Infinity October 2025 Rules Update and Me

Corvus Belli have dropped two massive updates for Infinity this month. They've returned several factions that hadn't been given rules this edition into play, updated a lot of army lists to get some better balance, and updated some rules to make things clearer or less unbalanced to play against.

On top of this, there's a new tournament mission pack, where all the old missions have been replaced (only the most recent three were kept), and a bunch of new ones added. As someone who's taken a few months off the game, I'm feeling a little bit like the meme from Community where the guy walks in to chaos having just gone to fetch the pizzas.

OK, White Company is probably the easiest here. "Officially" the faction had no changes, but a few profiles they borrow from other factions got considerable glow ups - Blockers, in particular have moved from something I only took to see what they could do, to likely a regular inclusion in lists. Taowu gained a Chain of Command profile, and there were a couple of other light adjustments. I might even try the Anaconda at some point.

My Shasvastii got caught in the blast as the vanilla Combined Army took a well deserved balance adjustment to Ikadrons. Their points moving to 11 and losing Flash Pulses is entirely fair, but they were helping prop up the quite weak Shasvastii. Some of the Shasvastii characters got some changes or some new profiles. Victor Messer is definitely better, and the Jayth / Gwailo fireteam gained a keyword to make getting the link bonus easier.

Combined Army, meanwhile, got a bit more of a thorough overhaul. Several Shasvastii and Next Wave profiles got banished to their own factions, cheap order profiles became a little harder to come by, and a few of the regularly taken big scary pieces got a bit of a rework that I think actually makes them a little better overall.

In the land of my other NA2 factions, Druze changes were negligible, Ikari gained a Tohaa profile (the Kiiutan Imposter), and Dahshat similarly only got a couple of minor profile changes due to them being shared with other factions.

In the land of Nomads, the biggest change is officially NA2 - Star Co, the mixed Nomad mercenary company, returned. They're fine. There's basically no changes or they'd mess up the Nomad balance. Meanwhile Nomads got basically no changes. A couple of new profiles that were lacking a bit of oomph got some slight changes, but that was about it.

The changes don't affect me a huge amount. I am loving them, though. In a lot of my factions I've got a couple of new or reworked profiles to play around with and see how they change how the faction works. That said, I'm likely to start pretty conservatively with some simple Direct Action missions and some models I mostly know as I try and remind myself how to play...

Dolmenwood Review

 

My Dolmenwood Kickstarter arrived last week, and I've taken some time to go through it and write a few thoughts on it. I originally planned to write this on Sunday evening. At about 7pm I sat down to have a quick scan through the Player's Book . . . and then it was bedtime.

I'm glad I didn't write the review on Sunday evening, because as I read through, and talked to a few of my friends over social media, I picked up a few nuances my initial scan read had missed.

Dolmenwood is both a game and a setting. The game is in the style of early D&D, with nine classes and six "kindreds". Attacks and skills seem to be quite a shallow progression, while hit points start very low with a dice per level and low modifiers so  the increase feels a lot steeper. I haven't had time to learn the spells yet, so I'm not sure how much they increase the power level.

The setting is a fantasy medieval realm, with a mix of mortals and fairies. As you may pick up from the name, the majority of the published setting is set in a large wood. It's ruled over by mortal nobles, has more civilised and more dangerous areas, has fairies, witches and monsters.

The game runs off three books - a Player's Book, a Monster Book, and the Campaign Book. The Player Book has all the player facing rules, the Monster Book does precisely what you'd expect, and the Campaign Book includes the GM guides, a detailed world guide including locations, NPCs and factions. I cannot emphasise enough how massive the Campaign Book is. It's more than twice the size of the player's book. I also got a book of maps with a mix of maps that are of use to the GM, and a bunch you can show to the players.

My Kickstarter Pledge also included four pre-written adventures. At least some of these have been previously published for Old School Essentials and D&D 5e. I had a scan through Winter's Daughter, which was a good starting adventure that gave a good indicator of how you might want to organise your own adventure if you were making your own.

It's an excellent adventure that's got a big "fairy tale" vibe. It's dripping with character and style. It feels very accessible and like a good starter.

I also got a canvas map designed to be player facing, and two canvas referee maps with all the secret information you need. I am unsure why I got two referee maps - it was in my pledge manager automatically at my pledge level.

The map is huge, and shows the real depth of Dolmenwood. It can be played as a hex crawl exploration, and this is where it's real "unique selling point" is. Every single hex has a write up in the campaign guide (though obviously, I've not read every single one, so I don't know what the balance of "places of interest" to "featureless swamp" there is. But there seems to be quite a lot there.

I also picked up the Adventuring Party box with a bunch of miniatures, because I am a sucker.

There's eleven miniatures in the set, with a mix of the different classes and kindreds. There's a bit of a shortage of goat people, short moss people and little bat people miniatures, so it's particularly useful for those.

The dice and dice bag fills me with joy. The highest number on each dice have little mushroom symbols on. They include 3D6 so you can roll your starting stats. The dice bag has some lovely embroidery on, and feels like a much nicer material and better quality than the Critical Role dice bag I got a while back.

Dolmenwood is selling you a dream. It has the potential set up for a massive long running campaign with your friends, in person, with beautiful in person props and miniatures. It recommends you run with six characters, whether that's six players, or having retainers and hirelings to make up numbers.

But the recommendation of numbers alone makes me want to run the "perfect" Dolmenwood game with six players - a sandbox where it's based off the goals the players come up with rather than a fixed plot arc or specific threat for them to try and defeat.

I don't have a local tabletop group yet, and you'd not want to jump straight into a massive commitment of a campaign like this. You'd want to build up to it.

But the dream is there.