Getting the band together part 1
So you have found an interesting game called Infinity sitting on the shelves or somewhere on the vast internet. It looks interesting and you want to play. But no one in your area plays the game. So what’s a poor soul to do?
I use to be an Outrider for GW Japan several years ago and I’ve helped with Warmachine/Hordes club getting people into the game. I’m also a teacher by trade. As a native English speaker, I’ve had the challenge of teach both English and Japanese people games before.
Over the next few months, I will talk about my attempts to bring people into the Infinity universe and some thoughts I have on how to present to new players the game.
One of the biggest challenges for any new players is naturally the rules. Without an experienced person to help them, it becomes even harder. Infinity, thankfully, has a pretty decent foundation for the rules and I don’t have to learn 10,000 special rules right from the start. The core rules plus some special rules will be enough. I’ve read through and I’ve read a lot on the Infinity forums. I’m no where near ready to play a game, but I have enough of an idea to step into getting starting lists ready.
In the end I chose two sectorals; USAriadna and Bakunin. The obvious choice, Operation Ice Storm, would be a great choice, however I felt it better to go a different path.
Icestorm – a good start for Infinity
Ice Storm has everything needed for new players to start. In fact, it is such a great deal that being able to point it out with all that it comes with is a great talking point to potential new players. If I can get two to sign up at the same time, they can split it quite nicely. As a new player myself, choosing it would have been a good option. The downside would be that I would have the exact same units as any two new players. USAriadna box gives me a similar deal.
Second, I feel that it is best to have factions you are excited about. The more interest you show, the more likely other players are to join. While I have no problem taking Pan-O or Nomads, I have a strong image for how I want my USAriadna and Bakunin to turn out. I even have a background story in place which will hopefully add an extra level of excitement when I play.
Contrast is something I feel can be a real good visual point when doing demonstrations. Regular infantry grunts mixing it up with Bakunin will look much more interesting than blue Pan-O vs. red Nomads to begin with. With my background in mind, I can also see how visually they will be very different and go beyond the simple color contrast of red and blue that Icestorm shows.
Finally, there is another possible player in my area. He bought the Ice Storm box set, but due to work and family, hasn’t had time to get things painted for demo work. Given how high of quality his work is, it might take him some time to get them ready. Should he happen to do that, I don’t want my models set against. It would be the ultimate paper bag over the head moment for me (and most likely my models would want paper bags over their heads too!)
With an eye towards demonstrations, there are a couple of thoughts I want to add. While I won’t be using the link teams in the demonstrations, a careful choice of rules is important. I want to present a compelling reason for people to play and having some of the interesting rules involved can greatly help with this. Despite the contrast factor I talked about above, I avoided factions such as Tohaa and Aleph due to their higher rule set to learn.
Do you really want to explain to a newbie how this guy works?
Last, I think that sectorals as a whole are easier for me to wrap my head around. The smaller number of models to choose from allowed all of my ideas and motivation to slide into place and make a run of this. Infinity has a lot of great models and choices and choosing can be rough at first. A sectoral helps focus the starting point and the story that I wish to tell.
So, having chosen my factions and having bought the models, I now need to paint them and get ready for teaching others how to play the game. I’ll talk about that more later.
I have given lots of demo games. I think the most challenging part of infinity is the many different rules. With beginners, I usually play 5 to six models a side and a simple scenario. All models are rifle line troopers apart from one with an hmg. If the player is upmfor it, one model is in camo. The camo model is to give a first taste of how this game really plays.
Nothing is stopping you from painting differently to the CB pai nt scheme! And pleae don t be shy to put your models next to someone whose skills may be further developed. If we all did that, there would be very few games indeed. I certainly don t paint the best, but I like my models the way they are. Decent people only give positive remarks about other people s paintjobs.
I’ve recently started playing Infinity regularly after picking up O:I and playing through the scenarios with a friend, before moving on to joining a competitive Infinity league. O:I is a great starter set and removed a couple of the big barriers to me to getting into this game. Firstly, which models to use when starting. The army builder is great, but a little daunting for someone starting. Secondly, and perhaps the biggest obstacle, was the included terrain. Everyone is agreed that this is a game that relies heavily on terrain, and I wasn’t going to shell out loads of money on wooden buildings for a game I hadn’t even played yet. O:I meant problem solved. The scenarios were good in one respect, in that they gradually introduced special rules by adding a model at a time. However, just having ‘Annihilation’ style missions missed a trick in my opinion, and led to a couple of strange situations where we each had one model left and ended up chasing each other around the board in Benny Hill style. I’ve since played through the missions with another person interested in starting at my local club and felt I had to keep reassuring him that the proper missions were much better. Having some of the simpler ITS missions in a modified format towards the end would have been a more engaging approach I feel. However there is a BIG step up from O:I to the full game, and it felt a bit like taking the training wheels off a tricycle and jumping onto a motorbike. An invaluable resource for me to get over the leap from O:I to full games was watching YouTube videos by Guerilla Miniature Games [AshBarker] and Gaming With The Cooler [Owen Schindler], two Canadian guys who operate a tabletop wargaming co-op. Seeing people actually use the rules rather than simply reading it on paper was incredibly useful. In addition, the videos are really well produced, with dice rolls discussed beforehand and a nice amount of banter throughout. Highly recommended for those looking to step up to 300 point games.
Thank you for the article I look forward to following this series. One thing I have found in creating my local meta what that it takes a lot of hard work by one or two individuals to really get the ball rolling. I was introduced to infinity via the Internet and like you had no local scene therefore I had to start from the bottom. At the time I was playing magic and warhammer 40k kill teams at a local store so step one, find a place with players was already complete. Step two I needed to buy models. Not only did I have to buy enough models for me I had to buy enough for two this way I can let someone eles play even if they do not own anything. I wrap painting into this step too. Infinity has very attractive models. I do not want to dissuade anyone from painting and showing off their work but make an effort to get at least the demo armies painted well and by this I mean over the “3 color minimum”. Step three I’ll call game set up. I personally made an entire tables worth of fully painted and detailed terrain. I put posters on the walls, I added scatter terrain, I made sure they covered all of the missions, and just did the same thing I did with my models and just made sure it was attractive for new players to see and use. I also printed off and epoxied two players worth of tokens. Everything from the normal orders, wounds, unconscious all the way out to hacking programs, dogged and NWI. This allows me the freedom again to have someone that has nothing to jump on and start playing right away. When giving demos I like to only use shoot, move, and dodge for the first game or two. But the players can look into the token box and see that they are only scratching the surface. Forth step was to create a “want to play” how I did this is by creating an escalation league. By this time there was an interest in the game from multiple people all of which were on the fence about getting models. None of them really had a reason to commit. Working with my LGS I was able to ensintivise people to play by ensuring prize support and utilizing a very offical league document I typed up. Step 5 which o will have to do once the league is over is this keep people interested. I am going to do his by running tournaments and I will most likely run an escalation league once a year. This is a great way to attract new players and for seasoned vets to start new armies.
To recap I found a place to game with active players of any game system (bonus if they are table top gamers). Then I got models and terrain at I painted to a high standard. Next I made sure I had enough gear, this includes rulers and pre printed out army list, for two players to show up with nothing and play. Then I created a drive for people to play. With those steps I have increased the number of players by over 600%! It started with just 2 people and we now have 13 in the escalation league! All this in only two months. Do not get discouraged with a little hard work you too can create a community for you to continue to play in for years to come!