Infinity Spring Cleaning

Second to last mission in the core set of Defiance. I shan’t say too much in order to avoid spoilers. What I shall say is A) that it was an excellent mission that played and felt completely epic and B) that we got to do our best Arnold impressions with much “Get to the Stalkaaah!”

I continue to be impressed with what a great job CB did with this game. My only sadness is that I don’t think they’re going to do a second printing of it which would be a nice chance for others to get in on it and for them to clear up errata and typos.

Whew. I tried to keep it simple but it still took a bit. Overall I’m pleased with the outcome.
If I had to do it again I wouldn’t bother filling the gaps. It’s an angular model regardless and the fill actually contrasts more than I’d like.

So I got my first games of base Infinity in finally! And it’s as good as I had hoped it was!

We played the first 3 missions of the “Learn To Play” manual that came in operation Icestorm. “Why Icestorm” you ask? Why start with what is now effectively an old rule set? A few reasons: that box was my first Infinity purchase, those were the minis I had painted up ages ago (so everything was ready to go), that was the terrain I had handy… It wasn’t a carefully thought out thing to do but it was fun!

If I wasn’t hooked on all things already for the aesthetic I would now be hooked for the gameplay. I will say the complexity ramps up quickly—and we’re only three missions in so there are a lot of rules to go! boy am I excited to get stuck in to more of this.

My plan is a narrative campaign. I have the Campaign Paradiso book and my acquisition disorder has led me to collect enough minis to field pretty much any faction (though much painting must be done to achieve that goal) so I have what I need to play through that. I’ve heard that book wasn’t a huge hit with fans—or that it’s in need of significant revision—but I could have imagined that. Anyone have any experience with it—issues, thoughts, recommendations?

So I primed the Stalker and then I decided that there were some gaps (innate to trying to use flat MDF to make angled/curved panels—not complaining) that were a bit more striking than I liked.

So I broke out the Vallejo plastic putty and put that in the gaps between panels. In the past shrinkage was never an issue but  this was the first time I’ve used in gaps this big. Here there was definitely shrinkage, though not away from the walls, just a convex bit in the middle. So I put another coat on, let it dry overnight, and then primed the putty. Overall it looks pretty darn good and I’m excited to start slapping some paint on it to make it come alive.
Only time will tell whether it ever gets used in a game. I suppose it will, if only as terrain in a game of Infinity (which I have yet to play but hope to get to the table later today).

The DHL fairy turned up today with this beauty from Luxumbra. I took the afternoon off to put it together.

it’s a beauty of a kit if a bit lengthy to assemble. They did some really clever things and I’m excited to paint it up and to play with it.

One question for folks: do you seal your MDF before or after you assemble a kit?

I think I worked out the kinks/shortcomings in my understanding of how the game engine/rules work. I will say this could really use some quick reference cards for:

• the AI symbols and targeting priority in case of a tie
• round structure
• keywords
• Attack sequence/timing

Thankfully that’s something that others have taken a lead on and all I need to do is print off and tweak (maybe) some files from BGG and the Corvus Belli forum.

That completes the core set for Defiance—or maybe it’s the deluxe core set. You decide. Now to get playing until the expansions come in.
I hadn’t thought about the fact that painting this up would cause me to paint at least one of almost every faction and every faction once the expansions come and I get a Tohaa under my belt (I’m counting O-12 as being done as I used there color scheme for the containers). It’s a bit whacky to see all the hours and effort on one tray with room to spare.

So these two made clear to me that I have to do more work on my purple. I started with the color on the left and then added white to highlight but wasn’t that pleased so I tried highlighting with the second from the left and then adding Vallejo Sunny Skin Tone to the mix as a highlight and that worked better. In the end I figured out that a pale grey as a final highlight helped things along.
The final color is what I used for her arm hexes/hair with Sunny Skin again added for successive highlights.

I thought about looking for a decal for his armband. I may still do so. However, I think the Red Crescent is passably recognizable.

I was thoroughly unimaginative here and just followed the concept art and (largely) the Vallejo Haqqislam paint pack instructions. The end result is rather washed out/faded which I think fits the Haq sun bleached Bourak theme quite well.

The main addition here is the base. I pretty much just used the same colors from my CA basing scheme—all with dry brushing except for the yellow centers of the plants and the dead TAG.

I painted the TAG Yu Jing colors even though I suspect that it’s a Pano TAG. I think that’s Carlos’s running joke as all of the corpses in the scenery pack are clearly Pano fusiliers. I figured I could amuse myself in a similar vein and get some more practice with painting Yu Jing.

This concludes the core box Combined Army. Now for the four final heroes (or rather two plus their remotes) and the whole core set will be complete!

Wow that was a lot of edge highlighting!

This is a thing of beauty. I still have to paint the base but I think this turned out well. I also think I’m getting small glimpses of reasonable NMM here. I’m only a bit sad that it’ll only see the table for relatively brief moments.
Next up: the base.

I used the same purple as ever for the tubes and glowing bits. Figured that and the bases ties the CA together.

For the orange flesh I just painted it up like I did YuJing but then threw a red wash over it as a final step.

So we completed mission 1 today with only a few glaring rules goofs (that I know about) and some utter clumsiness on my part that caused some minor disasters. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this and it lived up to my hopes. For anyone who has played Imperial Assault, it feels like a much more dynamic version of that on steroids—many more meaningful choices and many more varied units (despite there being fewer miniatures than IA there is greater difference as a result of the different identity cards).

A few minor rules goofs: While you shouldn’t read what happens at every milestone, definitely do take a look at the little boxes in the missions to see what triggers them. I think we caught everything but a couple of events may have been an activation late or something along those lines.

One major rules goof: the Nox Leaders can’t leave the shuttle. We forgot that and so they jumped of at their earliest convenience leaving Agnes unguarded. This made it significantly easier for us to save her. I can live with that.

Two minor disasters (aka reasons not to game with me unless we’re using my games):

• I knocked my drink over right into all of the tokens causing many of them to be a total right off and requiring some frenzied cleanup. I now have a new set of acrylic tokens (that will do double duty for Aristeia! also) on the way from Warsenal.
• I managed to knock over the entire tray holding all the minis not on the table. Much frenzied crawling around on the floor and a minor heart attack later and all the little folks were located, and with the exception of two arms in need of reattaching, all were in fine shape. Whew!

Now to reread through the rules and check out the reattach/FAQ before we play again in two weeks’ time. I’d read the rules before we got together today but I always find with games that it takes me one play through to have something to anchor all the details to. I invariably forget at least one rule the first time but I’ve learned that if I’ll never remember them all until after I’ve played at least once. With complex/heavy games there’s a good chance I’ll still get something wrong (I’m looking at you every Vital Lacerda game I’ve taught or played!)

Nothing unusual here. I used pano techniques and largely colors for the blue and Yu Jing for the orange/yellow. I missed a trick, however, I’m not doing Haq colors for the white/cream.

Regardless, now I’m fully painted up for at least the first two missions—just in time for my scheduled game day tomorrow.

Cadin was great fun to paint. Now I very much look forward to painting the rest of my Ariadna forces.

I pretty much just used the Vallejo WW2 Soviet box for this, though in future I may need to find a richer, darker, base green to give them a bit more vibrance.

Red hair recipe was to start with chocolate brown and then highlight up with the pictured colors (in gradations of course).

So…that’s everything needed for the game tomorrow, though I’m still hoping to at least get Agnes ready to go as well since she does figure into the first mission (I think).

Yet again I was entirely unoriginal and just went with the Vallejo PanOceania recipe. Not the first time I’ve done Pano so I knew what I was in for.

I’m not clear on Uma’s sectorial affiliation. And yes, that bothers me as I had come up with variants for the sectorials. Regardless, I just went with the game art.

Oh—I’m going with 74.029 Lipstick for the Pano glowing bits (though I may well have said something entirely different when last I painted Pano).

I swear one of these days I’m going to accidentally back my way into a respectable NMM. This isn’t it and it’s not really what I was going for but it feels closer than the times I’ve actually tried (see here for an example).

This my first go round painting Yu Jing and I’m no longer intimidated by the prospect (though it does take me a considerable length of time). I pretty much just followed the Vallejo playbook on this—with the exception of adding a final wash with a 50/50 mix of the pictured paints.

It’s really nice to get back to painting humans after all that Shasvasti. Billie was fun too. I’m a sucker for kawai.
So close to being able to play the first few missions with everything necessary all painted up! (And hopefully getting some battle/mission reports up!)