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 unadverted 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 sucessful, 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 rythm 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!

To Infinity... and beyond!

 Quite some time since I didn't paint Infinity, but in fact the original project wasn't really finished, so about time I did something about it!

I had painted the Operation Kaldstrom core box, but my pal also got the "Beyond Operation Kaldstrom" expansion pack, as well as a couple of heavy units; here y ou have them all!

First of all, I had a mini still pending from the core box, Oktavia Grímsdóttir. I had painted her, but not taken any pics. She´s a mercenary (well, maybe a little bit more complicated than that, but the word covers it all for this post's sake), so she can provide some flexibility to your games.

Now with added snow

 Right, I've added snow to the bases (I have to fix this one!). The effect works fine at tabletop distance, but I'm afraid that if you look closer, it looks like the mini has just opened a box from Amazon and all the protecting stuff has spilled all over.

Anyway! The Panoceania team is made of  these guys, a Varg (spec ops), a Boyg Soldier (scary bloke in his uberarmour) and a Locust (a hacker, don't be fooled by his gun):

A Varg, A Boyg and a Locust come into a bar...

A Varg, A Boyg and a Locust come out from the bar...

I tried to reproduce the same colour I previously used on other Panoceania units, but I believe this time I got maybe a slightly deeper blue. Anyway I think it works. They all have interesting designs and are exquisite miniatures, but that's precisely what makes a challenge out of each one of them!

Let's move on. The Yu Jing team also consists of three members, a Shàng Jí ("superior"), which is a Hacker in an armour; a special character, Jing Qo, The Shadow of Huangdi; and a Ye Mao ("wildcat"), covering the spec ops role for the group.

Seriously, you have to be more careful when you open your boxes, look at the floor

Hey, no, I'm not done with you, come here immediately!

Once again I tried to reproduce the colours, but I think this time my orange is a little bit more vibrant than my previous work, which was slightly more yellow toned. However, I believe they all look fine when together.

I told you that besides the "Beyond" expansion pack, my pal also got heavy units. In Infitity these are known as TAG (Tactical Armoured Gear). Panoceania got this Cutter:

Well, this monster truly impresses

On the other hand, Yu Jing counts with the Blue Wolf Mongol Cavalry:

Looking for Red Riding Hood

For sure you can have quite a game with all this! Here you have a pic with this whole batch:

We could make the cover of a book with such a composition

And a final pic with all the stuff I've painted so far, with snow bases for all:

The whole project!

Fortunately the differences in tones are not severe and the new freshly painted minis match the previous ones, I'm relieved!

Well, of course now that the minis are painted, there's only one thing we can do... we have to learn to play! I'll let you know of my progress on that front!!

A jump into the infinity

 The day has arrived! After many years I've dared to dive into Infinity [you may insert a scared emoji at will]. I played Aristeia earlier this year, and I totally got the itch for the Infinity universe.

A pal of mine got the Code One: Operation Kaldstrom box, and he commissioned me to paint it. The challenge was highly motivating, as I had been toying myself with the idea of getting into the game for long. I guess there's no point in highlighting the obvious, as everybody knows by now, but... Oh, the minis! The minis!

They really are like nothing I had painted before. The whole design itself, the proportions (oh, why are those heads so small? Why are those hands so tiny? How come the guns fit into those hands??), the level of detail... It's everything about them.

The core box comes with two forces, Panoceania (galactic superpower) and Yu Jing (upcoming fierce rival). I decided to paint Panoceania first, just to get acquainted with the models.

Just seven of them. This can't be that complicated, right?

Oh my. I truly had to reinvent myself as a painter. I'm sooo used to Games Workshop, and specially to old models, that these were a totally unknown challenge to me!

First thing was to find out the correct proportions for colours on my mix. I came to this basic combo:

Crude colours, just to get my mind oriented to the final result

The minis asked for proper highlights, and it took some time for me to get them right, but in the end I was happy with the general direction of this thing:

Seriously, this guy is pure GI JOE. Change my mind

After endless trial-and-error days, I finally declared myself satisfied. This is how they were going to look like:

I finally found an use for that 00 brush!

I gave little concession to metals on the weapons. I knew I didn't want them to look like WH40K bolters, with a lot of bare metal everywhere (in fact my first instinct was to leave them totally black), but in the end I painted the magazines, barrels and so in metallics.

There are more hours involved here than those the pic suggests

Operation Kaldstrom is supposed to take place in a winter environment, so the bases should be covered in snow. However, my pal told me he didn't planned that, but urban bases, just to match his boards. Then I had to face a particular issue. This mini came with a metal piece for the base, which clearly represents open, irregular field.

Don't know what it is, but it doesn't look specially urban

So I had to improvise a solution:

No, I don't have a clue of how that beam ended there, or why. It simply exists

BTW, a pic of the cloak, to show the Templar cross (I'm currently not sure if that's accurate, please any background expert can tell? I've just read it's the Order of the Hospital?)

Still need to read everything about their fluff

But well, I think this covers pretty much all I did here. Let me show pics of the finished models:

Fusiliers

Orc troop (not a Greenskin at all) and Nokken (SpecOps guys)

Knight of Justice and Infirmarer

Here you have them all:

I may still add some detail to the bases. Rubble or stuff. But for now this is it. Quite an experience! I'll breathe some air before I start the Yu Jing guys, but I don't want them to stay on the bench for long...