Welcome to Serenity Valley

I have been playing wargames close to a decade now but never had my own gaming table. Infinity was the first game that made me want to have one, and our Northern Alliance was also a big influence because most guys have their own table and I wanted to do my part to contribute to the Northern Open events. Since Ariadna is by far my favourite faction, I wanted to theme my table around it and also do something different from most tables I have seen, which are either industrial in theme or "generic" sci-fi cities.

I plan for this to be a series of articles about my progress on the board with reviews of the various terrain I have bought, from how difficult it was to build and how practical it is in the game. As I am writing this, the table is painted and game ready but not finished. The terrain is done in basic colours for the most part, so there will be plenty of updates to come as I'll do my best to finish it by end of the year.

And yes, I decided to name my table after Firefly show, after all my Caledonia Browncoats need somewhere familiar to fight!

Serenity Valley as it is today.

My first idea was to make an airport table, with runway and jetfighters and such but as I thought about it, I didn't see how I could make it practical and look good/realistic. I have then came across this Rust Pointe product, which I thought looked perfect for Ariadna settlement. The theme for the board changed to be half hovels settlement and half military base.

The current buildings I am using are from Zen Terrain, Death Ray Designs and Warsenal. The scatter is lots of Death Ray Designs, some random bits and few from Micro Arts Studio. For the gaming mat, I used mouse pad mat from Deep Cut Studio.

Currently I do not have plans to add terrain before I get the current things painted more. The main thing I need to get for myself though are some trees, I have been borrowing those from other people for some events but it works without them too.

I think that will do for the intro to the board! Here are some photos for you of the board building progress and set up during different ITS events.

All terrain arrived, time to start building!

Spraying Zen Terrain things green before putting it together.

Progress...

Buildings all sprayed and built!

First mock up set up.

Play-testing before Northern Open 5.

Set up at Northern Open 5.

Bunker gets a swanky new paintjob.

Set up at Birmingham Games Expo.

Set up at Gribbley Gaming Event.

USARF "Speed Painting", Part 1

Carrying from my USARF conversions, the next natural step is to paint the army! I bet many of you are like me and ended up with too many armies too quick, and don't have enough time to paint them all. Since I do not have an airbrush yet, I decided to try "speed paint" with just a paintbrush. From what I understand with airbrush people are able to undercoat an army with some highlights quite quick and then pick out the details with a paintbrush; which is the idea behind this.

The plan is to get all of the models undercoated with green, dry brushed for some highlights and washed with dark colour for some shadows. Then I will follow it up painting the straps, skin, weapons and other details in different colours. I might also do some camouflage, haven't decided yet.

Inspiration for my USARF army was taken from this image, where the uniforms are green camo and more or less everything else is black. I want my USARF army to be very uniform in their look, so they look more like a regular army.

The first step was to get everything green (well, all but the K-9 Antipode, the wolf will be mostly grey so I will do that one differently). I have used The Army Painter "Army Green" spray for undercoat, then Games Workshop "Rotting Flesh" (old name for the colour, it is very light green, like if you mixed little bit of bright green into white) for dry brush and finished it with Games Workshop "Nuln Oil" (black) wash. I think the result is quite nice, even completely green the details have definition thanks for the darker shades and brighter edge highlights.

The whole process didn't take long either and I have done around 30 minis this way. Though I am fairly certain the next step will take lot longer as I will be painting all the straps and weapons black, plus some of the pouches.

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!

USARF Conversions Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

I chose to do this article last because one of these Grunts was the most complicated conversion of this series. The other one was very easy.

Part 1 - Marauders
Part 2 - Foxtrots
Part 3 - Girl Grunts
Part 4 - Grunts with Heavy Flamers

Grunts with Heavy Flamers

These Grunts are one of my favourite units in USARF and I wanted more than one of them. I had two stater sets to decided to convert two Grunts from the box. I have used no additional bits on these, the heavy flamers were from the Marauders I have also converted (see link above). As mentioned earlier, the Grunt on the left was very easy. All I did was glue the arms on and then the flamer where his rifle used to be. I ended up with only a small gap to fill. Also what isn't very visible on the photo, I added a little connection under his right hand to match the Marauder Heavy Flamer handle.

The girl Grunt on other hand, was bit of a pain. The original model holds her rifle upwards so to be able to connect of her arms to the Heavy Flamer I had to get it go across her body. Problem was her chest was in the way. So I had to cut down her right breast to make the flamer fit, and then re-sculpt the top of the chest and match it to the original as best as I could.

The next problem was that the left arm did not match up that well because of the angle. What I ended up doing is cutting it at the elbow with clippers. The cut wasn't very clean but it allowed me to connect the forearm properly. I then had to sculpt around the elbow to make it look complete again.

The last thing was same as with most of these, green-stuffing the back of shoulders because they were not fully connected to the body. In the end I think it was worth it, gave me two more unique Grunts but I wouldn't do the Girl Grunt again.

I hope this series helps you with your conversions too. The USARF is a fun army but because it is so new (at the time of these articles), so many weapon options have no models yet.

Infinity at Games Expo 2016

On Sunday the 5th of June me, James and Laina traveled to Birmingham for the Games Expo. We didn't actually see much of the Expo at all as we spent the day playing Infinity, so next year we plan to go for the whole weekend. The tournament had a good mix of people from South, Midlands and North so that was very cool to see and meet everyone.

Somehow none of us managed to rank well, even James lost one of his games. I had two losses, which I don't think happened to me yet this ITS season. Though my experience was good overall, players were friendly and we had some good laughs.

As far as tables, I felt same way as back in Warzone start of the year. Less people would have allowed them to merge some tables and get better ones out of it. Though it would mean less places on the event, so I understand.

My Army Lists

Army List A
Army List B

Some of you might recognize by List A, I been playing it since Totally CRIT. It is my favourite list for Supplies and similar missions. Thus far it has not failed me and I just love the Scots Guard Link Team with Wallace. My Missile Launcher is ranking up high kill count every game. Sometime this month I should do a full Army List Tactica about it.

The List B was new one for me, I wanted to try 20 models list with Link Grey Rifles and Urugans. I am not quite sure yet if this is a good list. One problem I noticed was that I have too many Specialists in the second group so that needs addressing. Urugans I actually enjoyed, especially with Engineers and Hacker to support them. In both games they have been useful at stopping the enemy and retaliating. In both games though my opponents were very lucky with dice rolls which doesn't help with how effective this list is. I think I might drop it down to 16 Orders, see if I can get in some more elite units. Though I was happy with the Grey Rifles, they did well for me.

Game 1: Antenna Field - Caledonia vs Yu Jing
Lost 4 to 6 (0 TPs)

In the first game I faced Ryan of the Invincible Army blog and his vanilla Yu Jing. The table we played on was industrial-ish with some oriental elements so I thought it was fitting. It was different to most tables I seen on events because it had no high places, there was one tower on the edge but outside of deployment zone (and nowhere near objectives) and one side had a building but no cover on the roof and it wasn't even flat so prone markers would not be able to see. Which was not a big deal but what I did find somewhat problematic were the number of fire lines across the whole board. There were way too many and four out of the five objectives were in the open. Though the open lanes could have been easily fixed by shifting some terrain a little, or turning it diagonal. Ryan won the roll and decided to go second. Seeing as no side had any advantage, I took the one that seemed to give me the most deployment options.

Before I get to the turns, I'd also like to say that while I had games with above average number of crits, I never experienced this number of crits cancelled by crits. Ryan cancelled all but two of mine (if I remember right) and himself rolled quite a lot of them.

Since I went first my plan was to take three or four objectives and kill Ryan's Lt to make it hard for him to retaliate before I could consolidate my defenses around the objectives. This sort of worked. I was able to guess the Lt because Ryan had only one non-Specialist Line Trooper hiding in the back. Uxia, who passed her Infiltration roll during deployment, took care of it with her B5 Assault Pistols. My problems, however, began when I tried to take care of HMG Remote. First my Cateran fluffed his free shot (we were over 32") so I thought rather than risking him, I'll go in with my HMG Link Team. So I moved up to a good place, even got the Remote out of cover so I was hitting it on 19s vs Ryan's 11s! But my Highlander Grey was killed by two consecutive crits. I had more Volunteers around so I re-Linked back to five and it was my Volunteer HMG that managed to kill the remote eventually. I have also killed Ryan's Sniper that revealed itself from camo. I did not have many Orders left after battling the Remote for so long but I was still able to take three objectives, Engineer run into a building and then Volunteers held middle and the objective close to me.

Ryan did well in his first turn considering but it proved to be very hard to take objectives in this mission while being in Loss of Lt. Ryan could have grab the objective near him I believe but he needed to take my troops off objectives to even have a chance to draw in this turn. Lots of his troops run out and got shot to pieces, but I made a mistake of keeping my Volunteer Paramedics standing so he was able to kill them with HMG trooper. Fortunately for me, I had still one objective left and won the round.

Unfortunately for me, my centre-right lines more or less collapsed. Not enough cover and leaving troops visible was a fatal mistake for my Link Team and the other Volunteers were too spread out to Link with the second Grey Rifle. I was able to hold the objective room with one objective but for rest of the game dice rolls were not on my side. I had shots at troops from behind them which done nothing or Urugan with Marksmanship Lv2 in cover, within 16" of HMG trooper.... but Ryan rolled a crit. In the second turn we both held only one objective so we had a draw.

In the last turn Ryan had the advantage, he had more Specialists left. I made it as difficult for him as I could to take the central objective and the difference between us having a draw  came down to his last Order with a Specialist running for the middle objective, after I killed FO Remote that tried to take it. Otherwise we both only had one as Ryan was able to kill everyone and I was left only with troops in the objective room. My Volunteers managed to roll well and hit with his Light Shotgun but Ryan had a crit which mean he Specialist lived and took the objective.

In retrospect, I think I should have focus on the objectives more than battling the Remote. I could have easily just drop Smoke to block its LoF but I was too confident that I could kill it fast and then didn't let go. Ryan would have had more alive troops but I could have still kill the Lt to make his first turn hard. I also should have hide more troops before my first turn ended, so Ryan would have less targets while in Loss of Lt. Speaking of Loss of Lt, I think this game was also a good example that you can come back from a loosing first turn, so never give up on your games.

I also thought next time if I play on a board with no obvious advantage, I should make my opponent deploy on the side where he will be more in the open as he comes out.

Game 2: Supplies - Caledonia vs Steel Phalanx
Won 9 to 2 (3 TPs)

I thought my second game would be much more straight forward but Ed gave me run for my money for sure. The board we played was very different and somewhat odd in the sense that big chunk of it was just layered hills with trees but no scatter or cover otherwise, outside of the section with buildings. I am pretty sure I failed the Lr roll but thankfully Ed chose deployment so I was able go first.

My plan was the same as always with this mission. Take three objectives and more them back to my DZ, and if I can, kill the long range threads. This wasn't easy to do because Ed deployed Phoenix and Sniper Marksman to cover left (from my perspective) objective and middle one was covered by Total Reaction Remote. Problem for me was that the LoF were not easy and my Link Team would face two AROs, which I didn't want. So I spend good few Orders shooting Phoenix and the Remote with Caterans. The Remote went down but Phoenix's ODD was hard to beat. In the end I dropped Smoke to block his LoF to my Link Team and was able to kill the Sniper with Missile Launcher. After that I was able to take two objectives, middle and left, but with the right one I didn't pass WIP and didn't have the Orders to keep trying. Ed spent his first turn taking the available objective with his second Link, my Scots Guard Link made it really hard to get close to the objective I held.

The second turn for me was all about doing more damage so Ed would have less Orders to retaliate, I knew as long as I can keep more objectives I'll win, even if I don't have all three. I was using Scots Guard lot more this turn, though first I attacked Phoenix with Cameronian and his Chain Rifles, I believe I rook off one Wound before Scots Guard finished him. After that they moved from very left side of the board to the middle so I could shoot an unconscious trooper with a Missie Launcher to hit someone else with the blast. This only took one Wound off the hiding model. Moving with their 4-2 Move ate most of my Orders so I ended my turn in defensive position. Ed first dropped a Hacker using AD jump, I had a free shot with Cateran but failed it. He then killed the Cateran with Chain Rifle and got both of his hacking Classified Objectives. Ed then spent the rest of his turn using the model I wounded with the blast, who turned out to be his Lt, and run with him back to his deployment zone.

In the last turn my goal was to kill the Lt and deny Ed the objective. My only hope to take it was Cameronian who was in Ed's Deployment Zone but he got Immobilized by some trooper when killing him so that plan was out of the window. I had to use my Scots Guard Link again. First they tried to kill the AD trooper, which they did but I guessed the distance wrong and my Molotok was killed by a Chain Rifle. Even so, the rest of the team run across the middle of the board to get LoF at Ed's Lt and blasted him to bits with Missile Launcher. I left the Link facing the objective so they could kill anyone trying to take it.

At this point Ed was in Loss of Lt and in Retreat, so he used all his command tokens to make some of his three troops left function normal. He had a good idea of healing a trooper with MedKit shot, which would allow him to drop Smoke and block my Scots but his PH roll to heal failed. His Hail Mary was running with one guy to the objective and taking it, hoping to survive, but my SMGs and Missile Launcher made sure he didn't.

Overall I don't think this game could have gone any better for me. I think Ed did do well with what he had, this mission really does favour lists with Infiltrating Specialists and it is not easy to take objectives from me when they are close to my DZ by end of my first turn and protected by full Link and two Snipers.

Game 3: Highly Classified - Caledonia vs Hassassin Bahram
Lost 3 to 7 (0 TPs)

When Glen said he is playing Hassassins I was expecting two to three Fidays and the game to be over in his first turn because he won the roll and took the first turn, to my dismay. But he had a very different list, it was full of Remotes, impetuous troops and one Link Team. The table wasn't very good, though I do suspect some of the terrain was knocked around by people who played on it before us, because all of the terrain in deployment zones was pushed forward. Which resulted in not so good deployment options. I didn't see any advantage at the time but then I realized the side I didn't chose had higher buildings to deploy on, which might have helped me.

The missions we drew were Engineer the HVT, FO the HVT and Hack the HVT, and Engineer a REM. So it was a battle for HVTs. I did have two Engineers in my Lists so I felt okay about the missions but it was too many HVT missions for sure.

In his first turn Glen showed me just how deadly Remotes with Sat-Lock can be. I never played them before so I didn't know what to expect. Because of the terrain and me having to deploy most troops close to the edge of my DZ, Glen was able to target troops out of LoF and then used his Grenade Launcher and Guided Missile Launcher to take out bunch of troops. Only around four in the end, but it did kill Uxia and my Cateran. Glen wasn't able to do any of the Objectives so I thought I could take the upper hand, but again I was stopped by a Remote. This time it was just a cheap Sat-Lock Remote in Supressive Fire. It took 2-3 Chain Rifle hit and as many point blank Shotgun shots before it failed an ARM save. Which ate too much of my Orders and I wasn't able to Smoke it because my Smoke troops were either not anywhere near or in open LoF and would get killed.

So I spend rest of the turn trying to take Orders off Glen and protect my HVT. I should have really been moving up my Hacker and Engineer close to Glen's HVT but I wasn't thinking very well unfortunately, too focused on wanting to retaliate. The rest of the game was also bloody. We kept attacking each another and while I was able to fend off Glen's attack this time, I lost sight of the objectives. By the last turn Glen was able to secure three Objectives, all but Engineer the HVT. We both also achieved our Secondary Missions, so I had do three to Draw.

It wasn't impossible, I had just enough Orders to do it but all my rolls would have to be perfect. Sadly, they were not, my Hacker failed to pass a single WIP roll once she was in ZoC of the HVT. I was able to only do the Engineer Mission by repairing one of my Urugans. All in all, it was my fault really, it was very stupid of me to wait until the last turn to do the objectives. I lost focus from the start, going second really wasn't part of my plan. So the lesson here would be to always have a plan for both Imitative options and focus on the objectives!