Thoughts from Luke Weston

Overview

Like many people my first wargame was 40k. I played during highschool, ran a small school club and made some mates that helped me get through school until I discovered music and girls and dropped it. I didn’t really pick any kind of gaming hobby again until the end of university where I found magic and X wing. Magic fell by the wayside when I couldn’t afford to keep the habit but X wing stayed, and I started to discover how I would be making friends for the next 10 years. 

All but one of my friends now I either met through work or gaming. Having something to talk about that so easily breaks the ice on a first meeting is invaluable. Especially for socially awkward people or in strange and foreign environments. 

Traveling

Back before the plague made the world big and hard to navigate again, I went traveling for a year to Australia with my partner at the time. The first things I packed were some of my choice X wing models / squads and a few smaller card games (exploding kittens for example). 

I literally spent hours deciding what to take, and how I was best going to be able to pack them into as small a case as possible, so I could backpack around Australia and the southern hemisphere. 

My trip took me all over the country and I spent a lot of the time there in Melbourne. I played games in every city I went to and even to a gaming club in the outback in Kalgoorlie.I met a lot of great people and loved how gaming allowed me to easily make friends in all these different cities so easily. 

I eventually decided I wanted to pick up a small-scale skirmish game…

I was stuck between Killteam, Necromunda and this weird sci fi game called infinity. General games in Melbourne were super helpful highlighting the pros and cons of each, and I found that a game with free rules and a fantastic army builder app sold it to me. 

I took the new game with me and started learning to play. I had the loss of lieutenant guys play a few 3 on 3 games and 200 point games and show me the ropes before they properly started up the cast. I then moved to New Zealand and continued to learn the game meeting even more people such as the Khandalla gaming club in wellington and some of the players in Auckland. 

Sadly the traveling had to end and I ended up back in the UK with my partner at the time and living in a new part of the country (Wales) where I didn’t know anyone.

The first thing I did was seek out local gaming clubs, infinity play groups, X wing metas and start meeting new people again. 

From meeting up with the South Wales Infinity scene I have found some of my best mates. I really couldn’t have found a better game for bringing such like minded people together so we can get really really angry at the 5% rolled on some dice. 

I currently think I would like to go traveling again for a few months or a year around Europe or Canada and I have already started planning what army and models I would take and how best to condense as many sectorals / fun down into one single case. Probably JSA because I always fall back to the old faithful.

An actual battle report

Punking space police with megalomaniacal celebrity soldiers

This was a game where I was aiming to use some CC and thought why not steel phalanx.

This report is a simple affair from a game I played of annihilation with a mate. Whilst this isn’t a full battle report It’s more of a highlight reel of Alephs swinging dong HAMMERING down on the blue lives matters gang. 

The heroes of the human sphere (my list using some unusual units I wouldn’t normally take)

Kierons list where he was also taking some none usual units he wouldn’t normally use.

Here is the fairly dense table that we played on. It suited my gang of swingers fairly well allowing me to get into the medium range bands and CC. 

The game started fairly poorly for me as Kieron spent a few orders and moved into sight and ZOC of my Andromeda with his Hippolyta. I thought Christmas had come early as I declared guard and felt really bad about myself.

Here Andromeda somehow sicks here D charge equipped dog over a HUGE crevasse and Hippolyta easily swats it out of the air and explodes here from a distance. 

I didn’t need to lose those points so easily.

The second instance of close combat arrived in my 2nd turn after some of my guns died and I was stretching to make some points back. So I broke my link team down and made the most of those impetuous orders throwing Ajax into the mix. 

Here you can see Ajax berserking into a rather expensive Omega trooper and very easily removing him with an explosive damage 18 hit critting on a 10. It was awesome.

After eventually shooting down Kierans total reaction remote and clearing my for my next CC assassin I was able to drop him in….

Enter  the Ekrdomoi! After dropping down and running into CC he rather quickly dispatched the Gamma trooper in a couple of orders.

The final CC that came to pass in the game was from the other side of the board….

Enter the berserking varangian coming to try and dome Eduros from behind with that intimidating looking hammer.

I was worried for a second but after passing both my armor saves and the varangian failing I was reminded of this meme…

Euros’s potato looking head rebounded that hammer right back at you….

So in conclusion this game had a lot more CC going on than either of us expected and even with me going into this specifically to use some CC.

Lessons learned are that CC is a really good way of trading up and leveraging some of those cheaper CC units to kill much more traditionally efficient shooty units and where they have little chance of hurting you back.

Also Andromeda and guard are stupid and make you feel bad for using them against friends.

Thanks for the read guys, hope you keep well and I look forward to the next mission!!

Cheers 

Luke W