Introduction 2 - Infinity Gameplay: ARO and Orders

Welcome to the second Introduction to Infinity.

While my first Introduction was focussed on the factions and the story, this post will cover the basic gameplay of Infinity, which is really different from a lot of other turn-based strategy games. These mechanics are one of the main reasons that I really fell in love with Infinity; it creates a realistic simulation of a skirmish combat enviroment.

It is always your turn!

Active/Reactive Turn and ARO

While Infinity is turn-based both players are constantly playing. It is always your turn! In many turn-based games, there is a Player 1 turn and a Player 2 turn. While Player 1 is playing, Player 2 has nothing to do. In some turn-based games, you can even go to the kitchen to grab a bite, make some tea, read the newspaper and come back to resolve all the events with the dice before it's your turn again. 

Infinity however, gives us the Automatic Reaction Order (ARO). With the ARO Player 2 can react during his Reactive Turn to Player 1's Active Turn.

This way the game is really dynamic and realistic and it is taken to a whole new level of tactical warfare. 

So how does the ARO work?

Orders

To understand the ARO, we first have to take a look at the Orders. In an Infinity army, every unit generates one Order. Orders are a valuable resource in Infinity. The Order allows a player to move his units. Since a standard 300 point Infinity army is usually somewhere between the 10 to 15 units, this means that a player can generate somewhere between 10 to 15 Orders. With every model you loose, you loose orders as well.

With an Order a player can do many things. It is what powers your unit to take actions. 

An order is often broken up in two parts (two Short Skills or one Long Skill). While Player 1 is taking his actions; moving, hacking, taking objectives, shooting, Player 2 can react to these actions by hacking or shooting back at the opponent. Player 2 can react to every action his opponent takes, as long as those actions are preformed in Line of Fire (LoF) or Zone of Control (ZoC) of one of his units.

Let it sink for a moment... 

Yes indeed, you can shoot your opponents strategy entirely to pieces during his turn. It's this mechanic in the game that really makes Infinity a totally new way of tactical gaming.

The ARO is resolved by another core mechanic of Infinity; the Face-to-Face Roll, which I'll cover in future posts. 

Terrain

At this stage, I think everybody who read this gets an idea of the importance of cover and terrain within Infinty. If you're out of cover and out in the open, you're a sitting duck and the opponent can kill you off pretty easily. A player really needs to take a risk when crossing a street, square or passing an ally. He will also have to cover the backs of his own units with his other units. 

To play Infinity, you'll need a lot of LoF-blockers. I can't stress this enough! A lot of tabletops use few terrain-pieces. When you start Infinity with this kind of table in mind, the game is over in one or two turns and it will look like weird game. 

Luckily you can make terrain with everything; cereal boxes, books, cups, cans, etc. You can even make your own terrain with paper or foamboard, which is a pretty cheap option. 

One of the great Infinity tables, this one made by Antenocitis Workshop. You can see a lot of sight-blockers.

Well, that raps it up for tonight. :) Remember, the rules are downloadable free-of-charge from the Infinity website.  

                                                                                                                                           

The pictures are from Tom Shadle's Miniatures and Certs Tabletop

Introduction 1 - Infinity the Game

"Infinity is a game with 28mm high metal miniatures that simulates combat and special operations in a science fiction environment with Manga aesthetics. Infinity miniatures are characterized by the high quality and detail of their modeling, the dynamism of their postures and their futuristic aesthetic."

- Corvus Belli

That sums it up quite well, right? 

Infinity is a miniature wargame, sometimes called a tabletop wargame. It's similar to the more well known games like Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40.000. It a tactical strategy game where the miniatures represent certain type of soldiers with certain type of equipment. 

While Warhammer games are based upon full scale battles and open warfare, Infinity is a skirmish battle-system where small groups of soldiers preform stealthy, black-op operations.

Basic History and Setting

The setting of Infinity starts 175 years into the future. After different power shifts on Earth, O-12, the future United Nations and ALEPH, the advanced Artificial Intelligence try to form a unifying bridge between all the different multinational factions. Humanity sets its goals out into the stars. The factions colonize up to eleven different planets in the galaxy and try to make a living out there in the 'verse. Those eleven planets form the Human Sphere. 

In the universe of Infinity there is no open warfare between the human factions. It's more like the Cold War as the economic and diplomatic interests between the different factions are way to high to declare a full-scale war on anyone. 

The different factions don't want the other factions to become too strong so they preform disrupting attacks, tech theft or assassinations on important members of the other factions.

Unfortunately humanity is not alone in the 'verse. From distant areas in the universe alien threats are invading the Human Sphere. Might there be an all-out war on the horizon?

Factions in Infinity

PanOceania - The biggest and richest faction in Infinity. After the economic bankruptcy of America and Europe, PanOceania was build up out of India, Australia, South America and the Polynesian areas as a single country. They now own lands on five different planets and are a diplomatic heavy weight. They are build around a system of full-out capitalism. The PanOceanic faction is governed by different mega-corporations and the president is elected by those mega-corporations. Next to this organization of mega-corps PanOceania houses the future Vatican City as well, so the Church is a big organization in the faction. Their organization is based on the knightly orders of the crusades and they are a big part of PanOceanian society. They were the first faction that went to space years after the Ariadna-project seemed to have failed.

Yu Jing - The Asian Giant. China became so big that other countries around it were annexed. This resulted in an PanAsian faction. In order to instill a form of unity in this new diverse faction of cultures, Yu Jing changed their system to a new order. The Party was divided between a Liberal Party and a Conservative Party. Although both still belonging to the Party, there was more dynamic in politics. On the other hand, Yu Jing needed a new figurehead in order to personify the new unity of the faction. The Party retraced the linages of both the Ming and Qing families and from those families installed two emperors who'd keep each others power in check by playing a constant game of power. Both the Party and the Emperor created the system of order that rules Yu Jing at this moment. It's the only faction that is a match for PanOceania and they are in a constant battle for control. Yu Jing controls a twin planet-system and owns land of several other planets.

Ariadna - The first colonization-project organized by a collaboration of Russia, Europe and the USA. Due to the discovery of a wormhole connecting our solar system to another habitable planet. They built two ships, Ariadna and Aurora. Both were sent through the wormhole but only Ariadna arrived on destination. Aurora was lost when the wormhole collapsed upon it. Without the wormhole, Ariadna was on its own on a complete new planet. Life was hard and the local antipodes were hostile to the newcomers. These doglike creatures attacked the new settlers and the settlers defended themselves with all their might.The different countries on board Ariadna became divided and decided to separate into different nations again like they were on Earth. It took them about a century before PanOceania and Yu Jing found the planet and re-established contact with the Ariadnans. After a fierce fight for the scarce and valuable resources found on Ariadna, O-12 decided to intervene, officially welcoming Ariadna to the Human Sphere and establish it as an independent nation. The apparent failure of the Ariadna-project became the financial noose for the old powerhouses of the world.

HaqqIslam - The New Islam. Many muslims found themselves trapped between different factions fighting within Islam, fundamentalist groups terrorizing civilians and a religion set in ways to old to uphold in the modern day society, corrupted by all those who had power. So one man decided Islam should reform itself and start again with the basis on which it was built; a system of humanism, philosophy, science, medicine and progress. Although not much is know about this man, he is seen somewhat as a modern day prophet, although his conviction was that people shouldn't be put on a pedestal. This new movement called itself HaqqIslam and tried to establish a foothold on Earth. Finding this impossible, they decided to look upon the stars. With the help of astrologers and the tradition of the Prophet Muhammed ascension the movement found the planet Bourak, which they colonized. Discovering ways of advanced medicines and terraforming, HaqqIslam became a faction difficult to ignore for the other factions. They are the sole provider of the drug Silk, which is essential for cube-technology. This monopoly makes HaqqIslam one of the richest factions in the Sphere. 
Nowadays, HaqqIslam controls the Silk-routes and defends the trade-routes between all the different planets, spaceports and of course, the orbital elevators.

Nomads - Where would you go, if you were a misfit, a punk or a criminal? The Nomads are a space-faring nation built around three main ships; Tunguska, the money, Bakunin, the soul and Corregidor, the hand. These ships are beyond any control of the major factions and therefore a save-haven for the people who are in need of a shelter and couldn't find it anywhere else. 
Tunguska harbors the mafia and criminals who couldn't run their business undetected by ALEPH, Bakunin is a safe place for the people with weird beliefs or opinions that were cast out of society and Corregidor was build as a prison-ship for the hardened criminals on earth. Now it is run by those that were once its inmates. Each ships provides something to the nation as a whole. Tunguska provides the money and income, Corregidor provides skilled labour and the hardest military commando forces while Bakunin has the Black Labs, where science can run without any moral obligations, providing the nation with a new source of income; the hedonistic streets of Vaudeville, where everything is in vast supplies and of course the genetic modifications that are in fashion throughout the whole of of the Human Sphere.

ALEPH - Imagine a computer, built to calculate every outcome of politics, economics and everything else, wakes up one day, becoming self-aware and providing the Human Sphere with all its knowledge. This is the puppet-master behind the screens, according to the Nomads, who believe an A.I. with this amount of power could be up to no good. The other factions on the other hand praise ALEPH for its help establishing order in the Human Sphere. ALEPH created its own army behind the curtains. test-tube bodies filled with ghosts of the all-powerful AI. These humans were designed to infiltrate and influence the status quo to ALEPH wishes, killing off any rogue A.I. that could become a threat to ALEPH itself and push O-12 or some important people towards certain decisions. 

When the alien Combined Army invaded the Human Sphere, ALEPH created another army to fight it head-on. According to the Nomads, this army could as well be used to suppress humanity as a whole. The propaganda of ALEPH tells a different story though and the whole of the Human Sphere sees ALEPH as the great savior. 

Mercenaries - Guns for hire. If you pay, they'll fight for you. At this moment the Mercenaries are not really a faction, rather they are a collection of cutthroats, pirates and guns for hire able to join almost any faction that is willing to pay for their services. They are the guys that make a living out of fighting. Their origin is from different factions throughout the Human Sphere; Ariadnian Dogfaces, Nomadic streetfighters, Yu Jingian rogue ninjas, HaqqIslamic pirates and even some TAGs.

Combined Army - A race born ages ago. The Ur were so old it wanted to transcend this world. In order to do so, they built a great intelligence, the Artillect, to calculate the answer to everything. But when it found the secret to everything it disappeared, pursuing ambitions of its own. So the Ur started their project again. This time they built in a safety mechanism which unfortunately prevented the machine from reaching its goals, being corrupted by the flaws of the Ur. The machine used so much resources to get to the answer the Ur needed to revert to conquest to keep the machine working. Since they were an advanced race nobody stood a change. The Ur merged themselves with the machine in the hope to find the answer. They became the E.I., avatars of the Evolved Intelligence, flawed by the Ur. To accelerate the project, the E.I. copied itself, building franchises in order to speed up the collection of data. During the conquering of many civilizations, many joined the E.I.'s cause, forming the Combined Army. Now, searching for other potential races to join the cause, the E.I. has set its eyes on humanity...

Tohaa - The Tohaa are the newest faction that bring the fighting to the Human Sphere. The Tohaa are fighting a war against the E.I. for a long time, protecting the things that matters most; the Z'techi Digesters  computers that record the rise and fall of civilizations. The fight is stretching the Tohaa forces thin and weakening their morals. The Tohaa were on Paradiso when the Aurora crashed on the planet. Seeing the hardened humans taking up the fight against the elements the Tohaa took an interest in them, trying to figure out a way to use this new race as a weapon against the Combined Army. After doing some horrible experiments on the passengers of the Aurora, the Tohaa suffered a great loss and a major setback after the Aurorians showed them how though humanity really is. This set the Tohaa's plans back for a couple of years but now they seem to have regrouped. Will humanity have a valuable ally in the Tohaa or will they be manipulated as a buffer-zone between the Combined Army and the Tohaa? 

                                                                                                                                                 
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