This is the Wartrader, allocating new priorities...

Woooo new Infinity missions! If you've not downloaded them, yet, head to the Infinity site and download the PDF now!

First Glances

The first observation is that this is a massive document at 53 pages, but that's partly because it incorporates what were several separate PDFs last year, including the general Infinity Tournament System (ITS) rules and rules for escalation leagues (which can also be submitted to the ITS).

The second observation is that there are 18 scenarios including updated 2013-4 missions, the N3 rulebook missions and then a bunch of new ones.

Tournament Formats

In the 2014 season there were several formats such as using the campaign rules, doubles games etc. These have been restructured as 'Extras' that you add on to the tournament. Briefly...

Campaign is unchanged from 2014. This allows players to buy upgrades for their force between rounds, depending on how well they did in missions.

Hobby is new. Roughly speaking everyone who uses a fully painted force gets some extra points in their overall ITS ranking and the three best-painted forces get some more.

Joint Operations is an existing one. This is for doubles games.

Showdowns are new to 2015 and lets single-round tournaments be submitted.

Spec-Ops is another existing one. This lets players use a fixed 'Spec-Ops' character in each of their lists, buying equipment, guns and skills.

Scenarios

Some of the existing missions have been updated but the main change is to Lifeblood which in 2014 had six crates land on the battlefield after the players' forces had deployed. From a TO's point of view this was a huge pain. The 2015 version has the crates land before the game and distributes them much better. Now on to the new missions...

Transmission Matrix - Five 8" circles are distributed across the board. Points are scored at the end of each game round by dominating as many or more circles than your opponent by having more points of troops in that circle. The kicker is that the centre of each circle also contains a Repeater for both players, making Hacking shenanigans extremely likely.

Beaconland - Already commonly known as 'Baconland' to go with last year's 'Bacon Race', this has a pair of consoles on the centreline of the table which can generate beacons for your force. Gain points at the end of the game for having beacons in the middle area of the table and in your opponent's deployment zone. I can see this one getting really vicious with the need to push units up into the far side of the board.

Cold Sleep - There are two consoles on the centreline of the table and four coldsleep coffins spread across the table. At the end of the game you need to have interacted with more coffins and consoles than your opponent. Having tried this one out at a club last night, it's a relatively straightforward mission compared to some of the other new ones. Doctors and paramedics get a bonus to interact with the objectives.

Coffin Raiders - There are consoles on the edges of the deployment zones and four coffins in an objective room in the middle of the table. You get points for downloading data-packs from the coffins (and a maximum of four sets of data-packs), more points for uploading that data via the consoles back on the edges of the DZs and points for having more data-packs at the end of the game - including for any you've stolen from enemy models. Doctors and Paramedics get a bonus when interacting with the objectives.

Biotechvore - You get points depending on how much of the enemy force you kill and how much of your force you keep alive. The twist is that you only have 8" DZs but there are 16" deep Biotechvore Areas - at the end of your turn, you have to roll for all of your troopers in a BTV Area to see if they take damage. To make matters worse, skills that let a model start outside their DZ suffer penalties. This is already getting flagged up as the most divisive mission in the pack, with some players loving it and some hating it.

Highly Classified - This has a set of public Classified Objectives achievable by both players and then a hidden Classified for each player that they are allowed to choose. Corvus Belli have clearly been keeping an eye on how my Yet Another Mission System (YAMS) cards are been used these days, with it being common to have a pool of shared objective cards plus private ones for each player.

Classified Objectives

These are largely unchanged from the N3 rulebook with a major exception - the default 'Secure the High Value Target' classified that can be swapped for a Classified you don't like can still be swapped at any point in the game but you can't achieve it until the end of the game. Note that all scenarios use the full list of Classifieds, so both places will need a VIP/High Value Target model outside their Deployment Zone - possibly another nod to my use of a Civvie objective model in YAMS.

Summary

From a TO's perspective, one thing that leaps out is that there are now three missions that use an Objective Room - Beacon/Bacon Race, Coffin Raiders and The Armory. This means a full three-round tournament can be run without having to change all the tables to add or take away an 8" building in the middle of the table, which can be a big pain between rounds!

There are now a large number of varied official missions for Infinity, a far cry from the early days before the 2013 ITS season introduced 4-5 missions. With my YAMS cards having been the default system for almost all Infinity tournaments in 2012 and still being in use for tournaments now, it's been interesting to watch how the ITS missions have developed over the years, in some cases taking cues from YAMS. I might have to return the favour and start on YAMS 2.0.

Range Bands Chart - Unrelated to the missions, something that you might find useful for your Infinity games is my old range band chart, now updated for N3.

So, what's your favourite/least favourite new mission?

Ian Wood aka @wartrader

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