To Blind the Eye: The Bulleteer Armbot

Among the first set of games of Infinity I actually played was a tournament in my local city of Salt Lake. I had only played one full sized game prior, but I'm a very "into the deep end" kind of player when I like something enough to want to get into it more competitively. In my experience, more is learned from tournament style events than any other time in a tabletop wargame. One of those games was against a spam of Panoceania remotes.

It never occurred to me that a style like that was viable (now I know better) and playing against them, I sort of fell in love with the adorable little robots. It didn't take long for me to pick up probably my favorite of the Panoceania remotes... the Bulleteer.

We just want to love you!

For one, I didn't realize the box comes with two of the little bastards! My hype was pretty real when I realized I had not just one but two of these cute little buggers. I'm not sure what it is about remotes, especially the PanO ones, that I find so endearing but I'm just happy seeing these little guys running around. But who cares how fun they look (well... a lot of people do), what do they actually do?

Bulleteers are a "short" range combat remote and is AVA 2. With a 6-4 move they certainly aren't slow, BS 12 is reasonable especially when joined with stuff like the hacker you had to bring anyway giving them Marksmanship Lv. 2, they're ARM 1 and BTS 3 with a single point of structure so they're not exactly taking hits well, and they bring G: Remote Presence, Repeater, and an ODD: Optical Disruptor to the table. Repeater is great, especially for the hackers I tend to use (Fusilier on a building prone for the whole game most of the time) because to receive buffs, the Bulleteer can be anywhere on the table it wants. Really what makes these little guys just a pain in the side, though, is their Optical Disruptor.

Your two profile options are either a heavy shotgun version which is 17 points and no SWC, and a spitfire which is 1 SWC and 23 points. Pretty cheap, especially in Military Orders where I play where many of our non-cheerleader options are closer to 30, if not considerably higher. This puts him at a comparable value to spitfire options like the MSV 2 Spec. Sergeant, who is one point and .5 SWC higher, but with a bit of a different role on the field. For the points, and with me often bringing a hacker for Fairy Dust for my big Heavy Infantry fireteams anyway, I've been hard pressed *not* to throw a Bulleteer into builds. I basically have always taken the Spitfire version, and have no experience with the shotgun; I'm sure it has its place and it's very cheap, but is going to have to be more of an aggressive piece than how I'm using him.

So what is he doing? Well, he's getting involved in a coordinated order with a few other pieces, using his considerable move to get into a good defensive position, and spending most of the game in suppressive fire. Of course the option is there for him to get more aggressive, but... a lot of my list designs as I've worked more and more builds together have been around setting up lots of denial so my HI fireteam can work largely unopposed and without being flanked. This little guy is an absolute beast on suppressive fire with his ODD + the MOD from Suppressive giving enemies a -9 on their shots against him. Get him into cover and you're dealing with a considerable -12 MOD to your roll trying to fight this little guy. Even MSV 1 troops are having a degree of difficulty, it's not until you hit MSV 2 where it counters it completely, and even then you have three shots, which will at the very least give you a chance. If you stack in a hacker throwing in Assisted Fire for the round, the opponent won't even benefit from cover, which makes even this little bot's BS 12 into a very good place.

All in all I've just found that even when the Bulleteer doesn't do a ton of upfront work, he's order-intensive enough to handle to either seriously slow down my opponent or force them out of a line of fire entirely. On my side he requires very little investment, just a coordinated order to get him where I want, maybe one more for him and/or my hacker depending on his positioning or buffs that I want on him, and he's going to then spend the entire game in suppressive, being a serious pain to deal with.

What are your thoughts? How do you use Bulleteers on the table? You find any neat tricks with them we can all use? I, for one, am excited to keep playing with this crazy little bot.

I may not be where you think I am...

To Guard the Walls: MULTI Sniper Fireteam

Snipers guard the HVT closely...

Yesterday I was able to get a couple games on the table. Now I don't want to battle report (I might find a way to do that in the future but frankly this game has way too much back and forth to make written battle reports easy) but I want to talk about one of the main aspects of the list I was testing: a defensive MULTI Sniper fireteam.

Until recently I misunderstood the Fireteam rules; I thought in ARO that only the Fireteam Leader actually got... one of the bonuses, I don't remember which exactly. When I learned that no, the whole Fireteam is an ARO monster I knew I had to try a double MULTI Sniper fireteam. In Military Orders I can construct a team like that reasonably cheaply for the stats (although it's no Fusilier team, I suppose.) For this specific build I was running two MULTI Sniper order sergeants, an order sergeant with a combi rifle, an order sergeant paramedic, and Konstantinos. The reason for Konstantinos, honestly, is I needed a good specialist and I didn't have the points to let him be his Infiltration version so I figured he'd help out as a fireteam member until later in the game when one or both of the Snipers die and he can blitz forward on his own to start handling objectives as necessary.

Anyway, what does this Fireteam give you? What, in my experience so far, are the pros and cons?

Well, the pros are that they're a bitch to deal with. Two Snipers like that can be hard to avoid taking AROs from; you can spread them out pretty far if you want, or have them next to each other to be a serious threat into big targets. They're each getting their full burst in ARO, they're both getting +3 to their BS from the Fireteam, and they're both probably getting +3 from their range band unless stuff got really close to you. Even on our lowly Order Sergeants you're looking at BS 18 before other modifiers at that point; typically with firing into models in cover you're looking at 2 shots each on 15s, which is pretty damn decent. Also, if you're relying on AROs, your fireteam leader can just be a totally different model (for me it was the combi rifle order sergeant just hiding behind a building) and on your active turn, one of the snipers can take over and fire even higher burst shots into whatever he's got vision on. Pretty brutal and covers a huge area of the table.

So, what are the downsides? Well, in order to remain effective, both snipers do need to be exposed. Especially if you've got them close together, if one decides to shoot on your active turn, the other sniper is typically eating ARO shots uncontested if the other player wishes, which is a great way to break that 5-model bonus.

And then... the final downside. By its very nature, this team is quite powerful, but extremely reactive. It's a lot of points that essentially become just board denial... great board denial for sure, but you aren't really forcing your opponent to deal with it unless the terrain is really ideal for snipers. Also, if your opponent *does* have a good answer (smoke + MSV sniper before MSV troop can handle it, for example), the team really isn't very effective once broken. Konstantinos being a part of it sort of helps, in that he can break away once the team is broken and do his own thing really well, but really you've just kind of got an awkward team of slightly more expensive than necessary Order Sergeant cheerleaders pretty quickly, especially if both snipers go down.

So I have to compare this then to the heavy infantry fireteams Military Orders are known for; Hospitallers with Magister Knights have been my go to, and of course I'll be trying the Joan of Arc Pain Train soon enough. These teams are highly active, highly aggressive, and force your opponent to deal with them in a big way. My favorite aspect of the Hospitaller/Magister team is that, once that team is broken, the Magisters go nuts in a big way; they're already a good ways up the table and those Impetuous Orders get out of hand quickly. Most games I've played with them I've had them dodging their way up the table extremely fast after the fireteam dies and just tearing through stuff with panzerfausts and really vicious close combat antics. While I loved the MULTI Sniper team for its power and the satisfaction of having such a vicious ARO piece standing at the ready, it made me realize I missed my angry Knights of Order charging up the table and cutting foes down with... near... impunity.

Gotta keep the pain train rolling!

To See the Truth: Panoceania Black Friar

Disclaimer: This is not an advanced strategy guide, this is me as a new player going over the model, giving me thoughts on it; let me know if you've got additional thoughts on the model I haven't thought of!

Imperial Guard Black Friar, reporting for duty!

By the Hand of God

Welcome to Multi Spectral Infinity!

I'm Chandler, a fairly new Infinity player in the northern Utah area.

I've been a dedicated Warmachine/Hordes player for a number of years, and while I've played around with a number of miniature wargames over the years, WarmaHordes is the one that really drew me into miniature gaming as a whole. I was recently dragged into Infinity by some of the locals who have been picking it up and it got its hooks into me pretty quickly. It really started with the aesthetic, then as I dug into the rules I got locked in tighter. The games complexity, though quite the deep chasm to dive into, is a massive draw and I've loved sinking deeper and deeper into the available interactions, army builds, and just ways of playing the game.

Choosing a faction was a rough process, but in the end I settled on one of my favorite fantasy/sci fi themes in the zealous crusaders: Military Orders. Thus began an epic crusade through the galaxy, and armies of heavily armored knights bringing a sword to a gunfight... and winning. Well, some of the time anyway.

So what are we doing with the blog? Really I just like getting my thoughts about games, models, and painting on the table as I learn, and in time I'd love to push to getting out and travelling to conventions, getting to know this community which has already welcomed me with open arms a little bit better. I also like getting conversations started about these things, and a public blog is a great place to get that kind of a thing going... and at the end of the day, I'm just a media nerd. I like writing blogs, making videos, recording podcasts, and all those glorious things. If you want a fun place to see a newer player (and, eventually, more experienced player) give opinions on the game, rules, models, and reports of games played, this is a great place for it.

So that's where I'm at! Hope to have a great time growing as a member of this community as I continue on, look into new factions, paint new models, and just generally throw around what I think about this phenomenal, deep, highly complex game system!

Veritas vos Liberarit