Last Saturday was Legionary, the local wargames convention. The games club that I belong to, the Exeter Inquisition, put on two participation games: a 40k Kill Team game with a small squad of Imperial Guard facing endless waves of zombies and at the other end of the table an urban Infinity setup.

The 40k game, plus rather a lot of zombies:

Plus the Infinity table which we set up the evening before:

Come the morning we'd adorned the table with posters for the participation games, our upcoming NUSU2 tournament and some snazzy Infinity posters that Corvus Belli sent us.

In preparation for the game I'd put together a series of player handouts including a much-simplified summary sheet and illustrated army rosters for each of our small intro forces:

The basic idea was to have 3-4 typical models from a faction making up a 75 point force (games are typically 200-300 points) with photos of each model for easy identification by players unfamiliar with the ranges and explanations of all the special skills/equipment for each model.

I excluded all the models with more complex or harder to use rules like Hackers, Impetuous troops (for 40k players, think Rage but with more complex rules), Thermo-Optic Camo/hidden deployment, Sepsitors etc. and in some case then simplified things slightly further so model with basic camo only got the minuses to hit benefit rather than starting off as markers.

Each round of games started with a few minutes explaining the basic mechanics of the game and then straight into each player putting their models in a corner of the board and getting going. The table had been carefully laid out so that it would take a few turns for forces to see each other, giving the players an extra bit of time to get to grips with spending orders.

The slightly simplified rules worked really well, with players picking things up quickly. I wondered about using the Beasts of War Quick Start Rules but had already started on the handouts before Infinity Week and decided not to change tack. Interestingly, about half the people we spoke to about Infinity mentioned having watched the Infinity Week videos so it's really raised the profile of the game.

The various handouts should be available to download as PDFs sometime next week.

Batrep 1

At the start of the morning things were a bit slow so Dom, Honsou and I started a game between ourselves to make the table look a bit more lively. I took a Combined Army force of a Yoagat, Morat and two Seed-Soldiers, Dom used in own PanOceania models in the form of a Magister Knight, Order Sergeant, Fusilier and Kamau while Honsou used his Ariadna Tankhunter with Autocannon, two Line Kazaks and a Kazak Doctor.

After some manoeuvring at the start of the game, first blood went to the Tankhunter who convincingly mowed down the Order Sergeant.

Dom's Magister Knight took revenge by running up a ramp to shoot down the Tankhunter with his Panzerfaust rocket.

My Yaogat, the most expensive and effective model in my list, had been gunned down at this point, so enter the Morat!

After roughly eight attempts (no exaggeration!), my Morat climbed up a grey container and shot the Magister Knight in the back, felling him due to a wound that the Knight had previously suffered.

The Morat then proceeded to demonstrate how not to climb down, but fortunately broke his fall by landing on his head...

Unfortunately, by this stage the Tankhunter had been healed back into action by the Kazak Doctor and ended up happily gunning down the remnants of the PanO and Combined Army forces.

Batrep 2-4

During the other games I was too occupied running the intros and games to take proper notes or photos so it gets a bit more disjointed from here on in.

One of Antenociti's clear assassin models looks down over the table, not taking part but looking pretty:

My newly-painted Haqqislam trio were used several times by different players:

The table itself got a lot of attention over the course of the day which was gratifying as the bulk of it (the modular road tiles, the white buildings, the grey tower and the octagonal storage facility) were made by me with most of the scatter terrain coming from other club members.

In the distance in that last shot you can see an LED Miraball display which also attracted people to the table:

It works by rotating a vertical line of LEDs quickly enough for the flashes of light it puts out to register as a continuous image and can be programmed to show different messages, in this case ads for the club, our store and the two participation games. You can read up on my first experiences with the Miraball here.

Other notable in-game events included Dom using the Combined Army Charontid as an entire force in itself and winning, partly by managing to dodge out of the way of three suppressive fire corridors in one fell swoop!

A Yu Jing Su Jian transforming robot scuttles up behind cover:

It then transformed into combat pose making itself tall enough to see over the crate, apparently moving it's head directly into the flight path of a Panzerfaust from the watching Magister Knight. Thanks to some insanely bad dice rolling, the Su Jian's four shots at the Magister Knight failed to hit while the rocket most definitely didn't miss.

That about wraps it up, so I'll finish with another shot of the zombie game and a ginormous internally light spaceship that hovered into view on the bring and buy stand:

It was a great day, it looks like we recruited several new club members and a large number of attendees headed off home to order some Infinity figures as there were no traders stocking Infinity at the show.

Looking forward to next year,

Ian