Infinity Concepts pt 2

REFUTED!

Ignore this one, turns out that if you stand up, your second short skill needs to be a move!

Preserving your impetuous troops

On first glance impetuous seems like a massive bonus, right? It's a free order, right? Well, when your opponent becomes more experienced at setting up his reactive turn, you may find your impetuous troops running into the fire lanes of well placed enemies.

But it's ok, right? You can spend an order to suppress their primal urges. Well, yeah, but now they're completely the opposite of a free order. They're sapping one from your pool.

Here Eudoros, who is impetuous, will probably race into the fusilier's fire lane if I don't do something. 

He has to move of he can, so my options are, let him run into a firelane (sure, he's Euforos, he's a tough cookie, but this is Infinity. Even the lowliest grunt can nail him, so we don't take unnecessary risks). Or I can spend an order to suppress his impetuous order. Well, I'm playing Aleph, if this is the second or third turn I may well be on 4 orders. That's not cool.

So instead, I'm going to make sure Eudoros starts the turn prone. I do this by deploying him this way, and using his last short movement skill of a turn wherever possible to make him hit the deck.

Now, when his impetuous order kicks in, he just stands up, and I can use the second half of the order with a much greater degree of control

Simples. Now, Eudoros isn't the best example for this, he's just the only impetuous model I have kicking around. But a Cameronian, with their huge super jumping movements, are very vulnerable to baiting. 

Many players will use their very last order if their turn to kill something. That's cool, but very often this will leave a model over stretched and vulnerable. When you rely on your hard hitting impetuous troops, or you have a very aware opponent, try using it instead to preserve them. Go prone.

Infinity Concepts pt 1

Don't waste your orders trying to kill one guy, use your opponents

Scenario: Posthuman Nero is approaching a firelane, but pesky fusilier Barao is in the way, and is behind cover.

Nero declares move (into cover).
Barao declares shoot.
Nero declares shoot.

They have a firefight, Nero wins but Barao survives and passes her guts check. Both are now in cover.

STOP!

There are one of two ways this will now go, the first is a waste of orders, the second is smart use of orders.

Number 1) Annoyed at the fusiliers resilience, Nero declares another order, and declares shoot. Barao declares shoot. Nero declares....nothing for the second skill. Why? It would be stupid to move, as she will lose cover for her next order, should Barao survive again (and with range, cover-bs and cover+arm thats now likely). No short movement skill is helpful here, so she has effectively wasted half an order.

Lo and behold, Barao survives another three orders spent shooting her, so Nero has in effect wasted four short movement skills.

Number 2) Annoyed at the fusiliers resilience, Nero declares another order, and, losing nothing by using a long skill, declares suppressive fire right on Barao's head. We've already established that a short movement skill is useless here, so the long skill is fine. Now, as we put it down, Nero automatically shoots full burst at Barao. If she dies, great, we can move on, we've spent no more orders than the same point in the previous example. If he doesn't, LEAVE NERO THE HELL ALONE! Do not spend any more orders on this order-sapping firefight.

Instead, go somewhere else on the board, spend orders elsewhere. Now in the reactive turn, Nero will fire full burst on Barao every time your opponent spends an order on her. Use his orders to kill his guy instead of your own.

Added bonus: any time you don't have a viable short movement skill, never use shoot, always use suppression fire. You shoot just the same, but potentially you then have a nice sup fire corridor lay down for your reactive turn.

Summary: NEVER JUST SHOOT! If you're going to move, jump, climb, swim, do the okey cokey afterwards, fair enough, otherwise use suppression fire.

When not to use this tactic: when there's a massive external factor, like a sniper having LOF on Nero, or as always when a game winning objective hangs in the balance and you NEED to be covering ground on each order.

Infinity Fundamentals pt 2

2) surprise! Camo works best in your active turn

We've all done it. A juicy morsel has ran across the open, and your opponent has no idea you've got a hidden deployment sniper with an excellent LOF on him.

He moves, guffawing like a fat baron you shout "reeeeaction! Hidden sniper shoots you!"

He says "Ok Colin, I'll shoot back. Only it's face to face, and I've got four shots, you've got 1. Good luck"

Combat Camo works in your active turn. Just chill, he doesn't know your guy is there, he probably won't know to keep him in cover from your devious crows nest, wait till your active turn, and go first with two shots (probably) against his one, should he survive. You're welcome

When not to use this tactic: your opponent went second and its his last turn. Why the hell is your sniper still hidden?

Infinity Fundamentals pt 1

 Never generate an ARO with your second skill.

The order/skill declaration process in Infinity is very strict.

Active player declares short movement skill i.e move

Reactive player declares ARO i.e shoot

Active player declares short skill i.e dodge

However, sometimes that first skill won't generate an ARO, for instance if no enemies are in line of fire. 

Active player declares short movement skill i.e move. No enemies can see him

Reactive player doesn't do anything 

Active player declares short movement skill i.e move, bringing him into line of fire of an enemy.

Reactive player declares ARO i.e shoot

Active player can do nothing, as he has used both allotted skills for this order, and must face the incoming shot unopposed.

DO NOT do anything with your second skill which will bring your model into a new LOF. Instead, utilise the second skill to set up your next full order, i.e throwing a smoke grenade from behind cover, going prone, alerting friendly models etc. You will only feel silly when your all-star model gets shot dead by a fusilier and can't even attempt to dodge it.

When not to use this tactic: When you absolutely have to shift a model across the board over several orders, to claim a last minute objective, for instance. Generally speaking its when you have no other option but to brave a firelane

First post!

Infinity is my favourite game. I've been playing war games for about 19 years, and I still suck at them. But of all the games I have played (and there have been a great many), Infinity is by far the most enjoyable.

I don't need to go into everything about Infinity, there's a whole website and forum for anyone who wants to know more

www.infinitythegame.com

There's a ton of instructional videos that deal with the basic rules of Infinity, but I wanted to maybe post some stuff that was for the next level of learning, how to use the myriad of rules to actually play. Not how you use the order system, but why. Not how to shoot, but when. I'm going to split this down into Infinity Fundamentals, those hard lessons you'll learn in your first few games, and Infinity Concepts, for more advanced techniques

Hopefully it will be of some use