Stuart Marsh (@sam2064 on Beasts of War) has been playing Infinity for three years and now writes a blog about his time with the game. In this two-part series, Stuart explores the Infinity Tournament System or “ITS” and offers suggestions on how to get involved if you’re looking to take that leap.

In the first part of this article series which you can read HERE, he goes into detail about getting started with ITS. Now, we move deeper into this world and explore ways to speed up gameplay, building your armies and more.

Gameplay - Starting The Game

In official tournaments, the start of play should go as follows...

1. Name The Faction (and Sectorial) You Are Playing e.g. Yu Jing, JSA, Imperial Service
2. Each player should Draw Classified Objectives. Draw two cards per objective and discard one. If you draw multiples you may discard one and draw another card. (If INTELCOM is being used, in some missions only, players must roll randomly to see who has to declare if they are going to use INTELCOM)
3. Choose Your Army List. You can select your Army list after you see the objectives.
4. Roll Initiative – The winner then chooses the order of either Deployment or Turns
5. Deploy forces – Always deploy your HVT first, then the rest of your army, except one hold back.

This gives you a quick and easy guide to starting your games. For example, by the end of set-up, a game might look like this...

Beyond that we're then diving into some more specifics you'll need to know.

Line Of Fire & Order Declaration

One useful thing to remember in games is Line of Fire and the location of miniatures and markers are always open information. You can always ask your opponent...

• Where are all your troopers? Are there any in this building? What are they?
• Before you spend and order to activate a unit and start moving you can ask “if I follow this path, will any of your troopers or markers on the table be able to draw LoF to my unit?” If an opponent fails to declare this information and you then move and they say – “Oh I forgot this guy” you should get the chance to redo that order/or keep the order but cancel the opportunity to ARO (note this is something you’d have to agree between you or get the TO over)

Line of Fire is often difficult to see using the miniatures. While most are representative of the size of the trooper, it is best to swap the miniature with a Silhouette Marker (or place the paper Silhouette Marker in-front of the trooper) to check LoF. You can see an enemy trooper if you can draw a LoF from your model and see a 3 x 3 mm square on the targets Silhouette (these squares are a marker on the paper tokens or acrylic markers).

Note – it is not allowed at any time to measure Zone of Control or any Ranges, or the distance of the movement unit you resolve the order e.g. When you declare movement – you say “I’ll activate this Domaru. As my first Short Skill I’m going to move him into cover behind these crates”. You then measure and move the 4” but if you end up short you can’t take it back!

Ways To Speed Up Gameplay

Speed is always an issue. You should try and limit yourself to ten minutes each for deployment, leaving one hour and forty minutes for the game.

Lay out your orders clearly rather than stacking them up. Sometimes there is a useful roof-top to do so. Your opponent should at all times be able to see how many orders you have left and have spent. If you have two combat groups, place your order pools on different sides of the table, to not mix them up.

Each time you spend an order you can either flip the token, take it and place it back in a pot, or take it and place it next to the unit you are spending it on.

Work with your opponent to identify Lines of Fire and ARO’s – it’s much easier to do this that the opponent constantly having to come over to your side of the table and it makes the game go much quicker! You may even help you opponent moving his models on your side of the table if asked.

Rules & Questions

Try and know the basic rules of the game e.g. movement, combat etc quite well and then try and read up on any specific skills that your Army uses e.g. Martial Arts, Stealth, Camo. If you and your opponent get really stuck on a rule ask over the TO (this is often easier than trying to find the rule yourself!).

Your opponent should know the special rules of their Troopers, so try to give them some trust and latitude is these e.g. Protheon?? What’s that?? You can suck my blood and get extra wounds??

It’s not necessary to have a paper copy of the rules at hand. Most rules are looked up using the Infinity Official Wiki at wiki.infinitythegame.com and are very easy to search. In addition to the two core rules books (which are both on the Wiki) there is also an FAQ which clarifies some more complex rules interactions.

Building Armies For ITS Tournaments

Depending on the mission, you might take very different armies in an ITS mission. Some missions such a Decapitation, Frontline, Quadrant Control, Biotechvore etc do not require any particular skills or equipment.

Many missions require Specialist Troopers and some require specific equipment e.g. Looting and Sabotage can require Anti-Material Close Combat Weapons or Demo-Charges, and some missions require a specific unit type e.g. Show of Force requires a TAG.

What Are Specialists?

Many missions require Specialist Troopers to complete specific actions e.g. Pick up crates of Supplies, Activate an Antenna in Com Centre, Activate a Console in Capture and Protect. Sometimes you need to spend an action to activate the item, sometimes you need to just stay I base to base contact. Read the specific mission details for more information.

Specialist Troopers are identified in each mission but usually include the following...

• Forward Observers – Can use the Forward Observe Skill to place enemies into a Targeted State and have access to free Flash Pulse equipment.
• Engineers – Can use the Engineer skill to repair structure on Remotes, TAGs and some G: Remote Presence Heavy Infantry, and remove states like Immobilised. They also all have a Deactivator.
• Doctors – Can use the Doctor skill and also have a Medkit.
• Paramedics – Come equipment with a MedKit.
• Hackers – Including Standard Hacking Device (HD), Killer Hacking Device (KHD), Assault Hacking Device (AHD) etc. Note a Hacker is still counted as a Hacker even if their Hacking Device is destroyed/disabled.

There are also two other types linked to special skills...

• Chain of Command – can act as a specialist and is the only example of a closed information specialist.
• Specialist Operative – can act as a specialist, but does not get any other special benefits nor does it count as a specific type of specialist for bonuses

Lieutenants are NOT specialists (they were in a previous edition) so bear that in mind.

Most Importantly, Have Fun!

The Infinity tournament scene has a great gaming community with a whole variety of different levels of experience. Each time I go to a tournament there a quite a few people who have played only a few, or no tournaments before and the more experienced players are always ready to spend time helping other people to play and improve their game!

I hope this article has helped add some additional useful information to the rules and gives you a good place to start using the Infinity Tournament System and playing in your first Infinity The Game tournament!

Don’t forget - when at tournaments shout out “CRIT!” for all to hear!

Stuart Marsh (@sam2064) (ITS “sam2064”) 'in the day’ was an avid Role Player of old-school D&D, BattleTech and later Shadowrun 3rd Ed. In 2013 he discovered miniatures gaming in the shape of Star Trek Attack Wing and the X-Wing Miniatures game. In September 2014 while at his local gaming club he saw some people playing a futuristic/cyberpunk manga like tabletop game and soon became hooked on Infinity and has been playing ever since! In between being a High School Science Teacher and looking after two kids, he writes his blog, mainly because he is obsessed with taking lots of photos!