I’ve done some painting!!!

Yes, I’ve picked up a brush pretty much everyday this last week, for the first time since I guess November/December. The reason? I entered an Infinity tournament.

What did I paint? Well actually, I finished off a single model I started ages ago. I had used her at the ‘Northern Open 5’ event in Leeds back in May 2016. But she was only painted up to what I would barely call a basic table top standard for me, i.e. she had at least 3 different colours on her and was based to pass as painted.

After NO 5 I felt confident enough with the game rules to try link teams in Sectorials and moved on to Neoterran Capitaline Army. So Jeanne d’Arc there ended up back in my army case unused, and hence not completed. The event at Harlequins over the weekend gave me just the excuse I needed to finish off her paintwork. I’m a slow painter, and I really don’t have much hobby time any more. So I guess I have spent somewhere between 5 and 10 hours finishing off the model. Grabbing 1 to 2 hours an evening after the little one was finally in bed.

So Begins The 5 Evenings Of Painting

This is what she started last week looking like.

I am slow at getting things done because I procrastinate a lot. Pondering what colours to go where etc. So before I started I made myself a list of what to paint what colour, and in what order. This was to try to cut down the amount of time I waste wondering about those kind of things while the mini is in front of me rather than doing any actual painting. It also helps that I stuck to the studio scheme for my Panoceania anyway (blue is my favourite colour though).

Monday I’d got the blue armour highlighted up, white armour plates done, and started on the red armour and tabard. I painted the face and hair. I’d also blocked in the brown leather belts, holster and sword scabbard. At the end of Monday’s painting session she looked like this:

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent painting the tabard, along with the white crosses. Also the black shoulder pad, leaving a red cross behind. Swapping out the base, as I’d broken glue attaching her to the base, and knackered the base’s paint job in the process. Fortunately I had a stack of spare painted bases waiting for other models. I weathered the lower armour leg armour, and the completed tabard. As well as making progress on the leather belts, purple lighting, etc. Finally I made a start on the sword’s blade.

Thursday I was playing Malifaux, and then made a start on the gold NMM on the sword ‘s cross guard and pommel, along with the belt buckles, and each end of the scabbard. I think I also tried to tidy up some errors on the blue armour in places.

Friday night was the last push, as I needed Saturday to get the model varnished. So completed the NMM, sword blade, and any other outstanding details. This is how she looked Friday night before the coats of varnish on Saturday.

Apologies for the badly lit pictures throughout. Here she is, the completed Jeanne D’Arc.

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What Event Did I Enter?

Harlequins 6 Infinity Escalation Tournament: ITS OTM Event Listing. Harlequins is a games store in Preston, Lancashire. They host a wide range of events for different gaming systems at Preston, and their sister store at Blackpool. I’d decided to enter as it was ages since I’d played Infinity and I had that itch to play the game again. It didn’t take much encouragement from friends, who were also attending, to go either.

The event was an escalation tournament, so we had three lists, one list at each points band of 200, 300 and 400 points. I am not great at building lists (in any game system really) but Infinity certainly requires the most forethought on my part. Fortunately for me, I only allow myself to pick painted models, hence I have drastically reduced the number of choices I could make

Part of the rush to get Joanne painted was to be able to reach 400pts and not break SWC. It was either finish painting Joanne for vanilla Panoceania, or fully paint a TAG plus a couple of other models to use in Neoterra. I was a bit disappointed to find that I could no longer take my Scarface & Cordelia models in season 9, well natively at least (good enough excuse for build a Druze list??).

Below is a brief rundown of how the games went for me.

Where’s Who

Round: 1
Opponent: Steve’s USARF 
Mission: Safe Area
Classified: Telemetry, but I used it as an Intelcom card with a value of 40

I deployed first, but was going second, and set up everything out of LoS; including what I expected to be my ARO pieces, doh! Steve capitalised on this earning his Sabotage classified. I have to admit at this point I thought ‘oh no, end of the first turn and I’m down on objective points already’. However because of the orders required to get the classified done and the Engineer back to a good position, Steve didn’t leave enough orders to push forward with the remainder of his force. This gave me the opportunity to correct my deployment mistake with the Nisse sniper and Fusilier missile launcher. From my turn on these two became a real pain in Steve’s backside. The sniper closed down the advance of the Maverick and Devil Dog thanks to MSV2. Eventually taking down the Devil Dog. The missile launcher effectively pinning down and neutralising the Minuteman 3 man link, as their longest ranged weapon was a rifle. This swung the game in my favour eventually giving me a Total Victory, winning 9:1 on objective points.

Cool moment of the game, placing HVTs to find we’ve both got the Doctor.

Here’s a pic of my 200 pt list.

Today’s Sunday, not Fiday

Round: 2
Opponent: Joe’s Haqqislam 
Mission: Transmission Matrix
Classified: Telemetry

Now I hadn’t got my head round this mission when I was list building. It was only during set up I realised how vulnerable my Hackers, REM, and heavy infantry could be. I set up second and pushed my HI and REMs out to the flanks. There was a building in the gap forcing me to deploy either side of it and hence in the repeater zones with my two Hackers (I keep forgetting that going inside buildings is a good, and doable thing in Infinity). At the end of Joe’s deployment phase I found out that, thanks to Saladin, a Tuareg Doctor was being deployed next to my HVT, and that a Fiday was being deployed in my deployment zone right behind my Aquila…

I have never faced a Fiday before, and I have to say this moment was terrifying!

Joe had first turn, and I was expecting him to say ‘Fiday activates, short skill – Dead Aquila’. However, what he did do was to move his Tuareg into B2B with my Dr Who HVT and say ‘I’m going to doctor your Doctor’. A moment of utter bewilderment must have crossed my face, as Joe laughed, until I realised his classified must have been ‘HVT: Inoculation’. So in his first activation he’d secured his first objective point. Then a couple of orders later – it took a couple as my Doctor was successfully dodging – he killed my HVT with the Tuareg who was his data tracker. Joe is now on 4 objective points, having only activated one model, excellent game plan there!

Now it was the turn of the Fiday, fortunately for me my luck held out, and after a number of orders the Aquila managed to take out the Fiday. I soon learned my chances of hitting in CC were better than dodging out. Although a couple of learning points here.

1. MSV3 cancels surprise shot and surprise attack, but from camo markers only. Sorry Joe my bad, I’ve only realised the Fiday is an Impersonator from looking at the above picture. I certainly didn’t succeed at the first dodge roll anyway, so it wouldn’t have affected the outcome.
2. I need to work out how the ‘Warning!’ rule works, I know Joe was using the Fiday’s knife to begin with, to circumvent that for my nearby models. But I’m not sure I/we did this right either.

I felt like my first turn went my way. With the Fiday down this left the Tuareg in threatening position in my half of the table. I couldn’t get the Nisse or Aquila LoS to him without provoking a lot of Daylami Panzerfaust AROs. So I started to take out the ARO pieces carefully. At this point I realised I might be better off using the Pathfinder on the opposite flank. It moved up with little opposition, getting LoS to the Tuareg a good 30+ inches away. I then used ‘Triangulated Fire’ for maybe the second time ever. It works on the second attempt to take out the Tuareg. Finally, I revealed my hidden deployment Crocman close to the central antenna by placing a mine, I manage to claw back 2 objective points.

Things went south from here, as slowly but surely my ARO pieces went down. Clearing the way for Tarik to spitfire his lethality across the board. I ended up losing 8:2 with only 10pts left on the table.

Here’s a pic of the 300pt list.

Location, Location, Locati….NO NOT THERE!!!

Round: 3
Opponent: Andy’s MAF 
Mission: Looting and Sabotaging
Classified: Sabotage

So we’d picked sides and were deploying when I realised one of the objectives was out of position. After we got this corrected we carried on, and I think we both thought ‘bugger the true placement of that objective means I would’ve wanted the other side’. Anyway we carried on, it meant my plan to attack Andy’s objective was a bit more risky than I anticipated. However, as it turns out that didn’t matter, as Andy pretty much annihilated my plans in his first turn. Probably with a lot of help thanks for my poor deployment. Andy got to go first, and he wasted no time in racing down the flank with his Dāturazi link. You see I had deployed Jeanne d’Arc, the Father Knight, the Aquila Guard, and a Fusilier medic, all in base to base. I thought I had been clever and positioned them watching each other’s back, out of LoS. What I actually did was provide target practice for Dāturazi grenades. Not that a 5 man link throwing grenades within 8 inches can actually miss. Short story shorter – Dāturazi link murdered 43% of my army list in the first Round. My deployment killed me. I was in Loss of Lieutenant in my first turn of the game, this is a real arse!

ARO templates verses clumped up troops are also a real arse!

The Dāturazi link team then walked across my deployment in relative safety under cover of smoke. As my other MSV model, the Nisse, had been taken out by the Sogarat AP HMG. Here is a picture of the moment after my objective went BOOOOM!!!

The remainder of the game was points clean up for Andy’s Morats. I ended the game in retreat and losing 10:0 on objective points.

Well played Andy, I hope to remember a lot of lessons from that game in the future!

Finally, here is a pic of my 400pt list.

Final Standings…and the ‘Blog Off’

1. Matt Fisher
2. Andy Smith
3. Luke Taylor

(I think – from memory – if i’m wrong i’m sure someone will correct me 😉 )

I came in 10th, yes folks I’m claiming a top 10 finish here 🙂 . You don’t need to know how many players took part…cough 14 cough. I’d like to say thanks to all my opponents for 3 fun games. Even my two losses were enjoyable games, in no small part due to my opponents too. I really enjoyed the event overall.

Steve had joked at the start that myself and Greg, of The Plastic Crack Blog fame, should have a ‘Battle of the Blogs’ game. Fortunately for me we didn’t meet over the table in the event – as that would have been another arse kicking. However Greg’s final position was 9th, so he ‘only just’ beat me lol.

I highly recommend you head over to The Plastic Crack Blog YouTube channel and subscribe. He has a lot of good content, so help him get over a 1000 subscribers. While we’re here, I may as well plug his Patreon too, its a lot of effort creating content and every little helps. So support him if you can, and like what he does – he does a monthly raffle too.

Back to the event results, I did actually win something, I got best painted, so I’m really pleased with that.

Prize Support

Wow, was there was a lot of it! Everybody got something there was so much. What you can’t see on there is the Harlequins store credit for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Best Painted. I also think there was a spot prize store credit voucher too. Harlequins also donated a Beyond Red Veil box, as well as helping with the hosting of the event. Corvus Belli sent the box of Druze, 2 blisters, posters, badges and patches. Art of War Studios provided a plethora of markers. Micro Arts Studio sent some bases and tokens. The entry fee also provided for some of the prizes too.

I also have to say thanks to Lawrence who ran a great event. Also to everyone who brought their painted terrain to play on, all the tables looked ace. I should have taken more photos!

Here is what I claimed from the table…

There was a lot I wish I could have claimed (need to finish higher), there was one thing I should have claimed, but completely forgot about it when I was stood at the table (the Knauf poster). However I am more than happy with what I did take home.

Now I have to spend some hard-earned prise support at Harlequins. I see some white and red painting in my future .