Infinity - PanOceania: Family Photos and Army List

Here are some group photos of the completed 300-point PanOceania army.

 Here is the army list:

With the Fusilier as the obvious Lieutenant, you want to tuck him away, hidden in a building somewhere that it will be very difficult for the enemy to get to. Support him with AROs from some of the other models.

The Aquila provides amazing, hard-hitting and survivable fire support with his HMG and MSV3. Auto-Discover is great for PanO who often fail WIP rolls...

The Nisse Sniper locks down objectives or fire lanes from a good perch in your deployment zone. ARM 3 and MSV2 means he can get work done with a good field of fire in cover.

The Hospital Knight Doctor needs to get your Objectives taken care of. He's pretty tough, but watch out for E/M and enemy Hackers. And he can revive fallen comrades if he needs to.

Brother Konstantinos can start infiltrated right by an upfield objective, increasing your order efficiency. If you draw the Sabotage Classified Objective, he starts the game almost on top of his target, and can get those D-Charges planted and detonated right off the bat. Don't forget his Mimetism, and that Assault Pistol is nasty within 8" - especially with his Visor ignoring Camo effects.

The Kamau Hacker is mostly here to bolster the REMs with Supportware. She can put Assisted Fire (grants Marksmanship Lvl 2, which means you ignore your enemy's cover on BS rolls!) on the Bulleteer or Peacemaker from anywhere on the table, since they are Repeaters, but needs to be within 8" of the Sierra to do so. Ignoring cover is awesome! If your target is foolishly out of cover and only has 1 wound on the profile... go ahead and downgrade to Marksmanship Lvl 1 and make those guns have Shock ammo. She can only run 1 Supportware program at a time, so you'll have to decide which bot needs it at what time.

The Sierra Dronbot has Total Reaction which means it will fire its full burst of 4 with its HMG even in the Reactive turn. And it can see in all directions (360° Visor). It's a nightmare to deal with - your opponents will hate it.

The Bulleteer Armbot is packing a Spitfire and has ODD, which means you can get it into some very favorable matchups. In your +3 range of up to 24", ignoring cover because of the Assisted Fire Supportware from the Kamau, you are hitting with 4 dice on 15s. Meanwhile, catch an enemy combi rifle, MULTI rifle, or Plasma Rifle in that 16-24" band and they will be -3 for range, -3 for your cover, and -6 for the Bulleteer's ODD - a maxed out MOD of -12 to their BS! Often times they can't even hit, so will have to dodge. With good maneuvering, this bastard can severely reduce an enemy's order pool by picking on the "order monkeys" that can't even hit it back.

The Peacemaker Armbot can start halfway across the table thanks to Mechanised Deployment.  That means it will be a lot easier to get into that sweet +6 range band of its Heavy Shotgun (within 8"). Thankfully the auxbot can watch its flanks and rear, since it will be venturing largely unsupported into enemy territory. You can pair this with the Infiltrating Konstantinos for mutual support.

Finally, the Akal Commando. I prefer the Boarding Shotgun for the +6 range band and the small teardrop it places on impact, but the extra point is available if you want to swap it out for the Combi Rifle version. This AD: Combat Jump Troop can land anywhere on the table that you can fit the Circular Template (free of terrain or models), but that requires a PH roll. The Kamau can use the Controlled Jump program to add +3 to his target number for the jump, giving him a 70% chance of success... But I prefer to take luck completely out of it if I can, and downgrade to AD: Airborne Infiltration and walk in from a board edge. The idea with this guy is to get behind enemy lines and disrupt the supporting backfield, taking out Hackers and other Specialists, "cheerleaders," fireteams (who tend to get bunched up), or even the enemy Lieutenant. Careful placement and movement to limit AROs is key, but if he can line that shotgun blast up against 4 dudes hiding in a line behind a building... Watch out. Good times.

So with the aggressive Peacemaker, Konstantinos, and Akal being all up in the opponent's grill on Turn one, he has to spend time (and Orders!) dealing with those threats while your troops can work on objectives on your side of the table. Later in the game, the PanO fire support and forward attack should have softened up the enemy enough for you to extend your specialists forward, grabbing more advanced objectives.  Having only 3 Specialists is pretty light - I normally like to have 5 in a list because they earn you the OP in ITS - but the shock and awe of the forward attack paired with monstrous backline fire support means that the thing you have to be most concerned about is putting your opponent in Retreat too early in the game, before you claim all the OP that you can!

Infinity: List-Building

Several folks have approached me, confused about how to build their army list for Infinity. Hopefully I can help out, so you know what models to start painting!

Like most games, Infinity assigns models a points value to help create fair and balanced lists. The points you spend on your models cannot exceed the agreed-upon points total for the match. The tournament and campaign standard for Infinity is 300 points. 150 points is a good starting value to get into the game with for your first few games. Fewer points really limits your options, and at higher totals the options can become overwhelming. So: Start at 150, and plan toward an eventual 300.

When selecting models, keep track of their "AVA" or availability stat. This indicates the total number of models with that troop profile you are allowed to have in your army list. Characters are always AVA 1, obviously, specialized troops may be AVA 2 or 3, and more common troops may have AVA 4, 5, or "Total." Total Availability means you can have as many of that model as you would like in your army.

Infinity models also come with an "SWC" points cost. This stands for Support Weapon Cost, and is used to balance the amount of special or heavy weaponry your list may include.  Basic troops armed with a standard Combi-Rifle and no special abilities will have an SWC of 0. Heavy weapons like an Heavy Machine Gun will incur an SWC of 1, 1.5, or 2, depending on who is carrying it. Your army can include 1 SWC for every 50 points of the army's total. So in a 300-point game, even if you actually only spend 298 of your 300 points, you may include up to 6 SWC worth of troops.

Every troop type within the faction has a profile with multiple weapon and skill options, with the points cost and SWC listed with each different load out. Like this:

So - choose each model you wish, subtracting its points and SWC from your total available, until you have filled out the army list - keeping in mind Availability, of course.

Every list must include one Lieutenant. In the Fusiliers entry, above, you see that the Lieutenant option there is the same points cost and SWC as the normal version. This is often the case. If the troop is not likely to be in a leadership role, he may cost extra SWC to discourage you from that option. 

Unlike most games, the Lieutenant is not necessarily the strongest, toughest, and most badass character on the table. Think about the movie Aliens - Lt. Gorman sat on the bus and directed traffic (poorly) from his computer bank, but Vasquez probably cost the most "points" out of anybody on the team of Colonial Marines.

Just make sure to select one Lieutenant option, and only one. By the way - if your Lieutenant buys the farm, your army is in deep doo doo. So maybe waiting on the bus and directing traffic from a computer bank is exactly what you want...

There are a couple of other things to consider when creating the list. First, if you want to take any Remotes (REM) - little semi-intelligent robots - you first need to include either a Hacker or a TAG model. The second, and most important, is the concept of Combat Groups and your Order Pool.

Each model you include usually adds one order to your Order Pool. The Order Pool lets your models do "stuff" during your turn. Each model may use one Order, or one model can use all your Orders by itself - whatever suits your strategy and game-plan that turn. The key thing to note during list building is that if you don't have enough Orders, you won't be able to do much of anything.

Sure, it may be tempting to grab that cool TAG model, and these other 4 really cool-looking models that are really expensive, points-wise; but then you are order-starved at 5 Orders, and your opponent will out-maneuver you every time.

A Combat Group is a group of up to 10 models. If your army has more than 10 models, it must be split into multiple Combat Groups. Each Combat Group may only use the Orders from its own group.  What this means is that the number of Orders you want to shoot for is 10. Nine is good, 8 is alright... but 7 or less and you'll find yourself running out of Orders before you get to do everything you wanted to do in a turn.

So, why would I take a lowly Fusilier instead of loading up on awesome Aquila Guard? Because I need those basic line troops in there to provide me some cheap Orders for my Order Pool (I can get 6 Fusiliers - 6 Orders - for the price of one Aquila). We call these guys "Cheerleaders," because they may not be there to take an active and vital part in the action, but they are necessary to build up Orders, so that your super-fancy models can get done what needs doin'!


So - Availability, Points Cost, SWC, Lieutenant, Order Pool. All set?

The cool thing is that all of Infinity's army and weapon lists are available as Free Downloads. They are broken down book-by-book, rather than by complete Factions, so you'll need each to see all of your option. Also, the Infinity Army Builder is a Flash-based interactive army building tool that is alos free on their web site.

Links!
Core Rule Book Army/Weapon lists
Human Sphere (book 2) Army/Weapon lists
Campaign: Paradiso (book 3) Army/Weapon lists

Infinity Army Builder