(Un)finished business

OK, I'm back from a summer break with the family, so it was about time to take my brushes back too!

I had a couple of minis pending from the last batch of Yu Jing, and I thought I could get them done! They were cool to assemble (now that I got all the bits it was way easier!) and I used the same recipe, so it was quite a straightforward work. Here you have both minis:

Dynamic and cool as all the ranges

The lady with what I imagine must be some kind of gravitic parachute (at least in my imagination) not only wears her regulation tactical heels, but tactical suspender belts (you can't see them in the pic on those dark pants, sorry, but I promise they are there).

You can see both units finally finished: 

Booster Pack Beta

White Banner Expansion pack

Fair is fair, kudos to the Corvus Belli crew, who immediately replaced the missing bits, they did a really good job on that.

The whole batch looks this way, now that it's finished: 

Ahhh... completion. Feels good

This is how both Panoceania and Yu Jing forces look when facing each other:

I need a larger backdrop!

BONUS

If you made this far, I think I can take a few more seconds of your life to show you some pics from my holidays!

We made a modest trip to Tarragona (a little bit south from Barcelona, on the coast), which once was the  capital of the Roman Hispania Tarraconensis province and thus has quite a nice collection of really beautiful, old rocks.

The Amphiteatre visit is quite an experience to have

There is a Visigoth basilica built inside (later a Romanesque church)

The Aqueduct is something worth the trip out of town:

It's so wide that now its an actual, functional bridge

The Circus is only partially kept, barely part of the curve at the Porta Triumphalis stands:

Devoured by the town

 

But you can visit it underneath

Fun fact, the Town Hall plaza is built directly on the old arena, and it's indeed shaped that way. The buildings are built on the old arches of the Circus and their structure is clearly visible on the houses.

Scale models, who are we without scale models. The old Roman upper town, with the Forum and Circus:

 And then the medieval town, where you can barely recognise the Circus:

 

 Apart from that we had some medieval vibes too, as we visited the Cathedral:

Kind reminder that cathedrals were once colourful and not just plain stone

And a little town in the inside, Miravet, with this fabulous Templar fortress:

 

This would be all for today, but I'll be painting more stuff pretty soon!

(Partial) batch of Yu Jing

 I'm getting back to Infinity again. If some weeks ago I painted a batch of Panoceania from the Code One range expansion kits, now it was time for their Yu Jing counterparts.

I applied the same technique I used the first time: a mix of yellow and orange, so I get a very light orange and then I used the Iyanden Yellow Contrast as a wash. This way I get a warm, coherent orange all over.

Let me start with this part of a set, in which I had already painted the Panoceania guy. They are a Yu Jing diplomat and his bodyguard, Imperial agent Adil Mehmut:

Ow, I'm going to ruin my shoes on this snow!

Next one is Liang Kai, wandering Shaolin Monk. Quite a dynamic pose and a cool design.

You can call him as you please. For me it's Tao Pai Pai and you cannot change my mind

Next one is quite a favourite of mine, a Zanshi Paramedic. It's a nice mini with a cool standing pose and it's not over the top at all, I really enjoyed this one particularly:

Not that I trust that first aid kit with a huge knife

Now another cool kit, the Yáokòng Remotes, I'm totally in love with remotes in general, and these are enormously cool:

Properly magnetised, so all weapon options are interchangeable

Just as it happened with the Panoceania ones, I don't really know what some of those weapons are, they look like visors, sensors or lasers, who knows. Anyway, that's what magnets are for, so my pal can swap them as needed. I took care to look after polarity, and they are in the same position than the Panoceania ones, just in case you feel the urge of switching guns with the enemy. Who am I to judge.

We can move now onto the called Booster Pack Alpha, with some cool badasses in it: 

I'm not a big fan of tactical heels, but all females seem to wear them, must be unexpectedly comfy

Next... right, you got it. Booster Pack Beta. I had a problem here, as one bit from one of the minis was missing. Fortunately, the guys from Corvus Belli have it all covered. If you contact them identifying the missing bit (in this case it's a leg) and the control reference number which comes with each mini, they are more than happy to solve the issue.
In the meantime, I painted the other two minis from the kit: 

If that guy slips and falls to the ground I bet he can't get up again on his own

Unfortunately I experienced the same issue with another kit, the White Banner Expansion pack. One of the minis has its torso missing. Wow, bad luck. Again, I painted the other guys in the set while I wait for the replacements to arrive:

At least these two are cool as hell

So let me show the whole batch!

Imposing force, even with two numbers down

 When the missing bits arrive I'll paint the other two minis and I'll be sure to post them. I guess a pic of the two full opposing forces will be in place too.

I hope it will be anytime soon! 

To Infinity... one more time

 Here I am again with more Infinity stuff! My pal, who got me into this madness in the first place, has been expanding his Code One stuff, so here we are again!

I insist, these are some of the finest sculpts in the hobby, and painting them is one of those exercises that somehow manages to be both deeply frustrating and deeply rewarding at the same time, if you know what I mean. But let's go to the pics.

I haven't followed the original paint schemes 100%, but I believe I've been faithful to the patterns. That gives me some visual coherence with the previous batch.

Here we have the Booster Pack Alpha:

I have no snowy fields, this is as much winter as I can get

 I feared I couldn't get the mix of blue I used for the first time, but fortunately it worked at the first try, so it contributed to my mental peace. The minimal bits were scary too, but I managed to glue them all in place and didn't mix bits from different packs. Phew!

Here you have... ehrm. How to put it. Booster Pack Beta.

Seriously, guys, you have to work on those commercial names

 Both packs are reasonably similar, yet different. I had to paint some pieces before attaching them, so for some days my bench has been quite a messy place 😅.

Now a couple of special characters. I'm afraid I don't know their names, I'm not that deep into Panoceania lore, but they both look cool.

The hammer guy is part of a special mission/scenario box

 These two are the Dronbots, and they deserve a special mention. I've magnetised the weapon options on both of them, so my pal can swap loadouts depending on the mission. It's the kind of small practical detail that takes a bit of extra work but makes them look cooler. I hope.

These may be my favourites from all the batch

 And then there's this fella. The Jotum. A TAG (that's basically a giant walking weapons platform) and quite the centrepiece of a force. Painting it is a genuinely different experience from the infantry, mostly because you actually have enough surface area to work with. The white panels on this one were the main challenge; white is always white, and it always judges you.

Not a guy to mess with

Here you have them all, quite a force on their own:

Disappointing lack of snow on the board, I know

I wonder how these look along the previous guys I painted, but I bet it's quite an imposing force.

Now I have to paint their Yu Jing counterparts, but before I start that I have some other stuff that has been demanding my attention for a while. All in due time!

My first try at Infinity

 After quite some time and endless delays, I finally got to play Infinity! Wohoo!

We used the minis I painted for my friend, who generously offered to learn the rules -something I was terrified about!

I guess there's no point in making a full review of the game and the rules by now, but I'm happy to share a few brief impressions from a newcomer :)

First of all, we played the Code:One stuff, form the Operation Kaldstrom box. I had been told that the rules here were slightly lighter than previous versions of the game, so I came a little bit encouraged. We played the introductory game, just to get acquainted with the basic rules.

We used my old frosty mat instead of the one provided with the Kaldstrom box

The first introductory game uses three minis per side, and is just an easy going pew-pew thing to get familiar with how things work in here. So perfect for me!

There are some other three people out there somewhere...

The objective here is just to get the enemy killed and keep the own troops alive by the end of the third round. So my first endeavour was to get familiar with activations, how orders work, and specially reactions. This system is new to me, and I have to say I find it quite appealing, as it makes each round really cinematic, with tons of things happening at the same time, and forcing you to cautiously plan each movement you want to play, as an unsuspected enemy can really turn the tables if they catch you on the open!

On my first round, my fusiliers simply moved forward, taking care of lines of sight

When I moved, an enemy Zanshi saw one of my troopers, and shot at her:

The enemy is that blurry thing on the corner of the building!

I chose to dodge the enemy fire and, being successful, managed to get cover next to the building.

The Zanshi moved to open ground...

...and got one of my fusiliers killed with a skillful shot!!

Well, that was an incredibly against the probabilities shot! Of course that put me in a tight situation, having lost a third of my force without having really made any shot against the enemy! However, a thing about this game is that you can never surrender and must really give a try to your options. 

The fusilier moved upstairs and killed the Zanshi as he tried to reach cover again

Once on the top of the floor he received enemy fire, but cover served him well

He shot back and killed the enemy Zanshi (behind that short wall in the background!!)

Getting the high ground doesn't really have an impact on the game, but in psychological terms I felt things were making much sense :P

It was the third (and last) round and the blurry Zanshi in the background shot the fusilier

With this sucessful kill, both sides had two casualties and one survivor

End of the game! Draw!

I could say it was a little bit dense for a simple tutorial game with just three minis per side, but it was just me getting used to reactions and modifiers. To be honest, once you are into the game, things so smoother.

 

Let's see a second game, this time with a command unit on each side. This time we'll see how Lieutenants work game wise.

Lateral view will provide a better and more neutral comprehension of what's happening

OK, let's go. We have three infantry troopers per side plus a Lieutenant each one. The Lieutenants have their own special orders, so they can essentially do more (and better) stuff than regular troopers.

Yu Jing troops move forward, no encounter during the first round

But oh, the Orc moves upstairs and things change in a second

We considered that there was line of fire, but the Orc Lieutenant is under cover, while the Zanshi and the Jujak Lieutenant below aren't. I'm not sure if we acted according to the rules, but we didn't find that specific situation (I take for granted it is in the rulebook, we simply weren't able to find it and decided to move on). For us it made sense that the one holding the upper floor had better view and cover, getting the poor guys on the ground pinned down.

The use of additional ordinary orders on the Orc Lieutenant ended in him killing the Jujak Lieutenant:

The poor guy hadn't even had the chance to do anything!

The Lieutenant shot the Zanshi on the ground, who reacted and shot back, inflicting one wound

The other Zanshi climbed up...

...and killed the enemy Lieutenant, who flipped over the wall to the ground (in the better 80's tv show style)

So this is the general situation now

A fusilier advances

And the Zanshi climbs up the wall to the upper floor. Surprise, húndàn!

Quite a symmetrical situation!

The Zanshi kills the Fusilier

And moves next to the wall

Where she gets killed by the Fusilier on the ground

This bold firefight ends without casualties

And again! A new draw!!

Both sides had a Lieutenant and a trooper down, and two surviving troopers at the end of the third round. As short as it was, it had been another intense battle!

At this point we discussed some stuff; for example, it looked like there was little incentive to expose self troops, or the benefits of dodging vs reacting opening fire. I guess these things don't unfold so well in such a limited scenario with just three of four models per side. Besides, these scenarios being just focused on killing each other are not as interesting as any other in which you have to get objectives and that kind of stuff.

So my very brief conclusions from a newbie to anyone who hasn't played Infinity yet: The game is cool. Even more; the game is awesome. It's really cinematic, you get to feel that there's a lot of stuff happening at the same time, which makes the rhythm of the action quite quick. You are into an action movie. I wouldn't necessarily say a Michael Bay movie, but at least one in which you get the impression of things going on. I don't see this like a typical WH40K game of long-ranged weapons crossfire and little or no movement. Infinity is quite the opposite, enormously tactical, a game in which you have to seriously consider your movements and the line of sight, and where you don't get to roll hundreds of dice each turn.

The curve of learning can be harsh for a newcomer, but by no means it's a difficult game neither you should feel disencouraged for that perspective. The basics are easy to grasp, the more challenging maybe the mere concept that your opponent can actually do stuff (relevant stuff!) during your turn. I still haven't faced complex special rules nor exceptions, but I don't believe they can be a no-go at all.

Whenever I get a true game of this you'll be the first to know!