Pre-Adepticon Adepticon (or The Evening Setup of The Two Day Tournament)

With Adepticon nearly two weeks away, I can assume many are trying to get painting goals done and trying to work out lists. As for me I am quite excited to come back to Adepticon for my second year, especially since I am planning to do four days' worth of Infinty events. This is something I might regret later but going to enjoy the day of. 

While I am planning to do the narrative event and duos tournament, the main focus of this post is to talk about the five main missions of the ITS event. The mission lineup is Power Pack, Unmasking, Supplies, Countermeasures and Decapitation. The faction I am taking- due in part of Critposting's 'democracy'- is vanilla HaqqIslam. 

In truth, this actually works out well since for the most part HaqqIslam can do all these missions quite easily. For the most part, I have built my lists to tackle the mission line-up. I hope to place in the top half if I can, if not I am there to have fun and see some people I have not seen in a while.

So here is my lists I am planning to take and why I have made my lists like this:

List One: Power Pack/Unmasking/Decapitation 

Since Unmasking and Decapitation require you to kill HVTs, it seemed like a no-brainer to take a list that both ran a regular Fiday and Al-Jabel. If I was going to do that for those missions, I figured I would make this list my Power Pack since I can use the Fidays to either camp on his console to rack up objective points as well as forcing the opponent in an awkward position they would need to deal with turn 1.

Saladin is the lieutenant since he does have NWI and the identity of the LT is known in Decapitation. While it does make him a potential target his value bringing that extra command token and order each turn will help to squeeze out one or two more orders to get the mission done. Hackers and guided missiles are here to give me another attack vector if needed, with my main guns in the list being my Asawira Spitfire in a duo with the Rafiq and Knauf. Zuleyka and of course (and the surprise Krakot) makes an appearance since she will provide corner guard duty and smoke until I can use her to make an attack run to do as much damage as I can.

The rest of the list is my backup specialists like the doctor, as well as the chaff and order monkeys. There is only one Daylami instead of two or more to give me an option to have the Liberto lock down a lane or be a potential held back to lock up any enemy Impersonators to protect Saladin.

List Two: Supplies/Countermeasures

Since these missions are more specialist heavy, I changed a few things around from the other list to this one. Running both the Muhktar and Awasira+Rafiq Duos, this gives me enough coverage on the board to get the supply boxes and most classifieds in the deck. The largest omission in this list is any kind of Engineer. This is due in part to Haqq not having great access to an Engineer that can be generally useful. There is the Govad Engineer but needing other things for my list I decided to leave it out and hope the engineering classifieds do not pop up during the game that is Countermeasures. 

Naffatuns were chosen to be the lieutenant and decoy as the points were needed to have two Ghazis with Jammers to guard the DZ but potentially lock out the opponent's specialists. The Nadhir can act to grab the box in Supplies or stop the opponent from doing so.

Final Thoughts:

While I am happy with these lists for the most part, the one mission I may struggle with the most is Countermeasures if I cannot get the first turn. That said, I am confident in my lists to get it done.

I hope to see you all at Adepticon if you come! 

First Impressions (Hot Takes) on ITS 14

So figured I'd get out my opinions on ITS 14 since I have not yet managed to play it yet but read over the document. These opinions are bound to change, and not to be taken as law. With that out of the way, let's begin.

Main Takeaways:

Let me state that I still have a deep love for the game and get a good amount of enjoyment. Infinity is one of the most dynamic and for the most part well-balanced games on the market with a great amount of depth.

This said, I think the newest season kind of plays it a little too safe with a majority of the missions being action oriented than objective focused as it was back in N3. It also reuses some of the rules back in season 12 where I thought it would go into using Jungle terrain or so. As well, all the missions stayed with the inclusion of one more, whereas I would have liked to see a few of the missions to go away in favor of some new ones. This is particularly the case when some of the missions to be similar to some extent (example being Supremacy and Quadrant control).

This said, I will give Corvus Belli on a couple things they've done in season 14.

1) The creation of Direct Action Missions is a good way to introduce new players into ITS. Considering newer players may not have access to HVTs and a classified desk it is a good way to ease them in. While I'd would of like them to have different but easy to understand missions instead of the four of them being various of reskins of other missions, they work for what they are. 

2) The new mission Cryogenics on paper does seem like a good mix of both a combat mission but also trying to press the buttons in order to get the advantage over your opponent. From what I've read so far, it seems that the advantage of having second turn and scoring the lionshare of the points is somewhat diminished now that the first player could lock the second player out of two points if first player flips three of the four consoles. 

Now onto what I find to be...

The 'Free' Elephant in the Room

I thought I'd put the new Tachimoto rules and free units in this section because I found them to be the same thing for each season it does come into effect. 

What I mean by this is that these are concerted efforts for CB to test a specific set of rules on a unit or push people to buy some models to get the advantage of the full rules for this season. I don't find this to be too egregious for veteran plays but it could be a burden on new players trying to get into the game.

The Tachimoto rule is more to push Forward observer bots into play, or at least seems thay way with them gaining Marksmanship and a Tactical Awareness order. I find this a little surprising since those type of troops are a great toolbox but them getting a bonus might have me take them more often than I do in my list building at times (which is to say not that often but not rarely as well). 

For the free units you get this season in form of the Bashi Bazouks and CSU, I think these are better than the Motorized Bounty Hunters because with MBH I found anctedotially 9/10 times people had chosen the Red Fury profile because you were getting a burst four gun for free. 

Now with the Bashis and CSUs I think there are cases to which profile you want to take, being that the profiles for the both of them have a different toolkit that can play well into different match ups. Whether this plays out in the next few months in practice is to be determined. 

Concluding Thoughts

While I wish CB did more to go back to the more objective-focused nature of Infinity, I still think this season is alright on paper. Though it could be much better by taking a few more risks by cycling out missions that are similar for one or the other, but also having more Direct action missions down the line.

This said, I am going to give this season a go and then reflect on it with enough time. For now, hope to see you in the next batrep or post I write!