Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide - Special terrain to spice up your map part I

While we now know how to set up interesting maps for competitive play or regular games, everyone may reach a point where some spice need to be added. Whenever you cross the idea of a campaign, you define your location and think about ways to bring the jungles of Paradiso to your map or how the caverns of an asteroid around Human Edge may influence your game. But even without interest in campaigns and such stuff, the new ITS 12 adds some terrain rules to certain missions. If you have read through the previous two articles, you now may know how sensitive the game-experience can be to changes in the terrain. This applies most of the time to the placement of your regular terrain, but special terrain with added rules also can have a big impact.

The most important step for this topic may be the knowledge of how special terrain works rulewise in Infinity and how units interact with this. Everything basic you need to know for this is written in the core-book on p. 133 and following, as well as p. 115. The section around p. 133 explains the different terrain special rules and p. 115 includes the terrain-special skill for your units. Of course, MSVs also interact with terrain-rules, but since it is a quite clear interaction and this equipment also interacts with other things, so it is not that important here. The core rules define three effect-types for terrain, besides the actual terrain-type like aquatic, desert or zero-g:

• Difficult terrain - influencing movement of troops

• Saturation zones - influencing the burst of weapons

• Visibility zones - influencing LoF of troops

While in N3 every type here had different levels, only the levels of visibility zones are left in N4. Nevertheless you can combine all the different options, depending on what you want to achieve or what you need. To give you the needed information to properly choose between all these options, we will go through each type in the following.

Difficult terrain

Difficult terrain describes everything that limits the movement of troops. This may be a very rocky plane or a swamp where even a Morat is slowed down by the mud. The rules here are summed up as each trooper has to end its movement when entering silhouette contact with the terrain and needs to substract 1” from both MOV-values. In return, troopers with the fitting Terrain-special skill don’t need to end their movement by entering silhouette contact, ignore the limitations of moving in this terrain and gain 1” on both of their MOV-values. So in total, they become even faster, while everything else is slowed down in two ways. Altered moving speed on its own influences of course the order-efficiency for troops that want to move and reach more favourable places, but also exposes troops longer to AROs. This could be one additional shot from a long distance, one more chain rifle but most of the time one more attempt of spotlight or other hacking-programs.

Gainers of difficult terrain in first place are troops with the special skill, gaining quicker movement and the option to take paths too difficult for normal troops. In the second place all troops benefitting from slow opponents gain some more use. These are hackers, strong ARO-units and now CC-specialists with or without terrain-skills, since they can dodge with every ARO they get and ignore the terrain-limitations with this movement, except for the forced end of the movement by getting into silhouette contact (at least that is how I would read the current rules).So in the worst case Saito Togan appears in the forest you try to cross with your Azrail, engaging you directly.

On the other side, all units which need to reach places on the table and lack terrain-skills or high MOV-values get some problems with difficult terrain. In most cases you lose one short skill of moving by entering silhouette contact and depending on the size of the zone need one order more to cross the distance thanks to the reduced movement. If you then have nothing to protect you properly against DTWs or other AROs, like mimetism or dodge (+3), you have reached a wrong place.

One special thing for difficult terrain is the type you choose. We have many troops with terrain (desert) or terrain (aquatic) scattered unequally around the game, while terrain (zero-g) seems to be spread more equally (at least if you take the terrain (total) troops into account, too). So if you work with a lot of terrain from a not equally distributed type, you change the balance a lot.

Saturation zones

A saturation zone is filled with debris or other stuff, catching bullets flying through it. In this way, your burst is reduced by 1 to a limit of 1, if you are shooting through such a zone. It is important to note that the reduction is done after splitting burst, so a spitfire could shoot three shots into one target, or four shots against four targets, for example. For the moment there is no way to ignore those zones, besides having only B1 in general.

The reduction of the burst allone of course favours all units and weapons, which take their potential from high BS or other points and not from spamming shots. DTWs in most cases are not affected here and single missile launchers also see no difference by shooting through such a zone. Also weapons with high burst are not affected extremely by this reduction. Of course, B4 or B5 is better than B3, but in the end you still have two dice more than your opponent, which should do the job, if you engage in a good position. In short: actively, high B-weapons and link-teams with them deal good with those zones and may be a bit favoured by this. Reactive all vanilla-ARO pieces not gaining their value out of boosted B become better, since they are attacked by fewer shots now.

In return, natural B3 weapons like marksman-rifles or HRLs with natural B2 lose most of their advantage in active turn against the ARO-units. A link-team may reduce this impact a bit, but in the end, your engagements with these weapons become more risky. Also if burst is the only thing that shall win you the ftf-rolls, you may get some problems with saturation zones (like Krizas, Knights or Azrails). When it comes to the reactive turn, your linked missile launcher or sniper now suffer a lot, since the second shot in ARO is one of the most valuable things you have. If your defensive link-team needs to defend your ground through a saturation zone, it will be a quite ineffective investment.

Visibility zones

This kind of terrain has the most variation to offer. The core-rules distinguish visibility zones into the following:

• Low visibility (-3 to BS)

• Poor visibility (-6 to BS)

• Zero visibility (no LoF through it)

• White noise (no LoF for MSV-units)

It is important to note that MSVs cancel most of the negative effects of low, poor and zero visibility conditions and that the negative mod is not applied to dodge-rolls when you are targeted through such a zone. Thanks to smoke-grenades and the White Noise hacking-program, visibility zones can be created sometimes during the game and since many strategies or solutions for specific problems are including this, we are quite used to this type of terrain.

Besides White Noise, all visibility zones boost units with MSVs of any kind, since they get free reign about some LoFs and can use the good old smoke-trick even without spending orders to set up smoke first. If you don’t have to deal with zero visibility zones, full core-teams are boosted by this terrain, too. The +3 to BS-attacks limits the impact of the zone on your troop, while the target still has to apply it to his attack. This increases your chances actively and makes your ARO-snipers really hard to remove. Depending on the amount of MSVs on the field, also mimetism-troops and troops which act better in mid- to close distances can benefit from additional visibility zones. The mod stacks with the native mimetism on the one hand and may boost or guarantee your survivability against AROs while getting into the positions you want to start working.

While troops with mimetism may benefit from additional visibility zones, a high amount of MSVs on the field or at least one good placed MSV can also limit your use of these troops. If solid cover is replaced by visibility zones, you are losing all your protection without any benefit. Besides this situation, long range weapons and units without top-notch BS stats lose a lot of their potential. Even if both sides suffer additional negative mods, the success-chance of both units is reduced. This may be good, if you just want to survive while crossing a gap, but if you want to take out a target, you need to invest more orders for this, if you are able to hit the enemy at all. 

 

Special terrain in practice

Most maps in practice show that special terrain is difficult to use or most of the time not used because of the complexity. Probably the theoretical part has reinforced your concerns about this topic. It is true that you easily can create unbalanced situations by using these rules. But on the other hand you skip a lot of the fun Infinity has to offer, if you don’t use it. The next part shall try to give some advice on how you can use these rules without breaking the game.

Possible combinations and definition of terrain

Since there are only three different types of special terrain, the overall rules are quite simple. But then you are given the choice to combine the three types of terrain and label them in the way you want or need, creating a high number of possibilities. You can have difficult desert terrain without any further things or a difficult, poor visibility saturation forest zone, a White Noise zero g zone and so on. In many cases the map you want to create at least gives you a limited set of wanted terrain, like some desert-patches on a Bourak-styled map, or zero g terrain in a cargo bay. From this reduced complexity, you can start and tailor your terrain to what you want to achieve. A very important factor here is to keep things as simple as possible, at least if you don’t plan to prepare a week before for the game. Infinity has a lot to remember and to think about during the game, so the added terrain rules should be well communicated and not too numerous. Too much complexity and diversity would lead to non considering the rules, which you don’t want to achieve. Keep things simple and clear and according to your goal.

 

In different hands I (Starmada vs. DBS)

During the individual aftermath of the ENTE, Al'Espagnol and I played against each other with the conclusion that both of us said that our factions suck. Since I play Starmada a bit and he loved the challenge, the next game was scheduled easily to proof that DBS can be beaten easily with Starmada (my opinion) or that Starmada would not be able to score something even against DBS (his opinion). The mission for this was Supplies from ITS 11.

There would have been the option to set up a full anti-DBS list, utilizing on all the tools to punch their weak points, but this was not my intention. The only thing I took here concerning DBS-weanknesses was the Beta-haris with two Psi COps. Everything there has mimetism and is a good gunfighter on his own, granting great odds in FtF-rolls. Two additional flxible and fast spitfires should manage to close the gaps quickly and then simply gun down whatever there is. Especially the Raptor should do the Peacemaker-trick here with better stats.My defense should be build by Andromeda, consuming many ressources in the first turn and the Peeler, protecting my DZ in the progress. The left over points screamed for Parvati, since she was the optimal unit to keep everything else running smoothely. For the mission the Psi COps and the Santiago should be the main units, shooting their way towards the boxes and hold them in their hands until the end. Parvati may be a a last back-up for this.

Al'Espagnol build a typical list around Scarface and a flexible core-team. Both should do most of the shooting-stuff, while the Hunzakuts can grab the supply-boxes and hide somewhere. With Gromoz and an additional Brawler, the core-team can be filled up easily. The Peacemaker is mainly taken with Adnromeda in mind, to counter-deploy her directly with the Auxbot.

One of the most interesting maps for Supplies may be this ALEPH-base, even if both of us may have played on it several times now. You can cross most of the buildings on the ground level, but also have some nice elevated positions to utilize. The new N4-cover rules completely alter the former problem of being shot by crossing the rooftops, adding some new thoughts to this map.

I win the Lt roll and take the first turn. Al'Espagnol gives me my favourite side in the south.

My Peeler and a Yudbot are deployed on the far left, next to my haris-team, ready to engage whatever there is on the left. Parvati hides in the center, together with the Raptor in the right building. The Santiago is set to take the first run on the right, backed up by Cho as Beta KHD and a Yudbot.This side is completed by a Kytta to overwatch the central console.

Scarface and Cordelia take the right, where Scarface is difficult to hide but in good cover. Everything else is deployed on the left, with the MSV out to ARO. One ABH grabs an ODD. Gromoz and the Kameel have a centered forwarded position. Two Fugazis are placed on some crates in the center and each side sees a camo-marker.

Andromeda infiltrates in a lovely spot on the far right, only to get an Auxbot deployed in her back, while the Peacemaker takes the room a bit up.

Starmada 1: I have nothing to engage the core-team here, so I need to get my teeth on Scarface. Andromeda is in a bad space, but the Santiago could accomplish something and also be close to the right console. So I push him forward, shooting down both Fugazis on long ranges while climbing the first roof. The Hunzakut there gabs the wrong deployable while getting killed. The mine bounces off my armor, as well as some bullets from mine on Scarface. I manage to do one wound, then skip that after recieving one in return. Before dropping the Peacemaker, I fail to extract the cube of the Hunzakut. Now the Auxbot is disconnected but Andromeda fails to get Scarface in range and Cordelia in LoF, so she sets up an ARO-trap.

DBS 1: Scarface crits Andromeda out of the game without any problems, while the core-team advances on the left. The MSR does a great job, killing the MSV1 Psi COp, the Peeler and taking one wound of the Beta, then climbing up the small building on the left, overwatching everything.

Starmada 2: The link needs to go and the only option is my Psi COp KHD. After cybermasking her, she is able to get in the back of the link undiscovered, but only gets the Doc down with her nanopulsar. This is used by the link to dodge in different directions. The Lt is so focussed on the Psi COp, that he forgets about the Beta, now in his back. This is payed with his life. Since the MSR is dodged into full cover, I take the chance and advance the Raptor a bit towards the right, helping the Santiago with Scarface.

DBS 2: Utilizing some crates next to the building in the center, Scarface climbs it. My KHD is shot on the way. From the highest point on the field, Scarface failed for several orders to wound my Santiago, so Gromoz shoots a pitcher next to him. We forgot about the frenzy here, what would have definitely ended the Knights life here.

Starmada 3: Since the link is broken, the Beta takes care of the HMG and the sniper but can't do anything on the prone Hunzakut. Now the Raptor gets to the far right roof and together with the Santiago fail to do anything against Scarface. So the Santiago grabs the box and gets immobilized.

DBS 3: The left Hunzakut grabs the box, then Scarface kills the Raptor and the the Santiago. Cordelia is one order short to reacht the Santiago and grab the box.

The game ends 7-0 for DBS here. The high flexibility of the alpha-loadout on Scarface is a real terror, if he is utilized as the gun-platform he is. Getting him up in an elevated position, where he can hardly be reached by mid-range guns without getting shot before by the HRL, won the game here, I guess. At least after the Peacemaker shut down Andromeda in turn one, so that she had no chance to kill the TAG with her guard. That would have been the best chance for me, since then I had nothing to deal properly with the high armour, if Scarface was in cover. Pushing the full core team forward was also a great move, since the sniper then was able to cut all my visual mods. Maybe I should have ignored the left completely and saved the haris in the center, covered by all the buildings.

So in the end, Al'Espagnol could proof his point. I would say that the missing midfield presence cut my potential a lot, since there was nothing to harass the link on his way and I had no good options to set up a hacking-game for Scarface. What made Al'Espagnol successful here was the moving full core with the focus on refilling him, if needed and a focussed use of Scarface as the most dangerous shooter next to the Brawler MSR now. Since I often build on the flexibility of units, I may spend points for inefficient things. He did differently here.

Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide - General advice for your map

In the second part of this terrain guide, I want to give some general advice to set up a map four your game, avoiding strong imbalances and situations limiting the fun for both players. To minimize personal bias here and add some extra quality, I got certain support for this by badlazzor, a quite productive map-designer in the current TTS-community. 

Once you played your first games of Infinity in a club or a store, you may want to build your own terrain and figure out, how things work best. At this point you may have checked the rules about terrain in the core rules, where everything necessary is written down. Why then is there a need for this guide? Well, the section for terrain takes not more than three pages in the rule-book with a lot of empty space there. Everything written there is true and should be considered, but let us face the truth: The section leaves a lot of questions uncovered and much space for creativity or mistakes. Even the example-maps given there are nothing I would consider a good map, since there is a low amount of proper cover, so that your units can be tracked down easily from the opposite half.

An other source for not optimal/enjoyable maps may be the fact that not everybody has enough terrain or terrain of good quality, easing the set up of an enjoyable map. Or even if those things are available, you want to start playing, so the map needs to be set up fast without much planning for the idea behind it. But if you have some rules to follow, it will be easier to place the terrain available in a proper way and deploy it in a reasonable timeframe.

Before you start reading the advice and throwing your terrain on the table, you should be aware of my philosophy for setting up maps. Of course, everyone will have different aims here, but since these aims are woven into the following strategy, it will be good to know about these biases. My aims for each map I create are:

• The map is no servant for your game, but an additional challenge.

• This challenge should have an impact to the gameplans of both players, but without dismissing single list-types or units.

• The choice of the deployment zone should be important due to:

• Differing ARO-positions inside the DZs

• Different ARO-positions inside the half of the map

• Accessibility/defence of mission objectives

• Possible applications/protection of AD-troops, parachutists and impersonators

• For competitive play every unit should be playable on each map (unfortunately) 

The big question here is, how these aims can be achieved. Before I will give you a step-by-step guide how you can set up your map, here are some general advices for an interesting map:

• Set up the deployment zones asymmetric with one side containing more cover and better positions to place ARO-pieces and link teams, while the other one is more open. The good zone may have a slightly worse access to the objectives, so that half of the table may have a bit less cover in general. To even things out, the worse zone may have a better access to objectives and some nice spots for forward deployment units.

• Have one narrow LoF from deployment zone to deployment zone in maximum. Take care, that this LoF don’t need to be crossed necessarily to enter the game. This will reduce the potential for ARO-castles to pin the opponent down completely and may create some false hopes.

• To enable long range weapons, set up one to three longer corridors, optimally slightly diagonal. This eases movement a bit and allows short range weapons to enter the corridors in favourable positions.

• One deployment zone should not be able to overwatch more than 50% of the map and half of the corridors available.

   

    

  

  This spot allows some long shots on the left and middle, but the containers and high buildings limit the sight on the right
  

  
  

• Have at least one third of the map denser than the rest to create corridors where short range weapons and warbands can advance. The limited coverage of this section on the other hand prevents a domination of these units.

• Place the highest buildings between the deployment zones. This breaks up LoF and protects certain positions on ground level and above. The more you move them into the center, the harder they are to reach for ARO units. But make sure to create no new supreme sniper-spot in the center!

• Interrupt long corridors with scatter terrain of different size at different places. This creates safe spots in cover here and there but keeps the LoF, so both range-types can perform well, if needed. Also some good positions for infiltrators are created in this way.

• Place terrain of enough height on the table edges. Interrupt at least two to four this way, one deployment zone and one edge. This creates safe spots for parachutists and denies killing zones on the edges. It also adds some kind of known risk, since there are obvious spots, where you can count on those troops to appear. This adds also to the choice of deployment zone.

   

  

  The interrupted edge creates a possible safe accespoint for the Bashi Bazouk
  

  
  

• The main terrain you are using should be as high as S7 on average. On the one hand, this allows TAGs to move safely, but saves other units from TAGs, since those big guys can’t look that easily above everything.

  

  The initial papercraft-terrain from Corvus Belli is slightly lower than S7, so that TAGs can be seen easily and see a lot of things - make sure there are added things on the roof

 

• Have one oversized piece of terrain at maximum, if you can’t play on or in those pieces. Try not to place those pieces on the centerline. This prevents bottleneck situations and dead areas.

• Try to avoid unclear situations in general to ease the game.

Of course, these are some more or less easy to follow rules, but they are numerous and not always easy to remember, if you are setting up your map in a hurry before the game. To create a kind of routine, allowing you to follow the previous points, here is a practical step-by-step list:

1. Mark places for the mission objectives or set up your objective markers.

2. Spread your tallest terrain pieces loosely in the center of the table with a diagonal orientation

3. Starting from the center to the deployment zones, place the rest of your terrain pieces. Try to give them a diagonal orientation.

    

   

   The tallest buildings are around the center and the density decreases towards the deployment zones

4. Check the corridors created in the previous steps, starting from the deployment zones. Change the orientation, add or remove terrain to create the wished main corridors.

5. Interrupt the edges with additional terrain.

6. Check the horizontal lines of the map and break them, if necessary by placing additional terrain on rooftops.

   
   
   

   

   Even with two big buildings in the center, there is more obstruction needed horizontally - Done with containers on the buildings

7. Check the lines parallel to the center line and break them, if needed.

8. Spread bigger pieces of scatter terrain in the corridors and break up crossings and places, as well as horizontal fire lanes

    

   
   
   

   

   Many of the long corridors can be broken easily with walls or containers, creating the needed density

9. Finalize your map by adding smaller scatter terrain to create more cover here and there.

   

   Smaller and larger planters are great to create the needed additional cover-elements
   

   
   

   

   The final result, thrown together in a few minutes and always interesting to play
   

   
   

   So that is my advice on how to generally put together a reasonable and fun map to play on. Of course, there are many other ways and there will be different experiences. So if you have any comment on this, hit me up!
   

Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide - Introduction

Infinity is a quite complex game with many different factors interacting and determining failure and success. Most of the discussion and optimisation you can find out there, and also in this blog, circles around units, profiles, lists and game plans, while one major factor of the game, the terrain, is only discussed as a side note. Of course, those things are far easier to assess, to change and to handle, since the terrain most of the time is a one shot, quickly done before the game. Nevertheless, terrain remains a major factor in this game, but coupled with different problems and uncertainties. To help mitigating these problems, I want to give  some guiding based on my experience about most of the topics related to terrain in Infinity. Of course, in such a difficult topic there will be different opinions and insights, so feel free to contact me and discuss things! I am always up to new things and like to change things if necessary! The following topics are planned, divided into different posts:

1. Impact of terrain on the game

2. How to build a reasonable map

3. Terrain rules and their impact

4. Trade-off between rules and reality

5. How to get your map together

1. Impact of terrain on the game

What defines Infinity is the interaction of movement, line of fire and positioning. All of this is shaped by terrain, which determines most of the interactions in form of accessibility, targeting, modifiers and range. While you choose the weapon because of the range, the position mostly chooses which unit you take for the job. With this, terrain is a central point for your game.

Maybe you will question this importance a bit, but you probably know a lot of situations where you are pinned down in your deployment zone by a linked sniper, overwatching most of the map or got overrun by warbands templating your deployment without any chance of shooting them on their way. Of course, you can try to deal with these issues with different list-types, but in the long run, most of list-choices will be denied by the one-sided terrain and the fun will be limited. The two factors you can vary on your map here are the placement of terrain and the density. A third factor may be the type of terrain you are using, but since this is a bit harder to assess, this factor will be discussed in a later part on its own. Issues you can address by the other two factors are:

Long range weapons pin you down completely. Assuming terrain of a good quality (different heights and volumes), too long firelanes are often the source of this issue. By replacing the terrain to break up the long corridors into more smaller ones, not only the long range weapons are weakened, but also other weapons have the option to access them via the new, smaller corridors. Also placing the highest buildings more in the center of the table, while having lower ones in the deployment zones, mitigates this issue. Depending on the general horizontal design, the density/amount of terrain can be a factor here, too. The higher single spots are and if there are no high obstacles around, the more difficult this solution is, since you can simply look over smaller terrain and still have LoF. But if you are worrying about two or three long and empty corridors, the addition of smaller terrain pieces of different sizes (scatter terrain) inside these corridors or between smaller ones may help. This way you create spots to hide on the way, maybe allowing cautious movements and give nice spots to shoot out of cover.

 

A sniper in a too elevated position overwatching empty corridors is not only death to many models.Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

Warbands controlling the game with their templates. This problem often is the total opposite of the previous issue. Once you put too much terrain on the map, creating a really dense table, long range weapons lose their reason and warbands harass every more expensive unit with their templates, trading themselves for higher value. By lowering the density, there is more space to overwatch them on their path. 

Parachutists are not played/AD troops and impersonators are too strong/weak. These three units share their initial zone of action. While parachutists need to deploy on one table edge, impersonators and some AD troops may want to work in the adversary deployment zone. While parachutists don’t really like completely unobscured edges, since they are simply gunned down by everything while deploying, obstacles in deployment zones may boost the potential of units landing there. Both problems can be addressed mainly by the placement of your terrain. Putting something with at least S2-size somewhere on the edges give parachutists a safer opportunity to enter the game. Inside the deployment zones it gets a bit trickier, since overdoing the obstruction here, creates a new problem. But with placing some obstacles there, you are creating interesting choices and things to be considered. Increasing the terrain-density in the deployment zones as the second option, adds more different angles to hide your troops from attacking impersonators.

 

Unobstructed lines can cause serious problems in the deployment zones

Besides those zones around the edges, even in the central zones the connection of density and placement of terrain influences the effectivity of infiltrators in the same way as it works with impersonators in the deployment zone. If there is no place to hide them, they are discovered quickly and never reach their target. But with broken fire lanes and scatter terrain here and there, there are always some spots to hide and to take cover. By choosing the right places for these spots, you may direct some interactions and tune the effectivity. This is also valid when it comes to good and not so good spots to hide your HVT, especially in missions with designated targets or many classified objectives. Speaking about objectives, also the normal objectives like antennas or tech-coffins need to be placed carefully and the game can be directed by the corridors around them. Is there one side overwatching the whole approach to one objective? Or can one antenna be defended quite well from one side with a trooper in suppressive fire?

Everything coming from the south will need to deal with -9 or -12 (mimetism -6 + suppressive fire + cover) on their BS attacks

All these issues can really limit your fun with the game, if you have not agreed with your opponent about the specific situations you want to set up with your map. Since there is barely a practical situation where you pre-define each scenario you play with your opponent in this detail, you need to consider those points while preparing the map. In most cases, everyone wants to play the list he prepared for the mission or to test his new stuff and don’t want to be forced into a certain list-type by the map everytime. Nevertheless, if you would really want to, you could design nearly every interaction on your map by setting up special fire lanes, defining the points where you get cover and where you can’t end your movement and so on. But to be honest: Nobody has the time, the patience and the mental capacity to do this to that extend in such a complex scenario as you find in Infinity. And it is not necessary for most of the situations, if you at least think about some basic issues while setting up the terrain for the next game.