List of the Week - Stuck in a (Ma)Rut

A while back on the Infinity forums I chimed in on a thread about getting the most out of the Marut in ITS at the 300 points level.

The Marut has always been tricky to fit into a list. It's expensive (122 points), is an obvious Lt (due to Strategos) and is part of an elite and expensive faction where you don't have cheap rifle-toting troops to provide orders. This can make supporting it properly, whilst still having sufficient specialists for ITS, a challenge. Needless to say it doesn't get much table time.

I was initially going to write up a 300pt Marut list for ITS, but my heart wasn't in it. You can read most of my thoughts about it in that thread anyway. Long story short, just use an Asura instead and save 50 points.

Then fate intervened and I received a PM from Urian on the forums asking for help building a 400 point Marut-lead Aleph army for an upcoming Spanish Spec-Ops tournament. The catch was that he really needed to submit it that day. After a lot of discussion, here is the list he used.

Look behind you! - Image from Corvus Belli

List of the Week - Two-TAG-Haqq

What's that I hear you cry? "But Haqqislam can only take one TAG!" Not if you are playing Qapu Khalqi!

Some sectorials armies offer substantially different options compared with their vanilla peers and when deciding to take a sectorial you always have to consider what you are gaining by giving up a lot of versatility. With this list I intend to gain a great deal indeed.

Few sectorials differ more from their counterparts than Qapu Khalqi. You gain access to a variety of mercenaries (Druze, Yuan-Yuan, Scarface) and a host of Nomad troops (Alguaciles, Mobile Brigada, Iguana) in exchange for a rather limited selection of basic Haqqislamite troops. You also have access to the Haris rule allowing you to field a 3-man secondary link ands the ability to bulk out your links cheaply using Hafza.

This is going to be a 300 point Spec Ops list that is designed to be able to take all-comers in all scenarios, i.e. the kind of list I'd happily take to a tournament.

Image property of Corvus Belli

Spoils of War 2014

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of putting on a small Infinity tournament as part of Vanguard's annual Spoils of War event. Traditionally this has been purely a 40k weekend but due to slightly lacklustre ticket sales they had some tables and scenery going spare and were offering space to other gaming systems that wanted to run things along side it. I couldn't turn down an offer like that now could I?

So, with less than a month of prep and organising I sorted out scenery, prizes and a dozen players for the first annual Spoils of War Infinity tournament. 

I'm happy to say that it all went rather well.

The aforementioned spoils of war - including the limited edition Tabitha Bolt

Birthday presents!

It was my birthday not too long ago, and after almost six years I've finally convinced my girlfriend that small toy soldiers make for ideal presents.

I'm really quite impressed by the amount of research she did into getting hold of some nice old lead for my burgeoning Chaos forces, including excursions onto the CCM Wiki and Stuff of Legends!. So without further ado, meet the new recruits.

Freshly stripped and smelling faintly like wet dog

Infinity - Loss of Lieutenant and Retreat changes.

Over at Bell of Lost Souls there is an article about some of the recent N3 announcements that I feel it's worth talking about a bit more.

Two of the harshest parts of Infinity currently are the Loss of Lieutenant rules and the Retreat rules. Both of them are effectively crippling for an army, but that's all changing now. Just take a look at the chart below.

A game changer

List of the Week - Every Day I'm Fidayin'

Welcome back to another Infinity List of the Week which right on schedule is a mere two weeks since my last one....

This time I'll be looking at Haqqislam's suite of Impersonators and how to make them as unpleasant for your opponent as possible. I'm sure that many of you have heard of the Saladin, Fiday and Al-Djabel list before, it is fairly notorious after all, and I'll be using those models as the core of this list.

The idea is that with Saladins WP of 17 you are more likely to take the first turn and using Strategos you will also be able to deploy more favourably. Strategos allows you to keep two models in reserve (your Impersonators, ideally) and your opponent may not keep a reserve model at all. As an added bonus you may spend your Lieutenants order on whoever you like which makes your army just that little bit more efficient.

So, with this in mind, let's see what we can do.

Engaging in a bit of light-hearted stabbing. - Image from Corvus Belli

Blast-Tastic!

I recently had the pleasure of attending Blast-Tastic! (yes, the exclamation mark is compulsory), a small sci-fi specific wargaming show in Bristol, for it's very first event. Considering it was an entirely new venture I have to say it was very smoothly run by Michael of Angel Barracks.

I signed up to run demonstration games of Infinity throughout the day using scenery kindly provided by Ian from The Wargaming Trader.

The show itself was a success, although I did bemoan the lack of a bring-and-buy which is normally a great draw for me, and I even picked up some new bits of scenery to take back to my local club.

The main hall with traders and participation games