I HACKED SOMETHING! (Laina's Haq vs Matt's Nomads)

I intended to just write a post about my game with Matt on Bank Holiday Monday, but then I started writing about other stuff somehow. Apologies for getting a bit carried away...

So if you just want to read about the game rounds and not read my ramblings about other Infinity related stuff then just scroll down to the large 'Game play' title :)

Infinity online

One of the awesome things about infinity is the online community. Particularly on the facebook groups for UK Infinity and WGC Infinity, but also smaller club or faction based groups. It is completely fine for people to post questions about specific scenarios where there are rules queries and lots of people will reply with their experiences, opinions and relevant rules quotes which may have been missed.

A good example of this lately was a discussion on intent (turns out lots of people had different definitions of what intent actually is, which was causing most of the confusion - See great article here from Lead Rising for a summary of that).

Casual 40+ comments within an hour...

I often post things where I am not sure what the correct action is/was and get super fast and helpful responses e.g. below on a question about AROs when a hidden deployed model did (or didn't!) block LOS between two models as he appeared. This really helps me as a new player to get to grips with the game mechanics and I have asked many more questions like this and been helped out every time. Often I read other people's questions and learn something I didn't know too.

That pesky Tuareg causing mischief again!

The war cor, what a legend!

Everyone has their niche. Ian Wood of store.wargamingtrader.com is well known in the online community and often helps with resolving rules queries, backed up by direct rules or FAQ quotations. Luis never faulters producing a stream of battle reports for all to read (See an example here). People post some awesome miniatures, painting and artwork to feast our eyes upon:

Credit: Tommy Back

Credit: Ian Wood of store.wargamingtrader.com

So many more people bring so much to the table, including great terrain projects!

So to other new players (or any players) I say GET ON THE FACEBOOK PAGES (UK here and WGC here) and engage with these people, it will enrich your gaming experience. Particularly new people - ask questions, make mistakes, join the fun!

The match - Emergency transmission

I first met Matt at the Hemel Hempstead Wargaming Club on the all day gaming event a few weeks ago. Matt and I had an awesome game which turned out to be a five hour marathon of awesome fun. So I went to Matt's studio at the bottom of his garden to play emergency transmission.

Initiative

Matt won the roll off, chose deployment and got his nomads out. 

Matt's board. 

On this game six of the objectives are on/off type switches (the consoles) so having the last turn could really help. On this basis I chose to go second. Sometimes I like a good old fashioned alpha strike with 'your army's good friend Bob' (aka my Fiday) but I thought the pros of going last outweighed this in this game. 

Deployment

I was a bit worried deploying first but spent some time placing things carefully and checking I hadn't done anything stupid. 

Examples of my previous stupid deployment errors:

• Once I left my Jannisary standing up and Alex shot the bejeebuz out of it as he had first turn. He is religious and failed a million dodges.
• I played Pan O once and left too much standing up that wasn't strong enough and it all got gunned down turn one, unable to beat their superior BS, wounds and armour.
• The first time I used a remote I put it on a roof and had forgotten to put an engineer in my list so it got gunned down and that was that.
• Once, on the saddest occassion of them all, I didn't realise my lieutenant could be seen through a doorway from across the board even though he was prone, and he got gunned down straight away.

So I went with super cautious, mainly to try to protect my nice main order pool of 10 regular orders. Apart from my Shihab HMG total reaction remote, which I must say had excellent cover and two fabulous lines of fire to two objectives, everything else was hiding hiding hiding, prone prone prone! I held my Fiday in reserve.

To the left, to the left, everything prone in that train to the left...
Left side my deployment

My deployment right side

Matt was much faster at deploying than me, although this may have just seemed this way as I was being entertained by one of his super cute rescue dogs for part of the time.

A bit of a pre-match pep talk from one of Matt's latest additions to the family.

I had almost forgotten about the existence of that flipping Moran with the two Crazy Koalas. We had beef from a previous game. Straight down in the middle of the board near the antennae with the koalas covering the middle and most of the left side of the board, containing another 3 objectives. Rats. 

That Moran with her bloodthirsty pets...

At least I had a couple of nasmats I could use later to trigger them if needed. He also had a few camo markers, although this doesn't scare me as much as it used to, bearing in mind I play against Newman's Ariadna reasonably often. I knew one of them must be that wretched HMG intruder. *Rolls eyes*. I asked about combat groups and he said that he had one of ten and one of one. First thought was which is in the one on its own? He pointed to a camo marker hiding on first floor behind a huge pillar at the back of his deployment. Could be his lieutenant based on other troopers. Mental note made. Also, Could have some other things walking/flying on later. Mental note number 2.

I decided that based on how I had deployed, I didn't fancy missiles being a thing, so went with putting the imp-1 marker a hair's width away from the back of the missile trooper prone on the roof. Matt was not best pleased. 

Spot your army's good friend Bob. Nothing to see here...

He then put down a camo marker. Oh that flipping intruder, I thought to myself stroppily.

Game play

Round 1

Matt started his first turn fairly strongly moving up the board and around the objectives, dropping mines (sorry I mean 'camo markers'!) and moving koalas, using a snazzy new acrylic ruler to check ZoC etc. Is measuring equipment envy a thing? I also had this when Alex from Hemel had a flexi tape measure that could measure movement round corners. Anyway... He clearly would have liked to have had a go at some of my troopers but they were all well hidden thankfully. "WHERE ARE THEY ALL?!" He asked. I took off the train roof and showed him again. He took the objective closest to him in the train in his half and then set up next to the one on the right with a camo marker and 'camo marker' (mine). He didn't WIP it despite having been able to, so I assumed this was not a specialist but a defensive manouver. 

As a mean guy started stomping across the board, I AROd with whoever he was bullying, plus my Tuareg sniper in hidden deployment to help with the odds of taking him down. Unfortunately this ended terribly for her, being double critted on 5s. Straight off the board. 

The Tuareg was totally outclassed with a double crit. Sad times.

He may have forward observed the HVT in that turn as well but my memory fails me.
__________

In my first turn I had a lot of decisions to make. Lots of objectives to get, lots of board control from Matt already, particularly with his koalas, camo, and gecko in cover looking over lots of objectives. I had to super impetuous first with the bike. I had shunned her to the back of the board in deployment in anticipation of her insane tendency to go crashing into a blazing row the second she moves, so managed to stay out of trouble in her first 8 inches, just outside the ZoC of the first koala. She then chucked some smoke onto the objective on the right hand side of the board. Here is a proud moment from me, as it shows my long term planning has improved:

Firstly, I placed the smoke template so that it would block the LOF from the Moran to the right hand side objective, but also so it covered the objective enough where my engineer could now get through unseen. I made sure that the camo marker I thought was the one with the horrible MSV3 did not have LOF! No popping out and AROing for you my sneaky well sighted friend... The way the camo marker was behind the objective further away meant he couldn't see at once angle due to smoke and at the other due to the objective. Then, my engineer walked up to the objective, successful WIP roll and he was happy. The better part of that plan comes in later. 

I left this for a minute as I needed to see how the orders went with the Fiday. I stayed prone and hummed to myself about stabbity stab stabbing and knifed the missile launcher girl in the back (sounds more lucky than it is, he is cc 21 and with martial arts level 3 I enjoyed a +3 to my roll and a -3 to hers.) The knife is shock so she was 'dead dead'. 

Stabbity stab stab...

I then crawled the Fiday along the roof, went down a ladder and did more stabbity stab stabbing to a guy at the bottom of the ladder. He died too. Then I had a decision, as I kind of wanted to go after that camo token that I had a gut instinct was his lieutenant, but he was a bit far away and up ladders and with only a few orders left and him in camo, I had to remember the end of my previous plan and not get too carried away. Happy to have permanently removed two orders with my sneaky rascal, I re impersonated him and hid a bit, ready for my reactive turn and then went back for the end of my plan from earlier...

My deployed prone djanbazan hmg on a roof stands up. 

Whoa black betty, Djanbazan... HMG stands to fight

Hmg opposite me shoots back in ARO. Now I split my burst. Two into the hmg and 2 into the Moran through the smoke thrown earlier by the bike, due to my MSV2. I was well proud of myself. Might not sound like much to all of you seasoned players out there, but I thought more than one move ahead, planned a little sequence used several different units' skills to get an objective and attack two annoying things, one through smoke. But alas, the terrible dice continued here. After the double crit on the tuareg I thought I would have better luck here (god knows why). I hit both but the HMG arm saved on dam 15 with no cover or armour, and the Moran dodged. I was most upset, my plan ruined! At least they both were prone now so less of a threat to all of their surroundings. 

I actually remembered to give my hmg reaction bot supportware using the hacker (In a previous game I forgot). Happy with the knowledge that he had an engineer linked nasmat hiding nearby I left him set up nicely for my reactive turn. I ummed and ahhed about what I was going to be doing about those koalas and thought they have to go. I had two options. Chain rifle bike nearby (my only source of smoke) or nasmat like 3 orders away. I thought sod it for the ten points and sent my poor WB off to a sticky end. Turned out she got hit by both Koalas and a mine which I drove her at as well, and then we noticed the Gecko would have had LOF as well which neither of us had noticed, so I got Matt to roll that as well for the funsies and story - she was dead, dead, dead, dead! But worth ten points to chuck smoke to secure an objective and get rid of two koalas and a mine.

I used a coordinated order to put 4 things onto supression and then that was the end of my turn. 

Round 2

Based on the forward observing earlier, there were no prizes for me guessing one of Matt's objective cards! He used his Moran FO at the start of his second turn to FO the HVT again and nearly gave me a heart attack when he brandished the achieved card in the air. Sh**, was what I thought. In the back of my mind though, I knew they are only one point each and it was 4 points for more consoles than your oppoenent so I could turn it around like that (if I could manage it!). I felt worried though as we had one console each at this point and he was defending the others well, and he had an extra point. He then hacked the HVT. I knew what was coming. He was now a comfortable two points ahead at this stage and I was starting to feel a bit more nervous as I felt the win slipping away - he really did have those other objectives well defended!

He then did a series of annoying things including hacking my total reaction HMG and immobilising it, killing one of my engineers and putting his Moran, cocky after having what seemed like a million lives, on supression in the middle of the board. He made what I thought was a bit of a weird choice in moving his intruder around using the one order in that combat group and then using its lieutenant order (I was quite smug with myself for having guessed correctly from the start!) to do what I thought was hide behind a building round the corner from my Fiday. However, last minute he decided to leave him sticking out a tiny bit to see across the board and didn't have enough orders to recamo him from an attack erlier in the game. He then walked on a hellcat just behind my djanbazan hmg. At least I successully changed facing as he was in my ZoC. Even more annoyingly, he just left him there, pinning my djanbazan down ready for my active turn and aiming to give him an extra order in his next one.
__________

So it was the start of my second turn and I didn't feel too bad - I had still got quite a lot of orders and although I was losing at this point, I had some ideas of how to sort it. First things first, eyes on the prize - "Who are your specialists on the board at the moment who aren't camo tokens?" I politely enquired. There were two. Sweet. If I could get rid of them, in his turn he wouldn't be able to secure any more and then I could try to swing the console count in my favour in my third turn. So I killed one specialist who was ready next to the left hand side objective, can't remember how. Pretty sure he dodged a couple of times successfully and then I finally killed him.

Tried to engineer my remote with a nasmat and failed :( I also needed to have a go at the lieutenant with the Fiday as was far too close to not try to make his last turn all restricted. I went into combat using the Fiday and rolled a... 1. He beat me with a BS attack face to face and the Fiday fell unconcious. ARGH!

The next big problem was the Moran FO on supression, as my best bet would have been the Djanbazan hmg, but he felt a bit uncomfortable moving on account of the boarding shotgun in his face. I could afford to sacrific a trooper if she died, but too many and I wouldn't have enough orders to finish her off, let alone as many orders as I'd have liked for my final turn to get objectives, so needed to proceed with caution. Options were either my lasiq sniper who was currently behind a box, but would probably get seen by the gecko if she tried it. On burst two against supression - three dice and -3, it didn't seem like too good an idea, although she did have cover and mimetism on her side. The other option was the jannisary with AP HMG in a similar situation but from the other side of the board. I thought this could be better due to 3 dice but would still be risky! I also had my eyes on that lieutenant hanging out... 

In the end I went with the Janissary as I figured out I could go round the houses a bit and get LOF without being pelted with AROs. He hit once and she went down. Matt didn't seem pleased, but he didn't seem like a man who just lost the game. Something didn't sit right and it was then I realised that he could still have troopers waiting in the wings to walk on in his final turn...

I had one order left and figured out that to hit his lieutenant and not kill the Fiday I would have to roll 3s to hit him. Not happy about how my dice had been going lately I decided to pass. Can't remember what I used the last order on but remember thinking it was more sensible than the unlikely to work lieutenant roll. May have been a last ditch attempt to sort my remote out. Looking back, maybe I should have just given it a crack of the whip.

Round 3

Matt walked a specialist on. Rats. However, with most of my troopers still around, he walked across the board and my Lasiq sniper finally found a use for herself and took him down in ARO, thank goodness! At this point there wasn't much he could do except some other stuff to defend the objectives, mainly stomping his Gecko to the middle of the board and leaving him on suppression.
__________

Then it was my turn. I re-evaluated the situation. The two objectives in Matt's half were too far to get to. The one on the right still had the camo marker and mine and also a couple of his troopers watching it carefully. Too much going on. The one on the box in my half was a no go unless I wanted an ARO party to happen. For anyone who tried to walk up there. So that just left the one on the left on the centre line. The only real threat was the HMG camo marker nearby(ish) and the gecko looking right at it from cover.

I realised I would never have enough orders or luck to beat the three structure points of the gecko. So I went for what I thought was my best chance and looked up what hacking I could do on Captain Spud's hacking page. Highly recommended by me, and also people way better than me, you filter by hacking device and target with all options then given clearly, plus you can bookmark/favourite the page and cache it for offline use. I saw that I could roll on a burst 2 to attempt to immobilise it. Obviously Matt had put the Gecko on supression so he would have 3 dice but it was either this, run a specialist straight past him and if he died opportunity lost forever, or take it on head on. The first of these ideas seemed like the best chance, so I ran my hacker behind boxes until I had the Gecko in his ZoC. Then I hacked. My guy tapped away furiously and did it! The Gecko was stuck to the spot unable to do anything useful for the Nomads now. I was happy not even because of the mission in hand being easier without the Gecko, but because, as I said to Matt excitedly, "This is a moment - I JUST HACKED SOMETHING!" I had never hacked anything before :)

I HACKED SOMETHING!

With this big problem eradicated, I ran an engineer up to the objective and successfully rolled for it. 

Engineer successfully connected to the console,
a mean feat as he only had WIP 14 +3 :P

Then I sent my hacker to the antennae and connected. As he was base to base contact with it at the end of the game, it counted as controlled and I also had more connected consoles than Matt, so the game ended on 8-2. Sounds like a huge win, but actually it was a close game and in no way easy. We both played well and it was a really fun game.

Antenna controlled :)

Board at end game. Final score 8-2.

More infinity YAY!

I am tentatively going to my first tournament on the 14th May. It is far too early to think about winning games but I am hoping to have a laugh, sure I'll learn tonnes as always and it will be good a good experience to attend an event like this as I've never been to one before.

If you want to read posts by awesome people who win tournaments, check out these:

Pete from Straight Outta Caledonia went down to the Totally Crit open at the weekend on his own and came back the winner, see his post about his experience here

James Newman from Gribbley Gaming has won two and came third in the most recent Harlequins event in Preston (and is currently top of the international ITS ranking), check out his blog here.

Oh and Matt won that Just Play event in Liverpool recently too, but he doesn't write a blog. Yet!

Also, when Toby beat me a couple of weeks ago he wrote that up here.

So I am sure there will be a post from me soon all about how obliterated I got! I have just realised it will probably be the new book as well so I will have even less of a clue what I'm doing! Ah well.