Infinity – Low Tier ITS Tournament
Another tournament this past Sunday night. In past tournaments we’ve found that we almost always have at least half the pairings go to time and lots of third rounds go unplayed. This sucks. So, in order to alleviate this a bit – and all the more so because this would be an evening tournament – I dropped it to Low Tier; I gotta say, 200pts was about perfect for us. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the other battles, so this tournament report will be a bit of a blitz.
My lists:
Specialists
Veteran (APHMG, Lt)
Antipode Assault Pack
Tankhunter (Autocannon)
Cateran (T2)
112 EMS
Isobel McGregor (T2 rifle)
Bounty Hunter (BShot)
Irmandinho (rifle)
Irmandinho (chain)
Annihilation
Veteran (APHMG, Lt)
Antipode Assault Pack
Tankhunter (Autocannon)
Cateran (T2)
Chasseur (ADHL)
Loup Garou (Viral)
Dog Warrior
Volunteer (chain)
Round 1; Biotechvore
Ariadna vs Pan Oceania
I was expecting to be facing a Jotum, so my lists were built to be a little more lethal than my usual. I also had more time to spend list building than usual, and second guessed myself like crazy. I started with a list full of impetuous and infiltrators, and didn’t realize until I went to field them that I’d cut almost all of that stuff out, leaving a lone ADHL chasseur and a dog warrior as my only non-standard units. The chasseur made his infiltration roll without difficulty, and set up in a ruined building overlooking the Pan-O army, perched by a broken window just outside of the biotechvore zone. Pan-O brought Joan of Arc and four other knights; they choose to go first. Their first turn was to coordinate a charge at my chasseur. A fairly tall mid field and my own distaste at the idea of leaving snipers in the btv zone to die meant he was more or less on his own, but he did well, nailing Joan with an ADHL round during his first ARO. With no engineer, the Pan-O force opted to continue its coordinated charge (I had opted to cut him by two orders); the panzerfaust-toting knight was next to be hit with an adhesive round. The chasseur was cut down before accomplishing anything else, but he didn’t really need to at this point. As the chasseur was getting hacked to pieces, my viral Loup Garou was landing a critical hit on a knight that had advanced into his path. Only three effective AROs, but *very* effective. My own first turn was a matter of getting my units out of the biotechvore zone and eliminating as much of the remaining opposition as possible, via a combination of autocannon tank hunter, AP HMG veteran, and an antipode assault pack. The next round was really a mop up and classified grab; the surviving knights were overwhelmed,and the immobilized knights were executed. Final result: Ariadna, 10-1.
Thoughts? This one went very well for me, but part of that was probably the result of Pan Oceania’s inexperience. Not that I’m a super hardcore player or anything, but he’s only been playing infinity for a couple months, and a long history with 40k means he probably leans on unit stats pretty hard. Stronger tactics might not have saved those knights, but would likely have narrowed the gap a bit. The fact that I built an annihilation list expecting to deal with an Armor 10 TAG (the Jotum was in his second list, incidentally) also meant that the knights weren’t the overwhelming prospect they might otherwise have been.
Round 2; Cold Sleep
Ariadna vs Yu Jing
This was a much closer battle, and I expected it to be. Zeb and I are usually pretty closely matched (see last week’s Biotechvore run) and this was no exception. He went first and kept the pressure on; I just had far better luck with rolls. I made a lot of successful armour rolls, and more importantly had some really lucky AROs. Going last netted me one of each type of objective for the win.
Final result:
Ariadna, 7-0.
Thoughts? I definitely got lucky with the dice rolls. Second week in a row that my Veteran got 2+ crits in ARO. A more even score wouldn’t have altered the standings, but it would have been closer. I expect my dice to punish me this weekend, whatever we may be playing.
Round 3; the Armoury
Ariadna vs Combined Army
This time I went first. My first few orders went into an autocannon Tank Hunter and my Cateran, who thinned the Combined ranks significantly. By the time I advanced on the armoury itself, there was maybe half the enemy force that there had been. That didn’t stop them from knocking an Irmandinho into the next life, and I still had a bit of trouble getting the Combined to stay down until I managed to take their doctor / medic out.
By my second turn I’d looted the panoplies and blown them up, which was pretty much game.
Final Result:
Ariadna, 7-1.
Thoughts? This one went my way largely on the strength of deployment and initiative, I think. Matt denied me the really good sniper positions by choosing sides, but wasn’t careful enough with placing his units; I had decent lines of fire on much of his army from both my Cateran and my Tank Hunter (the TH started out of sight, but within a few inches of a good ‘nest’ corner, so he was able to move and shoot right of the bat). Between the two of these, I was able to get in a pretty strong first turn. It was hard for the Combined Army to recover after that (although, like I said, the medic tried pretty hard).
Final Scores:
Biotechvore:
Ariadna 10-1 Pan Oceania
Nomads 7-3 Combined Army
Yu Jing 10-0 Haqqislam
Cold Sleep:
Combined Army 4-1 Haqqislam
Ariadna 7-0 Yu Jing
Pan Oceania 10-0 Nomads
The Armoury:
Yu Jing 8-0 Nomads
Haqqislam 1-1 Pan Oceania
Ariadna 7-1 Combined Army
Final thoughts? Those are a lot of really lopsided scores. Part of that is probably just the nature of ITS (in general, we don’t really split the objectives too evenly), but I wonder if part of it is that we rolled up Biotechvore and Armoury, both of which some folks (online and otherwise) have voiced concerns about regarding balance. Anybody had experience with these two scenarios? How did they go?
Tonight? Infinity – Hunger Games!
rats east 