ITS @ NOVA Open 2013: Game 2 (Frontline) vs. Military Orders

I played the ringer in this game. He was playing Military Orders, which is a list I know well, since Morgrim Dark also plays this sectorial. I brought my Van Zant list this time and it made all the difference.

His list (going off of memory, since he only had one copy):

 GROUP 1 (Regular: 9/Irregular: 0):

 TEUTONIC KNIGHT Lieutenant Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, AP CCW. (1 | 42)

 TRAUMA-DOC Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (14)
 SPEC. SERGEANT (CH: TO Camouflage, Infiltration) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 39)
 PALBOT Electric Pulse. (3)
 PALBOT Electric Pulse. (3)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust / Pistol, EXP CCW. (29)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust / Pistol, EXP CCW. (29)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust / Pistol, EXP CCW. (29)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Missile Launcher / Pistol, AP CCW. (1.5 | 49)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust, Light Shotgun / Pistol, DA CCW. (31)
 MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust, Light Shotgun / Pistol, DA CCW. (31)

4 SWC | 299 Points

ARMY CODE: eNozNFZVNbK0VDVRNVczUTOsMTJUMwRRahZA0tASzIFSFmpGGKQpmDSBkaplJgDJ9xH5

He won the initiative, and decided to go second (the only game in the tournament where I am going first). My Van Zant lands in first turn behind cover with one of my HMGs, shoots his Teutonic Knight in the back, and proceeds to travel down the back field, killing his Magister Knights and his Doctor. I also sent one of my Chasseurs to Forward Observe a Magister Knight before dying to a Panzerfaust round.

He emerged from my turn with one Magister Knight left, which my Cateran killed. He was left with a single guy in TO, so I cautiously moved the remainder of my guys around to claim the three sections of the board, per the scenario. His TO camo sniper emerged, and he and my Chasseur went at it, doing a whole fat nothing to each other.

In the end, I was able to claim all objectives and, with the secret objective (Telemetry), I won 10-0. Military Orders are an awesome army, but very hard to play to these ITS scenarios, especially considering their lack of specialist troops.

Paradiso Impressions: Scenario 102

First off, sorry for the lack of pictures. I will resolve to take pictures of the games from here-on out, promise.

Lost Cateran's List

Group 1
Cateran w/ T2 Sniper Rifle
Dozer with Traktor Mul Control Device
Tankhunter with AP HMG
Tankhunter with Autocannon
Traktor Mul (Minesweeper)
Traktor Mul (Minesweeper)
Warcor
Veteran Kazak with AP HMG

Group 2
Dozer with Akrylat-Kanone
Intel (with Cube, 2 XP)
Irmandinho with Chain Rifle (Booty: +4 ARM)
Irmandinho with Chain Rifle (Booty: ADHL)
Irmandinho with Chain Rifle (Booty: AP Rifle)
Kazak Doktor
Line Kazak with Rifle
Line Kazak with Rifle
Line Kazak with Rifle (Lieutenant)

Morgrim Dark's List (Best I can tell)
Gabriel de Fersen (Lieutenant)
Teutonic Knight with Spitfire
Teutonic Knight
Teutonic Knight
Magister Knight
Specialist Sergeant with MSV2 and Spitfire
Specialist Sergeant (Hacker)
Bulleteer
Palbot

Turn 1 (Morgrim)

Morgrim ran his Magister Knight up my left hand side. Similarly, he used de Fersen to discover the activation sequence ([2, 1, 3, 5]) and activated the first marker. Finally, he moved his Teutonic Knights up to cover the center of the board.

Turn 1 (Lost Cateran)

Moved Irmandinhos up, discovered the activation sequence ([2, 1, 3, 5], same sequence coincidentally enough), and activated the first marker. Shot at a Teutonic Knight from my other Irmandinho’s Booty-ed ADHL, ended up killing my Irmandinho (do to vastly underestimating the distance between the two). Ran towards the second marker, failed his WIP and had to get into cover before orders ran out in that combat group. Other group shot at Teutonic Knights with my AP HMG Tankhunter, AP HMG Veteran Kazak and Cateran, with some pretty spectacular results.

Turn 2 (Morgrim)

De Fersen shot at my HMG Tankhunter and Cateran, killed the Tankhunter and sent the Cateran into hiding. Similarly shot at my Vet Kazak, which I chose to fail his guts check. Grabbed the data from the center objective, and had to book it around the corner to stay out of LoF of my guys.

Turn 2 (Lost Cateran)

Two Irmandinhos ran towards the Magister Knight, threw smoke in his face and attempted an Intuitive Attack. Succeeded the WIP roll, but failed to wound. Magister Knight manages to hit with a speculative shot with his pistol at my Irmandinho not carrying the data, who also has a +4 ARM from Booty. She rolls a 1 and dies. My last Irmandinho uses all the regular orders in that combat group to get up to the middle, activate the center objective, run towards the final objective and grab the data, while still avoiding getting hit by the Bulleteer and MSV2 Order Sergeant standing watch.

All I could do with my other combat group was to set up suppressive fire lanes across the board with my Cateran and Veteran Kazak, and run my dozer across the board to hopefully grab all the data necessary to triangulate (since I figured my Irmandinho was dead next turn). Had I known that I can triangulate with a different engineer than the one doing the activation scheme, that would’ve ended the game right there. This seems to be a point of discussion in the boards.

Turn 3 (Morgrim)

His Magister Knight runs towards my last Irmandinho, who now has all the objectives activated. In the process, he runs into my Cateran’s Suppressive Fire, which finally kills that SOB. His Bulleteer and MSV2 Order Sergeant make short work of my Irmandinho. His last Teutonic Knight spends an order to discover my last camo marker on the board is a Tankhunter with Autocannon, which I had no need to use until now, since he was blocking the avenue to Morgrim’s last objective. In a heroic charge, his Teutonic Knight charges forward to die gloriously, followed subsequently by de Fersen himself.

Turn 3 (Lost Cateran)

Knowing that Morgrim is probably now in Retreat (which doesn’t mean much for a fully Religious army); I run my Dozer up the board and into the LoF of his Bulleteer and Order Sergeant. This last Dozer shoots his humble rifle at the two, kills the Sergeant and in the very next order, crits (on a 2!) the Bulleteer. The Dozer retrieves the data, and in his last order successfully manages to triangulate on a 12.
 

Lost Cateran: 8 XP

Morgrim: 4 XP

The results of the other game:

Lo-Pan: 8 XP

Aulleas: 2 XP

Guess I'm playing against Lo-Pan once more for the final mission of Chapter 1. I will post my views afterwards. Have to figure out a good way of dealing with those Kuang Shi...

Lost Cateran Game 2 vs PanO

Game #2 against PanO was based on quarters, similar to the spearhead deployment of 40K. The obejctive was to capture quarters. My opponent was very good, and he knew what he was doing. He had some nice tools that made my life difficult, primary of which being TO Camo. In the end, however, it came down to my own stupidity that brought the game to a draw.

Game #2 Setup, with quarters superimposed

My opponent’s first turn was spent trying to shoot at my Galwegians, which I had foolishly left in the open. One Galweigan dodged successfully, but Wallace did have to take one wound. Thank goodness for No Wound Incapacitation. I was not going to risk his life again. He also tried to discover my Caterans #1 and #2, to no avail.

In my turn, I popped Caterans #1 and #2 out of camo and gunned down the ORC Trooper and forced the Fusilier to stay prone behind the rim of the building roof. My Uxia McNeill started just rampaging up his right flank, taking out the Fusilier at the bottom and his Fusilier on the roof in prone. My goal was to go around and start taking out his Fusiliers from behind. However, his Swiss Guard showed up out of TO Camo and proceeded to gun Uxia down. She earned her points back, I’ll give her that.

The next round was frustrating for both of us. My opponent and I proceeded to keep on trying to shoot one another from across the board with some severe negative modifiers. My Cateran had mimetism and cover, his Swiss Guard had TO Camo.

I was able to move Cateran #1 forward, in an attempt to try to grab some of the Fusiliers my Uxia missed. That’s when he revealed his Croc Man in TO Camo. With all the bad luck I had from shooting at the Swiss Guard, I got one lucky shot off with my Cateran, and the Croc Man fell in an order.

The Swiss Guard finally succeeded in killing Cateran #2, and moved his Fusilier into the top right quarter to claim that quarter for him.

My Galwegians with Wallace

Now, my last turn I completely flubbed up. I really wanted to kill that Swiss Guard, since I knew that he was making up ~80 points of his force. I sent my Galwegians on a futile mission to take out the Swiss Guard, but they were just not getting close enough to the Swiss Guard. Eventually, I had to give up. I also wanted to move Cateran #3 and #4 off the rooftop (still in Camo, thanks to Climbing Plus) and move them into the top right quarter, thus claiming that quarter for me. Afterwards, I realized mistakenly that I did not have enough orders left to get my Caterans into that quarter, so the top right quarter was left for him and his fusilier.

All in all, I killed all but his Swiss Guard and a Fusilier, but that was enough for him to take two quarters and bring the game to a draw. The last turn was sheer stupidity for me. I should have split up the Caterans and sent one into the top right quarter. I was frustrated, but my opponent played a good game. And he ended up coming in at 2^nd place in the overall tournament, so I should not feel too bad.

On to Game #3…

Su Jian Sneak Attack

Watch out, we got a badass over here!

Graphic Knights - Infinity Military Orders

Here's a few more painted knight models for your perusal.

Teutonic Knights

Magister Knight

Hospitaller Knight

Graphic Knights - Infinity Order Sergeants

No this is not the start of some slash fiction with the military knights raiding and uh... pillaging some poor unsuspecting village. Rather it is a post of my completed order sergeants (at long last).

No longer doomed to play in their white-washed villainy - the sergeants have exploded onto the scene in blazing technicolor!

Okay, so this is really just the first of several posts of my painted Military Orders list. The goal here is not to show off my painting (clearly overshadowed by other contributors to this illustrious blog). Instead I humbly offer these as close-ups for how the knights can be painted. When I started painting Infinity models I struggled to find fully painted minis that helped me decide how to define the colors for each model, where certain markings went, and so on.

In that vein, I present my fairly pedestrian shadings of those fabulously detailed, Corvus Belli miniatures - the Order Sergeants.

PanOceania Knights - Infinity Style with a Mailed Fist

As the resident player of PanO's Military Orders sectorial, I figured I should post some stuff about how the knights work in-game. One word - AWESOME!

Knights are an interesting choice in a game as varied and deep as Infinity... mainly because they do one thing and one thing well - punch your opponent in the face! I am not going to beat around the shrubbery here - you lay the knights down if you want an army that can take a hard hit and give it back a thousandfold.

To start with, by running the Military Orders (MO) sectorial, you unlock some of the meanest line troops in the game - namely the Order Sergeants. These guys clock in at 13 points, but for that cost you get a BS 12 trooper that will never run away (Religious) and can be linked up in various nasty configurations. My current favorite is running them as a three man team, one of whom is sporting a multi sniper rifle. These guys sit back and cover the field with 2 DA sniper shots in ARO and 3 in their active phase.

But those guys are just punky little order monkeys right? So where are the big guys?! The MO sectorial lets you field a total of 12 Heavy Infantry (HI) models - at the same time. That's 12 guys running around with 2 wounds and Armor 3 or better. Of course, that list clocks in at 418 points and doesn't give you much in the way of special weapons...

A more realistic list of heavy hitters like this would be three Teutonic knights (one with spitfire), a Magister knight with pistol and EXP CCW, a Santiago knight LT with spitfire, and three Order Sergeants each with a combi-rifle. That list comes in a 249 points and nets you 8 regular orders (not including the LT order). More importantly you end up with three panzerfausts, two spitfires, and a linked team with 6 rifle shots in ARO. Can you say Knight Punch?!

That being said, this is only how I currently run my knights. There are definitely some great ways to run a more nuanced list. Father Gabrielle gets you a WIP 14 BTS -6 spitfire toting Hacker. The Order Sergeants can do some hacking of their own and can also come strapped with a Multi-Spec L2 visor and a spitfire to smack down those pesky smoked guys. The Hospitaller doctor with Palbot buddies lets you revive downed troopers at WIP 14. Sepulchre knights are some of the only models in the game with L2 Holoprojectors. You get the idea...

The MO sectorial is definitely lacking things like smoke grenades, crazy guided missile shots, and some of the nastier TAGs that PanO can field. But overall it suits my playstyle and hopefully this so-called analysis will help you decide if it suits yours.

Feel free to post your thoughts/experiences/whinging about playing with or against these Religious monsters of PanOceania...