USARF Recruitment Office - Part 2

More USAriadna? More USAriadna!

The army is coming along nicely and this next batch adds a lot of variety for my infantry. I'm still loving painting these guys and am looking forward to picking up the Maverick box soon too!

Hardcase, 112, Grunt with LGL, Dozer and Airborne Ranger

USARF Recruitment Office - Part 1

I've kind of fallen behind with uploading pictures of my USAriadna army and I've been working on them at quite a pace recently!

I'm still really enjoying painting the colour scheme and look forward to playing the faction a lot once the Interplanetary is over. I'm hoping to give them their tournament debut at the Exeter team tournament towards the end of the year.

Anyway, here's the first of the batches that were completed recently.

List Building for the Interplanetary 2016

Can you believe that it's been a year already? Yep, it's almost time for the Interplanetary tournament in Vigo, Spain again.

For those not in the know, the Interplanetary is a 100-man tournament held in the home-town of Corvus Belli and it marks the end of the ITS season. Last year I took my Steel Phalanx and came a fairly respectable 33rd. My goal this time is to not do worse. Given my lack of tournament practice over the last year this is going to be a challenge!

My initial plan was to take a freshly painted USAriadna army with me, but after discovering that the tournament was not a Spec Ops event this year (at some point it was changed and the players weren't advised until near the deadline) my list prep was in tatters. In particular I was concerned about the faction's ability to complete Highly Classified reliably.

So I went crying back to all-knowing Aleph and once again took control of the Steel Phalanx.

Exeter Summer Challenge 2016 AAR

Last weekend I attended the Summer Challenge in Exeter which had a rather unusual format.

It was a three round campaign tournament with 12 starting XP, perma-death and panoplies which you could loot for weapons/equipment that would persist between games. It had all the potential for making really ridiculous combinations of skills or equipment and it didn't disappoint!

I was incredibly unprepared for the event and, if I'm honest, I almost flaked out at the last minute as I was feeling pretty rough that morning. I hadn't even decided on what faction to take until I was already on the train to the venue! Despite the potential flexibility of vanilla Aleph, in the end I settled on using my ever-reliable Steel Phalanx given the rather bloodthirsty mission selection.

Fortunately for me, it all worked out better than I had expected.

Infinitely BIG IV

A couple of weeks ago we held our fourth Bristol tournament at Bristol Independent Gaming.

Once again it was a pleasure to run as everybody knew what they were doing and swiftly got into their games. Unfortunately the turn-out wasn't as high as for our last event due to some players who had to cancel in the last few days leading up to the tournament, so in the end we had twelve people battling it out for the opportunity to take home a Krakot Renegade miniature.

Infinitely BiG IV prize pool - including the wooden 'spoon'.

Infinity - Dealing with Impersonation

The use of Impersonators in Infinity can be quite a divisive subject. Complaints of unfairness are frequently levelled against them because their unique rules seem to break so many fundamental aspects of the game and they bypass many conventional defences.

At first they may come across as unstoppable monsters who can go where they please with impunity, picking off valuable targets (such as an all-important Lieutenant) with complete disregard for their own safety, much like human-shaped guided missiles. However, in practice they are far from unreasonable - they might even be fair!

Learning how to deal with them effectively only comes with practice and experience, some of which I hope to share with you in this article.

Have a nice day!

Infinity at the UK Games Expo 2016

Last Sunday I was back at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham to organise an Infinity event for a second time. Once again we ran the event with 24 players and even had the privilege of playing indoors, rather than in the marquee like last year, as the trade section of the Expo had been moved over to the NEC.

We had great help from the Expo staff who had set up tables/cloths ahead of time for us and provided me with all the things that I had left at home (paper. duct tape etc.) as well as three trophies to hand out to the players.

Information on the final rankings, prizes, armies and tables are all below. Be aware that there are quite a lot of images.

Trophies for first place, runner-up and best pained army.