Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide: How to get your map together

After reading all the different points and thoughts about terrain in Infinity, you are hopefully eager to build your own terrain. In this last part of the guide, I want to give some different ways to get your map together a closer look. Since the cineastic and strategic experience of Infinity is strongly related to the terrain you use and it can impact the game in many different ways, as we discussed before, it is important to get the right terrain pieces to hand for your game. With the introduction of 3D-printing, lasercutting and a bigger community, the market of terrain in general and pieces designed for Infinity has grown a lot over the past years. But besides this, there are many opportunities to let your own creativity and hands flow and build things on your own. While I am not a great terrain-builder and especially painter on my own, I want to focus more on the general aspects of different kinds of terrain, like what do you have to take into account when using it and for whom it would be good to use.

A general wrap-up

Before we discuss different options to get your map together, we should recapitulate, what we need. Since line of sight is an important thing in Infinity and everything dies instantly if it is seen from too many positions, you will need solid terrain to block firelanes. In most cases, you should cover at least 50% of the surface with terrain to block firelanes. This may be not correct for some special situations, but you can keep it as a rule of thumb. Once you have broken up firelanes on the ground level, you need some more pieces to structure the upper levels of your map, creating elevated positions to shoot from and blocking firelanes all over the same level. The third important part for your map is the smaller scatter terrain, including all the stuff you can throw into the corridors, on the roofs or wherever you need some more cover. Besides these three essential parts, there are some special terrain pieces you can include in your map, but you don't need to.

The different ways to get your terrain

Papercraft

The easiest and maybe cheapest way to get a majority of your terrain together is using papercrafted terrain. Since the terrain produced by CB directly and used in the old and actual Operation-boxes is based on paper, too, I will include it in this category. The other options here are self-printed and assembled pieces, or premade kits purchased from somewhere. The community already created a lot of general templates for different buildings, walls and even scatter terrain, which can be downloaded for free of for a small tax, but if you want something more sophisticated, you will need to look for special producers like CB or something different in the internet.
If you have found something suitable for your needs and want to start, the only things you need are a reliable printer, some ink, a scissor and fitting glue. Depending on the paper you use for the prints, the terrain will be more sturdy and you may be able to deploy heavier models on it to the cost of material-flexibility. But besides printing and assembling, there is not much work to be done until you can have the first games on your map, since the whole painting-step is already done.

Papercraft terrain in general has the following pros and cons:

+ cheap
+ easy to produce
+ big quantitity of bigger terrain pieces in no time
+ easy to store

- persistence of terrain under constant use
- stability when using metal miniatures
- light weight terrain (easy to displace during the game)
- papercraft-look
- takes a bit to set up

Icestorm

Until the release of Code One and Operation Kaldstrom, each Operation-Box for Infinity included a terrain pack of pre-painted papercraft terrain, consisting of four buildings and four to six containers, depending on the set. The buildings were discussed in the previous articles, since the smaller ones have the problem of being smaller than S7 models. But besides that, the whole terrain is easy to use and to scale up for a whole map. To build an interesting map for a 48x48 map, you will need at least four of these packs, where five or six will give you more opportunities. The combination of containers and buildings let you create different situations and break up most necessary firelanes.
Only the stackability of the buildings is a bit challenging, since they don't fit on each other to 100%. A bit of adjustment from your side may solve the problem. The stability of the terrain is quite okay for papercraft and can be increased with easy to build or to buy inlays for both pieces. This also may solve the weight-problem, since the pieces are normally quite light and easy to move.
If you keep the terrain flexible, it can be stored easily and without much space needed, but even if you don't disassemble the terrain after a game, it does not need to much space. Thanks to the regular shapes, it fits easily into storage-boxes. I would advice to keep the terrain assembled to reduce the impact on the material. The persistence of the material and the paint under constant use is quite good. My set is used constantly over the year and shows no bigger problems after more than two years now.
In summary you will need something about 100€, a bit of adjustment and a bunch of additional scatter-terrain to have an easy to store and to set up map.

An example of the Icestorm paper-terrain, where the higher building is slightly modified to stack better.

A block of polysterene connects the two single buildings to avoid anything crashing through it or the buildings falling apart.

A piece of fiber slab or a filled cardboard-box from CB can and should be added to the terrain to improve the stability and weight.

 

Kaldstrom

Witht the release of Operation Kaldstrom, CB introduced a new set of papercraft terrain. Compared to the former sets, it is improved in many ways. Instead of normal paper, thick cardboard is used, enhancing the stability, weight and persisctence. Also the content is changed. Now not only containers and buildings are included, but stackable buildings from different sizes and different kinds of scatter terrain. These positive changes nevertheless resulted in two disadvantages: The prize increased by app. 10€/set and the assembling seems to be way more difficult. To avoid damages during the assembly, check out Youtube for some tipps and tutorials!
While the old papercraft-sets were quite uniform in pieces and design, this is now changed. Not only that the variety in the core-set is increased, but there are also expansion packs with completely new pieces in it, like an objective room or some sniper-towers. This will allow you to create different kinds of maps with a basic set of pieces and single special ones from the expansion packs, depending on your needs.
Since I don't own this terrain by myself, I have no first hand experience about storage and persistance. The community advices something like four to six sets of this terrain to fill a 48x48 map, resulting in total costs for your map of app. 150€. Since the shapes of the terrain are still regular and the smaller pieces may fit into the bigger ones, it should be easy to store and easy to set up. 

Papercraft

For every other papercraft-terrain the pros and cons of the different CB-versions may also apply. In general, I see two possible approaches for papercraft-terrain: easy to store and easy to produce paper-terrain and persistent cardboard-terrain. Cardboard-terrain will live longer and will be easier to set up for the daily use, but will also be more difficult/expensice to produce and a bit more difficult to store, since you can't disassemble it easily and have to store it in bigger boxes. The easily printed and assembled paper-terrain on the other hand can be disassembled easily and so stored in quite small boxes. But this will force you to assamble it before every game and disassemble it after it, what will take a while and stress the material. Also it is easier to be deformed by use or storage over the time. Nevertheless, if you want to get started and make your first expriences, it is a great way to set up your first maps and then switch to other terrain-types.

An example of papercraft terrain, printed from some files of the internet on slightly thicker paper.

This box fits enough papercraft terrain for a whole 48x48 map.

MDF 

Most of the maps you see on social media (and even on TTS, thanks to the community) consists of laser-cut MDF-terrain kits. The market for those kits grew extremely over the past years and even free files to use with your own or rented laser-cutter get more frequent. Not only the whole amount of general sci-fi MDF-terrain is growing, but also special designed for Infinity-sets become more frequent (like from Warsenal, TTCombat or Micro Art Studios). This allows you to select the terrain fitting to your ideas and needs.
The kits come unassembled in a kind of sprue and need to be assembled, glued and painted. The overall quality of the kits is good, but sometimes you need some refinement during assembly to make everything fit perfectly. Painting may be a bit difficult if you don't own an airbrush or are experienced with spray paints, since the kits get more and more detailled. But even if you have to work with brushes, there are several tutorials for this on Youtube to help you with this issue. If you don't want to paint the terrain, there are some pre-painted kits on the market.
Most of the suppliers not only sell a variety of normal terrain, but also additions and special pieces, as well as scatter terrain. So you can purchase everything you need for your map made from MDF. Depending on what you want for your map, you will end up between 200€ and 350€ for the terrain and about 50€ for rattlecan paints, adding to some time you need for assembling and painting.
For this advances price you will get a good looking and interesting map. Due to the material-properties, all pieces have their own weight, limiting the potential of displacement during the game. Also, assumed a proper sealing of the paintjob, the persistance of the terrain normally is quite good and will guarantee several years of use (I have not seen any teared down MDF-terrain since now). Since there may be different shapes of the pieces, storage can be a bit challenging. This strongly depends on the series you choose, since there are also very easy to store kits, which can be stored easily in smaller boxes, including even the scatter terrain.

So if you don't have the time and/or creativity to build your terrain by yourself, but want an interesting Infinity-map, MDF-kits are the right thing for you. Just consider the needed time for assembling and painting all the terrain during planning. Since you can choose individual kits for your own map, don't plan to short. Many suppliers actually advice how much space you can cover with the kit, so you can plan more easily for how much terrain you will need. But most of the time, you want to reduce the amount a bit to safe time and money, but will end up with a to open map and less fun to play. So plan with the right amount of ressources!

There are many different MDF-kits available on the market, so that there are basic pieces of many kinds of maps.

3D print

Not only lasercutters are becoming more and more frequent in the hobby, but also 3D-printers for private use are a real thing now. These machines allow everyone to print everything out of thermoplasts or resin what you want - in theory. In theory, you now can design your whole map on the computer and then print it on your 3D-printer, put it together and paint it for the costs of the printer, the energy and the material. If you are used to computer-stuff and have some experience with vector-graphics, this may be your approach and in this case, 3D printed terrain may be the best solution for you. But in most cases the steps before it comes to the printing itself cause you some troubles, since most of us are no technical experts in this topic. Desiging your own terrain as printable files then is very difficult and rarely possible, while getting the printer online and working should be doable with some time to try out. Luckily the internet can solve the first problem for you, since it offers free and purchasable pre-made files you can use for printing. Over the past years there were many kickstarter-campaigns creating unique sci-fi files, but you can find a lot on pareon and thingiverse these days. If there is something fitting your needs, you have a great point to start. But even if you have found the files, you need to get them running and fit on your printer. In most cases, you will have to print smaller parts and put them together afterwards, since the private printers won't allow to print quite big pieces in one go. So in the end you will end up with okay-ish costs for your project but maybe the biggest time-investment of all options you have.
Once you have overcome the technical issues, you may get not only a nice looking map, but also terrain designed to use in wargaming. The material used will give most pieces enough weight to not be moved by accident and is sturdy enough to endure transport and storage, but also many games. Like wood or MDF, the material will be thick enough to let heavy pieces be placed on roofs and so on, at least of you have printed them thick enough.

On a side-note, 3D-printing may be the easiest way to create tons of scatter terrain and objectives like tech-coffins and antennas. So even if you don't want to print your whole map, take this option into account when it comes to the smaller pieces.

Selfmade

Depending on your idea for the map and all the other circumstances (time, money, motivation, creativity, talent), a selfmade map can also be an option, maybe the best. To generalise a bit on this topic, you can achieve the best results for your terrain with this 'method' and also with the lowest costs, for the sacrifice of time, creativity and talent. But since the last three points most of the time are the fun-part of the hobby, building your own Infinity-map is the coolest thing to do! In many cases you are forced to go with this, since not every setting can be done with MDF or 3D-printers. On the other hand you are able to create all the things you need, you can imagine and you need rulewise to allow the best interaction during the game. 

Since you can use different materials for your terrain, the persistance may vary together with the needs of storage. Normally you will build more detailed pieces with less durable materials or designs, so that you have to decide on your storage-solutions. If you store each piece individually, nothing will break but you need a lot of space. If you are short on space and have to put everything in one box, details may collide and irregular shapes won't match each other, so that there will be damages. On the other hand you have the chance to design everything in a way to match your own storage- and transport-situation.
 

The choice of material not only affects the persistance, but also the difficulty of production and the costs. The cheapest but also most fragile material may be cardboard. It is available for free in your trash, can be cut easily but is less durable when it comes to contact with other terrain and use.

Some hot-glue and cardboard from packaging can be brought together easily for basic buildings.

Many cardboard materials appearing in your flat can be used for Infinity-terrain. Just glue the boxes together and shield it with blank cardboard to even the surface and create ceilings.

 

More flexible and durable, but also a bit more expensive, is foamboard or whatever this material is called in your locallity. Here, I refer to polysterene blocks, which can be cut with a sharp knife or a hot wire (Proxxon Thermocut!!). The available tools allow you to cut many different shapes and things, so that there are no limits, once you are used to the tools. Problems with this material is the missing ability to use most of the rattlecan spraypaints directly on them, the missing weight of the material and the sensitivity to damages and breaks during the use and transport. A proper sealing may help you with all these issues. 

The most durable option may be solid wood, plastic card or plastic in general. These materials are not that difficult to use for basic shapes and things, but once you go for the details, you will see the limits. Depending on your supplies, this also may be the most expensive way, since you will have to buy everything and can't use things appearing in your flat.

Especially for scatter terrain, polysterene can be cut in many different shapes and sizes to create all the things you need.

Simple polysterene-blocks can be used and fenced with different structures to create buildings of different style and size.

Most of the time you will end up with all materials mixed, creating the look you want. If you are not super experienced in this field, you will need some additional time to plan everything, collect the materials and prepare for failure. In most cases, not everything will turn out in the way you dreamed about it, so plan b is quite common and you should be aware of this. But nevertheless, in the end you will have some great hobby-time and end up with an unique map, fitting your needs and ideas about the game.

Polysterene-blocks of different sizes covered with some cloth and lots of PVA make good and flexible scatter terrain.

Planters made of caps (bottles, rattlecans) and filled with different kinds of moss are also a cheap and easy option to create your scatter terrain. You can fill it with some metal-pieces to gain the needed weight.

To summarize about this topic:
If you are new to the topic and want to try out different things or don't have that much money left, go for papercraft terrain, especially the sets designed directly by CB. They will allow you interesting basic games for a small budget. If you want to advance from this, the solution depends on the factors of time and money. If you are short on time/motivation, but are willing to spend something like 300€, MDF-terrain is your way to go. The internet is full of available and great kits, so that you can find everything you need, If you are short on money but have some time left and at least some motivation (talent is optional!), try to build your own terrain. The included pictures may give you an example of how simple those things can be. If you are searching for some high-level inspiration, you can check out the forums or social media. But in the end, all these solutions will be fine for your game and can be used to display all scenarios you want to play.

Pandemic Protocol 2: Round 2 (QK vs IA)

After my loss in round one, I was paired against a Greebo, a newer Infinity-player but experienced tabletop-gamer in general. We met each other a few years ago on a Malifaux-tournament, so it was quite nice to face him now on 'my' battlefield. The mission for the second round was Highly Classified.

This time I simply wanted to play something different and include as much new and flexible stuff, as possible. I ended up with a defense simply relying on REMs and one Hawwa sniper. To push forward, a haris is formed around the Djanbazan HMG. They should be able to shoot their way forward and do some classifieds there. The other flank should be secured by the Azrail, put somewhere in cover and suppressive fire and just wait.Some specialists to round everything and allow me to score as many classifieds as possible.Luckily there would be some REMs to repair...

I expected the usual Zuyong-paintrain, but obviously, Greebo wanted to try something fancy and build for some smart missiles, supported by the Lui Xing, landing somewhere unexpected and target the necessary stuff. Krit should do the maintance for the support-REMs, while the Zhencha and the HacTao do the rest.

For this round I chose one of the Dire Foes maps made by Cabaray. Originally we wanted to play Rescue, but since I could not find a suitable and working map for this and this one was quite nice, we switched to Highly Classified on this map. It is quite obstructed by elevated positions in the midfield. The left has a deeper corridor, while the right sees some forest-zones.

The drawn main-classifieds were Rescue, Telemetry, Mapping, Nanoespionage, my secondary objective was Sabotage.

Again, I lose the Lt-roll and deploy first in the south. I decide to go first, since I see some good chances to push my Hawwa hacker up on the right and score a row of classifieds.

My Lt, covered by a mine, hides on the left behind a crate and overwatched by the Hawwa sniper and the first TR-bot. The haris scatters around them, ready to clear the whole side with the HMG if needed. The center sees my doc and the Rafiq as back-up, as well as the Azrail. I forget about the dead spot behind the container on the right, while a Fanous and the engineer overwatch the rest there. My hacker starts right in the center on that side.

The Doc hides somewhere on the left. The REMs take the roof of the left building with the EVO behind this. One camo marker starts in the center of the table, an other one in the left corridor and one in the center of the deployment zone, clearly being the Lt. The EVO and the left space in the order group telegraph a Lui Xing and/or a Guijja, but I am not sure for the moment.

My second Shihab also takes the roof where the first is deployed and Krit appears also on the left, a bit forwarded. His helper starts on the roof with the REMs.

QK 1: My second group loses two orders. The Hawwa hacker starts on the right, scoring Sabotage on the container there. Now I realise the trap and remember the HacTao, but since I can't be sure where he is deployed, I push forward. In the next order the Hawwa is shot in the back by the HacTao, overwatching the right. The Azrail climbs up the building in front of him and starts shooting at the HacTao, inflicting one wound and forcing him into full cover. To recover my Hawwa, the doc advances a bit to the right side. My Lt and the Azrail enter suppressive fire.

IA 1: Controlled Jump is activated and the Lui Xing uses the only uncovered place in my DZ to land behind my Najjarun. He scores Mapping and Telemetry without any problems and a missile knocks my Fanous out. A second one is tanked by the engineer. The HacTao enters marker state.

QK 2: A Yuan Yuan drops behind the Lui Xing and engages him, only to lose the CC and die. So that problem won't be solved this turn. The second option is to clear the REMs on the left building. The Djanbazan advances a bit and discovers a Zhenca in the center. We are both shooting on 12s, since he has a panzerfaust. Now the crit-fest starts and the Djanbazan is evaporated directly. The only option left to get rid of the SML is the left Yuan Yuan, landing behind the drop-ship and smoking his way up to the roof. While engaging the missile-bot, I template all REMs and get shot. The missile-bot and the helper recieve a wound. My doc advances a bit further to revive the Hawwa in turn three.

IA 2: Krit climbs up the building, repairing the missile-bot and his helper. A new missile kills my engineer. With the remaining orders, the HacTao tries to kill the Azrail, only inflicting one wound with several crits on both sides.

QK 3: I dragg as many orders into group one as possible to have some ressources left for the revivied Hawwa. As backup, the Rafiq can use some orders and Azrail gets some to kill the HacTao. First Azrail dies to the HacTao, then the Doc revives the Hawwa, unseen due to the obstructed right side. The Hawwa dies again to the HacTao while scoring Mapping. I fail to score Telemetry in a coordinated order with both Shihabs and the Rafiq on the TR-bot, thanks to a crit on both sides.

IA 3: Krit switches the flanks and scores Nanoespionage on the unconscious Hawwa.

With that, I loose 7 to 2. It would have been an easy thing, if I would not have underestimated IA in general. Leaving the premium spot for an AD-hacker with this set of classifieds was a crucial mistake and rocketing up the right side without any cover only to be surprised by a HacTao, clearly telegraphed by the deployment, wasn't clever, too. As the Djanbazan was killed, things were done, since he was the last tool to use properly and get into a nice position to dominate the game. Greebo then played his game calm enough, focussing on the recovery of his elements and picking his targets carefully. It would have been a good option to redeploy the HacTao towards the left, attacking my units, instead of forcing things against my Azrail, but that would have opened the flank for my doc and the Hawwa again.

Pandemic Protocol 2: Round 1 (QK vs. CA)

After all the european events, it was time to get a bit back to the locals. So I started orgaizing the 2. Pandemic Protocol. With 16 players from Germany, we started right after ITS 12 was released, all happy to have new tournament-rules and all sectorials available. For that reason, I listed myself in the crowd with Qapu Khalqi and their new wildcard-links.

The first round of the tournament was Capture & Protect and I had the 'luck' to play against the number three of the last ITS season, WorstC4se. Instead of his beloved Nomads, he is playing vanilla CA in this event. I have to admit that some of his battlereports, focussing on odds and decision making, really influenced my way of playing and may have inspired me to write my own battlereports. So I was really curious how this may turn out!

I wrote that list before I knew about my opponent and only made slight changes. The plan was to get the beacon secured with one Yuan Yuan, while the other one secures the path for him. Everything else should be distraction and defense. The double MSV-sniper in the core-team covers a lot of space and is able to damage a lot of things. In addition to this, two snipers allow me to have one on the ground and start moving to pick juicy targets actively. The Sekban is included to use the NCO. It was an advice of AssaultUnicorn here, who is a real fan of them in a core-link, so I gave it a try.
While the Hawwa FO should be a back-up for the Yuan Yuans, the two snipers should cause some headache on my weaker ARO-spots. One should team up with the Fanous, while the other one should have a look at the Azrail. The Azrail itself only was there to move up a bit and enter suppressive fire in cover, being as hard to remove as possible. With Rahman there, everything should be revived as often as possible.
As slight change towards CA as opponent, the Bashi was included. One Speculo would be there for sure and if I get the chance, the Bashi is a good tool to simply pin it down. For the case that it is clear that there won't be a Speculo, he can stay in reserve and maybe pick the beacon. Who would really rely on a Yuan Yuan?

Everyone would have expected the typical Avatar-list, but WorstC4se deployed the opposite: One hidden Sphinx to steal the beacon and a bunch of annoying terror-pieces to stop my attempt and secure the retreat of the Sphinx. Daturazis are a good secondary option to recover the beacon or to close narrow corners. The Haiduk may be included due to the map, which was quite dense, so that long-range AROs are not super efficient. Flash-bots are always a good thing to add some more cover to this. Since most of the important units have Terrain (Total), the Dazer of the Shrouded paid twice. On the one hand, my attack-potential was limited and on the other hand everything else gets faster by moving through the difficult terrain. Sounded like a good plan!

For this game, I chose a recent map from the White Noise-collection, made by Cabaray (thank you again for this, man!). It used the new Micro Arts terrain and had a lot of narrow and not so long corridors. Two longer firelanes were there - one on the right from one DZ to the other and one in the north half from the center to the right side. We agreed to not deploy on the rooftops with the solar panels.

I loose the Lt-roll and deploy first in the south. To not have to run my Yuan through things that advanced into the midfield, I chose to go first. My decompression zones go in front of the enemy-DZ to make the advance a bit more difficult, but leaving enough gaps for my Yuan Yuans to get the beacon out. This is done a bit too obvious, so the planned path is closed by an opposing zone. The last one blocks my major exit of the DZ.

My core-team starts on the right around the long street. Fanous and Hawwa overwatch the right edge, while the EVO hides in the back. The center is overwatched by Rahman and his flash pulse. I saw the left side to be better suitable for the Azrail in suppressive fire, so he and his Hawwa-buddy take the far left. My FO-Hawwa also takes the left but more centered to catch things in the close corners.

The beacon is overwatched by the Haiduk, both R-drones and two Daturazis. The Nexus hides behind them. Bit hides on a rooftop on the left, together with the sensor-drone, while Kiss is down in the streets. A third Daturazi securs the far left side and the right is quite uncovered. All camo-markers start in the center, so that the Dazer coveres the central left.

Since there is no Speculo deployed yet, I choose to not deploy my Bashi Bazouk. A Speculo is deployed in front of my core-team on the first storage of the building.

QK 1: I loose two orders in my first group and skip my impetous phase. The defense around the beacon is lined up quite nice, so I try to wipe them out with my Yuan Yuan. Controlled jump activated, Yuan 1 lands in the enemy-DZ with an HMG. Using some smoke, he places a template over Haiduk, both R-drones and the Daturazi, only to be engaged by the Haiduk and the Daturazi and everyone dodging the shot. This takes the whole first group. On the left, Azrail advances and enters suppressive fire, while the Bashi Bazouk enters the field in my DZ and advances towards the Speculo, blocking the ladder he would have to take to engage my link.

CA 1: The sensor-bot crawls into the center on the walkways and discovers my Hawwa FO. Since the hacking-thread is non existent now, the Spinx appears, burning him down and grabbing my beacon under smoke from the Speculo. Meanwhile the Daturazi shredds my Yuan Yuan. On her way back, the Sphinx engages my Hawwa and Azrail. One heavy pistol-crit causes two wounds on the TAG, while Azrail also takes a wound in the process. Under heavy fire, the Sphinx manages to retreat into a safe corner of the CA DZ.

QK 2: Since controlled jump is still active, the second Yuan Yuan and his motorcycle jump in the back of the Sphinx and dropping it in melee. To avoid any camo-engineering, the TAG gets coup-de-graced, but then the Yuan Yuan is a bit overstrained and gets stunned on the way towards the beacon. In my DZ the Bashi finally pins down the Speculo, while my core-team advances into the center, gunning down one R-drone. The HRL uses the corpse as a target, but the Daturazi and Haiduk again manage to dodge the template. Azrail re-enters suppressive fire and the right Hawwa sniper advances on the rooftops to pin Bit down, if she tries to get the beacon.

CA 2: First a Liberto tries to engage my link and Azrail but dies in the progress. Of course the light shotgun manages to knock the Azrail out. Then the Shrouded followed his path but is gunned down by my link, followed by one Daturazi. This guy manages to take out one sniper and the normal Hafza before he dies. A smoke template covers Bit, who climbs down the building, but the beacon is taken by the far left Daturazi after killing the Yuan Yuan.

QK 3: I have no option to get to the beacon, so it is simply about denial now. The remainings of my link advance towards the left. A pointless shootout between my sniper and Kiss, followed by an R-drone, let my sniper advance unharmed on the far left side, so that he can gun down the Daturazi. Rahman uses his Nasmat to revive the Azrail, scoring Experimental Drug.

CA 3: The last Daturazi covers the center in smoke, so that Bit can easily grab the beacon.

With this, I loose 1-9. After my 'alpha-strike' failed completely, my pointless deployment closed the coffin. The Azrail did more than everyone would expect to stop the Sphinx, but in that moment things were already lost. WorstC4ses' plan was too good here. I failed to access my DZ right here and went with my snipers in the long but uninteresting firelane. If I would have placed them more on the left and maybe switched the Azrail to the right, I would have gained more flexibility and a better defense of my beacon. On the other hand that would have simply had a switched focus of the opposing attack...

Nevertheless I am quite satisfied with this list and QK in general. The added Sekban in the core-link increased the order-efficiency singnificantly. It may be not necessary in a purely defensive link, but once you want to use it more aggressively, you are happy to have this added order. To invest into a more expensive core-team of Djanbazans also was a good idea. Not only that two MSV 2-snipers are always great, but also the high arm and the regeneration on PH 13 makes decisions more easy. The mos present thread to such links are DTWs, but in this case this can't be a problem. If they get one wound, they simply stand up again on their own or are revivied by Rahman, so you can always shoot and kill the stuff attacking you.
This also was my second game with two Hawwa snipers, teamed with an other ARO-piece. If you manage to team them with something else, the sniper rifles becoma a real thread and gain good value in your advance, even with BS 11. But you have to place them in a way, that they see the opponents attackpieces in a spot they don't want to be seen by one additional unit. Unfortunately, this takes most of your space in the list, if you already have a full core-team and two Yuan Yuans. Maybe one here is enough then. That maybe would have allowed me to invest in a better offence in form of a Kaplan spitfire or maybe a cheap haris around a Sekban spitfire. This will be tested in the future.

Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide: The trade-off between rules and reality

Maybe the most exiting thing about Infinity is the stunning terrain you play your games on. Even if you don't own one of these premium tables, you can find them shared all over the internet and sometime will find the place, time and money to build one yourself. Unfortunately, the best looking terrain or the most realistic terrain may cause problems when it comes to the practical games, since the rules require certain considerations. To avoid the situation that you spent hours on your map and only see these issues in the first, long awaited game, I want to discuss these points in this part of the guide.

Cover

Before the cover-rules changed in N4, 30% of the actual silhouette of a model needed to be concealed to get cover. This set the height and width of most scatter terrain, since it was quite useless in game-terms, if a S2 model is not able to get cover while standing behind it. With N4 there is no given percentage, but only that a part of your silhouette is concealed by the terrain you are touching. In this case, the new edition lowered the error-potential while building the right terrain a bit. Before the planter you wanted to use as scatter terrain needed a specified minimum size and even if S2 would gain cover, the next S4 unit maybe won't get cover there. Now even a small water hydrant gives cover to everything hiding behind, even a Maghariba Guard.
In the same way, N4 changed the cover-rules for units on elevated positions. In N3, your trooper needed to be prone on an elevated position to get cover, or stand on any kind of handrail. While being prone on an elevated position limits your LoF in many ways and causes misunderstandings, handrails are not usable or nice on every piece of scenery. Not every roof is designed to walk on it, mointains or bigger rocks rarely have any handrails and whatever weird situation there may have been...Now it is solved, since you only need to be higher than the trooper you are interacting with. So your troopers can walk on any kind of roof and rock-formation you are planning. But before throwing away all your handrails, make sure to have other horizontal structures to grant any kind of cover against troopers on the same level.

Scarface on the right now gets cover from everything on the ground level. Thanks to the small planter, a part of his silhouette is covered even for things on the same roof. On the other hand, the Uhlan on the left has free sight on Scarface. Take this situation into account while setting up your map.

Placing

Besides cover as one former important point to consider for your map, the necessity to be able to place a model somewhere may be the most important thing to consider while planning and building your terrain. The issue of placing occurs whenever you are building any kind of non-standard terrain. Espcially if you want to work with rock-formations or anything similar, you need to make sure that every model you want to be there is able to be placed somewhere. It isn't that important anymore that the whole path is wide enough to fit the base, but to make terrain playable in this term, there needs to be a place big enough after a narrow path. This path should not be longer than 4", maybe in some rare cases 6", so that there are places where troopers can move to with their build in MOV. If this isn't planned properly, troopers may only cross the terrain with two short movements and have no opportunity to react to the AROs they will produce, since they can't legally stop their movement in the path. Nevertheless, you can always use this kind of problem to design paths not suitable for bigger units like TAGs or REMs, if you think this would be necessary.
One last thing to consider regarding placing issues are te highest points of your map. Sometimes you build rock formations or even buildings higher than the rest of your terrain. In most cases, this generates really fancy sniper spots, which can't be accessed from the ground. To avoid this, make sure to either design your terrain in a way that you can't place a model on this pieces, or that it is clear for everyone, that deploying there is forbidden. 

This hill is designed to minimize placing problems and avoid miniatures falling down. While Saito can be placed nearly everywhere here, Scarface can't legally take the current position, but cansimply vault over the hill to a position, where he can be placed.

Interaction

Rulewise models use and interact with terrain most of the time when they are vaulting over obstacles, climbing on things or jumping from one point to an other. While climbing and jumping are more or less designed to deal with specific terrain-situations but are quite order intensive in most cases, vaulting is the short-cut for this. Rulewise a model can move over or climb on obstacles without any restrictions, if the obstacle is not higher than the silhouette of the active model. In many cases you want to make your buildings and other higher terrain-pieces more accessable while also lacking some ladders to fulfill this role. For this situation, the vaulting-rule allow you to create easy access-points for normal troopers by stacking some smaller boxes or creating other stacked structures. This also adds new combinations for cover to your terrain. On the other hand you need to make sure that bigger units, especially TAGs can't go everywhere without any difficulties. This is an issue with the old Icestorm-terrain, since the buildings are slightly lower than S7 models, so rulewise every TAG can just move over them. While building your own map, take care of these two problems and choose the right height for your terrain.

The old papercraf terrain from Corvus Belli is slightly smaller than S7, so that TAGs can simply vault on the buildings and containers. Take this into account to determine where things can move easily and where not.

Line of fire

Of course, some of the previous points already interacted with different situations of LoF-issues, but there is an other specific one to point out. In many situations, you want to spice your terrain up with more irregular terrain, altering the standard box-shape. This can be a walkway, a forest or some kind of industrial plant. But while leaving the box-shape with defined volume, there will appear holes and unblocked corridors within the terrain piece. This is also valid for buildings with windows, where you intentionally can draw LoF through the whole building. I would assume that these kind of LoF-issues is the most common reason for arguments and kind of gotcha!-moments in Infinity, since it is played differently everywhere and so is up to interpretation.
This overall problem could only be avoided if you build complete consistent and clear terrain. Unfortunately, this will be quite boring in general and would let most of the beauty of the setting unused. So please continue building cool terrain, but I heavily recommend to try to design the terrain as clear as possible, considering the different possible interpretations and ways to use it and in the best case note some instructions to be handed out on the table.

This high pillar is a premium place for every stron ARO-unit and also fits at least S6 units. If there is no ruling or clarification about deploying there, you can break your game easily.

This building illustrates several issues with terrain and LoF. Not only that it is totally open on each side, so that units can draw LoF easily through it, it also shows how terrain which is designed to block LoF can fail with this, if you don't clarify it. Be clear about the use of real LoF or home-rules and take those possible LoF-issues into account.

Clarity

The previous LoF-issue may be the most common problem of clarity on Infinity-maps, but they can and will occur in every non-standard situation. If you took all the previous points into account while desgning your terrain, you will have avoided a lot of discussion. But nevertheless, there will always be situations where the exact ruling or practical use of a piece of terrain is not 100% clear. But since the game itself is quite complex and works a lot with pre-calculating interactions, uncertainities regarding terrain-pieces really should be minimized. To do so, try to design the terrain as clear as possible and wherever this is not possible or wanted, give some easy to understand advice or instruction to the players. To talk through a map before the game really should be the standard procedure for every player, but we all know how things go sometime. So prepare two papers with short instructions and store them together with the terrain. In that way, the information is always available on the map, when it is used for a game.

N4 Escalation League Part 2

Even with a lockdown-light at the moment in Germany, a lot of work and several games in TTS increase the backlog and deny the time to write down all the battlereports. So the second part of the report about our Escalation League took a bit longer than expected.

 

Round 2: Hunting Party

While the first round for me turned out quite nice, I hoped to continue this in round two. The choice of mission boosted this, since I am the only one with proper experience of these nieche-missions in our local group. Also my opponent, Bakunin, lost his first round horribly, so what could go wrong?

At the time I was preparing these lists, I thought that I could build a Varangian-haris, what is not the case. So I wanted to slinghot Shona into CC with this link and gluing things down. The Lawkeeper was the major beatstick, utilizing his speed to remove obstacles from the perfect position. In case something goes wrong, there is a Beta spitfire and a full linked Psi COp MMR as last defense. Minimizing on specialists here should reduce the opportunities for my opponent to score some points.

The haris of Reverends is a general appearance in his Bakunin-lists. For Hunting Party, their high PH is a real benefit. I am not sure about the composition there, maybe Kusanagi was also in that list to add some firepower. Besides that, everything else is gathered in a core-link build around a Riot spitfire as major beatstick. A Morlock and a Zero KHD should cause some trouble besides that.

The map has some niece elevated spots in the center, topped by a tower in the south deployment zone. I manage to go first and get the south deployment zone.

The haris with Shona takes the right side, since I can simply smoke the edge and advance there. The core-team is scattered on the left around the corner with the Lt high on the tower to be safe. As a back-up, the Beta takes the center.

The Moderator-core is also deployed on the right, the Reverend-haris on the left. A Morlock screens the core-links.

My Badlands Patrol takes the left center and gets a camo marker infront of him on the center line.

Starmada 1: Mr. Mad Cop advances, which triggers the Zero KHD, placing a mine. The Psi COp glues him to prevent further problems and then disables the mine.With the next movement, the Badlands Patrol gets shot by a Moderator. To get a better position, the Psi COp advances a bit, which is used by the Zero to reset. On the left the Varangians advance and enter suppressife fire under smoke.

Bakunin 1: The Riot Grrl utilizes her visor, executing both Varangians and Shona without any problems. A new mine is placed by the Zero, which fails to activate the console.

Starmada 2: A first shot of the Beta is dodged by the Zero, which leaves the LoF. The next four orders only scratch the armour of the killer-Moderator and the Beta needs to retreat. Before entering suppressive fire, he recieves a first wound.

Bakunin 2: First the Zero activates the console, then he drops a mine next to my link. The following shot downs the Psi COp. I am out of options here, so the game ends.

While I loose 7-0, our Newbie scores the second win against Shasvasti, taking a good place to win the whole league, but still leaving everything open for the last round.
Would the Patrol have reached his target and burn down the Reverends, I would have been in a much better place. Loosing him to a Moderator with combi rifle was bad. Having the Zero unglued that fast was bad, too. But when the Beta fails to kill the Moderator several times, things were gone. My smoke-dodge plan with the Varangians failed totally, since I misjudged the new potential of MSV 1. Being able to see through smoke, even with the modifier, limits the potential of smoke-tricks drastically.

Round three: Highly Classified:

Luckily we could use the last possible date before the second lockdown to end the league physically, of course with enough distance and safety-measures. So it went against WinterFor with the aim to score a major victory and hope to win the league with enough objective points.

The anchor of this list is the Beta-haris with two Psi COps, since this team can shoot nearly everything and score several objectives on the way. Saladin should grant me some more flexibility. The list also was created before I knew about the missing haris/core for Varangians. So one needs to go on his own, while the other one guards Shona on her way forward. Parvati rounds everything in terms of classifieds and once two turns are played, the Santiago should be able to wipe out whatever is left.

Due to the time and an advanced time for the game in that evening, I am not really sure about some points of the list here. There was a Fusilier core with Karhu and Orc for classifieds and to do some shooting, a Boygg for more shooting and a MSR Nisse for reactive shooting. To do some other stuff, a Nokken is included, as well as a Pathfinder. There may have been a further heavy weapon, but I don't remember properly.

Our big shopping center cut the right into two pieces, while the left was taken by smaller terrain pieces. There was no deploying on the higher roofs allowed, but the north got slightly better ARO positions, especially into the midfield.

I somehow need to go second, starting in the south.

Two REMs, a Nokken MSV and a heavy gun take the left, while the core, together with the Boyg and the Pathfinder start centered or on the right. The HVT is deployed on the right, behind the bus.

Together with Saladin, my haris takes the right side. Parvati hides in the center and Shona together with two Varangians are deployed on the left. The HVT also is on the left side.

The Nisse MSR is deployed on the high building on the left side and my Crusher guards my HVT in suppressive fire.

WinterFor 1: The Pathfinder crosses the table, scoring identity check on my HVT. On the right, the Boygg climbs up the shopping center and does a wound on my Beta, while everything else dodges out of sight. Some units advance a bitand the Boygg enters suppressive fire.

Starmada 1: My hacker scans the Boygg out of SF for datascan, so that the Beta can gun him down easily. On the left the Crusher finishs the Pathfinder and the MSR, then enters suppressive fire on his own.

WinterFor 2: A Fusilier hacker scores datascan on my Crusher, then the core team advances. The Karhu repairs the Pathfinder, scoring test run.

Starmada 2: The haris team advances, cutting through the whole core-team and scoring extreme prejudice on the way. The Psi COps then score identity check and follow up on the HVT.

WinterFor 3: Someone shoots down my exposed Psi COp hacker and scores extreme prejudice on him, making the game a tie.

Meanwhile the match between Bakunin and Shasvasti also ended in a tie, leading to the result that our newbie won the league with 7 OPs, followed by myself thanks to some more OPs and 4 TPs, while Bakunin took the third place, also with 4 TP and Shasvasti on the last place with 1 TP.

In general the league was a good start into the new edition, since everybody had the chance to include new skills and units slowly and could focus on new interactions in the first games. I did not expect that everyone of us goofs at least one game, mixing up the ranking completely. Only our newbie failed to mess things up. So now the consideration for lacking experience is gone and the big guns are taken in the future. But of course only strong games let you grow. For the future, we need to find some ways to deal with Covid during the winter, but the next project for our small group is on the horizon!