Ajax complete, Icestorm begins

Ajax the Great is now Ajax the Done






Also, because I've learned from competitive sport , if you've got some momentum, you should go with it, I pressed on with my speed painting Icestorm stuff, as ive got some demo games booked in. Not far off done




For funsies, next to one of my original 2008 fusiliers.

Customeeple Panic Room review

Overview: I think it was Campaign Paradiso that first introduced the objective room scenario. Subsequently, ITS 2014 and the N3 Rulebook scenarios have utilised a central objective room, and I'll eat my hat if ITS 2015 doesn't have at least one scenario that uses one. 

Specifics: Customeeple offer the Panic Room. Micro Art and Warsenal both offer their own objective rooms, this is the most simplistic on offer, and also the cheapest. It's 8"x8" and has four narrow gate doors as is standard. It has the option to be sent with an extra floor, which can act as a roof, therefore allowing you to play with both a roof and a detailed interior. I did not opt for the second roof, as I don't like to play building interiors, and I mainly wanted this piece purely as an objective room. 



Price: The basic panic room is €12.95 (approx £9.70/$14.60), which goes up to €14.95 (approx £11.20/$16.80) if you opt for the second floor. Compared to warsenal's command bunker (€53/£39.90/$60 minimum) or Micro Art's Objective room (€20/£15/$22.60), that's a bargain in my book. If you play ITS, it's likely to be an essential terrain piece, but you don't use it in every scenario, therefore I'd be looking to spend as little as possible, so under £10 sounds great to me. 

Shipping to the UK was €10 and arrived in about 3 working days. 

Customer Service: The website was well laid out and easy to navigate. Where a product has options, such as colour or faction, there is a simple drop down menu to select your preference. The website is in (good) English as well as native Spanish. The website also has assembly instructions for download, which is extremely helpful

Quality/Durability I transport my terrain to and from my LGS, so I try to avoid anything that might be vulnerable during transport (especially the way I drive!). The building is made from 2.5mm mdf, and is laser etched on one side. 



Curiously, the laser etching goes on the inside of the building. The exterior detail is made by a sheet of thin plasticard shapes. You kind of have to align these by sight and glue them to the undetailed side of the mdf. This is not the easiest thing to do, but with a little patience it will look fine. I would also recommend using a craft knife to clean up the edges of the plasticard, as it is pre- serrated. The floor comes in two halves, and fits neatly into place, with two small indents to help locate the doors.



When assembled, the building looks smart and professional. I treated the mdf with knotting fluid (liquid shellac would do the same job) prior to priming, so the mdf didn't soak up any paint or warp.

One minor quibble, part of the assembly are four very small corner pieces that hold up the floor pieces, if you decide to use them as a roof. These are very fiddly and difficult to attach, and three broke off the first time I transported it. However, it would be a simple job for even an inexperienced modeller to replace these with slightly larger and more sturdy triangles, which is what I intend to do. 


Usefulness If you're playing ITS, you're probably going to need one variant of the central objective room. Equally though, so far the majority of missionsdon't use a central objective room, so for me I don't want to shell out a ton of cash on something that is used infrequently. Cost is relative, as our friends in the US will have a more expensive affair if ordering this, but for me, the cost/practicality balance here is just right. It's not super fancy, but neither is it overly plain, but at 1/4 of the cost of the warsenal one. An added bonus is that you can sit the floor on the corner-tabs to make this a flat roofed building for use in games that don't use an objective room, so it's usable outside of its primary function. For my use, it needs to look cool and stand up to the rigours of transportation, which it does (the aforementioned corner-tabs aside). In short, it does the job at a price I'm happy with, with the added bonus that it looks the part, too. 



Summary I'm very happy with this purchase. Terrain can get expensive with Infinity, and this is a simple, but well thought-out piece. Not as cost-effective for the US players, a steal in the Eurozone. For us Brits, I recommend clubbing together and putting larger orders in if possible

Customeeple Camo Markers Review

Overview: Camo tokens have traditionally been 25mm flat round tokens, either printed, stuck to bases or 3mm acrylic. Customeeple offer an alternative, cutout acrylic silhouettes of the various camo options for each faction.

Specifics: I'll be reviewing the Aleph camo tokens set, and the Tohaa individual camo tokens. At the time of purchase, Tohaa had access to only 1 camo troop (the Clipsos). The tokens come with plain black bases, I chose to match mine to my factions.



Price: The Aleph pack is €4.55 (approx £3.40/$5.10), containing 5 tokens (silhouettes of Naga hacker, Naga sniper, Dasyu Combi, Proxy mk1 and Dasyu Hacker)
The Tohaa token is €1.10 (approx £0.80/$1.25). 

Shipping to the UK was €10 I believe, and arrived in about 3 working days. 

Customer Service: The website was well laid out and easy to navigate. Where a product has options, such as colour or faction, there is a simple drop down menu to select your preference. The website is in (good) English as well as native Spanish

Quality/Durability the silhouettes are cleanly cut out, no rough edges you sometimes see with laser cut products. The material is the standard coloured acetate that seems to be used across these kinds of products.

Not a criticism of Customeeple specifically, as this has been the case with all acetate I've used (either from other companies or when I've commissioned laser-cut designs for terrain), the blue acetate is a lot more transparent than the other colours. All of the other colours are much brighter and translucent, whereas the blue is almost entirely clear. So on products where you can select a colour, I'd probably opt for something other than blue

Usefulness I'll start by saying that I believe that these kind of camo tokens should become the new standard. Controversial, maybe, but here's why. This situation has happened to me a TON of times.




Thrasymedes sees a chance to pop a dastardly Kamael. This is my view of the table. Maybe it's my last order of my turn , for example. Seeing no damger, he hurtles forward to deliver the righteous pain to the wierd alien



Glory be, the dice are on my side and Thrasymedes kills the Kamael. Mission accomplished



Unfortunately, I hadn't seen this camo marker (I know Clipsos is TO camo, but for the purpose of the example I had to use what I had to hand. It could just as easily be a chasseur, scots guard etc etc) lurking on the balcony. Not because of where the marker is, but because of where I'm looking from.



In his turn, the Clipsos pops out and sends Thrasymedes to the next life. Yes, it's a camo marker and is supposed to be hidden. And Yes, maybe I could walk around the table after every skill spent to check, but my problem with this situation is that the Camoflage marker has kind of awarded itself a pseudo-hidden deployment state, where I only know about it if I remember where it was put, or I've been feverishly looking for obscured camo tokens.
I have a regular opponent who plays camo/mine spam Ariadna, and his camo tokens are (admittedly quite nice) 2p coins based modelled to match his board), and I'm forever surprised by stuff I didn't know was there.



This situation, I feel, is much fairer. Thradymedes is aware of the camo token, and he still has to deal with it if he wants to take out that strategic behemoth of a Kamael, but neither is the Clipsos going to capitalize on a situation simply because the player wouldn't have acted a certain way if he knew it was there. 

Similarly, if that camo marker wasn't prone, then it's S2 in N3. You'd be potentially robbing the other player of the option of discovering the marker, where he likely would if he knew it was there 

They nicely represent the silhouette of a human sized model, and could draw a players attention to requesting a LOS silhouette marker be placed for LOS checking. 

At present, there is no way to distinguish between camo and TO camo. Players may like to:

1) mount the cutouts on a MAS camo/TO camo marker to differentiate

2) mark the bases to differentiate

3) put the flat-style marker next to the cutout marker, and inform your opponent of why you're doing that

Alternatively. Perhaps Customeeple could consider offering an etched version of the existing tokens ( similar to their nano screens) to denote TO camo

Summary An excellent product, very reasonably priced, that I now use in every game. Highly recommend 


Next will be the Customeeple Panic Room 

Atalanta and Spotbot

Update time!

Ive been lazy with the blog again, but mainly because I've been busy! Busy playing N3, busy painting terrain, and busy painting Steel Phalanx!

First off, N3 is awesome. The rules are much more fluid, and have just made a great game better. Hopefully I'll have some Tactica stuff worked out soon

I painted this terrain for my friend Russ, a sizeable amount in a very short time 

And for myself, I've started on my plast craft terrain. I really like this stuff, as I can paint it quickly and make it match my Aleph forces

I'm fairly happy leaving the white sections unpainted, I mask them off and paint the counter colour violet/Royal purple/white

I've also rushed out a ton of scatter terrain. Some of it needs redoing, and details added to all, but it's good enough to go on the table right now

I got a new airbrush for Christmas from the lady

I painted the CSU from Operation Icestorm. She's been my High Value Target in the new N3 missions

I've made a start on Ajax the Great and Atalanta...

...and a finish on the Spotbot!

Also a dakini sniper conversion, as it's so cool in the new rules

I posted a simple how-to reinforce and weight the Moto-Tronica terrain. I like this simple card terrain a lot, as it looks good, is functional and creates no rules ambiguities. 

Waylands Games continue to suck by sending me a second email to explain why my order still hasn't arrived. I'm waiting on a micro art studio's battle mat and 3 sets of Moto-tronica terrain

Finally, a look backwards at some of my old battle reports from back in 2008 when I first started playing Infinity :)

Ajax and Atalanta WIP

Not too much left to do on these, Ajax needs more time than Atalanta, but the Spotbot is all good!

54 mm stone troll

Also I forgot to post this fellow. First thing I've finished in a while. He has a trollslayer partner for a nice diorama that will be finished soon

Stretch Goal 8 reached!

A bunch of stuff sold on eBay, and I had quite a big commission over Xmas, so the full Carnevale board should be happening! Awesome!