Corvus Belli's Infinity Operation: Ice Storm

We got our box of Operation: Icestorm in the mail yesterday.  We were pretty excited to check it out and see what we were in for.  I am very impressed with the quality of the art on the box, and the heavy duty box inside.  Usually we get a heavy duty box, and the art suffers a bit because of it.  This allows both art and security together.  It's just one of the little details that show someone was thinking a great deal about this box set.

Inside the white box we have all of the other contents.  I had one problem with the way they did this unfortunately.

  Most of the minis are secure in the double foam padded boxes.  The exception being the two exclusive minis, the father knight and the reverend healer.  They were wrapped in a baggy and just tossed haphazardy.  My reverend healer had a bent arm.  It isn't a big deal, because metal bends back, but it is worth noticing for the next time Corvus Belli releases a set like this.  Usually I would expect the special miniatures to be more protected then they were.

The miniatures look great.  There is minimal flash, and the poses are fresh and interesting.  The models do need to be washed in soapy water before assembly.  Some of the joints are difficult to line up, and it takes a little ball of green stuff to make a good joint.  The other option is obviously pinning, but some of the arms are just too small to pin.  Compared to 40k plastic they are easy to prep really, and compared to old metal mini's, like my old battletech beasts, these are night and day.  The quality and detail are incomparable to my old minis.

This is the included terrain.  My son dug right into it, and we ended up with a table ready to go in 5 minutes.  Other companies take note: This is how you should do an intro box set.  Able to be played straight out of the box after a bit of assembly.

Here are the tokens for orders, smoke, wounds, and other things.  IF you need more tokens and markers, and it seems like we all will, you can print out what you need at this link here: http://inf-dice.ghostlords.com/markers/        

You can also see a sample of the quality of printing in the book.  The artwork is beautiful.  It really helps to get you into the world, and interested in the game.  I would have loved to see a bit more fluff personally, but that's just the kind of player I am.

The missions and rules are well written for a new player.  They slowly build up by adding new rules, and adding new models.  The missions seem interesting, and are a great way to introduce new players like myself.  Reading through a big, thick rulebook is daunting, and then when you have to turn around and apply that big list of rules. I'm working on getting some paint on some models, and we should get our first game in this weekend.   We're both looking forward to it.

Just a comparison with the size of the models on the box against the actual models.  The detail on these guys is wonderful, and should be a lot of fun to paint.

My preliminary verdict?  If you want to play infinity then this is the way to get into it I think.  The price of the box is cheaper then the starter sets, and a set of moto.tronica.  You also get some extras like the dice, tokens, and the "exclusive models.   The missions seem like a nice value add.  Don't forget that the rules are available free on the infinity website too.

I'll give the first mission a play, and maybe put up a battle report!

Stay tuned for more from both of us.

- Brandon.
as always, email, comments, criticism and cheering are always welcome either through the comments, or through my email. brandon_dot_abbott36_at_gmail_dot_com

Crumbling Wall: Scatter Terrain

Crumbling Wall: Scatter Terrain (WIP)

I tossed together a simple piece of terrain for whichever game I'm using at the time.  Let's do like a tv chef and show the finished project to start with:

This is a pretty simple piece really.  I'm not done painting.  Really the sand and rocks will end up painted.  This helps to make it jump a bit more, and actually helps to keep the bits on the base.  I'll go through how I made it quickly for those of you who are interested.

The wall is made from wallboard insulation panels.  These are readily available at hardware type stores.  Alternatively you could use whatever hard foam you can get.

I like to cut my foan with a wire cutter.  These are just a wire that heats up, and slices through the foam like butter.  If you can find a cheap one I would highly reccomend it.  Compared to the alternative it is almost an essential.  The alternative being cutting with a hobby knife or other knife.

For this wall I cut out a larger piece to the overall shape that I wanted, and then cut it into smaller brick sized pieces.  The other option would be to make a pile like the above and just glue them into a shape you like.  I used hot glue to glue them down onto a base made of foamcore.  You can make nice curves, or gaps for firing maybe.  I have some ideas for a fun twisting line to make a military gun fort that has been commandeered (I had to look up the spelling of that one;P) and in the middle of the city.  You could use white glue if you want, but hot glue is perfect for this kind of job.  It sets up quickly, but gives you a small window to move things.  The problem with PVA (white glue) is the slower time to set up.  Once it dries it would be fine, but it will be more difficult to set up in the first place.

You might have noticed that the front of the wall has some deep pitting and texturing that isn't like what you easily achieve.  I painstakingly sat down and carved every texture and contour.  Ok, that's a lie.  I estimate that this part of the project took approx. 30 seconds for real!  I took advantage of Spray paint and their tendency to melt foam when you spray them on.  You don't want to get too close, or it

will melt your whole block, and you don't want to get too far away or it won't melt at all.  My suggestion is to play around with it on some scrap pieces.  Make sure that you give it a few hours to sit before painting, because sometimes the foam keeps melting a bit.  Remember that you can always give it another millisecond spray, but you can't remake it without a fair bit of work if you melt too much.

At this point I painted the rocks.  Very simply I used a black base coat.  Then a dark grey pool, and a white pool on my pallete.  I mixed increasing amounts of white in and drybrushed it on.  A quick and dirty paintjob, but this was a quick project.

Finally I added some texture to the base.  I painted on White glue, and added my mix of sands, kitty litter, small rocks and gravel, and some tiny shredded cork "rocks."  The larger rocks were glued down with hot glue before sprinkling the rest on.  I like to give it a blast of 'spray adhesive' before painting.  I will probably just pain it in shades of brown with some patches of weathering if I feel ambitious.  

This project was just a tossed together piece in between other things.  While waiting for paint to dry, or other inevitable waiting parts of the hobby, I like to pick up something and try to make something out of it instead of just waiting.  I figure that there is about an hour worth of work in this piece, and probably 10 minutes to finish painting the ground and add some lichen in the cracks.

Here is a hill that I made out of the same foam.  The 'grass' areas are shredded aspen from my wife's leopard gecko vivarium.  I just painted it up with a few shades of green and did a highlight with drybrushing.  I need to fix the side.  My son got enthusiastic with the drybrushing!!

Here are some miniatures for a size comarison.

The ethereal and the squad captain are giving the firewarrior breacher squad their briefing before going out and kicking ass.  These models were just the closest to hand, and aren't finished yet.

Hopefully that helps people comel up with some ideas.  I know that for me the hardest thing is to come up with an idea that I can build on.  Once the initial idea is there it is easy to build on it and add some embellishments.

In other news, my box of Operation: Icestorm arrived today.  I'm going to take some pictures, and get a first impressions review up.  As a quickie, I will say that I really love the art that they use.  The world is beautiful and is a fertile playground for the imagination.  Good stuff!

- Brandon.

Introduction Part Deux

Introduction Part Deux

This is a continuation of the first part.

Digging around more I found some instructions for how to make your own terrain.  This is the option we've been using for the most part.  Still, it's a lot of work.  The quality of your table is dependent on the quality of your skill at doing arts and crafts basically.  It is a lot of fun, and I think that everyone should make their own terrain, but it is a lot of work for a newcomer to the game.  Starting from scratch with no skills to speak of was a daunting task, and My son is also totally overwhelmed by it.  It just seems too bad that a fun and quality game is gated behind something poorly handled 

We have also found the 40k rules to be daunting. There are so many rules, so many exceptions, so many modifications and rules spread out piecemeal into several very expensive books. The mini rule book seems to be missing some of the rules for the models included, and it's vague on others.  In other situations the rules are poorly worded, and open to insnely overpowered or subjective interpretation.                                                                                                                                                                      

Also, the Dark Vengeance game / box set leaves you with a tiny fraction of an army. I looked at pricing for making two decent armies in 40k, and it was intimidating. I’m heading back to school soon, and our finances are finite right now. The pricing to complete an army for each of myself and my son seems to float very close to $1000 once you add in t axes and a bit of terrain to spruce up the table. It could easily go higher, but it is tough to get it much lower then that. That’s just too much money for me to justify. Way too much. 40K seems to live in the land of serious business. money, and not casual "lets have a fun game with the box."  The odd rules almost encourage “that guy” type of rule hacking, and spending money on models that utterly demolish your opponents. It’s almost like a pay to win wargame it seems sometimes. I don’t want to be down on 40k. I have bought a few models, and we will likely continue to play it.. The positive for me was the wonderful models, and catching the painting bug.

I’m not a very good painter yet, but I’m having a blast painting what I can. I’m steadily improving, and I’m enjoying learning new techniques. My wife joked with me that painting was the real game. With 40k it seems that way sometimes.

While looking through online sites for information about making terrain, I’ve stumbled across infinity quite a few times. It seems like an interesting game, and I’ve become more and more curious to try it. At first it was the artwork and models. I stumbled across the maghariba guard on a gaming news site, and I was in love with the style. That got me digging through the corvus belli site, and I just loved the sculpts that they’ve done for these models. They capture a bright anime feel while still feeling gritty and brutal. I was very curious.

The system with automatic reation orders looks like a lot of fun. My son gets pretty discouraged when it isn’t his turn, and I spend a couple minutes ripping apart his army with nothing he can do about it. Either that, or he gets bored and drifts off during my turn. (“Kids today just don’t have the attention span that we used to. Why, In My Day ….”) The line that you hear often about the facebook generation and immediate rewards is somewhat true. My son does seem to be more attentive since we’ve been playing more games, and spending more time together.

Infinity has a box set that addresses some of the issues that I had with the Dark Vengeance set. It includes terrain, and you can get a second pack for ten bucks. The starters are fairly balanced, and the models seem to be useful if you go on to play with pan oceania or the nomads. If not then they are pretty cool models, and just on their own I bet we can have fun with the Infinity Operation: Icestorm introductory starter box.

When I saw the Onyx Contact Force on a news blog it reminded me of Infinity, and my mind was made up. Those models are just downright gorgeous. The possibility to get a decent starter box for $100 ordered at my new flgs is a great deal. Looking around online it seems like you can just add on a couple models and have a cohesive force that is adaptable and viable. Maybe not the best, but good enough to play in some games with other people here in Montreal I think. I can always build up a different faction later. I priced it out with a couple of extra models, and for way less than half the price of getting into 40k,I can have a great army. and that is only counting models. Buying your codex is a big investment, while infinity makes the rules freely available on their website. So, this blog is set up to document my son and I getting into Infinity, our Infinite Descent into Infinity: The Game!

The plan is to document every step of our adventure the best we can. I will do my best to review every piece of terrain and unit that I pick up. I’m not an expert, and I’m not the best painter ever, but hopefully it will help other people out there who are unsure of Infinity, and maybe those who are experienced can both learn something new, and share all the old information with myself and the other newcomers.

Welcome to my new blog folks  and I hope to see you back as we get going. Any questions/comments/hate mail/ or anything else really, are always welcome at my email address (brandon _dot_ abbott36 _at_ gmail _dot_ com) Swap in the .@. as written of course.  The Operation Icestorm box set is in the mail right now, and I will get some first impressions and a light review up very soon.  A more in depth review will likely follow, and my son and I will be putting up some battle reports for the beginning missions as well most likely.  That way we can show other brand new players a guide to the box set missions.                                    0                                                                                                   

- Brandon and Adrian Abbott

Introduction Part One

Hi there,

I'm Brandon, and this is my first attempt at a blog.  I'm a 34 year old father of three boys.  The oldest has just turned 12, and he's my most frequent gaming partner.  It's fun to have an opponent built into my daily life!!

When I was a kid I was a big fan of miniature gaming.  Battletech was my first love, but I also got into Necromunda, and some other smaller games.  I'm a big fan of skirmish style games as opposed to massive armies / clash of the titans type of games.

My oldest son has been interested in Battletech for a while now.  Mostly from playing some of my old video games like Mechwarrior 3.  He played that game obsessively, and kept on begging me to teach him how to play the tabletop version.  

This year I decided to get back into the hobby of miniature wargaming.  Much to the dismay of my wife and wallet, but to the sheer joy of my boys and I.  You can't make everyone happy.

I went looking for battletech, and found it pretty difficult to find.  Not only that, but it didn't seem to age as well as I remembered.  I'm still tempted to order the plastic cast boxset, but less so now.  Part of the appeal for me was the mech designs, and the iconic designs from macross were straight out amazing here.  Macross was the start of my anime/manga mecha obsession, and I continue to love and watch it today.  I've actually been thinking about getting one of the models from this show just to assemble and paint for fun!

Without those iconic minis battletech just lost it's allure.  We proxied the game with some cardboard pop ups, and aprinted out hex map.  It was long and slow.  Heat is arduous at best.  Some of the mechanics are just excessive.  In short battletech just didn't hit the itch that we wanted.  My son was dissapointed, but in total agreement.  We needed a new game it seemed.

I went into the FLGS, and started asking around.  He pushed 40k very hard.  VERY hard.  The two of us were extremely excited by the whole thing.  The shop owner talked us into getting a dark vengeance box set and a paint set.  My budget for starting the game up was $200 all in.  Just the box and the paint went over that.  Still, we were very excited and I made an exception while we paid up.   The shop was a strange place, and didn't keep stock in stock besides cards.  He told me that he lost too much money on games that don't sell, and he doesn't want to take that risk anymore (I don't go here anymore by the way.)

The next week I got a call and went in to pick up the box.  My son and I rushed home and ripped it open, to find our large purchase of sprues upon sprue of mini's and a rulebook.  Now this is my fault, but I didn't look into the box set properly first.  We had assumed that we would be able to play a game with the contents of the box.  This isn't really true at all.  Games Workshop does make some games like that, but Dark Vengeance isn't one of them.    We were dissapointed.  I checked online to find some terrain, and found some very expensive games workshop terrain, including boards that would cost in the thousands!  It seemed like I had gotten myself into a very pricey hobby, and it would be tough to say no to my son for everything!

The introduction continues in Part 2.