Today we have a guest post from previous contributor Chris, this time sharing with us an awesome Infinity battle report. Chris has previously written about how great Infinity is and why he started playing. If you are interested, check out his previous post to get an overview on how Infinity works as a game before reading his battle report. Even if you don't know Infinity, Chris does a great job in the report of explaining what certain actions do and how the game plays, so be sure to check it out!
Over to Chris.
Assault on SYGTIR-2 - an Infinity battle report
Chris Rhodes
G'day dear readers of St. Andrews Wargaming!
Chris here, the avid reader turned guest writer that offered you a glimpse into the world of Infinity in fall last year if you remember (http://standwargaming.blogspot.de/2016/09/guest-post-infinite-patience-or-long.html). I'm mighty pleased to be able to contribute another small piece to this magnificent blog and, fittingly, this will be about Infinity as well.
Before we get to the actual battle report I want to give you some very basic information about Infinity and how it works. If you're already familiar with the game, feel free to skip this bit.
Infinity is a skirmish game set in the year 2200 (the rules are free to download by the way). The various factions on Earth have merged into different constellations. For example, the state empire of Yu Jing that comprises most of the Asian nations, or PanOceania that includes, well, all the rest of the world. Of course, the various factions are still squabbling as they are today, but there's no open warfare going on, only mostly clandestine work. So far humans have made contact with 2 alien races - the Tohaa, which are seemingly benevolent, and the Combined Army, which seeks to conquer all races they encounter. A few new planets have been settled, too, and we have researched the technology of "jump gates" to facilitate travelling large distances. One such jump gate is the "Wotan Gate" which basically connects two planets, one being Paradiso, and the other being Svarlaheima. Paradiso is already being attacked by the scout forces of the Combined Army, which now try to make a push through the Wotan Gate.
Gameplay-wise, an Infinity game has 3 turns, similar to Warhammer 40K in the way that the players alternate moving and shooting with their respective armies. One of the interesting differences is that there's always an active player (whose turn it is) and a reactive player. When the active player moves or shoots with a unit, the reactive player gets to shoot back (but less powerful than in his active turn), or dodge with his models. A mechanic that makes Infinity games quite engaging, as there's almost no downtime.
The second big difference in the game play mechanics, and one that took some time getting used to, is that in Infinity you can move and shoot with a unit several times in your turn, by consuming "orders". Orders are supplied by each of your models in your army, one order for each model. This is balanced out by the fact that even expensive elite units are still relatively fragile, so unless something goes really wrong, there won't be a single unit Rambo-ing through the whole opposing army. This does open up a world of tactical opportunities though, as you can freely spend your orders on several models or just one troop model in any order you wish.
So a few months ago, Corvus Belli, the Spanish manufacturer of Infinity, started a global summer campaign ("Strikezone: Wotan") with 3 stages that is now complete. In this campaign, the various factions got to fight over strategic locations in the space around the Wotan Gate, for instance, a space station or various orbital defense platforms, and the results will advance the storyline of the game. This is one of the battles I played during this campaign, and the most memorable for me.
