Keep Calm and Carry On

This is a sort of farewell post. If you were a regular reader of this blog you might have noticed that I have not been adding any content since November last year. This is not because I stopped enjoying Infinity but my time to play has been severely limited due to a change in my life. Without playing the game I have not been painting either so I didn't feel like I had much to write about.

The change in my life was going through the process of joining the British Army. I have successfully passed Selection earlier this year and will be going to Basic Training next month in June 2018. While I was in the process I have been dedicating majority of my spare time to physical training. Joining the Army has been a goal of mine for couple of years, so I am glad it is finally happening.

I have no plans stopping playing Infinity entirely but at this time I do not really know when I'll be able to pick it up again as a regular hobby. Until then I do not think there will be any new content on this blog, but hopefully one day in the future I'll be writing articles again.

When I started this blog back in 2015 I wasn't sure it would have lasted as long as it did. I tried to write something couple of times a month and people were responding well, which was always cool to see; especially meeting people in the UK who were reading the blog. At the time of writing this article the blog had close to 112,000 views. The highest number views in a single month was in October 2016, almost 10,000. I don't know if those are big or small numbers in terms of Infinity related blogs, but they are cool numbers to me!

Another cool thing was when the official Infinity Facebook page linked one of my articles (which is still the most read article on this blog); it was just a really awesome reminder how Corvus Belli actually cares about the community. One of the main reasons I love this game.

In conclusions, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who has been reading my articles. It has been a good ride!

Peter

Pride of Rodina - $wag Box

 Earlier this year Pride of Rodina (PoR) was holding a painting contest through Facebook and I have entered my Veteran Kazak, which ended up to be the winning entry. Kyle sent me a box of Pride of Rodina merchandise, which has arrived today from across the Atlantic so I thought I'd share unboxing of this awesome PoR swag.

The box was padded with a genuine copy of Southeast Missourian newspaper, and I'd like to say that American newspaper are so weird comparing to the British newspaper! They are like really long, and thin. 

Inside the box I found a t-shirt, a patch, six button badges, set of templates, a fancy brush, a tournament box and an awesome PoR miniature; everything (except the brush) has the PoR logo and is of good quality. The tournament box needs assembly so I'll share how it looks when I built it.

I think the miniature is the most impressive thing. I remember seeing the 3D pictures of it on Facebook and its really cool to hold it in my hands. It fits perfectly into an Ariadna army and I love the details. It will make for a great Spetsnaz proxy or any unit with a Sniper Rifle. I am certainly looking forward to painting it.

Pride of Rodina Interview

The Pride of Rodina blog has a really cool series of articles about players of Infinity. I think it is quite neat idea as it shows all the diversity we have in our hobby. I was lucky enough to get my own interview which you can find here.

They said I could be anything...

... so I became a HVT!

This happened before the last Norther Open, the 7th, I just forgot to write about it sooner. One of the sponsors for the tournament, Arts of War Studios, made us HVT (or civilian) tokens in likeness of the Northern Open HQ Members.

From left to right on the picture above its Ed, Colin, myself and Matt. Arron who does lots of the organizing was unable to take a picture of himself before the deadline so sadly he didn't get a token. I thought it was a great idea and sent them a photo in my Caledonian outfit. In my opinion they captured it quite well and even gave my token a beard feature!

The tokens are super cool and good quality. I can only recommend to buy tokens from the Arts of War Studios. They do have a range for Infinity and other games too.

You'll have a chance to play with them if you come down to any future Northern Open event. We don't let people keep them but they are offered as token for the games. During NO7 I of course always used myself as the HVT.

Tic-Tac-Toe Practice

As of writing this article, it is less than a week from Northern Open 7 for which we have decided to go with objective missions not played before on the NO tournaments, or at least two of them weren't. Greg from The Plastic Crack Blog wanted to get some practice as did I, so we had a game of Tic-Tac-Toe last Sunday.

And I am glad we did because it really helped to try the mission and see what improvements our army lists could use. We both played Morats and it was a really fun game. We both had a Fireteam of Hungries but otherwise played different styles. I relied more on Vanguard Fireteam and HMG Remote, while Greg had Haris Fireteam of Yagoats and Sorogat Tempest Regiment to do damage.

The main thing we both took from the game was that you want to have EVO Hacker in the army because it gives all of your Specialists +3 for WIP to do Objectives, while the EVO is alive.

Greg won our practice game in the end by having one Objective more than me. His Sorogat took out all of my heavy weapons and then I couldn't kill it even after like three rounds of shooting it with Kornak in the open! The game was a proper bloodbath otherwise though, so many dead.

Greg did a timelapse of the game, plus some commentary about his army and paiting on Youtube:

I only took few photos during the game:

From a Wooden Spoon to an ITS Event Winner

This month last year I have started this blog. I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep it alive for this long, let alone get almost 35,000 reads over that time. So I thought I would write something different for the one year anniversary. I have been planning this for a while. I been meaning to do it after my first ITS win but there was always something else to write about! I am hoping it will give you all some insight into "behind the scenes" and perhaps some idea on how to be more competitive with Infinity, if that is what you are after. That said, this is not a "how to guide" so I can't promise it'll work for everyone.

I have been playing tabletop wargames for almost a decade now, can't quite remember what year I got into Infinity (it was when N2 was already released) but it was in May 2015 when I started to really think about playing competitively. The only reason I remember the specific month is because it is directly linked to an article on Corvus Belli website. It was in May that they showed the Le Muet miniature (for the first time I think) and basically said if you want this miniature, you'll have to earn it by winning an ITS event. Until then I didn't really know you can win special miniatures.

My first thought was that I am not going to worry about it because I am never going to win one. The only tournament I have done up to that point was the first Northern Open and I came last, but I had a great time! Plus I wasn't that interested in the tournament scene. Bit later on I thought "Hold on, if other people can do it, why can't I? Infinity doesn't have meta game like Warhammer games." I went on the UK Infinity Facebook page and the forum list of UK events, and signed up for every tournament I could travel to. I actually did well on the second Northern Open and later managed to win my first ITS event in December.

So how did I manage to do it?

Well, short answer would be I went from casually playing Infinity once a week to playing as often as possible and going to about two tournaments per month, basically live and breathe Infinity. It wasn't enough just talking about it, playing it, reading online... I wanted to write about it too, which was the main reason I started this blog.

As you likely know, in its core Infinity has a very simple and efficient system but it also has tons of special rules and each unit has large amount of utility. The trick is to always find the right way to use a unit in each given scenario. To achieve that you need to practice, a lot. I am pretty sure its the same like with any other skill, the more you practice, the better you will be at it. Personally I have stuck with one army for the whole journey (Caledonia). Not only because I really like the army but it helped me to practice using the same army in different ways, I do quite enjoy finding out new utilities for the available units. One of my mates plays different army every few months and he is good with all of them, I'd say he is more efficient when it comes to writing army lists so he doesn't need dozen of models to try out different things.

If you can't practice very often, I would highly recommend to at least read up on tactics for your chosen army and Infinity in general, especially mission specific tactics. The missions do impact the army lists and how you play, which is another good thing to keep in mind. Its possible you can have one army that is good for all missions, but tailoring your army to missions where you can does help. In my experience it did anyhow. I have also noticed the impact practicing missions before an event has. We used to practice more often earlier in the year and I do feel I was doing better than I am now. If nothing else, it lets you see the things you could improve in your army list.

Another thing I found personally useful was finding my own use for units. Especially online you'll always have people trying to tell you what to use, what not to use and while their opinions on units might be valid, you ought to make up your own mind. For that reason I always try to only give recommendations and suggestions when giving opinion on units or army lists. It can easily happen that a unit that is being overlooked by others, could work amazingly for you and your play style.

So yeah, there really isn't any big secret behind winning tournaments. I do believe practice was the main thing and I feel lucky that the people I play and practice with are also competitive so we can always challenge each another even during casual games.

Even if you are new to go the game, go out to tournaments and have fun! It is the best way to learn new things and play new people. Don't worry about loosing either, keep at it, learn from all games and one day you can be ITS event winner too.

Lilith is in Infinity canon!

While I am writing my articles about the UK Masters Tournament I thought I'd share this wonderful news. Gutier Lusquiños Rodríguez, aka Interruptor made Lilith part of the Infinity canon! Okay okay, he didn't say that or even implied it but he was cool enough to sign our N3 books and left awesome messages in the same style we find in the books. So close enough I say!

Thank you Gutier and Corvus Belli for being awesome.

[Alert Message]
[All the units proceed to the canteen of the deck 9-B. We have a code 24. Fight in a bar. The Caledonian operative called "Lilith" is giving troubles, once again.]
[Alert Message]

"Peter 'Lilith' Balogh comes straight outta Caledonia. That means he knows taverns as well as the front line. And he fights in both!"
[Colonel Yevgueni Voronin. Recorded in a meeting o the Stavka, the Ariadna High Command. Mat' Planet Dawn.]

Looking back at ITS Season 7 and plans ahead

Season 7 Review

On the 28th of August Interplanetary 2016 ended and so it did the ITS Season 7. The ITS ranking page showed I had 10 tournaments logged and ended 13th in the UK, which is good. I did spend most of the time on 10th place or higher in the UK, which I am happy with. In my opinion the ITS rankings are not completely accurate and easily manipulated, but more on that later.

I have actually attended 13 events since start of the season and only one of those was non-ITS. Nine times out of twelve I have ranked in the middle or better. I won one tournament and I also had a second place in another. Most of my placements seem to be between 5th and 9th for events with more than 10 players.

I believe most events for me were Win-Win-Loss, and while I don't have the numbers I think most of the time I faced one of my mates, James (Murkage) or Matt (s0tek), in the last round. Overall I think it was a pretty good season, I had some great games and few with pretty terrible luck.

Best performance - This one is quite easy, I had some really good games in the season but the best thing I done was traveling over 200 miles to the South of England and showing them how we do it here up North by winning the tournament!

Worst game - One game from the first Harlequins event comes to mind, where focusing on the wrong target cost me the game, or the second Harlequins where not doing nothing cost me a game. At Infinity Expo 2016 I played two people who would not stop passing ARM saves. Though the one game that will stick in my mind the longest has to be the last game of the Northern Open 6, literally winning the whole time and loosing to the last three Orders!

Favourite army list - I think I played Caledonia for all of the ITS events and I had some good competitive lists but my favourite is from Gribbley Gaming where I took 11-12 Morat Hackers! It was just very amusing and I want to try it out more often.

Season 8 Plans

After giving it some thought I decided for the new season to focus less on the competitive side and play more of my other factions. There are two main reasons for that:

Firstly, I spend most time time playing Infinity either on events or practicing for events. Which means I play Caledonia a lot. I love playing it (its my favourite faction, no surprise there) but it leaves little time to play the rest and I own six more factions. I could be competitive with all but I don't own as many units for those as I do for Caledonia, which limits what army lists I can build. While I could just buy more, I want to play with what I already have and try some fun lists this time around.

Secondly, as I mentioned at the start I don't think the ITS ranking system is accurate enough. I think the ITS is a great thing overall but it has flaws. Some events are not logged accurately or at all, and it takes long time to fix (my mates have been affected by this is more than I have). Non-tournament games can be logged on the ITS, which in my opinion should be a separate ranking system at best. I don't know if CB wanted the extra money or its just a way to give people not going to tournaments a way to rank, but escalation leagues or friendly games are not the same as competitive events and so should not be treated the same. I doubt people use it intentionally to better their ranking, but if we really wanted to we could just buy a whole bunch of codes and enter results to make us look better. I don't know why that is even an option. Not to mention it feels like the more events you play, the worse you make it for yourself. I could probably play one event mid-season and if I beat the top ranking player, I'd probably end up ranked higher than going to as many tournaments as I go to.

That all might have sound bit more negative than intended but don't get me wrong, I still love going to tournament, I really enjoy the ITS missions and I think CB is a great company. However, going ahead I want to focus more on playing for fun and the hobby side of the game rather than trying to rank as high as possible on ITS.

That is not to say I am giving up on competitive side of the game. The UK Masters will happen later this month and I plan to do my best on all the qualifier events the next year also.  

So what does it mean for this blog? Not much to be honest. My event articles will have a different flavour as there will be a mix of fun and competitive. I'll still post regularly about all things Infinity and Caledonia in particular.

DIY Tokens

This is not something new but I met some people at the last event I been to who were looking to make cheap tokens so figured I'd do an article about it to share. This is the best way I know of as you can easily make hundreds of good looking tokens in minutes and it'll cost you only around £10.

To do this you will need 1" Circle Puncher, Clear 1" Round Stickers (they can be found as epoxy domes or bottle cap protectors on Amazon/eBay) and printed Infinity tokens. For tokens I recommend the Infinity Marker Sheet Creator, it has all the options and super easy to use. Or you can download them on the Infinity website. Plus you get some tokens on every Infinity box.

It is worth "investing" a little into the puncher. I use the one in the link above and it works like a charm. The first one I bought barely worked properly. For any UK people, I bought the puncher in Range store, but any story with crafts section should have it.

After you have everything, just get your tokens ready. Usually I print out mine in a local library because they have a colour laser printer so it comes out in good quality and costs only 20 Pence per sheet. The ones I am using here are from Haqqislam Remotes box.

The puncher is super easy to use. Just slide the paper in and then, well, punch it! It does help if you keep some paper around the token when you cut them out, it makes it lot easier to position them inside the slot of the puncher.

The clear round stickers already come with some kind of glue on them, so you don't need anything extra. Whatever glue it is, it really strong. I use my tokens a lot and I never had one get lose or anything. I bought them last year (over 7 months ago from posting this) and they still work perfect.

This part is also very easy to do, just stick the sticker onto the token and then press it hard between your palms (or against a surface). I thought it might be tricky to get them fit perfect, but its not.

Even if you need to make 100+ tokens, it should not take you long at all. Soon you'll have all the tokens you need. Even for statuses and equipment your army can't use! I do love these tokens, you get exactly what you need and on the table they look just as good as anything you can buy.

New Year, New Army... sort of

The holiday weeks are almost over and the New Year is upon us, time to get back to Infinity. 2016 should be a good year, the new ITS season is coming in February and in the UK we have an event like every month, so plenty opportunities to play. I thought I'd be taking a break until March but there is a tournament in Loughborough around end of January that we'll be going to. More importantly though, this year UK is having its first Masters Tournament, which should be great fun as it will be the biggest one I believe. This will happen in September and there are five or six qualifier tournaments before. I will be attending at least two of them but might go down South for a third if I don't qualify in Leeds or Birmingham. If I remember right about half the tickets to Masters will be open for sale but I would like to attend as qualified.

This brings me to the new army... sort of, part. I will continue to play Caledonia but I want to play it differently. Mainly by making use of Scots Guards which I have hardly played last year. Plus I will make use of the other units I have hardly played, like Mormaers. Basically I want to play the same faction, but differently.

Luckily, most of my Caledonia has at least basic colours but it still has long way to go before being finished. I just have too many models and I wanted to get them all done to the very basic level, so they look okay-ish on the table. I also have four other armies that I want to finish to at least table-top standard. Which is one thing that worries me, if I can do it all. I think I should be though, if I do at least some painting each week. To give you an idea, here is what I have to paint:

Caledonia - 45 models, 10 not painted and/or not based.

USAriadna - 19 models, none painted

Nomads - 25 models, none painted (includes my Bounty Hunters)

Morats - 37 models, 7 not painted

Military Orders - 23 models, none painted

Only my small Ju Ying army is fully painted, but I only have like 13 models for those. So, for only unpainted thats 84 models, 119 if I count that none of my Caledonia is fully finished. This doesn't include some of the stuff I want to buy. Its going to be challenging but I am sure it doable if I don't buy too many new things.

On top of that, I have my gaming board to do. I think I have all the buildings, just need to build them and the scatter. Most of it I will just spray with a single colour, grey, military green, black or brown. When everything has some colour, then I can go into details. My goal with the table is to have it ready for Northern Open in May.

In conclusion, my "Infinity Resolution" is pretty much just get on with painting and win a tournament in the new ITS season.

What to listen to when painting

I think most people who like to spend lots of time painting would agreed it is good to have some background noise; music or TV and such. I often play some show or films but lately I like to listen to podcasts, either as audio only or on YouTube. What propted me to write this post was finding MayaCast, which while I think I heard about before, I didn't listen to it. And I totally should have! Their shows, at least the latest ones, are over an hour, so they are nice and long. The two hosts have good chemistry and are fun to listen to, so definitely worth checking out:

http://mayacast.com

Some of the other things I like to listen to are:

Dan Carlin - Hardcore History - As the name suggests, this is a podcast about historic stuff, but he has a really cool way of talking about different periods. He has done some amazing series on Genghis Khan, the Roman Republic and World War I. Only the most recent stuff are free and you have to wait a while for new episodes, but it always pays off. I wish I found about it in high school, I'd have paid more attention to history classes!

The Plastic Crack Blog - This is relatively new YouTube channel about Infinity and wargames (and board games) in general. You'll find things like product reviews, battle reports and tutorials how to make custom terrain. Right now they are doing the Operation Ice Storm missions which are good intro to Infinity. Overall it is a pretty good channel.

UNpopular Culture - These guys, Hugo and Jake, they do film and TV show reviews, game reviews and playthrough, and similar stuff. I like how they do really long trailer breakdowns or TV show reviews for each episodes. To me they stand out from other channels with similar content because when you listen to them, its just like talking to two of your mates; swearing, stupid jokes and all the good stuff.