Is It Just Me, Or Would This Table Be a Nightmare?

[Guges]

These are the kinds of tables, with numerous long lines of fire that go from one board edge to another, that have ruined entire tournaments for me. Do other people think games on an Infinity table this open would be an utter train wreck or am I missing something?

http://youtu.be/4TKSugP3K3Q?t=21s

[MarcoSkoll]

LoF actually looks alright to me, at least with what Myk was saying about agreeing the gaps were total cover in the pre-game terrain discussion.

Sight is actually pretty heavily blocked at ground level, and while a sniper at a higher level would have a lot of LoF, there's enough opportunity for cautious moves, and those guys will struggle to pick and choose their engagements.
I think that's pretty good, all in all. Things like ITS games do need enough LoF that you can present a threat without moving outside your deployment zone (else games like Supplies have all of the boxes in the back of the first player's deployment zone before player 2 has even had their first turn), and weapons like HMGs and Sniper Rifles weren't given those long +3 range bands only to never use them.

The complaints as they are - as Myk says, pretty bad at AD:2 or less... and personally, I like to see terrain with more horizontal cover - low walls and the like, things where a model's cover is much less dependent on positioning (and where they can hide prone).

[Harlekin]

The table looks quite fine for me.
There's some places to hide, when not going first and a lot of opportunities for every range band to shine.

[Willowran]

I actually agree with the OP and believe that the table is terrible.

Yes, there are a lot of things to block LoF. However, it looks like in order to move between covers you will often have to have 6+ movement to make it all the way. Which means that anyone with LoF to you will be able to easily fire at you without having to worry about factoring in movement. Secondly, i am personally not a fan of hexagonal cover, because you are way too exposed at all times. You're only ACTUALLY in cover if your opponent is shooting at you from a rather steep angle. And especially in the center of the field. Any scenario with objectives anywhere in the middle equates an open killing field for anyone who was unlucky enough to be given the sparse terrain side of the board. Finally, TAG units are almost impossible to hide, requiring a full 3-tier section of terrain to get Total cover. Basically, the train-crate board problem.

[Guarda de Assalto]

I'd prefer just a little bit more scatter terrain on the board but I think it looks quite playable. Mind you I've seen far more tournament boards that were spoiled by TOO MUCH terrain rather than too little.

Also I'm a bit of a hater so I don't mind so much that TAGs would have a hard time hiding lol.

[Berjiz]

Which sides are you seeing as the deployment? To me it looks like if the side they aren't standing on and its oposite are the deployment sides then it's probably fine however if it's the other way around it does look bad along the edges.

It might be a bit short of shadowzones though since it's all hills.

[Guges]

Sight is actually pretty heavily blocked at ground level, and while a sniper at a higher level would have a lot of LoF, there's enough opportunity for cautious moves, and those guys will struggle to pick and choose their engagements.

Snipers (and other long range equivalents) are the number one thing you need to plan for when you make a table. The absolute, number one, biggest problem with making an Infinity table, is creating one where a sniper can have too much access to too many fire lanes. This table is a sniper's paradise and forcing players to waste a ton of orders on cautious moves, is not a solution to the problem in an ITS environment. Imagine getting this table, where you have to waste a zillion orders on cautious moves, and get a low score compared to the guy next to you on a dense table who gets to play a normal game.

He wins the tournament, and you don't because of terrain and for no other reason...

[Harlekin]

He wins the tournament, and you don't because of terrain and for no other reason...

You loose because you didn't use the right tool to get rid of that Sniper.

[Guges]

He wins the tournament, and you don't because of terrain and for no other reason...

You loose because you didn't use the right tool to get rid of that Sniper.

That isn't always possible and it's also not fair if people on that table have to waste orders getting rid of snipers who are dominating the table because it's wide open, and people on other tables don't. They have the potential to score more points because they won't be wasting orders on snipers who have too much LoF.

[solkan]

You appear to be choosing to complain about the wrong problem.

If a tournament has three good tables and then has Planet Bowling Ball as its fourth table, that doesn't make the first three tables bad.

[Harlekin]

If it's not possible your list isn't suited for winning. Especially during ITS2014 where you are able to bring two different lists to the tournament.

And I ran and participated in about two dozens of Infinity tournaments and didn't see a single game, where none of the players had to spend orders to get rid of his/her opponent's annoying models.
You don't like ITS - we all know that - but your statement just makes no sense at all, when you look at the ITS rules.
You loose because you face a huge pack of bad luck or because your opponent has better skills (at Infinity tactics and list building) - that's it.

[Willowran]

He wins the tournament, and you don't because of terrain and for no other reason...

You loose because you didn't use the right tool to get rid of that Sniper.

That isn't always possible and it's also not fair if people on that table have to waste orders getting rid of snipers who are dominating the table because it's wide open, and people on other tables don't. They have the potential to score more points because they won't be wasting orders on snipers who have too much LoF.

I'm actually with Guges on this one. When at a tourney, you want VARIED boards, but they should still be fairly balanced. At the second last tourney i went to, there was a 3 story building in a deployment zone, and every single player who deployed on that side won the game because there were only two tiny zones on the other side of the board that could not be seen from the roof. I parked an Intruder, and two Reaktion zonds up there under PiWell's ODF. My opponent was playing Ariadna. They had no chance in hell.

[Spambot]

If those... things... count as solid through the middle section then I've got no problem with it.

Since it probably doesn't.... not a fan really. Not a tournament-ruiningly bad table though.

[Harlekin]

I parked an Intruder, and two Reaktion zonds up there under PiWell's ODF. My opponent was playing Ariadna. They had no chance in hell.

You're talking about inexperienced Ariadna players, don't you?
"My" Ariadna players usually bring so much Camo and heavy weaponry that this situation would easily result in two dead Zonds, a dead Pi-Well and probably a dead Intruder...
But that's probably a different story.

[Guges]

I'm actually with Guges on this one. When at a tourney, you want VARIED boards, but they should still be fairly balanced. At the second last tourney i went to, there was a 3 story building in a deployment zone, and every single player who deployed on that side won the game because there were only two tiny zones on the other side of the board that could not be seen from the roof. I parked an Intruder, and two Reaktion zonds up there under PiWell's ODF. My opponent was playing Ariadna. They had no chance in hell.

Well I'm not used to people agreeing with me, but I have had this happen at every single tournament I have ever played in. Not as bad as what you're describing, but there's always one table with too much open ground that ruins games.

In some ways this is unavoidable. As a TO I can tell you that when you set up 8-12 Infinity tables, you're probably going to make a mistake on at least one of them.

The two things that bother me about this video though are:
One, the person who made this table pre constructed it this way on purpose thinking this is a good way to set up a table.
Bostria thinks this is a good table which doesn't bode well for terrain guidelines in N3.

Classic example of a game designer trying to force their players to play the game the way they think it should be played as opposed to the way that players want to play the game. The latter is always better and game designers mess this up quite frequently...

[Willowran]

I parked an Intruder, and two Reaktion zonds up there under PiWell's ODF. My opponent was playing Ariadna. They had no chance in hell.

You're talking about inexperienced Ariadna players, don't you?
"My" Ariadna players usually bring so much Camo and heavy weaponry that this situation would easily result in two dead Zonds, a dead Pi-Well and probably a dead Intruder...
But that's probably a different story.

Actually he was my nemisis opponent. xP

The problem was that at such an extreme range, only HMGs could even TRY to hit in the +3 range. So + 3 (range), - 6 (ODF), -3 (cover) = -6 for each of his shots. For me, i was looking at straight shots (+3 (range) -3 (cover)). That is an average of needing 6s for him, and 11s for me.

Best he could manage was one burst of 4 shots, to my 9 reaction shots (at least 5 of which would be unopposed). His list had no tank hunters, and so no combat-camo HMGs. His combat camo attacks missed, my HMGs burned his link team, and Duroc could not get past the mines/zeros/koalas/lunokhod in one turn in order to try to chainrifle the group. It was pretty much a one-sided game. He even tried co-ordinating a couple orders and focusing all of the fire on even just one of the Reaktion zonds, but he still lost the f2f.

[ElectricPaladin]

I actually think that the table would probably be ok. It looks pretty bad from above, but whenever the camera panned down to a "model's eye view," the board looked pretty cluttered. What the table has is a lot of open kill-zones, but it would be pretty easy to get to and from those kill-zones without being murderized in ARO - at least, not unless your opponent is willing to commit his forces to guarding the approaches. And this is pretty much exactly what you want in Infinity - terrain that forces your opponent to commit.

[macfergusson]

The problem was that at such an extreme range, only HMGs could even TRY to hit in the +3 range. So + 3 (range), - 6 (ODF), -3 (cover) = -6 for each of his shots. For me, i was looking at straight shots (+3 (range) -3 (cover)). That is an average of needing 6s for him, and 11s for me.

Best he could manage was one burst of 4 shots, to my 9 reaction shots (at least 5 of which would be unopposed). His list had no tank hunters, and so no combat-camo HMGs. His combat camo attacks missed, my HMGs burned his link team, and Duroc could not get past the mines/zeros/koalas/lunokhod in one turn in order to try to chainrifle the group. It was pretty much a one-sided game. He even tried co-ordinating a couple orders and focusing all of the fire on even just one of the Reaktion zonds, but he still lost the f2f.

Silly person, no Spetsnaz OR Tankhunters? So many options that weren't used!

Anyways, as for the table discussion, it looks balanced from one side to the other, but a pain to play on with so many random little holes for potential LoF.

If all those little doodads (which are neat looking!) were a little more solid, I'd be overall OK with that field. As mentioned, it is actually cluttered quite a bit, it just looks very open from a top down perspective.

Any extra elevation on one spot of that map would kill it, though. A 3 story building in a DZ that has nothing blocking LoF across the whole table is just not a good board. A little edge for deployment is nice, but that's just over the top.

[Willowran]

Silly person, no Spetsnaz OR Tankhunters? So many options that weren't used!

To be fair, he was playing the Merovingian sectorial, and so neither were options for him (that, and the Speznaz did not exist back then (this was a couple months back)).

[Spears]

If you park half your list (less zoe) exposed for table coverage it sure as hell should make things difficult for your opponent. That said if you play without being able to pie the corner it skews things somewhat too.
Having sniper positions with multiple fire lanes is fine, by the sound of it there were covered ways to approach it but these were covered by your infiltrators. Thats not a board issue so much as proper control of the midfield aswell as the ranged battle. My question would be if your opponent couldn't contest the long range battle or the midfield what had they built their list to do?

Edit: that table is a bit sparse mind.

[Willowran]

Having sniper positions with multiple fire lanes is fine, by the sound of it there were covered ways to approach it but these were covered by your infiltrators. Thats not a board issue so much as proper control of the midfield aswell as the ranged battle. My question would be if your opponent couldn't contest the long range battle or the midfield what had they built their list to do?
.

Are you referring to my table? It was less a case of "this sniper position has a couple fire lanes," and more a case of "This sniper can see the entire goddamn board." There were only two places in my opponent's DZ board that had any cover from the sniper/zonds at all, and the only covered advance was around the center of the field, and still didn't reach the sniper building. I had infiltrators around midfield, for sure, but my opponent couldn't even get that far.

Don't get me wrong, my opponent had a couple heavy weapons, as well as Mirage-Team 5, but "having long-range-weapons" is not the same as "able to shoot a face-to-face roll where (due to ODF) your guns are going to be perma-firing at a disadvantage (5s to 11+s) against 9 reaction shots." If my opponent had a Visor, that'd be a different matter, but Ariadna has no MSV2.

[Spears]

Fair shout i've played on some terribly open boards at tournaments myself. Having answers to long range units often with to is pretty staple though.

Facing 9 at once is pretty unusual though, but thats touching on the contentious subject of singling units out around a corner.

[MarcoSkoll]

Duroc could not get past the mines/zeros/koalas/lunokhod in one turn in order to try to chainrifle the group.

Screw getting Duroc into Chain Rifle range, I'd have Margot spec-shot Pi-Well.

[macfergusson]

Duroc could not get past the mines/zeros/koalas/lunokhod in one turn in order to try to chainrifle the group.

Screw getting Duroc into Chain Rifle range, I'd have Margot spec-shot Pi-Well.

Maybe sac a camo FO to try and mark off the spec shot penalty too. One lucky roll and you crack open that defensive shell.

[MarcoSkoll]

It's funnier than just cracking the defensive shell. An ODF is circular template sized - save some very unfortunately placed total cover, it's possible to catch all four models in the grenade blast.

[Willowran]

Duroc could not get past the mines/zeros/koalas/lunokhod in one turn in order to try to chainrifle the group.

Screw getting Duroc into Chain Rifle range, I'd have Margot spec-shot Pi-Well.

Maybe sac a camo FO to try and mark off the spec shot penalty too. One lucky roll and you crack open that defensive shell.

Well the building was 10 or so inches high, meaning Margot would have to be almost too far away to Speculative-shoot and still hit in order to get a grenade up there.

I believe he actually tried to FO one of the zonds (PiWell was in Total Cover) under the ODF (so that he could win a classified, if nothing else), but he flubbed the roll and the Chasseur got melted by my ARO.

The moral of the story was that the board was incredibly imbalanced.

[macfergusson]

The moral of the story was that the board was incredibly imbalanced.

Yeah, but we're problem solvers. Never give up, never surrender!

[MarcoSkoll]

If the building was so designed such that the Intruder and both Zonds could claim partial cover with Pi-Well able to safely hide out of LoF (and still keep them under the ODF), then that is more of a problem...

Still, even if Pi-Well were somehow magically hidden in shadow zones from every direction, Spec-Shot ignores CH, ODD, Visibility and Cover modifiers, Margot has BS 14 and doesn't need LoF. She should be able to pick any of the models and still make them all have a bad day.

[Willowran]

The moral of the story was that the board was incredibly imbalanced.

Yeah, but we're problem solvers. Never give up, never surrender!

In the end, for any faction with Camo and MSV2+, my ARO zone would not have been too difficult to dislodge. Any HMG/Sniper combat camo attack would have a fairly solid chance to remove both zonds at least before retaliation, making it significantly easier to dislodge the Intruder.

However, for the Merovingian sectorial i frankly don't see how an Ariadna player COULD have gotten rid of that without a) some lucky dice, or b) an Anaconda who tanked a lot of HMG shots. The building was around 10 inches high, and almost entirely in my DZ. A concentrated AD: 1 assault on the lower levels of the building could potentially have destroyed my order pool (hiding from ARO in the shadow of the building), thus rendering my ARO team nigh-pointless... but that would have taken a considerable number of orders to accomplish, as my troops were fairly spread out (some infiltrating), with mines and Koalas. Even if my opponent succeeded at this, in the end, i still would have had 75% of my opponents units trapped on his half of the board.

[coleslaw]

The rules for shadow zones might not be completely clear for situations when the shooter and the target are at different heights...

If the building is 10" high, is the shooters shadow zone 10" if you are trying to lob grenades onto the top of the building?
If so, you need to be at least 16" from the target to be able to fire and have -9 BS...