In our last battle report we saw the Tohaa lay waste to the Nomads of Corregidor in a straight up, no nonsense firefight. But without any sort of objectives to fight over we were missing out on a large portion of how the game is meant to be played. So how do a couple of new players handle a real ITS style mission?

Luckily it turns out there were some valuable supplies in the area so the Nomads and the Tohaa were once again forced into confrontation…

This time instead of playing in the dark we played at our FLGS and we even had a BoW regular, Wildchevy, there to help us get all our rules straight! Having an experienced set of eyes and hands to flip through rules and was huge. Thanks Wildchevy!

Mission: ITS – Supply Run

We’re playing this game only slightly modified: we are holding our points to 150 and 3SW. We are also ignoring the 60% retreat rule since that percentage is pretty easy to get to in this small of a game.

TOHAA

GROUP 1 (Regular: 6/Irregular: 0):
KAMAEL Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (12)
KAMAEL (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (15)
KAMAEL (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (15)
ECTROS HMG, Nanopulser / Pistol, CCW. (2 | 53)
CLIPSOS (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (27)
SAKIEL Viral Combi Rifle, Swarm Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (26)
2 SWC | 148 Points

ARMY CODE:

eNqzMFRVNTSxUDVSNVSzUDOsMVQzg5OmakZA0hzMNlIzUTNULTMBAPPRCmc=

Casey’s Thoughts: This game is going to be all about grabbing objectives so I’m taking as many specialists (Forwards Observers in this case) as I possibly can. I’ll pair the Sakiel to negate his impetous status with a couple Kamael and rush them forward to secure an objective with the third Kamael following close behind them to reform the link in case it gets broken. The Clipsos with infiltration and FO is my ace in the hole in case the game goes pear shaped.

JURISDICTIONAL COMMAND OF CORREGIDOR

GROUP 1 (Regular: 6/Irregular: 0):
WILDCAT Engineer Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (23)
WILDCAT Engineer Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (23)
WILDCAT Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (19)
HELLCAT Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (24)
ALGUACIL Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 22)
INTRUDER Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, CCW. (1 | 37)
1.5 SWC | 148 Points

ARMY CODE:

eNozNVJVNTSxUDXUM1U1MlIzUzOsQVAWQMpYzRBIGoKFTNSAPNUyEwAkoQtY

Austin’s Thoughts: The Tohaa are going to be relying on their Kamaels to take objectives so a Hellcat with a shotgun is the perfect tool to drop in and pin them down. The Intruder will move up in camo and clear the way for everyone else. The Wildcats are the bread and butter of this list, they’re tough, mobile, and will be seizing objectives for me. If possible I’ll try to get my hacker involved but compared to the other rough and ready units in this list she’s probably just going to hang out and generate orders.

Pregame

Austin won the role off and elected to go first, this meant I got to deploy second in response to his deployment. Austin set himself up strong on my left side, telegraphing his intent to go after the left objective. The Alguacil was the lone unit holding down the right side of the board which appeared virtually empty.

My Ectros took up a nice over watch position that gave me several nice lanes of fire, while my link team huddled behind a building that gave them the option of going for the center or left objective. Ideally this would allow me to keep Austin guessing which objective I would go after.

Turn 1, Nomads:
Wildcats were free to push forward towards the left objective, but upon reaching the fire lane guarded by the Ectros and his HMG they hesitated and consolidated themselves just out of the HMG’s LOS. The Intruder moved as a camo marker up almost to the center objective to a spot where he could see anything coming towards it.

Turn 1, Tohaa:
I don’t have enough cover or armor to go head to head with a link team of Wildcats so my link team made the decision to start pushing for the middle objective. There’s only one large clearing they had to make it past…

Crap! I forgot about the Intruder, he’s got perfect LOS through a window! Since he’s firing from camo I pretty much have to take what he’s giving me, and my Sakiel, finds himself glued to the floor much to Austin’s amusement. I’ve had to get rid of the Intruder if I have any chance of making it out of this clearing alive so my Kamaels regroup into a new link team and open fire on the Intruder.

They managed to incapacitate the Intruder, but he managed to kill two more including my Lt. in ARO. Turn one and I’m already in Loss of Lt. My final Kameal huddled next to a building and hoped the puddle of fear he’s cowering in will dissuade any further violence towards him.

Turn 2, Nomads:
With nothing covering the Wildcats, the Hellcat dropped in. She was out of sight of the Ectros, but if the lone Kameal made a run for it she would have had no problem cutting him down.

They must have been feeling pretty confident since the Alguacil charged out from cover and tried to go for the right objective, but was gunned down by the Ectros. (Note HMG in cover > Combi Rifle in the open)

Turn 2, Tohaa:
Well that was a short turn! I nominated the Ectros as my new Lt. and sat back glumly trying to figure out how to win the game with one turn left.

Turn 3, Nomads:
Austin’s plan was simple: grab the objective and then walk it back out of LOS of my Ectros. The only problem was he failed two of his WIP checks and was left semi-exposed. However he did his best to get his Wildcats into cover. He only had one objective to my none so the worst he could do is a tie right?

Wrong.

Turn 3, Tohaa:
Time for my Ace. The Clipsos slipped out of TO Camo and revealed she had been sitting on top of the right objective, out of any LOS, all along! She passed her WIP on the first try and tied everything up.

I’ve got a HMG, it's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, I’ve got two orders, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and my Ectros is wearing sunglasses. The Ectros makes a flying leap and gives the Wildcat a full dose of HGM. The Wildcat responds with a ARO shoot. His shot glances harmlessly off the Ectros but is riddled with holes and drops the objective.

Result: Tohaa Win

Post-Game Analysis
This game was down to the wire and I think it showcases a couple of important things to keep in mind when starting to play Infinity:

1. Loss of Lt. is no fun. ITS missions are typically only 3 turns long so going into LoL and essentially losing a whole turn is killer. I tried to be cute and hide my Lt. in a non-obvious place; after all who would put their Lt. in the line of fire? No one, because putting your Lt. in danger is stupid and I got punished for it.

2. TO Infiltrators are AMAZING! IF you have access to one don’t just look at it from the stand point of “What can it kill?” holding my TO infiltrator back till the end saved the game for me. Had I tried to use her earlier I would have given that advantage away for negligible offensive output.

3. Don’t give up a model you don’t have to. Austin kind of threw away his Alguacil. Had he saved her for later he might have been able to use her to take out my Infiltrator.

4. When playing an ITS mission, time is short. In a lot of other games you spend your first couple turns adjusting position and setting yourself up. You don’t have time for that as in Infinity and you need to have your plan of attack ready and your deployment needs to be done right so no time is wasted.

5. Go second. Now a lot of people might disagree with this, but I’m finding more and more that going second allows you a last ditch response that your opponent can’t effectively respond to.

Do you prefer going first or second? Do you hate TO FOs? Do you love LoL? Sound off in the comments.

Casey Roberts

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