Saturday 3 December 2016

Totally Crit 8 - Tourney Report

To Royal Tunbridge Wells I travel for Totally Crit's intense two day, six game, Infinity N3 tournament, this time, run by Chris P. I have begun to play Infinity much more recently in an attempt to become at least partially proficient (if you throw knowledge at me for long enough eventually some of it will stick). This particular event will be a real struggle for victories; two days and six games, is the sort of tournament that attracts seasoned players. 


Above: A scout hut fun of expectation.



Chris runs a small terrain building enterprise, and had decided to provide the majority of the terrain for the nine tables. Quite a task, especially as his plan was to have all the tables alike for each round. Unfortunately, it took a little longer to set all this up than he had planned, and just for the initial round, terrain was a little sparse. However, it was an interesting concept and made the event quite unique.

I'll leave a detailed description of my vanilla Nomad lists to another time, but it featured, an Interventor Lieutenant, some Alguacil, a Spektr, two total Reaction Remotes, a Clockmaker, and two Moran.

Game One - Supplies - Doug - (I cannot recall the faction Doug used - this will teach me to leave it so long between posts)

With the expert use of his link team Doug was a knife through butter on his first turn. His buffed link team HMG and a sneaky flame thrower was just too good, and I lost both Morans, the Clockmaker, both Total Reaction Remotes, an Alguacil and a Alguacil Hacker early on. The rest of the game had me fighting against the tide as my depleted order pool significantly reduced my ability to move towards the objectives and escape with supplies.


Above: The table set up for game one.

The final score, an unsurprising 10 to 1 win for Doug, and a massive difference in kill points.

Game Two - Highly Classified - Grant - Vanilla Aleph


Above: Grant is Art of War Studios, as his well stocked marker tray could testify. 


Above: Table two set up. 

This game was the story of opposing total reaction Remotes going toe to toe. With fairly open areas on my side of the battlefield, this contest was pivotal for board control, and after all the hacking buffs and engineering rolls had concluded it was the Aleph Remote which held sway.

Although, Grant didn't have it all his own way. The attentions of his Naga Hacker, with a Killer Hacker Device, were fully focused on my Interventor. Fortunately, after two successful attempts at Brain Blast, I was just able to pass two BTS saves, and the Naga eventually fell to conventional bullets, as it attempted a second attack on my not so obvious Lieutenant. This was a closer game than my first, and had me losing only 7 to 6.

Game Three - Antenna Field - Ben - Nomads


Above: The table arrangement for game three.

This game featured my very unlucky Tomcat Doctor who managed to get the jump on Ben's models. Vaulting over a wall he achieved the situation every model dreams of, and managed to cover four models with his light flamer thrower template. Unfortunately, Ben was un absolute star with his dice rolls, and after dodge and armour roles had been taken, the only model laying flat on its face was the TC Doctor. This game also featured Ben's Sin-Eater whose annoying full burst in ARO vexed me considerably.

Above: This will be good...............

Above:.......perhaps not.

Onto day two, and with the relatively small number of players, and my comfortable position at the bottom of the field, it was more than likely that I might play one or more opponents for a second time round.

Game Four - Engineering Room - Grant Vanilla Aleph 

My second game of the weekend against Grant. And this game featured an Aleph Tag at its finest. Due to mistakes in my initial deployment, and my failure to appreciate that Grant was holding back a model of considerable value, he was able to find an unprotected route to the back of my board edge and smashed my ill-prepared guys. Not a very good start if I intended to turnaround yesterday's sorry fortunes.


Above: 'Shhhhhh'. 'Don't tell them that I am here'.


Above: Job done. (Please note the rather sad line of order tokens before I work out how many fewer I have for my turn one).


Above: The models killed by the Tag in turn one. To this you can also add the second Total Reaction Remote.


Above: Death incarnate.

The result? An unsurprising 9 to 1 loss. 

Game Five - Cold Sleep - Ben - Nomad - Corridor

My second game of the weekend versus Ben, and of the six games, this contained the most twists and turns. In our previous games I had always struggled against his Sin-Eater, this time I managed to lay smoke in front of my prone Intruder, and after standing up and adjusting his MSV2, he dropped the eater of sin. 

My TO Spector was a champ. He critted a Zero Sniper and flushed out Bran Do Castro from his hidey hole so that the Intruder could deal with from afar. The Spector's luck finally ran out at the hands of Ben's Meteor Zond Remote, who then went onto securing an objective, and winning the game 3 to 2 in Ben's favour. Good fun.




Above: The table for game five.


Above: The Meteor arrives to deal with the unsuspecting Spector and win the game.


Game Six - Protect and Survive - Adam - PanO (Military Orders)

This will be the game which introduced me to a new tactic, firing at someone during a super jump. You place your model on the top of a building in the prone state. You think, 'well no one is going to be able to shoot me up there.' Wrong. Your opponent employs a massive Seraph Tag to jump up in the air, and at the top of its leap, pepper your now easily seen model with bullets. Simples.


Above: The table for the final game.

However, the funniest thing about the game was Adam's mistake with his Knights link team. Having got it down the board and within touching distance of my home objective. Adam then realised that he had not yet activated a console which would allow him to pick up the objective. (Doh!). And with not enough orders left to make his escape the Knights had to sit out in the open waiting expectantly for payback. Fortunately for the Knights I couldn't ruin their day entirely in my subsequent turn, and they were able to get away with their prize. In my final turn my Tomcat was able to kill the objective holding model, but I could not turn around the result, and it finished 4 to 3 in Adam's favour.


Above: The jumping Seraphim and friends.


Above: Judging for best painted, which was won by Adam's Haqq.


Above: Some of Adam's work.

Well done to Zach with his Nomads which won the event. I suspect that a Totally Crit podcast will come along at some point to give their impressions. I certainly learned a great deal about Nomads and despite my last place I enjoyed taking part and meeting the participants. It was well run apart from the little terrain issues at the start which, if you are going to try something new, is likely to have some teething problems. Thanks to all my opponents and to Chris and the Totally Crit guys for organising the event.

Until next time, happy wargaming to you all.

Alex

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