of the best camo units and the speculo killer is devastating.  morats are crazy CC specialists that play kind of like steel but without the ODD spam.  they also have some scary guns/equipment!  for vanilla the charontids is like the asura for aleph but... better lol.  they also have some super good TO units and snipers.  they have pretty similar issues as aleph does but they are generally even more elite/costly.  they also have the craziest TAG.

pan-o i really think might be the most user friendly of the 3.  you can play pretty much most play styles with them pretty darn well.  if you like elite camo, they are amazing.  they have cheap as crap TO options and then go up to the swiss guard, ugh.   also have plethora of great msv options.  they have all the shiny stuff.  if you want to play TAGs i really would strongly suggest this faction.  3 sectionals in being crazy knights, the guys with all the toys-neoterra and then the shock army which i havent seen yet(but am starting soon).  pan-o have cheap order makers and the best BS/point in the game.  their weakness is they dont do wip rolls very well so their specialists for missions are pretty mediocre.  so thats their tradeoff!  amazing guns/toys/price, lackluster specialists.

 

but really it all comes down to: what models do you like that you can use that play style for...