Getting Started with Infinity #2

Almost no one plays a game for the rules. They are the reason that a player will continue with a game, but usually it is the miniatures or the game universe that draw a person in. I have a soft spot for the Knights of the PanOceania Military Orders, but the Infinity universe has a wide number of factions and a unique background, not to mention great art and miniatures, to appeal to any gamer.

Infinity, like many other tabletop games, provides a rich and varied background for gamers. Where Infinity diverges from the norm is that it is a realistic science fiction setting that is not only influenced by military anime series but is also infused with a more global tone and language. The Infinity universe lets you field units like the Guarda de Assalto, the Shasvastii and the Yáopú Pangguling.

So lets continue our exploration of Infinity by looking at the people and forces that are in the game.

Let start at the beginning

The Infinity game is set 175 years in the future where humanity has reached the stars and colonized 11 different star systems. The Western powers of our time which had led the race to the stars suffered a debilitating collapse, leaving newly formed pan-national alliances in control of mankind’s destiny in space. These factions now jockey for position and power in the 11 worlds that make up, what is called, the Human Sphere.

Facing off against the powers of the Human Sphere are the Combined Army, a force of disparate alien races led by a possibly insane AI, and the Tohaa, an alien race that has been battling the Combined army and may be influencing the Human Sphere to aid in their fight. Rounding this all off is the Aleph, another AI led faction but this time it is the artificial intelligence that runs the Human Sphere’s version of the Internet, known as Maya, which is building an army to help protect humanity from alien threats.

Putting the science in science fiction

Infinity focuses on land combat and the game system is filled with examples of how science fiction has influenced the game. Science fiction games are often “near future” settings in which the technology of the game is only slightly advanced from our own or takes a “dark future” approach where technology could be easily replaced by magic. In Infinity, many of the weapons are still recognizable but other realistic technologies have been added to the battlefield.

Imagine a scene. Your troops are pinned down by hulking Tohaa armoured battlesuit, a TAG,  called a Gorgos. Your sniper has attempted to take down the light infantry model controlling it but its symbiont armour absorbed the damage leaving the controller unscathed. Your hacker is too far away to attempt to shut down the TAG so you have sent a camouflaged unit forward to deploy a repeater to allow your hacker to extend its range. Unfortunately the Tohaa force included a model with thermal-optic camouflage that was hidden. It reveals itself and discovers your unit which is then cut down by enemy fire. Undeterred, you airdrop another unit into the enemy rear area. It lands accurately and then finds cover and throws an EM grenade. It takes a lucky scatter and explodes disabling the TAG as well as ts controllers weapons.

In Infinity, troops can take to the field in heavy armour, or be protected by camouflage systems or hologram generators that can make duplicates appear on the battlefield or allow them to impersonate friendly troops.

Guns and close combat weapons have a multitude of special ammunition or damage types available to them including armour piercing, explosive, shock (which causes immense trauma killing models quickly) or monofilament. Troops also carry electromagnetic pulse devices in the form of grenades, mines and other weapons that can disable electronics making many weapons and other units inoperable. These weapons also work through walls and cover making them especially effective.

Troops can be equipped with various mimetic cloth and thermal/optical systems that bend light around the wearer to provide multiple levels of camouflage. To combat this, there are visor and vision systems to try to overcome camouflage or other other element that block line of sight.

The future is even more dependent on digital information than our own time and that has made hackers an important part of the game. Hackers can disable heavy armour, TAGs and remotes. They can block missile fire, divert parachuting troops and fight against other hackers. While they don’t require line of sight to hack opponents, they have a limited range which is often overcome by the use of repeaters.

An Infinity force can also deploy small robotic support units, called Remotes, which are lightly armed but often have useful secondary functions like minesweeping, minelaying and providing repeaters for hackers. TAGs are the armoured battlesuits of the Infinity universe, and like Remotes, they are operated by teams from outside the battlefield either by human operators or AIs. They are the equivalent of armoured vehicles in Infinity, bringing large weapons, heavy armour and requiring heavy weapons or hackers to bring them down.

The Factions

Each of the human factions has a specific “national” character and also has access to some distinct equipment.

PanOceania

PanOceania is a corporatist, high-tech faction that combines big business and the newly reformed Catholic Church. PanOceania has the widest access to technology and are second only to Aleph and Yu Jing in terms of how many heavy infantry models it can bring to bear. PanOceania troops are very good at shooting but their specialists have lower average willpower. Overall, PanOceania are better equipped than almost any other faction.

Yu Jing

Yu Jing is an asiatic counter to PanOceania but with second-tier technology and Chinese and Japanese themed units. It features many close combat focused units and access to monofilament CC weapons. Yu Jing forces also have ready access to template weapons to help against camouflaged opponents.

Haqqislam

Haqqislam is a forward looking, modern Islamic power that has a monopoly on Silk—a unique drug that facilitates the resurrection of people by uploading their memories into cloned bodies. Their strength is the abundance of Medium Infantry as well as their access to a wide range of weapons and technologies making it easy for them to create counters to other factions and strategies.

Nomads

Nomads are anarchic groups of hackers, geneticists and free-thinkers that travel the Human Sphere in three immense spacecraft. Tunguska is a trafficker in information with a focus on hackers, Corregidor is a former prison ship that supplies cheap labour and mercenary troops, and Bakunin is the most anarchic of them all and deals in all manners of illegal and exotic technologies. Nomad hackers are notorious for using remotes to guide missiles into enemy units.

Aleph

Aleph focuses on putting the best, most technologically superior troops on the battlefield. Specialised infantry, multiple remotes and heavy infantry are all the hallmarks of Aleph. Many units are named after characters from Homer’s Illiad and Aleph forces also feature numerous remotes and Tacbots.

Ariadna

Ariadna are the descendents of the first human attempt to colonize another planet. They are a mix of Cossack, American, Scots and French nationalities that have the lowest technological level of any other faction. What Ariadna lacks in technology, they make up with in camouflaged special forces and weapons and armour made from ultra-dense Teseum unique to their homeworld. This low-tech focus makes them almost entirely immune to hackers. They also have access to the Antipodes, a human alien hybrid that is best described as a werewolf.

Combined Army

The Combined Army is an alliance of alien races, including the Morat, Shasvastii and Exrah, all bearing high-tech weaponry and led by the Evolved Intelligence. Even more interesting, they bring non-human and non-bipedal models such as Slave Drones to the table. Many of the alien races have their own exclusive abilities

Tohaa

The Tohaa are the second alien faction in Infinity and have an insectoid influence in their weapons and tactics. Many Tohaa units are equipped with viral weapons that work against a target’s body and not armour making them very effective against heavy armoured troops. Many of their troops wear armour that consists of an alien lifeform giving them an additional wound but making them susceptible to fire damage. They also have weapons that use swarm ammunition that consists of miniature insects that attack and sting their targets.

Each faction, except the Tohaa, also has sublists, called Sectorial Armies, that provide gamers with more narrowly defined versions of the core army lists. We’ll discuss these in more depth in our fourth article.

Going forward

In the next installment we’ll begin to look at the core of the Infinity rules and some of the basic concepts that you’ll encounter when starting to play. After that we’ll look at building an army based on one of the available starter boxes and look at the force building system in Infinity.

The game provides quite a lot of interesting background and the best place to find it is in the core rulebook and the Human Sphere expansion. The Infinity Wiki also has an interesting selection of articles and my favourite feature is the Random Pages list which you can use to explore rules, background and game concepts. The official Infinity website has a Getting Started section that has more detailed background information, fluff videos and some game tutorials.