UK Masters - Day 1

 
It was finally time for the UK Masters where we could settle if North is better than South (nothing to settle really, we all know Yorkshire crew rules). It was the biggest event in the UK up to date as far as I know, if you are not familiar with the UK Masters from Infinity forums, it was collective effort of five tournament organizers from across the UK. There were five qualifier tournaments earlier in the year.

The UK Masters were also selected to be Satellite Tournament by Corvus Belli and they sent Gutier Lusquiños Rodríguez (Interruptor on forums) to give a seminar, which was really cool. I actually did not realize Gutier is one of the people who created Infinity! Shame on me. Though that makes it even cooler that he knew my blog.

Cheeky sneak photo of Gutier.

My performance in the event was not great overall. I went home with 2 Wins and 4 Loses. Mostly I'd blame it on my lists and not taking enough time to really think about them, and that in the first day I did not sleep for over 24 hours. There was a midnight pre-release from another unrelated hobby of mine that I could not miss. All of the games were still fun, I had only one game where my dice just rolled wrong all the time but that is to be expected.

Overall though really good weekend, I met lots of people I knew and plenty more that I didn't. The venue was good and spacious to fit everyone in and I believe everyone was more or less on time each round, we did have 2 hours and 15 minutes per round, if I am remembering correctly. The TOs were good at reminding the timings and we also had big clock on a projector. There was a big variety of tables, some were really good while other not so much. I'll give a comments on tables I played on in a later article.

I only ranked on 30th place out of 38 players, though the player who beat me in the last game ended up 18th so I could have been higher if I passed few more rolls! From our group best ranking was Matt who came 2nd and James came 4th.

Army Lists

List A
List B

I did go with Wulvers as Core for the killing missions and Scots Guard as core for the objective missions. The main difference from last few events, and the biggest drawback was including more SAS than I done lately. Giving myself less Orders and during the games it proved to give me less versatility. I am still not sure about the Dozer-Urugan-Hacker combo. I do like the idea and in some games having Marksmanship Lv2 Total Reaction Remote was helpful but 51 point feels bit too much. I did very much miss having Cameronian, especially in the Wulvers list. In retrospect I would have prefer to have him in both Lists and even two Caterans.

Game 1: Supplies - Caledonia vs Yu Jing
Won 10 to 1 (3 TPs)

In the first game I was paired against Stuart, a new opponent to me but on a table that I played on in the past at one event (think it was Birmingham Expo), it even might have been the same mission. It was one of the tables where they added terrain rules, this one had mountain terrain and woodland saturation and low visibility zone. The only thing we did differently was counting trees as blocking LoF, it was for convenience sake as some trees were large, otherwise we might have just as well remove them from the board. I believe I won the Lt roll for this and selected to go first as I always try to do for this mission. Though my plan was different than before. Instead of rushing all objectives with three Infiltrators, I wanted to take two and protect the other one until I can take it later in the game. We did clarify with the TOs that one WIP roll is enough to open the box and get the supplies token but I didn't want to risk it. It worked out in my favour because my opponent also had two units with MSV Lv2. The table was also somewhat in my favour as my Scots Guard have Multiterrain, so they could walk over it normal.

As I deployed I decided to grab the objective on my left and the middle, then protect the one on the right because it was the hardest for Stuart to get to as it was behind a building in the open so he'd have lots of AROs unless he had Smoke. With very few Lt options on the board, I sent Uxia to kill one of the two basic line troopers. She did kill it, but later in the game I found out it was the other one. She also provoked ARO from TO Ninja who missed its free shot and then Uxia killed it. My Scots Guard Missile Launcher in a full Link Team took care of enemy Sniper and HI with HMG and MSV Lv2. Next to the HI was also another trooper unfortunate enough to get caught in the blast and died as well. I finished the turn with taking the objective on the left with FO SAS and on the right my Dozer took it.

Stuart had lots of expensive troops as he started with only 10 Orders, meaning I halved his Order pool and making it extremely hard for him to retaliate. He did kill my Dozer and then there was shoot off between Scots Guard Molotok and another HI with Spitfire but nothing happened, or I might have taken off one Wound.

In my second turn I first sent my second SAS (Chain Rifle & Light Shotgun) to take care of the HI with Spitfire. Allowing my Traktor Mul to get the objective on the right from the unconscious Dozer. My Highlanders also provoked ARO from a Camo Marker Stuart had near the middle objective. It dropped a Mine which meant when another Highlander charged into CC, the mine went off but nobody died. It was the next Order where we killed each another (or it might have happened the Order before, memory is blurry but that was the end result, both dead). My problem then was that if I killed anything else I was very likely to put Stuart into Retreat, which I didn't want to do as I wanted to go for full points. So instead I moved my troops around to protect all the objectives and have AROs on the last three troops Stuart had left.

He was holding back in his second turn but he did kill my Traktor Mul. Which meant in the last turn I had to send a Scot Guard to grab the objective and then instead of killing I had just enough Orders for a Highlander to take Objective from SAS on the right, allowing him to FO an unconscious unit for Classified Objective and then get to the middle and grab the last objective, giving me all three when I finished my turn. Stuart charged at my units to try make them drop objectives so I woukd lose some points but I managed to kill everyone with AROs without any of my objectives holders dying. So in the end I did managed to score full 10 (I think I did secure HVT for the Second Classified or it might have been Extreme Prejudice earlier on) and be on a good start for the day.

Game 2: Antenna Field - Caledonia vs Tohaa
Lost 1 to 8 (0 TPs)

It wasn't until the lunch break after the first game that I realized it might have been better off to score lower than going for full 10. It meant I would be paired against someone else who scored full 10 instead of having potentially easier game (on two day events it might be better to win consistently, even if small). I was paired against John, another new opponent. Unfortunately for me he was playing Tohaa and I wasn't fan of the table we were assigned. I played on it before (again in Expo) but back then it had objective room on it, making it bit better I think. Neither deployment zone seemed to have advantage and thanks to not sleeping for over 24 hours at that point, I could not visualize how it would play out on later turns. I went with the side that I thought would give me advantage of having objective on roof. In retrospect I think we could have try ask the TO to shuffle the terrain a bit to put them all on the ground as two objectives were on roofs (I think it says somewhere in ITS pack they should be on ground level like the HVT).

I am not even sure why I did not pick to go first, I really don't like going second. The table had some really awkward lines of fire, John spent a good deal of time checking them all out before sending his troops against my Link. He was able to kill one of my Scots Guard FOs without getting ARO from anyone else. He then spent his turn establishing defenses and taking the middle objective and the one at his deployment zone. He prevented me from taking mine with MSV Lv2 Sniper standing on a lantern building (not sure what else to call it), which gave him line of fire to my Camo Token (SAS), who was on the roof, if he moved to the objective. The only cover I had there was some ridiculous oversized advertising sign  which did not do much but made it awkward to stay in cover.

In my turn I tried to take out the trooper John left looking over the route my Scots Guard could take but he either passed all saves or just lost Symbiont Armour (those troops should be more expensive for having that extra Wound... I'll try not to rant about Tohaa). I thought I would at least make it hard for John to get all the points so I sent my Link Team into the middle, killed one unit and took the objective. The smarter thing would have been to give John the points this turn and attack the next. He was clever with his deployment, three Triads with heavy weapons, one on each flank and one in the middle, made it hard for my movement. Since there were no long lines of fire I felt stuck in my half of the board. I finished the turn with troops in Suppressive Fire to at least make it hard to attack them. The turn finished in Draw.

Since I completely forgot Tohaa have access to Heavy Flamers on basic line troops (or just able to put them into each Triad), moving my Link to the middle was a terrible idea. It did not help that my SMG kept missing its shots, despite passing his ARM saves like three times, I only killed the Tohaa unit on the third or second round of shooting. At the end I was only left with him and Wallace, pretty much game over as far as ability to retaliate. I had nowhere near enough units to stop John winning this round on objectives. I did make some attack attempts but it wasn't enough.  

John took even more objectives in his last turn. He had every Triad moved up to one of the objectives and with heavy weapons on Suppressive Fire backing them up. My last turn was pretty desperate. I had one shot at either forcing a draw again or if everything went perfect, winning the round. First I sent Wallace to clear up the middle and the objective near John's deployment. I had one round of shooting to make it work. Wasn't impossible to kill two Light Infantry but my dice rolls were bad. Which also describes the rest of my attempts. Both SAS and Urugan failed to kill anything. Which left most of my army dead in the end. John had very solid victory.

My two big mistakes were not really thinking about the kind of units Tohaa have (I don't remember any of their names which doesn't help) and not thinking about the deployment zones properly. Only as we played it became clear the side I chose was the worse of the two because outside of the deployment was very open, while on the other side you could advance behind and into cover. Tohaa seem to be a wild card for me, never sure how the game is going to go.

Game 3: Comms Centre - Caledonia vs A.L.E.P.H.
Lost 0 to 10 (0 TPs)

I was more confident with this match up (at first anyway) against Chris and his ALEPH. I believe I met Chris before but think this was our first game (sorry Chris if I forgot any earlier games!). The table looked quite good, until we realized there were some enforced terrain rules which in my opinion were entirely unnecessary. The area with trees, marked by the green hedges, was counted as a Saturation and Low Vis zone. The whole area between the hedges, not just the trees themselves. For me it meant I was not willing to send my army through there because it would put me at big disadvantage, while Chris was fine since ALEPH has access to both ODD and MSV Lv2. His army was not what I expected, it was all Remotes with TAG as Lt and only like four S2 units (engineer, hacker, Warcor and sniper I believe).

The table looked like it would have some good long range lines of fire so my idea was to send the Link Team up a tall building to get them into good ARO and attack spot. During the game that proved to be not such a good plan. I couldn't get the Link Team up there without taking AROs at disadvantage. I did get tunnel vision on a Bounty Hunter Sniper, it took me like four Orders to kill it which didn't leave me much to move around and also meant I did not kill enough in the first turn. I ended the turn with trying to set up the Link in a way that if anything wanted to attack them it would face multiple AROs and also moved Uxia out of a hot zone. She was near the TAG (which deployed last so I didn't know it would be there) and had no chance surviving against it since it has MSV Lv2.

Chris was careful with his TAG. He moved it through the Saturation Zone to attack some of my back line troops and my Sniper. I think Uxia died too. But then he run it back to his deployment zone. It wasted all his Orders but it also meant it was again on the other side of the board from my Link. We played the doors in the buildings as opening when you touch them as part of your movement and then closing again. This allowed my Link Team to go through a building on the very left near Chris' deployment zone and give my Missile Launcher a shot at the TAG. I did win the face to face. Both shots hit. But Chris failed only two of the six ARM saves. The TAG then went into hiding and I had nothing close enough to finish it off. Actually I did consider using five or so Orders in my second pool on the Urugan doing speculative fire on it. I would need 1 to hit, but 1 would be a Crit too. Though I thought that was too much of a Hail Mary to waste Orders on in the second turn.

Again Chris was careful in his turn, he set up defenses outside of the building where my Link Team was and Engineer repaired the TAG back to full Structure Points. This game was odd in that while Chris wasn't killing that many things, neither was I. In the last turn I wanted to deny Orders and just kill more things. Wallace went balls out and killed both Total Reaction bots right outside of the doors. I only then I realized I did none of the objectives thus far so I sent Dozer and SAS to get as many as they could. I managed to get only three thanks to bad WIP rolls. Also on the photos you might have noticed infiltrated SAS on a roof near Chris' deployment zone. He did nothing the whole game because Chris always had AROs I did not want to risk just to kill a Warcor which was on a roof of the same building.

In his last turn Chris revealed a TO Hacker (or some specialist) that took two unclaimed objectives and then one of mine. Considering I couldn't kill any of his Specialist, it was clear he won so we called it there. Looking back at the game I really should have put the Link into middle of the board because there was a good defensible building and with Specialists in the Link I could have done more Objectives earlier (I really should have been using them for that during the game more), I was just too tempted by that high vantage point. It is definitely something worth keeping in mind even more for future games, deploying Link Team in the middle gives them more mobility to attack every part of the board. If you put them on a flank, their ability to attack on the other side of the board is reduced (unless it is a really fast Link).

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.]

Renegades Direct Action - The Holy Crusade

In the year of Our Lord 2016 on the 10th of September the PanOceanian Crusader Army of Christ took upon the fields of battle in the city of Kingston upon Hull. By the will of our Lord the Maiden of Orleans did not lead them to victory but their sacrifices will not be forgotten, they will live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven and will be remembered as Martyrs of the Holy Crusade. 

This was first event of the new ITS Season 8 "Tagline". If you read my previous article, for this season I decided to play more fun games and use my other armies. I decided to take my Military Orders for this event. I really wanted to get them painted and this was as good as reason as any. Plus I played them only once before. So in a week I painted my Crusader Army and off to Hull I went with James and Matt.

The event was hosted by the Yorkshire Renegades. 

I lost all thee games and came last, mix of bad match up and just terrible luck. I think I might have done better in Limited Insertion event because I only took 10 Orders, which was mainly because I didn't have enough time to paint more models. I enjoyed playing this army though, space-Knights are cool. I will likely keep this army for Limited Insertion events in the future as I don't plan to buy more units to make it a viable competitive army for normal ITS.

Game 1: Supremacy - Crusader Army of Christ vs Yu Jing
Lost 3 to 7 (0 TPs)

"Wrath is no vice when inflicted upon the deserving."

The Maiden of Orleans and her Crusaders of the Lord took it upon themselves to liberate our faithful citizens from the clutches of the evil Imperial Service after the heathens of the Yu Jing StateEmpire had the audacity to try subjugate one of the Hyperpower's residential areas. By Will of the Lord, Saint Joan's army was able to break the enemy lines and establish a defense perimeter to evacuate our innocents civilians. The enemy horde was relentless and many pious soldiers of the Lord fell that day, forcing Saint Joan and the Crusaders into tactical retreat. 

In the first round I was matched up against Nigel so I knew it will be a very hard game. Nigel's army is very competitive so I didn't think my first attempt at Military Orders had a chance. The table, while very pretty was not good for this kind of mission. On both sides you had only one building outside of the deployment zone, otherwise it was all open with wide streets going both horizontal and vertical. If like Nigel you had two Total Reaction Remotes, they could easily lock down much of the board. In my opinion every board needs some closed routes to get you out of the DZ, if they don't it can end up frustrating real quick.

Considering I had only 10 Orders vs Nigel's 16 plus 6 or so Impetuous, I was aiming for a draw at best, I had no chance controlling more zones than him. My only advantage was going second and having expensive units to throw into quadrants if he spread himself out too much. My plan was to have Joan and two Knights of Santiago on my right flank in a building outside of DZ, and then Knight of Holy Sepulcher (who spent most of the game pretending to be three Fusiliers) and Infiltrators and Crusader on the left. I knew who Nigel's Lt was so I thought if I kill him, I could get draw or win on quadrants first and second turn.

But there was only one real way to kill Nigel's Lt, by having Infiltrator on a roof in the middle of the board. Which I did. Nigel was smart and got his Sensor Remote on the roof, which forced my hand to reveal my TO unit and shoot it for free when it finished climbing. But that allowed Nigel to use his tiger/mini-TAG unit to climb up and kill my Infiltrator. That unit also took out my hacker through a really awkward LoF. Then it stood there in Suppressive Fire and was a problem to shift. Luckly for me Nigel didn't move much into any quadrant. Which allowed me to move Joan and her Knights to get lower left, my second TO unit to take lower right and then my Crusader Brethren took out a unit on top right quadrant and captured it, so I was on good start.

It didn't last long, the buildings turned out to have even more awkward LoFs through windows because they had no internal walls so my Crusader had nowhere to get in cover. Nigel killed him and then moved up his Chain Rifle guys to take out my TO unit, followed by Total Reaction Rems moving up to the middle. It basically locked down my entire Deployment Zone as the table was crazy wide open. I did manage to take out some of the Remotes and give me just enough to force draw on second turn but Nigel was then able to just heal up everyone with his Engineer and since he had double the Orders, he took three of the four objectives. In the last turn he had more quadrants. The game went better than I expected but the result wasn't surprising.

Game 2:  Decapitation - Crusader Army of Christ vs Morats
Lost 0 to 7 (0 TPs)

"Suffer not the alien to live!"

The Devil saw his chance and part of the Crusader Army was cut off by the Devil's alien minions known as Morats. The force of evil struck quick and hard but the Crusader Army fought with valor.  Identifying the Devil's Lieutenant, the Crusader Brethren descended from the Heavens like the blessed Angels but unfortunately not even all their might was enough to smite the alien evil. Before they were overrun, Knight of Holy Sepulcher in command ordered to leave the battle and rejoin with Saint Joan.

Normally I get paired up again James in the last round and the result is also predictable (you can read my previous reports on how bad match up my Caledonia is against his vanilla Ariadna), but this time he was also playing for fun and had his Morat army. So we thought this could be a good match up, both had heavy hitting armies with few Orders. My plan for this mission was having Knight of Holy Sepulcher in Holoecho state, with Auxbots, Hacker, Hospitaller Knights and Black Friar protecting him. Then I would use Crusader Brethren to AD behind enemy line to suicide while killing the enemy Lt. I also had TO Sniper Infiltrator for the chance of getting a nice sniper angle on the enemy Lt. Good plan I thought, and it sort of worked. I just had terrible, terrible luck.

James got the first turn and I was perhaps bit stupid but I had my HMG Hospitaller Knight watching a fire line. I thought with high BS and ARM and Doctor near by, he'd have a good chance. But I didn't realize how good Rodok HMG in full Link Team is. BS15 with Mimitism is really powerful. So my Hospitaller Knight died and then was shot while unconscious. James ended his turn just holding back around the middle, with Kornak behind his troops. He was in the open if I got behind him and there was lots of open space to AD into, it looked good. So I started my turn by activating Hacker and gave my AD troops +3 PH. PH14 is got great but its above average. Plus James did not have a normal Hacker so it was unopposed. My first Crusader with HMG dropped down without problems. I got to shoot at Kornak in the open while I was in Cover... but I rolled so low on four dice that James won the roll and I of course failed the ARM save.

I thought lets try it again. This time my Crusader failed to land and scattered so only one Rodok with Shotgun could see him. He hit, I failed ARM save again, plan out of the window. Next turn nothing major happened, I think James wasted all his Orders just getting a Classified Objective and getting everyone back to where they started. My Hail Mary was using my TO Sniper to take out his Tempest Regiment units. They were in the open, I had the range, the cover, the TO, the surprise, basically putting them at -9 because they were also in their good range. I needed 15 vs their 4. What do you know, James crits with both units! BOTH!

With half my army dead and no chance getting past his units, we called it there and went to get some food. James couldn't really get to my Lt either, it was on roof with no ladders, in marker state, with flamer bots and mines around the way to get to him.

Game 3: Frontline - Crusader Army of Christ vs ALEPH
Lost 0 to 2 (0 TPs)

"Through the gates of hell we make our way to Heaven."

Betrayed by its very creation, just as God was betrayed by his angel Lucifer, forces of A.L.E.P.H. attacked the Crusader Army. Guided by the Holy Spirit the Crusaders attacked swiftly with the Lord's might and in His name they slew A.L.E.P.H.'s champion Achilles. Unfortunately the enemy was not slowed down for long but every inch of the battlefield was paid with blood. The Holy Crusade came to an abrupt end when the Maiden of Orleans fell in battle. The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Last round, last chance for victory. I went against Al who was playing his Achilles & Hector list. I felt good about it because once more we had around the same number of Orders. The table was interesting, one half was infinite high buildings and the other half was super open with saturation zones. So for all intents and purposes we played on one half of the table, you can guess which one. The table also did not have a single tall building or roof with cover, the only high place was a catwalk around middle of the board on the side we didn't use (we both had one unit on that side of the table). The mission was front line so the plan was to move up a little each turn and set up good defenses so I would finish the game with units in the middle and in the furthest zone from my DZ. I believe I won the Lt roll on this one, I had the first turn either way.

After deployment an exciting opportunity presented itself in form of Achilles deployed near the edge of the board in a building with doors facing the edge of the board. He was also outside of Al's Deployment Zone because of his Forward Deployment. It meant I was able to send AD trooper and TO Infiltrator to go assassinate him, or try to anyway. First I moved the TO unit to plant a mine in a doorway, he was on the right side of the doors. Then Crusader walked on the edge on the left side of the doors. Al had one chance to change facing when I was placing the mine but after that, any ARO and he'd have to take the extra hit. With the Crusader I then went to shoot Achilles in the back with Al doing change facing. He failed his rolls and then managed to fail three ARM saves too, which was lucky for me. I am not sure if it was before or after shooting Achilles, I had a go at shooting Hector. It didn't do anything but it made Al throw a smoke grenade with one of is units, blocking LoF into the building where Achilles was. It allowed my Order Sergeant to run in and Coup de Grace, I did not want to risk Al having a doctor somewhere.

Al also revealed his TO Hacker and I screwed up moving my TO Sergeant and the Crusader, so I ended up blocking my own mines that could have hit the Hacker. Which I paid for later in the game. The Hacker was in such a bad place for me that I couldn't go shoot it without risking my HI unit being hacked. And Al killed my hacker in his first turn. Looking back maybe I should have just go risk it, my troops had decent BTS but I thought I could get around with my Knight of Holy Sepulcher. He did really good in the game, put Hector down to 1 Wound and took out some units. Al was holding back for first two turns and I did not have enough Orders to push much either.

In the last turn I went for it but the Knight of Holy Sepulcher got killed. After that I didn't have enough Orders to go anywhere. I left my Knights and Joan overlooking access routes to the zone in front of my DZ, which Al wanted to get, trying to at least stop him. That plan failed when one of his units went against Joan and I failed to hit and then she failed three ARM saves. There was also a point earlier where I needed like 11s or 12s to hit and I managed to roll three 13s, it was pretty amusing. Al got the victory in the end by capturing the quadrant that gave him the most points.

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.