I am new to Infinity I just ordered the beginnning of my army the JSA which I’m waiting right now for it to arrive in the mail but I want to start to learn the rules awhile. I went to the resource page and there are several different rules packets including rules, quick start rules, new rules, N3 human sphere rules. So I would I assume I start with the rules pdf but is there a better place to start and what order should I read them in ord doesn’t it matter. I there any of these rules pdf’s that I can ignore for now or are there any parts that of the rules I shouldnt worry about learning for now either. Also does anyone know any good videos on YouTube or anything that they teach the rules because I’m a far better audio and visual learner then by reading something. Thanks
Start here: https://assets.infinitythegame.net/downloads/qsr/en/v1.1/qsr.pdf The Quick Start rules aren't going to cover everything that your characters can do, but it will get you into the basics of playing and you can expand through the other abilities and equipment at your own pace.
The quick start rules get you the concepts, then the N3 rulebook. Human Sphere N3 is the expansion, though all factions use the rules, especially sectorials. Don't try and learn all the special skills, get your head around the basics first. If you have anyone in your gaming group with one of the Operation boxes (Icestorm, Red Veil, or Coldfront) they have neat little intro campaigns that teach the basics. Start small and build up, look at 150 point games first rather than jumping in at 300. It can also be best to bring in things like hacking, close combat, and Fireteams one at a time after you've got a few games under your belt. For on the spot rules checking the official wiki is invaluable: http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Main_Page The online army builder or Android app is also great for looking through profiles, much easier than the PDF, it even hotlinks to the wiki. http://army.infinitythegame.com Beasts of War did a 3 intro videos on the basics covered by the quick start guide.
Check the JSA subforum for ideas and useful lists, and also this Dude's guide, quite useful! Infinity it's not easy to get into but it's great. Read the rules carefuly, play some games to 150-200 points, then read the rules again... twice XD. Some tips for JSA and infinity in general (read this after reading at least the quick start rules): Get used to how an order is resolved, this is the core mechanic of Infinity and understand it is of paramount importance. AROs, the other part of that core mechanic, be mindful that your positioning is very important, you can only ARO if you have LoF (some abilities modify this but this is the most important thing). What can you do if you are attacked for behind: Alert and Warning! JSA is essentialy a sectorial so you are gonna need to learn about one of the sectorial's great strengths, the Fireteams, and one of its banes, the templates :P One of the best things of JSA are its TOs, the ninjas and Oniwas are just nuts (just check what monofilament does, now imagine a TAG eating that). But they are not easy to use, learn about CAMOs, and abuse of ARO mechanic to pick advantageus fights (sneak from behind, don't try to assasinate someone in front of the entire enemy army, that kind of stuff). The two TO characters (Saito and Shinobu) are amazing, check them out. JSA strength is mid to close range so you will need something to cover your advance, the TOs are good to get rid of nasty ARO pieces or big threats. But Smoke is another thing you will need to learn to use. You have some flavours, grenades and grenade launchers. You would include a Yojimbo in a lot of your lists just for this (Only Yojimbo and the Ninja/Oniwa characters have smoke, but these two are more useful hunting than covering the army advance). Check the Kempetai, the only linkeable MSVII in the faction (the other is a REM, the Rui Shi), both are very useful to shoot throught smoke. The CC abilities of our HIs and TOs are among the best out of any infinity faction, learn about martial arts and berserk (Domaru) and remember that if your atribute exceed 20 any extra would ADD to the roll (this makes CC very reliable). Also remember the TOs are able to perform surprise attacks. You will learn some tricks like forcing ZC AROs with your first skill and then move into CC while engaging and if you plan to use your CC specialist to pin enemies be careful with triangulated shots or it will ruin your day. Stay away from Natural Born Warriors, better shoot these MF to death. E/M weapons are common in this faction, they are an amazing tool, the E/M debuffs are crippling for almost every single troop in this game (but non hackable Veterans). You have no parachutists but have to know about them not to get caught by this mechanic because it's very common. If you use the HIs, Hacking would be one of your dooms, your HI BTS is plain bad and you don't have a lot of ways to increase it (some supportware and that's it). Learn how to use the Stealth ability not to trigger hacking AROs (it is included in martial arts so it's avaliable to all of them, even to the faction`s TAG!). You also have ninjas with Killer Hacking Device to hunt down enemy hackers. If you do get hacked, Engineers with their G:servants (Yaozaos) would be very useful to remove the debuffs, if you play a HI link the Engi is not a must but it's quite close. Doctors are also linkable to servants and useful to support the HIs. Talking about hacking, JSA is not a hacking heavy faction by any means but you can include some tricks, the supportware is always useful (Fairy Dust, Assisted Fire or TeamPro) and even if ninjas and aragotos aren't the best hackers, they can reach easily the good targets by themselves, have AHD and KHD and they still pack a punch. That's enought for today XD. Hope it helps ;) PD: also remember this is mainly a shooting game after all, CC is part of your plan but not your main goal, don't rush it or you will regret.
The long and short of Infinity is that the core rules are pretty straightforward and very solid. Order Pool, Face to Face Rolls, Automatic Reactive Orders. That's 90% of Infinity. Learn those and you will be set for most of the game. Infinity is 'complicated' when it comes to persnickety little rules interactions, and you'll learn those best through experience. Play with folks who know the game. When a question comes up during play, stop and look it up in the wiki. If you can't find the answer, post it on the WGC Infinity Facebook Group for a quick answer. Don't worry about playing slowly at first. If you don't have experienced players to play with, watch videos. The Fireteam rules finally 'clicked' for me when I was watching a video battle report by Guerrilla Miniatures Games. Also, expect to have some swingy, crushing defeats at first. Infinity can severely penalize 'bad' mistakes, which are easy to avoid once you know they are mistakes, lol. You can deploy your models and then half way through turn one realize that you are totally screwed. Don't be afraid to stop a game in progress and start over when your main goal is learning the rules. The other thing about Infinity is that there's lots of special rules, but they are accessible to most every faction. This makes learning the game a lot easier, because you don't need to memorize a bunch of special rules that don't apply to your faction. Cammo is cammo, for example, regardless of which faction is using it.
Thanks for all the help I really appreciate it. I really like how CB has all there rules posted online compared to other systems I used to play like 40k were u were spending over a hundred dollars just for the rule book and an army book.
Yeah, that's one of the major advantages of the game. The worst part is that some of those interactions MindwormGames mentioned can work in an counterintuitive way, or got FAQd. But if you're starting at lower point level and work your way up gradually you should be able to get a grasp on the core rules easily. Good way to start would be to get one of the Operations books (Icestorm, Red Veil, Coldfront), and go through the short campaign, even if it's with a different army than JSA. They're specifically designed to ease new players to the game, and they introduce units and rules gradually.
It can be a little annoying when something that seems important at the time is only answered via a buried forum thread. But these are almost always edge cases, and the game isn't going to 'break' if you handle them 'wrong' during gameplay. Lots of times what you have in Infinity is interesting theoretical discussions about how a specific interaction works, and the ultimate answer might be important in some very specific circumstances, but for the vast majority of the game it is going to be immaterial. Order Pool, Face to Face Rolls, AROs. After that it's stuff like 'Oh, that's right. Speculative Fire is an Entire Order Skill,' and 'Closest model is defined by which one takes the fewest Orders to get to, not linear distance,' and 'templates are three dimensional, not two dimensional.' Stuff like that. Sometimes it is remembering an exception to a basic rule, but Infinity is actually pretty trim on exceptions compared to a lot of wargames. One of the most conspicuous exceptions is the way Smoke works in that the template blocks Line of Fire for the model that used Smoke even though effects are normally applied simultaneously. The exception is created by a specific special rule, and otherwise everything works normally according to rules as written. There's some instances in which the wording of a rule is ambiguous, which can be a little frustrating, but the community is very active and responsive. Literally, if you post a question on WGC Infinity during a game, you'll probably have a good answer before your turn is over. The last game I played a question came up about whether the Fireteam Burst bonus applied to hacking programs. My immediate answer was "No," but I couldn't remember why. My opponent was happy to roll with it, but 20 seconds with the wiki showed that the Burst bonus only applies to BS Weapons, which Hacking Programs aren't. Easy-peasy.
