Morat Daturazi Witch Soldier

The Morat Daturazi Witch Soldier, for the Combined Army, embraces the comlog and mind to increase response time. They also embrace the close combat or "dirty war" that revolves around this martial art. They also have the ability to corrupt opponents cubes after incapacitating an enemy model in a burst area.

 Primed white.

 Pants and shoulder armor GW Foundation Knarloc Green. Drybrushed Goblin Green. Metal parts P3 Ironhull Green.

 Drybrushed P3 Cold Steel. Other metal parts drybrushed GW Codex Grey and lightly drybrushed GW Fortress Grey.

 Face and assess points painted GW Scab Red, access points and face drybrushed GW Red Gore. Face drybrushed a mix of GW Red Gore and P3 Menoth White Highlight.

 GW Snot Green for fabric sashes and crystals and these were then drybrushed GW Scorpion Green. Hair was painted P3 Arcane Blue then drybrushed P3 Frostbite.

 Side bags painted P3 Guncorps Brown and drybrushed P3 Hammerfall Khaki.

 Finally a wash with GW Devlan Mud.

And the back. This is the model in the Combined Army Starter Pack here. There is also a two model pack with other poses and weapons here that I'm thinking of getting if I like the game as much as i do now and it gets more playing time.

Morat Vanguard Infantry

The Morat, in the Infinity sci-fi game, are aliens that are ferocious and tough and are reluctant to give up. As long as you Combined Army has at least one Morat, you do not need to retreat until 75% of your forces are eliminated (rather than the regular 60%). These three models were included in the Combined Army starter pack.

 Primed white.

 Arms were painted with P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight, pants painted one-half GW Foundation Gnarloc Green and the other half GW Foundation Orkhide Shade.

 The pants were drybrushed GW Goblin Green. The arms were drybrushed 50/50 P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight and P3 Frostbite. The gun and metal items were painted P3 Ironhull Grey.

 The bottom part of the gun, tops of the shoes, and the pistol were painted with P3 Cold Steel. The metal parts were drybrushed GW Codex Grey and then lightly drybrushed in GW Fortress Grey.

 Face and connector bits were painted in GW Scab Red then drybrushed with GW Red Gore. The face was then highlighted with a mix of P3 Menoth White Highlight and GW Red Gore.

 The green connectors were painted GW Snot Green then highlighted with GW Scorpion Green. The hair was painted P3 Arcane Blue then drybrushed with P3 Frostbite.

 The leather bags were painted P3 Gun Corps Brown then drybrushed with P3 Hammerfall Khaki. Some parts on the arms were painted in P3 Menoth White Highlight. The grenade was painted P3 Traitor Green.

 Finally the model was washed with GW Devlan Mud, the chest armour washed with GW Ashuruman Blue and the top part of the gun washed with GW Thraka Green.

 Here's the back.

 The front of another model.

 And the back.

 And the front of the third one.

 And his back.

These fun and cheap in points models will make a good staple for my Combined Army forces.

Infinity Factions and History

In my last article on Infinity, I wrote of the overall basic gameplay. Here i'll talk about the different factions and history of the universe of Infinity.

PanOceania: The number one power in the Human Sphere and also has the greatest technology. Based on the Western Powers. Good ranged skills and their armour looks like hi-tech crusaders.

Yu-Jing: The other great power and eternal rival to PanOceania. Based on the far East. They've just released Shaolin Monks...with gun...in awesome poses. Here are their others.

Haqqislam: A smaller power based on the religion of Islam without the fundamentalism. Promotes humanism, medicine and planetology. Also the inventors of the substance that allows transfer of human consciousnesses. I like their elegant looks.

Ariadna: Decendants of a lost colony ship that consisted of Scots, Cossacks, Americans and Frenchmen. Not the most advanced technology but tough. Great looking models and they have alien-made werewolves! Awesome!

Nomad: Made up of people who don not wish a life controlled by large social-economic powers or the human AI, Alph. Travel in three superlarge ships. Very anime style and specialize in subterfuge.

Alph: The AI controller of the vast technological systems interlinking most of humanity. Extremely anime style and expensive point models, but they are good for those points spent.

Mercenaries: Corperate warriors. Hires themselves out to other human powers but can be a faction in thier own right. Variable looks.

Combined Army: An alien AI that has gathered other races it deems important in achieving its mission, transcendence by observing other races transcendence. Humanity will be the latest experiment, in order to observe their reaction to an outside threat in this mission. Variable looks as they are an amalgam of alien races.

I chose Haqqislam and Combined Army; mostly because of the look of the models and the background.

For the history of the universe of Infinity, i suggest going here. They have it displayed better than i could and their InfinityWiki is good. The Infinity website also has sample 300 point forces that are based off of the starter boxes, seen here.

Next are my Combined Army starter pack models.

Infinity Overview

Infinity is a 28mm sci-fi tabletop skirmish miniatures game made by Corvus Beli, a Spanish company. They started it in 2006 and the miniatures line and popularity has expanded exponentially as time has gone on. It takes place about 175 years into our future. The rules are free as well as a free army builder on their website.

Small games are played with 150 points (about 5-10 miniatures) with larger games using 300 points (10-20). Every faction has models that do different things. Regular troopers heavily armoured Special Forces, support and robots. They can also be armed with a variety of weapons from knives and pistols to monofilament blades and plasma rifles. Each weapon has varied ranges and damage output. Needless to say, the variety is astounding and it would be best to start with proxying models with ones you already have. A start point should be 150 points until you get used to the basic rules and the rules for the miniatures you like. There is also the concept of "special weapon cost" or SWC. Items such as heavy machine guns and other support weapons have an SWC cost associated with it. Every 50 points of your forces you are allowed 1 SWC point. This is a good mechanic that keeps special equipment equal between different factions and forces. You must also have one Lieutenant who can give another order just for itself.

Your tabletop should be crowed with terrain. They recommend each terrain piece being no more than 10 cm from one another and the fire lanes (lengths of the playing area with long straight-aways) short.

Once sides are decided and when each player has their forces placed, you begin your turn. During a turn, you get an amount of orders based on the number of models you have on the table. You can have jump troops off the table and totally camouflaged models hidden in areas but they do not give you orders until they are revealed. This rule also limits a small high-point value force from dominating the table because a specialty force of 6 models has a smaller number of orders that a smaller point value force with lots of models and orders.

Orders come in a variety of forms. You could have a model move then move again for an order (short order and another short order). You could have a model use an order to shoot a round and then move. There are short and long grenade orders (direct pitching versus throwing over a wall). Hacking orders. Medical orders. Close combat orders. There are more but you get the idea. It seems imposing when you first read through the rules but makes more sense when you actually play it.

The tagline for the game is "It always your turn" and they are not telling falsehoods when they say this. If you give a model a move order to move between two pieces of covering terrain, if an enemy model can see you, they can have that model "react" to your move with a short shooting order. The model being shot at can also give a short reaction order: shoot back, dodge, hack...etc. To add to the chaos of battle, if multiple models can see the model that did the order they can react to it as well as any model within 8 inches.

To resolve an order you roll a d20, add or subtract modifiers and roll under your statistic. If you roll equal to it, it is a critical success. If there are multiple orders to resolve, each model determines their target number and rolls a d20 at the same time. The highest successful roll beats all others and only its order is resolved. If a model scores a critical then their order is resolved instead. If there is a tie then the model with the highest target number (number required to be under or match) resolves its order. If that number is a tie then they reroll until someone wins. This does mean that if a regular grunt is firing on a stealthy model behind cover (target number 1) and the model being shot at is an special forces model with a kick-ass accurate gun shoots back at the grunt firing in the open (target 12), if the grunt rolls a 1 and the special forces model rolls an 11, the grunt wins. But hey, isn't war hell...

Once a side takes 40% or more casualties, they begin to retreat off the table. That's right, retreat. You can spend orders to suspend this but you are then having a fighting retreat. Models with religious can act normally in this regard.

That's pretty much it. The Infinity website above has lots of cool stuff on it, including this army builder and this miniatures page. Just be warned that because it was written in Spanish and translated to other languages, there are several tense and grammatical errors. Don't let that deter you from the game though. Their free rules are here and download for templates, orders and other counters are here. Also take a look at this demo video. It’s fast and feels really realistic...except for the plasma guns and alien AI and such but realistic none-the-less. Enjoy!

Infinity First Demo and Terrain Setup

A fellow from Vancouver recently moved to Victoria. He has been playing Infinity (a 28mm sci-fi skirmish miniatures game) and was willing to show the game to three others, including myself. I set up my 4 feet by 6 feet table with lots of scenery and some walkways. Next time I have to remember to limit side-to-side firelanes.

Remember, more terrain in Infinity is better. As well, Magners is not only a great cider but also great "liquid containers" for a battlefield with the Armorcast set.

Multi-level terrain is also great as it ads multiple dimensions, but don't do so for the deployment zone, keep it on a single level. This is so you don't provide sniper nests and such early in the game to people.

Old 1:48 vehicle models work well as wrecks. I have more painting and assembling to do.

I really like the game so I've picked up some Combined Army and Haqqislam starters and models, as well as the rules. The rules are free on their website but I like to have the physical books. I'll be talking about Infinity in the next week and showing off some paintjobs.

Khador Army so far

When I started playing Warmachine two years ago, I was debating on which faction to play. Back then it came down to Khador, Cygnar or Cryx. I decided on Khador because I liked the Soviet style in the faction, the sheer physical presence of many of the models and units, and that not many were playing them. I played them until the end of 2011 as I wanted a change of style and paint scheme. I will eventually go back to Khador sometime when i'm bored with Cygnar but until then I thought I would display what i've done with my old army.

I based the paint scheme on WW2 style Soviet green with the colour red denoting rank or position. I was also inspired from this coolminiornot model. I'm nowhere near as good though.

Here are my Warcasters.

Prime and Epic Sorscha.

Old Witch of Khador. She's a very fun model to play.

Her scrapjack, the only arc node for Khador.

Prime and Epic Vladimir. Very up-frount casters.

The Kodiak and Bezerker warjacks.

The Demolisher and Destroyer warjacks

The Spriggan warjack.

The character jacks Beast-09, Behemoth and Drago.

A unit of Doomreavers with their attachment.

Two units of Greylord Ternions.

Full unit of Winterguard with attachment and two rocketmen.

Winterguard Riflemen.

Winterguard mortar and cannon.

Full unit of Manowar Shocktroopers. I love the mustache on the sergeant.

Battle Mechanics.

Widowmakers

Koldun Lord and Kovnik Joe.

Wardog and Widowmaker Marksman.

Manowar Kovnik.

Yuri flanked by Manhunters.