Campaign Weekend - L337 Morat Haxors

My mate James organized a campaign weekend earlier in April, a two day event with bunch of games to play for fun. We used a mix of 200pts, 300pts and 400pts army lists (with a free 15XP Spec-Ops) and over the course of the games there were opportunities to gain wargear, weapons and extra units. I decided to take my Morat Aggression Force because I enjoy playing them the most for fun, plus I had to make a come back with the list where almost everyone is a Hacker! 

The premise of the campaign was that all of our forces were left behind on a war torn moon and were fighting over resources and the chance to get off the moon. Each mission had a narrative to it, from early skirmish to signaling your faction to repairing a spaceship. I will be only giving brief overview of my games but I have lots of photos. 

Game 1 - 400pts

My first game was against Caledonia (which made me feel bad, fighting clansmen). The day started off with 400pts which was a lot, considering that both me and my opponent had 20 units each. Sadly, many of mine were hackers (8 in total) and I had nothing to hack! The mission objective was straight forward, just kill as many things as possible. There was also an addition of virus zones we placed on the table (radioactive templates in the photos).

The mission was a grind as I knew I didn't want to get too close to Caledonians so I was trying to keep distance and try to kill as many things as I can with HMG Remote and Tempest Regiment. It was a bloody battle and I managed to get a win because the Tempest Regiment wouldn't die (I kept passing all saves) and I got lucky with attacking a Link Team of Volunteers and Grey Rifle. They bunched up together with other units (notably a Spec-Ops and Wallace), which gave my Hungries a chance to attack with Chain Rifles and then my own Spec-Ops with a Boarding Shotgun. 

After this game, the winning players formed a faction and so did the loosing players. Our faction was led by Combined Army and also had Yu-Jing and Tohaa alongside my Morats. The enemy team were two Haqqislam armies, Ariadna and ALEPH.

Game 2 - 300pts

The second game was also bloody but not at all in my favour. The mission was to set up a beacon on the highest point of the table, and there was a chance to recruit some renegade Morats to your army. The table was purposefully set up to be open in the middle and thanks to bad deployment (and no Smoke Grenades), my opponent was able to destroy me with long range weapons. In one corner he had HMG Remote, Sniper and a Missile Launcher. They had AROs like everywhere.

It wasn't until too late in the game that I killed them all by playing smarter and using my own HMG Remote to engage them one at a time. It was certainly a good lesson to not deploy all of your long range weapons exposed, especially when going first. At the end of the game my last remaining unit was a 3pts Slave Drone, everyone else died in the crucible of combat like a true Morat would. 

Game 3 - 400pts

The last game of the first day was against Haqqislam, and again not much to hack with my abundance of hackers! In this mission the objective was to kill High Value Targets, each person picked two of their own units and then two from the opponents army to be HVT (so four targets in total for each player). The two units I picked from my army were well hidden but then my opponent picked my HMG Remote and Krakot as the other two. I had similar targets to kill, two well hidden and two I was going to kill anyway.

My first turn went well, but I got too excited with my Krakot (forgetting he was a HVT) and whilst he did kill lots of enemy units, he did get killed in the end. Similar thing happened with my Remote. I was trying to kill a Spec-Ops which had Mimitism. I was overconfident and engaged it within 8", which turned out to be a terrible idea because the Spec-Ops also had a Shotgun and was able to out shoot me.   

The game kind of stalled after that. My opponent tried to assassinate my other HVTs with an Infiltrator but I was able to kill it before it got to my HVTs, though the Fidaj did kill some other units. After that I did have a chance to win but my Tempest Regiment was pinned down by a TO Sniper, I just couldn't get where I needed to go fast enough while trying to kill or dodge the Sniper.
 

Game 4 - 200pts

At the start of the second day the campaign had a twist where the General of each group accused someone of being a traitor and that person switched teams. I believe we gained a Haqqislam player but our General decided to betray us and joined the other team! Typical Combined Army that. 

I actually forgot to take photos of this game. I was playing against ALEPH and the mission was to assassinate the Lt, which was open information. My Lt was a regular Vanguard and well hidden but my opponent's Lt was Achilles, at 200pts! You can imagine how did that go. I thought I was doing okay at first but then everything slowly died trying to take out Achilles. I believe in the end we had a draw.

Game 5 - 300pts

Last game was the funniest from the whole day. I ended up playing James and his Yu-Jing. Originally he wasn't playing in his own campaign but one player didn't show up for the second day. The mission was about getting to a broken spaceship, fixing it and then getting inside and staying there until end of the game. The middle of the board was pretty open again but I was smarter with deployment.

James was very excited about his Shikami and how it was going to ambush and wreck my army, so I tricked him with my Holo-Projector Lv1 Spec-Ops, who had a BFG (very overpowered gun I gained in an earlier game) and killed the Shikami with the first shot of the game. Fun time for everyone. I then proceeded to kill every single long range weapon James had that was in ARO position. The first turn I thought went rather well for me. 

But that didn't last long. James kept his head in the game and dropped down a Tiger-Soldier with Spitfire, which proceeded to slaughter like over half my army with all the remaining Orders James had available. It was not pleasant. With almost nothing else left, I decided to fortify my position around the spaceship with HMG Remote and lots of mines. Go Kurgat Engineers!

This allowed me to hold off all James' attacks. As last resort to repair the spaceship and use it, I spent all my Orders on Kornak in the last turn but he couldn't pass two WIP checks (at -6). James did try to get to the ship but didn't have anything left that could take out my ARO units. In the end both of our armies ended the campaign stranded on the moon and fighting over the remaining resources. No happy endings.

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:

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.

112, Emergency Service

In my opinion the 112 Emergency Service of Ariadna is arguably the most badass Doctor in the Human Sphere. In Caledonia he is also currently the only available unit with the Doctor Skill therefore you will very likely find him in your army at some point as part of the "standard" Doctor & Engineer support group and Specialists.

Thankfully, despite being the only Doctor option, the 112 Emergency Service is very useful in its own right and so it doesn't feel like you are wasting points on a "should have" unit.

Profile

Generally speaking, Doctors tend to have about the same stat line as Line Troops and maybe higher WIP. This is the case when you compare the 112 to Like Kazaks (Ariadna Line Troops) but in Caledonia their stats are better than Volunteers. For extra 2pts (over Volunteer Paramedic) you get +1 BS, +1 PH, +1 WIP and V: Courage; which can always come in handy.

You have AVA 3 on the 112 but I never played more than one, so don't have experience using multiple 112 but it might be worth considering if you have the models.

So, for only 12 pts you get a decent (more or less average trooper in Infinity as a whole) unit for your Caledonia army, who is also a Specialist in ITS missions and gives you a chance to heal your unconscious troops. In a quick summary, in my opinion the 112 is worth the points.

The 112 also comes with a Light Shotgun, CCW and Pistol. Gives you few options when it comes to defense or attack. If you are wondering why would you ever use Pistol over Shotgun, remember the Light Shotgun always uses the Impact Template and in some situations you could find yourself unable to shoot it as it would affect Friendly units.

And lets not forget the MedKit. I think people, beginners especially, might not realize that you can shoot the MedKit. It has the same Range Bands as a Pistol, and if you hit, the unconscious (Null) target has to pass -3 PH check to heal. Which is lot riskier than normal Doctor check, but sometime it can save you Orders or gives you a chance to heal where you can't get into base contact.

On the battlefield

You of course take a Doctor for the chance to heal your Unconscious troops but its not always simple as that or even worth doing. In my games I found the 112 used in these roles generally speaking:

ITS Objectives and Classified Objectives are arguably the main reason to include a Doctor, who is a Specialist. The 112 is actually well equipped for this. With Light Shotgun you can defend objectives from close range, or even attack, and because of V: Courage you can always count on your 112 to stay on the objective and not run away or hide (or you can decide to hide if you really want to). Guts Checks should not be underestimated.

It might be bit of repeating but I would like to stress out the use of Light Shotgun for defense and attack. Within 8" your 112 is shooting at BS17, which is excellent. Against most troops you can hold off with even one dice (unless you just roll really bad), though it obviously won't work as well against Camo, TO or ODD. Same goes for your active turn. If you can catch someone out of cove, the 112 should be able to deal with them. I think your opponents might be surprised by it, I am guilty of underestimating 112 too; not many people expect a Doctor to charge out and be good at taking out units.

I don't recommend CC with the 112, but if you do find yourself Engaged, at least you are dealing Damage at full PH thanks to the Close Combat Weapon, which is a sweet looking axe.

One scenario where I use the 112 specifically for Healing is "Sniper-Healing". By this I mean using the 112 to sit back near my Snipers and heal them back up if they go down, which you expect them to do so. The most important thing about this is to deploy your 112 over 2.5" away because you don't want him to be caught by a blast that might hit the Sniper, or Sniper caught in a blast because of the 112. If you have more than one Sniper, its worth deploying in such a way where you can reach one Sniper base to base and at least see the second one for some ranged healing with the MedKit.

The downside of the above role is that your 112 is usually far from everyone else and probably on a roof somewhere, so he might not be able to get to Objectives reasonably fast. Because of this, consider what is more important to win the mission, healing your Snipers or getting Objectives. Hint; in an objective mission the objectives are more important.

My miniature

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with my first 112 so I took lots of inspiration from the Corvus Belli studio miniature. The main difference being I went with grey jacket over blue-grey and with less yellow stripes. I am happy how it came out, it fits into the military setting with green overalls but stands out.

My favourite thing about the 112 are all the little details, like the gas mask, the flash light and the shotgun shells on the chest.

I find it hard to take pictures of this but I did do bit of dirt on the bottom of the jacket, though I might make it bit darker later on as you can only really see it in person.

Last but not least, this was my first mini where I played around with blood paint. I wanted to use it for a long time but so far never finished anything to such a level where I could do the final detailing so when I finished the 112 I took the opportunity to add blood to his axe and a blood splatter on the base. More blood will definitely follow for my other minis later on.

Most photos in this article by James from Gribbley Gaming.