Gribbley Gaming Event

This event was organized by my mate James Gribbley Gaming (as the name of the event would suggest!). It took place in Leeds in a nice venue of Headingly Social Club. James wanted the event to be more fun than competitive and decided to use The 20 x 20 Infinity Scenario System. We played few missions before to take a break from ITS Missions and it was fun to have it used in an event.

I believe we had all 14 people show up, lots of familiar faces and some new. Shae Konnit from Shae-Konnit Games also came down to hang out and donated £20 Voucher, which was super cool. If you don't know Shae, he does split box deals for Infinity box sets which is amazing.

Also shout-out to Ragnarok Games, Andy has helped out with the prize support for this event!

I decided to take Morat Aggression Force for this, I wanted to try some fun things and I haven't played them in a while. My performance, however, was pretty bad! I had another loss-win-loss outcome (thankfully not counting for ITS ranks). It was a mix of reasons really, first game I made some bad calls with deployment and in-game decisions and in the last game I had a very daft list.

Overall thought it has been fun, I enjoyed the day and playing Morats again.

Game 1: Border Clash & Zombiefication - Morats vs Tohaa
Lost - 0 TPs

My first game was against Adam, I challenged him because last time we played in an event I won, so it was time for rematch. Unfortunately for me he took Tohaa and since I didn't read the mission, I did not expect Low Visibility Zone on the table. Which meant when Adam deployed MSV Lv2 Sniper in a good sniper nest, I had really really hard time taking care of it. To make matters worse the sniper could see everywhere but one part of the board, which I didn't realize until end of the turn. The table was more open than it looked.

I did have a Link Team with HMG and Missile Launcher, and HMG Remote so I thought I could take care of it with high burst but my REM failed, twice and my Link Team HMG got hit with a crit. As a separate but related rant, the Tohaa Simbiomate that can ignore all damage but crits is the most broken thing in Infinity!Thanks to that, most of my army was stuck in the deployment position and my Hungries Charge did lot less damage than it could have if they were able to move without being shot to pieces by a sniper.

Since the mission was about getting to the other half of the table, Adam had to go towards me. Which was a double edged sword. It got his Tohaa out of their hiding holes but also since lots of my troops were deployed in groups, Adam was able to hit a lot with templates. But that was where I had luck and nobody died from those hits. My following turns were very static. I had hard time moving anything after Adam advanced and thanks to the stupid Simbiomate it took too long to deal with things that should have been dead lot faster.

The worst thing in this game though was when Adam managed to zombify my Sorogat Tempest Regiment and then use him against my own troops! I managed to kill him with my Spec Ops but was 0.5 inch short to get base to base with my last order in last turn to try take him back with my own zombify test. In the end I was left with only one 3pts Slave Drone.

Overall it was one of those games where your whole army is pinned down by something you can't take down but I had fun. It reiterated the lesson of having an army built for the mission. 

Game 2:  Launching Sequence & Raise Your Flag - Morats vs USARF
Won - 2 TPs

I think this was third time this year I played Luke, he is a fun opponent and our games tend to be very close. The mission we played was quite tough, it is about activating four objectives in a specific order, two are in your half of the board, and two in the other half. I think I won the Lt roll off and decided to take the side with the highest building in the deployment zone. Kind of stupidly I didn't take the first turn, even though I knew Luke was playing USA and had some of the infiltrating heavy flamethrowers. Fortunately for me only one of them managed to Infiltrate and didn't do any damage when he attacked.

Though Luke also had five bikes, three of those with Light Rocket Launcher, which was pretty scary. With so much smoke there was little I could do to stop them, but they also didn't do much damage. My army was well bunkered down with only cheap Hungries on front lines, and I had Morat Vanguard Link with Missile Launcher and HMG observing all of my deployment zone. My turns were not any easier, with lot less Orders I couldn't be advancing too much and had to focus on objectives. Eventually we both had two objectives each. Luke tried to take third but since I knew which one he had to get next, I focused lots of firepower there and was able to fend off all attacks. He did the same, my third objective was protected by a Grunt Link Team I couldn't take down with my own Link and everyone else who could was too far.

In the end I have won only because my Lt, the Sorogat Tempest Regiment, walked into Luke's half the board and planted a flag; Luke didn't do the secondary objective. My Lt did try to take on the Grunt Link by himself but I rolled pretty bad on shots and ARM saves.

Game 3: Intercept Enemy Communication & The Duel - Morats vs Nomads
Lost - 0 TPs

My last game was pretty funny. The mission was about "scanning" the enemy active troops and hackers got a bonus to their WIP to do it. So I took 8 Vanguard Hackers, Zerat Hacker, EVO Hacker REM and Spec Ops Hacker. James used his list with a TAG so I was hoping to hack it to death but he wasn't going to make it easy for me and deployed the TAG on a roof. James also had a Grenzer on another roof which made things difficult because I had no long range weapons. Fortunately, a Plasma Rifle Remote was able to take down two Wounds off the TAG quite quick. Plasma Ammo really is quite deadly, and James had bad luck with the TAG. The Grenzer I was able to take down with a Link Team of Hacker, even on more negatives than James, I had lot more dice. My Yagaot Lt then finished the unconscious Grenzer with Panzefaust!

The fact that I didn't scan any enemy models in my first turn would prove to be my biggest mistake. It also didn't help I bunched up six models in a room in middle of the board. They couldn't get out because of the TAG and James was smart to only bring two models into hacking range. One of which was a Killer Hacker, which made for some interesting hacking battles. I have managed to win those. The TAG went down three times before it died for good. James had Engineer next to it and kept fixing it, which he did deserve after consistently rolling low on ARM saves. My Hacker in 4-man Link was the one to kill it with a Combi Rifle. In my last turn, what I found quite funny was when the four man Link Team run out of the room and beat a Zero to death. It couldn't have been fun to get charged by four angry Morats.

James went last and his last turn was very intense because we had the same amount of scans and I had done the secondary, so technically I was winning. Having only few people close to my troops almost proved to be a mistake because when I killed them all, he had to run towards me but I had AROs set up so he couldn't do it without being shot. Though what proved to be mistake on my part was position of Zerat. She had to run close to get two scans in so I could draw those, but I didn't have enough Orders to either run away or try kill her by jumping off buildings. James' victory came with the last few Orders, his first few didn't work the way he needed them too but in the end it was matter of rolling scan vs Zerat's Reset enough times until I failed. When he succeeded, having just one more scan swung all the objective points in his favour.

Laina's Chicken Bot in the chicken shed!