27:12.24: Infinity N5 first test run

After about a week of doing nothing but reading the new ruleset, yesterday we tried out N5 for the first time. I am a fairly new aficionado of Corvus Belli's War Crimes Simulator with nary a few games under my belt, so I can't actually give a fair and balanced opinion of it the same way a veteran could, but my independent opinion is that the new edition is a lot more clear-cut and easy to play, with the changes to orders and saving rolls making it a far easier and more clear-cut experience.

I also found a bit of time to paint a few unpainted models to make a 150 point list, and barely that even. I woke up at 6 AM to give them a clear coat just to protect the paint (I'm a bit specific about metal models) and unfortunately didn't have the time to bring them down to mat yet so they shone like Christmas lights that evening.

You can also see a lot of the Musan City terrain here and how it's shaping up - I'll make sure to show you the details soon! I got all my terrain from Base 42 and will be finishing things up so I can return it to be used by the community.

Musan City Gun Fight. The Haqq guy better paint his stuff soon.

My newly minted Initiated Observant Jubilee, moonlighting as Uhahu.

The game was 150 points Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin vs Hassassin Bahram, Annihilation mode. My opponent chose the side to deploy and bade me deploy first, and I bade him to have the first turn. I hid most of my units on the table, and infiltrated two Zeros, a Minelayer and Forward Observer near a homefield objective.

Max Spectre, Zero Minelayer, hiding behind a big box and a burek stand.

The Mine got quickly detected and got, and the Minelayer, due to a lot of lucky rolls, remained in play, taking up a position behind a crate and staying there all game, alive and well. At this point the Haqq player moved up the field to take positions and set up firelanes, a Bokhtar and Lasiq FT on one side and a Ghulam and three Camo markers on the other, all of which revealed themselves to try and stop the very, very lucky Zero. Zero failed missions indeed.

Initiate Jubilee and a Morlock beneath her, about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

At the beginning of my turn, I moved up a set of Morlocks, one managed to pop a smoke grenade off and the other got immediately put into Unconscious due to a bunch of Haqq ARO, which inadvertently left my one sole Hacker in a bit of a tight spot. I decided to brave it and jump sans-smoke grenade, but unfortunately she didn't make her way down at all, instead getting shot to bits while jumping.

Breadman, Zero Forward Observer, holding up an objective and being covered by an errant Morlock.

Meanwhile, the other Zero, covered by the smoke grenade, managed to hack a console with a good WIP roll, putting me in charge of one console and the Haqq player at zero. At this point, Reverend Kusanagi, the woman of the hour, began to move up from the side and wipe the Hassassins from the map one by one, taking out the Ghulam.

Raela Nessaan, Tohaa Riot Grrl of the Slaughter Vixens gang.

Aided by a high-placed Riot Grrl with Spitfire in a tower, Kusanagi managed to pop off two more Daylami into shock, with the Riot Grrl putting another Daylami and the Bokhtar, who turned out to be the Haqq team's Lieutenant, into Unconscious state. At this point the game was pretty much finished, as the Haqq player only had a Lasiq and Hidden Deployment Nadhir in play, both of them in Irregular now. After Kusanagi ate all the otders and failed the WIP roll to hack a console twice, the Lasiq managed to bring her down into No Wound Incapacitation. My second turn was mop-up of the Lasiq and Nadhir, both of which were killed by the Spitfire, though I will note that I had forgotten about the Riot Grrl's Frenzy skill (again) so things could have been just a slight bit different. I also tried to move up a Zero into close range, completely forgetting just how big a Chain Rifle's template is, and it got deleted immediately by the Lasiq.

Sister Athena Argyros proxying up as Reverend Kusanagi failing to hack a console because she was too busy killing everything that moved.

There was a definite discrepancy here as two models pretty much wiped the entre opponent team, but a lot of it was lucky dice rolls and good positioning rather than an imbalance - and even though it was a turn 1 wipe more or less, which I've had happen to me as well, the reactive nature of Infinity at least makes it a fun 1-to-2 turn game, unlike some other games that are based on an I-go-you-go style, where an early game wipe just stings a lot more. With a reactive system, at least you get to roll dice while you're being rolled.

Bitzie the Vertigo Zond did nothing all game, as my Hacker got ignominiously killed due to my own bad play, and the Zero with the Forward Observer just never got to do anything when Kusanagi and the Riot Grrl hogged all the orders.

WIP: Musan City Terrain Project

To me, the best part of the hobby is creativity. Finding solutions to problems with everyday tools and with things that can be easy to find. There's a certain crow brain part of me which, upon looking at random stuff around my life immediately goes - hey, this could be a cool gubbin! Entering a craft store is like seeing the Parthenon marble.

Not to dwell too much on the hyper-capitalization of a hobby based around buying plastic toys (as well as the fell gravity well of the Great British Miniatures Satan's anti-consumer practices and the enclosure of social media) and how it has shaped the hobby and inadvertently beaten a lot of the natural creative spark and ingenuity out of it, at least in its online presentation, but the whole point of a hobby is to have fun, right? To create! Shouldn't we endeavor to make instead of buy when we can? And the Dark Gods help you if you have magpie tendencies like me.

Another important point of this is that terrain crafting seems to be, to a lot of people within the hobby, a mechanic necessity and afterthought, and sure, a building is not nearly as cool as your Primarch centerpiece, takes a lot more space, and doesn't get as many likes on Instagram. Not to belittle anyone's enjoyment of different parts of the hobby (I, for instance, don't like painting nearly as much as putting kits together), but I do genuinely believe that if people stopped treating terrain as something you just scrounge up because the game demands it, they could find a bit more of the simple enjoyment in it, especially since it's the one aspect of it where anything can go and you can use whatever you have at hand. A bit of 3d printing, a few kits, and a bit of resourcefulness can give you a pretty damn good result that will elevate your games to a whole new cinematic level that that other box of troops just won't! And it racks up interest into the hobby cause nothing beats seeing a game being played on a good-looking table!

And so, I unfortunately find it that the local community is sorely lacking in functional terrain as a whole. And, since right now I'm playing in a shared space, this project isn't just for me. It's a public good so we can all play better, cooler and more cinematic games. I intend, when Musan City is done, to slap it in a big plastic box and give it away to Base 42, the place where we gather to roll dice and move toys about.

I was inspired by a few Infinity sets in how the basic buildings should look like, and the very basic movement considerations. Don't want to make something too big which can't be used. I decided on two groups of four. I bought a few of the really tough-carded office binders, which to me, are a very easy source of thick card which I can buy at any office supply store. The faux-leather (?) exterior will also help add some texture to the building when done. I made the basic shape out of this card source, and added some plasticard (in this case, this is a PVC sheet used for stamping out plastic cards which I stole from a previous printing job - the pilfering, magpie-like, does add to the magic I think) for the stairs so that models can ostensibly stand on them.

The Sushi stand and bench are from the TT Combat Food Stalls set, here for comparison. Please ignore how destroyed this desk is, it is almost as old as I am.

To hide the edges I bought some PVC L-shaped corner angle strips used for construction and home repair. To my delight this thing glues ridiculously well! Even though it wasn't originally my plan, I decided hey you know what I can also make the railing outta this! Gotta let us have cover, right? I should have started with this before I glued the basic shape to itself, I should have just glued it to the PVC in the first place because it turned out a bit... wonky, as in, not always lying flat against the PVC. You can see the gap to the outmost left, and things aren't exactly parallel. But hey it's all a learning process, the process gives beauty to the project, and we'll put a lot of detail to hide the seams. In hindsight I could have put some more to hide the top's edges, but they don't look too bad to my eye. I don't really strive for perfection. Some of my Nomads are testing out how things fit.

The plan now was to build two groups of four boxes, one smaller type with stairs to the side, and one slightly larger group of boxes that can fit the smaller one in. Like I said, terrain can take up space, but some smart thinking can mitigate that.

A few extra buildings and ideas - we have a tower, made again from binder card and PVC L strips. The base is some old unused MDF coasters I also pilfered from the same workplace, just to give it some weight and stability. I don't know what the back girders are - I just found them in a random box a friend who hasn't been in the hobby left me. A chance find, but a welcome one. This is going to be a big billboard, which I intend to print out - the future, of course, being cyberpunk and dystopian, should be covered in all sorts of ads. If I can, perhaps some day I can figure out a way to also light things a bit - like LEDs or something to give that really cyberpunk feel. But I know next to nothing about electronics so we'll see.

Another thing I'm adding here is a plastic box for a CNC machine drill bit from a factory job I did some time ago - and walked away from with a TON of useful little bits. It's gonna be a little pillar covered in ads and posters, like a little bulletin pillar. Just a bit of cool scatter to add whimsy and charm to Musan City.

A very important detail which can't be seen here - and one of my favorite little tricks in the hobby - is that the plasticard that made up the stairs wouldn't always glue well. Being slapped onto a ragged card edge, the join was a little wonky. PVC is a dream come true as far as gluing goes, but here it was the card that floundered. So to make this a super extra sturdy join (because after all, THIS IS GOING TO BE USED, and not always within my presence so I can chastise clumsy players), the stairs are held in place by a mixture of super glue and baking soda. Super glue and baking soda glue very strong together, and I always use that to reinforce things that I'm not super sure in. It can be sanded down, though generally I do not mind the bit of texture, as you can just whisk that away. What city is super clean? Even in the future there's probably some dirt, especially on the Human Edge.

I was ruminating over how to exactly furnish the boxes. I wanted to have some doors, and I had some spare parts of MDF from the TT Combat Food Stalls (I think, or it may have been the TT Combat Objective Room, which unfortunately needs a bit of work and is at Base 42 atm.) that could make door frames, and my first idea was to cut out bits of plasticard and make some futuristic doors, but a) I didn't have enough of these and also, I wanted some windows too. Don't want the buildings to be too stuffy. Even make-believe has considerations! So I remembered I have some corrugated paper I've bought forever ago and never really used too much! I figured then that that will make window blinds and roller shutters like you see at storefronts and garages. So to add the top part of the roller I glued some styrene rods to where the shutters were gonna go. Ample PVA glue.

At this point I also built the benches you can see above, which were just two pieces of PVC cable channel nestled together, given a PVC L strip to the bottom and back, and bits of plasticard to close up the sides. I love hardware stores so much it's insane. The walkways are recycled card from an older walkway, and PVC L strips holding it together and making the railing.

The painting was simple, as quite honestly this is becoming a whole lot of terrain, so I gave everything a coat of red paint - in this case the one I could find wasn't mat, but honestly it doesn't show on porous materials at all so it's no issue. Then I masked the bottom two centimeters on the boxes, and left strips of tape on the benches and walkways, and then sprayed a thicker coat of white. You can see I became overzealous at a certain point, and in my defense I did this at like 11 PM cause I'm impatient as hell, but you know what we'll cover that later. I am very pleased with the red-and-white. It's chipped at places but actually that adds a bit of detail so it's a happy little accident. You can notice the top isn't all that well sprayed because...

I wanted to add a bit of solarpunk to this place, which could be a desert environment, could be an asteroid, could be an urban center... by gluing some fake grass to the tops to make little gardens for the tiny metal soldiers that will shed blood in the name of corporations and governments! They can have a picnic if the really wanted! Here you can see things being laid out together, and you start to get the feel for the city! 

You can also see these little barricades I have made, which are a transparent lid from drill tips boxes I also liberated from the CNC job. Glued onto the trusty L strip, they are a good source of full cover scatter.

Home stretch! Several things to note here - first, I employed the services of a friend with a 3d printer, and his work really helped bring this whole thing together - I got a few crates for scatter, a set of ladders, and some consoles for the gaming aspect - I'll work on them in due time. The crates opened up but were kind of wonky so I just sub-assemblied them, spraying red and white and gluing them together. I don't need them to be functional.

There was a lot of thought as to where to put the ladders, and I had them printed out to fit the railing-less edges just in case but decided to put them on the opposite sides instead, and they still fit really well! You can see the extra bits from the MDF sprues from TT Combat serving as window ledges, and I went with a nice orange corrugated sheet for the shutters and rollers. A few ladders remained unused so on to scatter with them!

Also a bit of cleanup, just a few strips of plasticard to hide some seams, and I'll think about continuing that on a few parts that could use some work.

As you can see the ladders still need a bit of cleanup (I am impatient, as I am wont to mention). Some of the acrylic parts of the TT Combat food stall sprue remained unused because I wanted a bit of variety with them (I will show them next time when it's all done) so I decided to furnish a few buildings with them.

Next up I will print out a few sheets of paper with posters, billboards, designs, etc. to give everything a bit of cool lived-in detail, and paint over some mistakes, hide some brush strokes, etc. Overall I am super happy with this, and I forgot to take a picture of it but it all stacks pretty well! The scatter fits into the smaller boxes neatly, and the smaller boxes fit into the bigger boxes, so it has a surprisingly small blueprint when you put it all a certain way.

Thanks all for reading, and I'll keep you updated when I furnish the final bits on this project, and I'll make sure to photograph all the tiny detail for your enjoyment. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of the whole thing laid out, and a street-level view that my Nomads, incoming Shasvastii and their enemies will see before they're sent to the cube extraction center.

Musan City in all its ignominious glory.

If nothing, you can get something to eat while getting shot at.

A view of the tower and how to climb it if you're sniper-inclined. You can also see the consoles in the back.

Faction Showcase: The Sons of Malady

 

The Maelstrom-bound planet of Krypteia IV is ruled by two factions of Chaos Space Marines - the more numerous Shadow Reavers, and the smaller, yet more specialized Sons of Malady, worshippers of Nurgle the Plaguefather.

The Sons are an offshoot of the Iron Warriors, who escaped Medrengard upon developing The Gauntlet of the Sacred Affliction, a novel method of binding a host suffering from the obliterator technovirus to a vehicle - akin to the process of binding a daemon of the Empyrean to a machine. Covetous of their secret ways and paranoid of their brethren in the IV Legion, they made their way to the Maelstrom, where they found the hidden system of Krypteia - a system of four planets, the fourth of which housed hidden subterranean forges of the Dark Mechanicum, and whose surface was ruled by petty tetrarchs. Finding common ground with the warband known as the Shadow Reavers, the two groups worked together to oust the tetrarchs and declare themselves masters of the planet. To what end the paranoid and secretive Maladists aided the Reavers in the conquest, only two people know, and neither is willing to share the secret. However, building the sort of rapport that stems from battle, the Maladists and Reavers meshed their styles of combat so well that they decided to maintain the partnership in perpetuity, though the never-trusting Maladists have plenty of contingencies for the, in their minds, inevitable moment the two come to blows. Whatever their future machinations, the Maladists bide their time, pursuing their own goals away from the prying eyes of enemies and allies alike, whether in Medrengard or in the Maelstrom.

The Maladists escape Medrengard with their hard-developed secrets.

An Obliterator cult that numbers only scant groups of seven, they specialize in siege warfare and heavy weapons support for the more numerous Reavers and their respective slaves to darkness, the Porphyr Elixis and the Plaguebatteries numbering in droves. Seldom do the Maladists enter the fray in any number, as covetous of their lives as of their secrets, but when they do, they relish in destruction, bringing overwhelming firepower and swift death to all who oppose them. They have an almost religious hatred of enemy fortifications, and dismantle them with murderous, daemonic glee, for it is the Plaguefather Nurgle that demands the inevitable end and rebirth of all things.

ORGANIZATION

War Smith Baash-Chellik the Deathless

Baash-Chellik is the sole leader of the warband, a hulking monstrosity of a creature that can no longer be called human. Struck by the obliterator virus aeons ago, the mutated War Smith has been destroyed countless times, only to rise up again, regenerating from leftover scraps of slag - thus, called the Deathless. Or at least, so do Maladist legends claim. Almost none alive has seen this alleged process of regeneration. He is revered as living god of the Maladists, both among the warband's marines and their mewling mortal supplicants. His plans span centuries, and none know them, save the Deathless.

Sergeant Lobanya, bottom left, is the newest struck by the technovirus, yet oldest among the Maladists and more ambitious than all of them combined. Some rumour him to have seen the beginning of the Long War itself. Solely he, among all, knows the Deathless's true machinations and nature.

The Plaguefather's Chosen

The elite of the warband, the Chosen are those living who have been afflicted with the technovirus that mutates a Space Marine into an Obliterator, an avatar of diseased, heavy-gunned destruction. Numbering exactly six, along with the Deathless they make the sacred number of Nurgle, their patron - 7. Pustulent monsters that drink promethium and spew flesh-slick weapons from their innards, they are revered as demigods by the Maladists' subjects. Whenever an otherwise hale Maladist begins to show the signs of the technovirus, he makes his way towards the Chosen's inner fortress and demands recognition among their number. One among them must answer his call and fight the upstart to the death, for the sacred number of seven must be maintained to keep the favour of the Grandfather of all Plagues. If the upstart manages to win and kill the Chosen, then, and only then, may he take his place among the brotherhood.

Those stricken with the technovirus who fail to reach the Chosen's echelon are chained to abominable weapons of destruction, becoming known as brother-machines by the rest of the Maladists.

The Predator Endless Spite.

The Land Raider Iron Cage, named for that ancient battle with great gladness.

Brother-Machines of the Maladists

The scant few among the Chosen who will be given Nurgle's honour to bear the mutating technovirus but will fail to win their death duel against the seating Chosen or are otherwise lost to battle before they can issue their challenge, will undergo the Gauntlet of the Sacred Affliction. Should they survive the deadly warp-infused, tech-heretical ritual, the secret and revered process of Maladist binding will turn the hopeful into an unholy and powerful amalgam, becoming daemon, man, vehicle and virus all in one. Put through a grueling seventy-seven-day process, the chosen supplicant's soul will be painfully torn from their body and merged with that of a daemon and then a vehicle, anointed in pus-filled unguents and given new existence as a living, sentient warmachine of the Maladists.

Like the obliterator who bore the technovirus in life, this new amalgam can likewise produce different panoplies and armaments from its techno-organic innards, a process which takes days to complete and requires an inordinate amount of power, during which the machine must be fed promethium, scrap metal, ammunition and human flesh. This flexibility in loadouts allows the Maladists to sport a smaller pool of vehicles which can be outfitted towards any necessity.

Kugarin Ulerov, Warpsmith

Ulerov is the latest recruit of the warband, and the sole survivor of seventy other chosen to undergo the process of becoming a Space Marine. Outside of the demigod Chosen, each Maladist is a heretek by nature, and they do not serve in direct combat roles, instead maintaining the vehicles and equipment of the Sons and their mortal servants, the Plaguebatteries. As a former bombardier general of the Plaguebatterists, Ulerov, knowing their ways and well-respected for his tactical acumen, is often put in charge of the countless rabble.

Every brand of war machine is, in effect, a living Maladist given new power.

The Plaguebatteries form Heavy Weapons Squads or Fire Teams to do the grunt work of their masters.

The Plaguebatteries

Machines of war, human hereteks, renegades and their ilk, the Plaguebatteries comprise the main bulk of the Maladists' forces. Venerating the Chaos Space Marines and their machines as living deities, each among their number hopes to one day join the ranks of the Astartes, yet almost none succeed. Experts at siege warfare, they are as spiteful and cruel as any Iron Warrior, and will freely stab each other over even the slightest promise of a promotion up the ranks. Despite their ragged and brutal nature, they are well organised and extremely hierarchical, for the Maladists require unerring discipline and grit. They are used as pawns and bargaining chips in the game of war by their callous and uncaring masters, expending their lives in numberless hordes in the scant hope of climbing up the ladder - eventually, to godhood.

When working with their mortal kin, the Reavers' own subjects the Porphyr Elixis, they are doggedly obtuse and stubborn, and will more often than not refuse orders from Elixis commanders until a Maladist (this dubious honour most often falling to Warpsmith Ulerov) interjects and forces them to work together. Thus many campaigns have met ignominious failure solely due to refusal to coordinate - the Batteries firing where they will, even upon supposed allies, for such is their cruel and uncaring nature.

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That concludes our first Faction focus and my first post on this blog! Thanks for reading! I hope to get new pictures at a certain date, and I have some more Plaguebatterist things in the works eventually.