Dead here. I think Infinity has the problem of having a high cognitive load... and then pretty much fails to deliver what it says on the tin while taking forever to play for no good reason. It absolutely is not a 10 model count skirmish game with a pool of 10 actions. Factions that can make a 10 model list work are the exception and not the rule. Even the ones that can sorta make it work can only do so by throwing away a lot of their options as being too cheap to fit into a 10 slot list. Fireteams derange the system even further. You are looking at 15+ models per side, and the orders those models generate are being fed to fireteams to make the orders even more efficient. Don't forget dirt cheap warbands inflating the number of activations even further. The elevator pitch of the basic game mechanics are simply not reflective of what the game actually is. Furthermore, the truth of the state of the game is buried behind a massive learning curve. So you've got an old school heavy duty steel can labeled as containing pork, and then after a substantial amount of sweat and elbow grease to finally get the can open you find beans inside. Nothing inherently wrong with beans. Everything wrong with finding beans inside that can labeled pork after you REALLY had to want some pork to go through all the effort to get that can open. The game also has a lot of other mental mismatches. The rules really require people to play like gentlemen, but the game mechanics are such that executing fiddly tricks are so over the top powerful that it causes people to become highly defensive and lawyer like. You simply can not have ANY grace about something that might kill your LT on that order or any of the multiple followup orders that will happen because the game mechanics have massive swing. If you randomly try to land a jump trooper in my back field, I'm basically forced to be a pedantic prick about the entire situation because of how much the game will swing on each technicality. When I'm diving your lines with an infiltrator, I'm going to be pedantic about every little thing I do because I'm forced to recognize the game mechanics are forcing you to be a pedantic prick about it because of how badly my infiltrator can screw you over. Also, the entire smoke systems is an unholy abomination. It isn't just MSV2 interactions, it is smoke and close combat too. Basically, anyone using smoke is weaponizing it and being a massive prick in the process. That armies exist that more or less need smoke + MSV, or diving melee units that need smoke + close combat to be at parity is a problem with the game. Smoke should exist to push board positions or defend, but the ability to weaponize smoke is ABSURD. Especially if someone knows the smoke rules inside and out. Also, Infinity takes FOREVER to play for no good reason whatsoever. Too many orders, every little action is WAY too high stakes and mega-swingy and causes the game that already has far too many actions for the size it claims to be to move at the speed of a court case while performing each one of those actions. This isn't something like Warmachine where tournament play is basically insufferable, but you can play it casually in a relatively quick manner while still trying to win. You can't play Infinity casually in a quick manner unless you are not trying to win, the mechanics of the game set the stakes such that it requires the lawyer like approach to EVERYTHING. I think the fundamental idea of the order pool and multiple activations prompting players to create board positions that represent layered defenses, and estimate their ability to penetrate defenses with their given order budget is good. I think the game has a problem in that both players start with all their eggs on the table, their eggs are too fragile, and order pools are simply too large. I think the game needs to find a way to work with the advertised number of models. I think that would fix a lot of issues, in delivering on the initial promise and also by limiting how deeply you can push into the other player's board position. I think they thought lowering the point cost to get more models on the board would limit the swing of the game, but it gave too much fuel to the attacker to go on the offensive and also cover ground in one turn. I also think the game really needs a way to disentangle losing board position from losing the ability to play the game. I've started playing Chain of Command lately, and if my math is correct, in that game a player has about a 20% chance of getting another turn immediately after any given turn they are taking when they generate their command dice at the start of the turn. Point is, it is another game system that sees the sort of penetrating multiple activations that you can get with Infinity, albeit on a lesser scale. As the game progresses, the players gain resources that allow them to interrupt another player's turn and fully activate a unit. So you've got to keep a three activation deep defense up on that game and develop your board position to allow you to execute thrusts when the opportunity presents itself. Of course activations can be spent to put units on overwatch to threaten any units trying to push across open ground, so you can drain your action economy to dissuade them from making focused pushes while falling behind on total offensive output. A game that operates around chain activations to produce thrusting attacks (or the threat of them) into a layered defense works. Unlike Infinity, the game plays fast because it plays over a large number of short turns that are individually not worth arguing every little detail over because many adjudications would have to go all one player's way before it starts to swing the game. The order system allows you to keep playing at full or mostly full capacity after losses with reduced options. The mechanics of the game make sure to buy the players dinner before the game mechanics starts creating opportunities for decisive breakthroughs of their defenses with activation chains.
n-sphere, I mostly disagree very much with what you said (Infinity takes maybe 30 minutes longer to play than other squad games that have a lot less detail; The cognitive load is high but so is any other similarly subtle system, and that cognitive load is -totally- worth it for the counterplay opportunities IMO; and smoke and other abilities are balanced decently via unit availability, capacity, and durability, and I say that despite -hating- to play against cheapo smoke armies). But this is a good insight: More ability to move units on/off the table would definitely make the game more dynamic. Those abilities do exist and are widely available (AD), but are seriously underused IMO. Some similar ability (or mission deployment dynamic) that applies to more troops would be a good way to test if the game works well under the balance that you describe. A mission added to ITS which involves deploying only half your troops the first turn, then moving the others in via the side board edges, would be an interesting place to start with that on a small scale.
Agreed. I don't think the game designers were expecting people to bring the 8pts flashbot + 8pts baggages every game. Yet our french meta is much more about 15 or less mini than 15+. Lot of successful limited insertion list by top players here with a lot of ARO and TAG. 2 hours in tournaments, and pretty much the same or even less in casual games ... I sometime feel I spend more time setting the table than playing the game. Only casual beginners playing with too many special rules will take forever. And Code One is for them.
I am not a great gamer, not a fast one, but I've had 300 points tournaments were each of my games were hardly over 1 hour. I've had games were after 1 hour, my rival finished his 1st turn and we had to do 3-2 player turns in half an hour (we didn't finish, but we managed to do 2 turns each)., and I've had some games where I got crushed on my first turn and spend half an hour in my 2nd thinking what to do (And loosing anyway, but finishing all 3 turns). Even our first tournaments (prior to ITS, with the n1 rules for 4 turns) were done in 1,5h each game. In my first interplanetario, with 2 groups, I managed without problem to finish all my games on time. In the last one I participated, with limited insertion, there were 2 games that I could not finish on time. There are fast players that have no problems playing lists of 20 dudes, and there are slow players that cannot finish in time with armies of 10 dudes, and this is something not related to the game, but with the people playing it what I am trying to say is that, the time, is not a good argument because there are a lot of things unrelated to the rules, that can force a player to take too much time.
In my experience it is not the size of the list that defines the time it takes, but rather how many models are activated both by the order and through ARO as well as how difficult lines of sight are made. Some of my slower games have been limited insertion Invincible Army where 13 orders have translated to well over 60 individual miniature movements - per turn. Clearly visible troop markers such as 3D Camouflage Markers speed up decision making and reduces the risk of "take backs" due to obfuscated information, as another avenue for speeding games up.
You know, I also got into the game thinking I would need to own like 10 models and could play a full game on my kitchen table in an hour. It turned out to not be like that at all, but by that time I was hooked. So I was about to write a post agreeing with @n-sphere that Infinity promises to be something very different than it is (while disagreeing with pretty much everything else he said). But, does Infinity actually promise to be a quick, simple, low-model-count game? I went back to the website and rules and I can't find any such claims anywhere. I can't remember why, when I started playing, I thought that was what the game would be like. Maybe I read a misleading summary on Board Game Geek? Or maybe all the promotional photos are a little misleading where they show like 10 units in a 12"x12" area having a massive shootout? Anyway, we all seem to think Infinity makes that promise, but why do we think so?
Funnily, contrary to what @Savnock said, I mostly agree very much with what you said. Especially with Infinity being swingy and requiring you to be pedantic. And to add a point: It is heavily depending on luck. Only problem I don't see is smoke, but on the other hand I would emphasise the problem with Fireteams. I think removing Fireteams (or reducing the Bonus to moving 5 models simultaneously) entirely and focusing on Vanilla would solve most of it's problems. Sektorials could have different units and availabilities. Oh, and C1 is no solution, although it's only Vanilla. The ruleset, especially the hacking abilities, it too limiting. Without pitchers and repeaters, C1 reminds me of a pure shoot-them-up. But I haven't played it yet, I have to admit.
It's mostly the players or inofficial game ambassadors who are responsible for the elevator pitch - it is describing Infinity by the starkest contrast to the giants (Warhammer, Warhammer AOS and Warmahordes). Yes, Infinity really is a game where you only need 10 miniatures on the table and games are really quick and decisive compared to higher tier other games. I think the general success of the Stockholm meta is that we don't play very pedantic here. Pedantry has this tendency to only be rewarded if playing against another pedant and I think this creates an atmosphere I imagine feels hostile for newbies. I have experienced the same sense of alienation when watching some people play Warhammer 40k competitively, which was part of the reason why I never felt inclined to seek out tournaments while playing that game, so I really don't think this is an Infinity thing. -- As for the Fireteam meta-discussion, I do note that sectorials are massively more popular than vanilla factions; with only a few exceptions vanilla factions have the lowest participation. I'm not sure killing off what is unique to sectorials will do the game any good, but I do hope they look closer at how Fireteams interact with the game.
Full agreement here. Too much to remember off the cuff, way too many rules interpretation, FAQs, forum posts, wiki, rules nested within rules nested within rules - all of this creating a massive load of possible permutations of consequences of each and every single move or attack. I often feel like people do not consider them all, just wing it based on familiar profile vs profile (weapon vs profile, rule vs rule, etc.) probabilities, mission familiarity, schticks in their armies that work most of the time against most everyone, etc. This allows them to play a game within 2hrs or less. Myself, I find that I get instantly bogged down in either the "five chess moves ahead" kind of planning and reacting to potential enemy actions vs mission objectives, or "things I need to achieve & how to achieve them vs how many orders I have left on the table". When you add the layer of fireteams and how they can disproportionately affect the table (1 Order per mini, but 1 Order makes 5 minis act in a 10-15 mini game?! dafuq?!), the game starts being really not fun or at least tiresome to play in the long run.
I do think its due to their link with starter boxes. 9 out of 10 PanO newcomers say they will start collecting Varuna since their initial sets were VIRD starter pack, and well the 2-man starters also imply their possibilities of being a sectorial.
About that "Pedantic" atmosphere, it's completly alien to my Infinity experience. And listening to a lot of podcasts (mayacast and white noise) I feel like this kind of behaviour isn't really widspread. I may be on the extreme side of the spectrum (and sometime regret it) but I never do gotcha ARO, help my opponent to find secure way to move (like if he ask me "Can get to X point without being seen ?" I will explain how I think he can and how he can't, spend the order, good you are here), will remind my opponent that he is entering ZoC of camo / perimetral weapon and make sure he know and validate this decision before declaring ARO, even let some takeback after we calculated the odds and find it's not in his favor (before we roll the dice of course). And I usually behave this way even in Satellite tournament or Inter (sorry if someone doesn't feel that way, feel free to denounce me if I didn't with you ). And most important is that most of my opponents / gaming partners tend to do the same, including in tournaments. Off course this game sucks if you play it like warmachine or chess, not using intend, with "the board is what it is", "a moved model is moved" etc ... As for Fireteam, I regret the time when it was only one FireTeam at the same time and only similar models. The game was complicated enough that way. Then you should try to play it. Hacking is SOOOO powerful in C1, even without pitchers. I hope it's a first taste of what N4 will be like, without stealth on HI and without KHD. It feels like rock/paper/cisor : Hacker > HI > Regulars > hacker ...
I am not going to disagree with that, Varuna was one of the most popular factions last year after all, but even old sectorials are consistently more popular than vanilla factions by over 25% greater participation - even in cases where the vanilla starter is more recent than the sectorial one. From memory, only MRRF and about half of NA2 showed worse participation than the vanilla average.
Game lenght is not an issue for me, personally, but then again I don't play tournaments and I can see how it can become a huge issue if you are playing multiple consequtive games on a schedule. The obvious approach is to somehow limit the amount of miniatures in any given list, but that might require an extensive rework of certain factions/sectorials. I also think Fireteams are a core issue, even though I can't imagine something like IA working in its current form without them. Currently, I find they do restrict list building too much because they are just too good to pass up. It's really a general problem with funneling most/all orders into a single potent attack piece that has very little chance of getting countered, except by another model in a fireteam. This is also valid to a lesser extent for something like a Su-Jian with 8 Kuang Shi in ISS, but at least that thing still has "normal" stats and probability attached to its orders. Fireteams just swing probability too much in their favour due to the B and BS boni. Smoke, on the other hand, seems alright to me. The notion that it should not be used offensively is preferential and not self evident in my opinion. MSV is ubiquitous and useful even without smoke and there are other ways of discouraging Smoke+CC like perimeter weapons and deployables. It's another balancing factor that might need a few changes here and there, but I think it works fine overall.
Limited insertion is a good option for limiting the amount of minis on the table, but not all factions can be effective with a 10 miniature list. Limiting the amount of order spent on a single miniature each turn could be good idea though.
there is allready a limit. Also, with a shorter limit, some factions have it harder against certain oponents. There are some thing in the game that cannot be changed without affecting the overall balance between factions.
You are taking pedantic to mean trying for gotchas. Pedantic means pedantic without any attached assumption of trying for a "gotcha". What you describe are friendly exchanges that are more concerned with accuracy and formality than is useful in a 28mm miniatures game that is inherently not that accurate as a physical medium. Playing Infinity is like arguing in court. It might be polite and seeking a fair resolution when done properly, but it is still a highly pedantic process. I would argue that it is also widespread. When you see Carlos do demo games, he can't make it through most demos without getting into a friendly pedantic argument about which model can see what. A reasonable person being paid money to behave reasonably, playing against someone else who was paid money or access and has a vested interest in behaving reasonably and wants content that isn't an argument... still produces friendly arguments over details. Friendly arguments over details are still arguments over details. That the game system produces a highly volatile game state from the top of turn one is the thing that inherently creates all of the friendly arguments over details. Other games that are either less volatile, or the game mechanics require buildup before the game reaches a volatile state, produce fewer friendly arguments as most things are simply not worth bothering with pedantic negotiations over. Then, when you consider the sheer number of rules in Infinity, the complexity and nesting of those rules, and how insufferable it is to try and play a game of Infinity when both players only mostly know the rules and the resolution of any given action is potentially going to produce a huge swing in the game state. It creates a needlessly unsatisfying process for many people. Can people play it and have fun? Yes. Do a lot of people not play it for all the issues the game has? Yes.
Infinity has been alive and kicking for about 15 years. Sometimes things die down in your area, sometimes it fires up with a blaze. Never judge the INfinity growth or community by your local activity. Even the strongest areas have lulls and quiet times.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, or you are making something more complex than it needs to be, but it sounds like you want to do away with the two players working together to play a game. It's for the things you seem to dislike, that I do like about the game. I want the interaction over he goes, you go. Some can always be simplified of course but I would never want that to go away. I really don't see why people say there's more rules. I've played board games that are more complex! Yes there's more things you can do. That's it. I like that part. The interactions are the hard part. Hopefully some of what's in code one will show up in N4. I like instead of having Dual Weapons, it's CC+1. Or instead of 2 BS weapons, it's BS+1. It can and will be simplified.
Well, you really seem to just not like the game at all, that's cool but not sure what anyone can say to alter that, never mind altering the game to meet your desires, lots of what you said can be applied to 40k for instance, with buckets of scattered rules, FAQs everywhere, constant nonsense with random objectives and from my limited experience comparing the two, i find 40k breed a lot more arguments and toxic behaviour while the game don't even look like a battle (or is even fun, but that's probably just me), and nevermind the whacky balance, FAQs, glitchy codices and so on. But i don't go over 40k groups telling about how i don't like the game they love, nobody's going to listen to me and neither should they. Then that's just me, you do you, and you did have some decent points.
I’ve played in two metas, Denver and Indianapolis. I have found both to be thriving and endearing. Due to everything going on in my life, many of the “complaints” about Infinity work out in my favor. I don’t have time to be involved in multiple different games, but I do have time to be invested in one complex game. I can spend the time reading up and staying current on one set of rules. I generally have time to get one game in every two to three weeks, but when I do get a game, it’s usually a good chunk of time that I have available, so it’s not a problem if the game goes long. Though to be honest, most games end in a reasonable amount of time. Additionally, it isn’t uncommon for me to run a 20 order Ariadna list and take half the amount of time as my IA LI opponent. It will be interesting to see what the meta looks like once we come through all the pandemic restrictions.
