Infinity Project: JSA - More Keisotsu and a Spec-Ops

Here are a few more 32mm scale figures to add to my Japanese Secessionist Army forces for Infinity: The Game.

The two helmet-less figures are Keisotsu. The word Keisotsu is a title of honor that translates as ‘excellent soldier’, a credit to the level of commitment expected of these rank and file foot soldiers. For those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in future Nippon, the most practical enlistment options are the Keisotsu Infantry (Butai) regiments. The Keisotsu are the backbone of the Nippon armed forces and the crux of their operational doctrine.

Kaizoku Spec-Ops respond directly to the Nippon Department of Military Intelligence, and are chosen from among the more unruly Keisotsu whose talents are nevertheless too valuable to waste. This particular model is interesting; two sets of arms are offered, wielding a MediKit or a Spitfire (a type of squad automatic weapon). I assembled it with the big gun option.

Generally you need your opponent's (or Tournament Organizer's) permission to field Spec-Ops figures. However, they add a bit of customization to your force, enabling a model to be fielded with a unique set of skills and equipment (here, the Spitfire, Engineering skill, and a Mimetism visual shield). During a campaign, Spec-Ops may earn points to increase their stats and add skills.

(Click on photos to embiggen.)

Generally, I really like metal models. The rubber molds allow for a lot of detail. However, this Spec-Ops model had a gap at the left wrist which I filled with super glue, and the left foot was at a lower level than the chunk of debris the right foot was standing on. I found a suitable, multi-level resin base for it.  After assembly and cleanup, I pinned the models with brass wire to cast resin Tech Deck bases from Dragon Forge. I drilled 1/4 inch holes in the bottoms of the resin bases, in preparation for rare-earth magnets later on.

I started with the usual zenithal highlighting. GW Chaos Black primer from a can, then airbrushed GW White at a downwards angle to provide a grey-scale ground. I had some difficulty with paint spatter. I used the same Iwata airbrush/compressor setup and paint dilution as for the figures I painted in the fall. It is drier now in the winter, but I am unsure of the reasons for my difficulties. I resolved them by increasing the ratio of thinner, and cutting down the water.

For the Keisotsu, I laid in the base contours of the flesh areas with various Vallejo acrylics.

For the bearded figure, this included the lower part of the hair, since I was going to render that as shaved pretty tight to the head.

Below, I finished off the flesh tones with various oil paints, to smooth out transitions, heighten hot spots, and deepen shadows. I then used various Citadel Shades from GW, for the base colouring of the blue undersuit/boots (Drakenhof Nightshade), the green armour (Coelia Greenshade), the golden hakama (Seraphim Sepia), and the weapons and hair (Nuln Oil).

RE: flesh painting with oils: Winsor & Newton Titanium White mixed with Schminke Burnt Sienna made up the basic flesh tone, with some additional flesh shades from Weber (John Howard Sander's Pro Mix Color System). Winton Alizaran Crimson added ruddiness to the cheeks, temples, and lips. W&N Indigo was patted on with Liquin to simulate the stubble of the shaved part of the head.

Highlights and shadows on the uniforms and weapons were punched up with mixes of  oil paints: Winsor & Newton Titanium White & Indigo for the undersuit/boots; Titanium White & Grumbacher Greenish Umber for the armour; and Titanium White and Winsor & Newton Gold Ochre (highlights), and W&N Burnt Umber and Gold Ochre (shadows) for the hakama. Some sky reflections were added to the weapons with Winsor & Newton Pthalo Turquoise. Tiny catch points or edges were picked out over the figures in pure Titanium White. The nominal light source was above and slightly to the front of the foreheads of the figures.

Glazes of Secret Weapon Stone Wash, Vallejo Rust Wash, and some detailing with Winsor & Newton Titanium White and Peach Black oil paints finished off the base tops. Vallejo acrylic black, with 180-degree LOS lines in dark grey, went around the lower part of the bases. The figures were sealed with Tamiya semi-gloss. After removal from the painting stands,  I epoxied magnets into the previously drilled holes, finishing off the figures. The magnets allow for transporting the figures in metal boxes.

You cannot have enough rank and file troopers. These were a fun addition to my slowly growing JSA forces.

With these Keisotsu done, I only have a couple of figures left in the JSA Sectorial Army Pack left to complete: the second Ryuken (who looks like Batou from Ghost in the Shell, naturally), and the Kuroshi Rider (a straight copy of Celty Sturluson from anime and manga). However, I have also purchased extra rank and file, several heavy infantry, some robots, some more ninja, a biker, special characters, and Conscript MikeA gifted me two versions of Shikami, a deadly combination of heavy infantry and techno ninja. I have no idea when this pile of metal will get done.

Infinity RECON+: Exfiltrate! and Rickfest X

"RECON+ is a set of unofficial firefight missions for Corvus Belli’s Infinity miniatures games. Based around 150pt games, they are slightly larger than the official starter box missions but half the points of a traditional 300pt game. Although they make great stepping stones to full size tournament play for beginners, they are also fun and challenging tactical games for experienced players. The action is fast, games are quick, different weapons and tactics have increased emphasis, and hard choices have to be made in designing army lists."

I really enjoy the smaller-format games for several reasons, including a smaller play area (roughly 2'x3'), and a shorter play time. Infinity: The Game is a very detailed sci-fi combat system, with hundreds of pages of rules. I typically play with the Wiki open on a nearby smartphone or laptop.

Over the recent holiday season I played a couple of games of RECON+, with KyleF and with DerekY.

Play Area Configuration
As part of their army deployment, before placing their High Value Target, each player deploys 3 Civilian models inside the half of the Exclusion Zone (see below) on their opponent’s side of the play area. Civilians must be deployed at least 4” away from all other Civilians placed by that player. They cannot be placed on any terrain requiring a Climb entire order to reach. No model or marker may be deployed in base contact with any Civilian or vice versa.

Once deployed, take 2 Agent and 1 Citizen importance markers (or suitable proxies indistinguishable on the back side). Turn them face down, shuffle them, and randomly
assign one to each of your Civilians without being revealed to you or your opponent.

Exclusion Zone. 
There is an Exclusion Zone extending 6” on both sides of the short centerline of the play area (12” long total) and covering the full extent between long edges.

Mission Rules
Players may target Civilians they placed with the Discover skill. On success they may look at the targeted Civilian’s importance marker without revealing it to their opponent.

Once a Civilian has been revealed to both players as an Agent via the Interrogate Civilian skill, it may be directly targeted by the opposing player as an enemy troop and no penalty is
incurred by them for damaging it.

Scoring
Exfiltrated: An Agent has been Exfiltrated if it is wholly inside its player’s deployment zone.

Secured: An Agent is Secured if it is wholly outside the Exclusion Zone on its player’s side
of the play area. An Exfiltrated Agent is necessarily Secured, but not vice versa.

Victory Conditions  
Have at least one of your Agents in CivEvac state at game end. 1 Point
Have both of your Agents in CivEvac state at game end. 1 Point
Have at least one of your Agents Secured at game end. 1 Point
Have both of your Agents Secured at game end. 1 Point
Have at least one of your Agents Exfiltrated at game end. 1 Point
Have both of your Agents Exfiltrated at game end. 1 Point
Have more Agents in CivEvac state at game end than your opponent. 1 Point
Classified objective achieved. 2 Points


So, the game is all about finding and rescuing your own agents, and preventing your opponent from achieving his victory conditions.


Here is my army list for both games, from the Infinity Army list-building tool:

Game with Kyle

Below, Kyle can be seen after setting up his Nomads.

I ran my new Japanese Secessionist Army forces, who were set up behind cover, below.

Below, the exclusion zone, with various civilians and nearby infiltrating skirmishers from each side.

Kyle had previously won the roll off and chose to go first. He put a fireteam together and pushed toward the centre of the board, identifying one of his Agents right away.

Kyles had a trooper escort the Agent back deep into his deployment zone. Fortunately, I had succeeded in infiltrating a techno  ninja ((Oniwaban) into the Nomad backfield. In a face to face roll-off, these deadly foes managed to blast each other into unconsciousness, and out of the game! Kyle's Agent was now out of CivEvac state, losing the 3 victory points he had gained for these efforts.

Meanwhile, the other two members of Kyle's fireteam had advanced up the flank...

...revealing their Classified Objective, which was to kidnap my HVT (a Kuge Delegate)! They proceeded to grab her, and pull back to the centre of the table.  Kyle now had 2 more victory points to my 0.

After a bunch of shooting where we each inflicted a casualty or to, I managed to get a Kempei (a type of political officer) into contact with one my my own Civilians, and blew two or three dice rolls vainly trying and interrogate them.

In the last turn, running out of time and running out of orders, I sent my heaviest armoured trooper (a Daiyokai) into the fray with drawn swords against the heavy machine gun and rifle fire of Kyle's fireteam.

Against all odds, the heavy dude cut both opponents down, rescuing my Kuge Delegate, denying Kyle his victory points, and forcing a 0-0 draw!

This was an exciting game, which I was losing from the start, until I suddenly wasn't. KJyle played very well, achieving his goals in the first and second turn. The dice were with me that day.



Rickfest X

A week later, I joined DerekY at Rickfest to,play the same scenario against his Ariadne. He went with a lot of cheaper troopers, ending up with 10 models/orders to my JSA's 6.

I ended up on the same board edge, and set up somewhat similarly to the previous game. However, this time I had to move first.

Derek successfully Infiltrated a trooper just beyond the planter. She caused no end of trouble, gunning down my own mine-laying infiltrator (the Ryuken, who looks exactly like Motoko Kusunagi from Ghost in the Shell), in ARO when the later tried to turn around. I ended up committing the big Daiyokai early, to get rid of her.

Deep in the Ariadne deployment zone, there was (from L-R), a hidden sniper on the roof of the small Japanese building, a war correspondent and a couple of troopers behind the same building, and a fireteam with an HMG on the roof of the small rectangular building. Again, before the game started I had managed to infiltrate the techno ninja (the Oniwaban) right onto the roof with the fireteam.

He revealed himself, and managed to cut all three down with his mono-filament blade.

My Lieutenant tried to get into the fight, moving up beside the self-driving car, but she got shot by Derek's sniper. Fortunately, the Kempei's presence prevented my forces from entering the Loss of Lieutenant state.

Derek's sniper had special, extra-damage-causing ammo. Throwing caution to the wind, I advanced the Daiyokai. In an epic firefight, the Daiyokai managed to outright kill the sniper.

Realizing that my forces had little chance of actually fulfilling game objectives, the Oniwaban stood up and gunned down a couple of Ariadne troopers who were by the Spinner hover car. This lowered  the Ariadne's numbers enough to put them into Retreating off the table, ending the game with another 0-0 draw.

As the scenario itself states,

"The Exfiltrate mission is challenging and often results in low scores. In tournament play it is recommended to be used in the late rounds, so opponents will be of roughly similar skill but given the opportunity to differentiate themselves within win/loss brackets."

***
Following, some other photos of gaming action at the end of December at RickFest X, “the 6th most wonderful time of the year”!


One of the surprise hits from Rick’s collection was The Royal Game of Ur; it’s a dice and race game that traces back its origins to ~4500 years ago. (This video featuring Irving Finkel, curator at The British Museum, shows a play-through of the game:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I )

Everyone brought lots of snacks and appetizers (unseen, meatballs etc. in slow cookers in the kitchen).

ClintS (in black shirt) running his game Ragnarok: Age of Wolves (available for purchase here).

Congratulations and thanks to Rick, for hosting another fun event. This year was the highest attendance yet!

Infinity Project Phase II: the Japanese Secessionist Army

(Click on the pictures to embiggen.)

Last March, while Jen and I were out of town on a mini-vacation, playing board games with Conscript Byron and his lovely wife Kim, news dropped about the release of a new(ish) faction for Infinity: The Game. Formerly a sub-faction of the powerhouse Yu Jing, the Japanese Sectorial Army morphed and changed into its present form, the Japanese Secessionist Army (JSA).  The folks of Japanese descent were tired of being oppressed, and rebelled against their Chinese masters, forming their own political entity. This necessitated some changes in the background and play style of the JSA, while keeping their core flavour of being basically sci-fi Bushi/Space Samurai.

This, of course, also meant that Corvus Belli released some new rules and figures, namely a JSA themed Infinity Uprising book and a JSA Army Box set, both of which I pre-ordered directly from Spain. The rules give some neat background and scenarios. The army box contains 10 figures, more scenarios, cardboard terrain, templates, dice, and a paper map (I had the similar Operation: Red Veil map dry-mounted on particle board at a framing store - see TERRAIN below). With the early-bird purchase, I got the three extra figures noted on the website, too.


FIGURES

The new figures are some of the best gaming miniatures I have ever seen. The figures continue Corvus Belli's new engineering practices, with very positive location points and pegs for the assembly of the multi-part 32mm scale models.  They are very much LESS fragile than their Yu Jing counterparts that I painted up last year.

I received all this stuff in early April, and assembled 9 of the models right away. However, with various work and personal commitments, I only finished the first 7 models over my recent vacation, at the end of September.

I finished painting 7 JSA figures: 6 infantry of various classes, and a non-combatant High Value Target. This is enough to play small, 150-point games of Infinity Recon+ or RECON 2.0, small firefight versions of the basic game, based on 2'x3' maps, instead of the tournament standard 4'x4' playing area. The mounted paper map is of such a smaller size, which makes for fast games, and an easily transportable setup for demos at conventions.

I attended a fantastic painting seminar put on  by Sergio Calvo Rubio back in May of this year.  Based somewhat on that experience, I approached the painting of these figures a little differently than I have in the past. The putative light source is now above, and sightly in front of the forehead of each figure; I hoped that this would provide a more dramatic look to the overall impact of the figure. Also, I was more concerned with the basic shapes of the figure - analyzing the cones, cylinders, cubes, etc. that are part and parcel of the figure's shape. I was less concerned with painting every detail. Also, I tried to highlight and shadow according to the texture of what each figure wore - sharp, point highlights for hard/shiny areas like armour and weapons, and softer edges for cloth, and to bring out interesting shapes of major areas.

As usual for my Infinity figures, all my bases are resin cast, from Dragon Forge Design. Secret Weapon and Vallejo washes, plus some oils, weathered the bases.

Below, I primed the figures with spray can GW Chaos Black, and I added zenithal highlighting with my new Iwata airbrush and compressor combo (blowing at ~17 psi; equal parts water, thinner, and pigment):

Below, faces done in Vallejo acrylics; ready for over-painting in tube artists' oils (to soften transitions, and punch up highlights and shadow):

Below, an in-progress photo:

Below, the completed High Value Target (HVT), a Kuge Delegate, a commercial agent representing the elite of a free Japan. She is armed only with a briefcase (full of counter-revolutionary secrets, no doubt), and a small cat. Using lots of thin glazes of GW Thrakka Green over the zenithal highlighting, I tried to emphasize the outline of her body beneath her traditional dress.

Below, a female Keisotsu Butai; a line infantry figure. Her face is really striking, so I used more contrast than my usual to bring out her expression. I also like how her cotton hakama (split pants) came out.

Below, a female Ryuken Unit-9. Able to infiltrate, armed to the teeth, and equipped with an optical disruptor, these individuals are tough, light infantry. This model looks a LOT like the anime character Major Matoko Kusanagi. from the Ghost in the Shell franchise. I again used a lot of contrast for her face. She is looking downward, so I left out the whites of her eyes. Just a few glazes of GW Nuln Oil brought out her musculature beneath her grey cat suit. The purple hair is pure Major Matoko. (This figure is also seen in medias res in the header picture above.)

Below, a Kempeitai - a type of political officer, who can immediately take over if the unit's officer gets killed. I painted it kind of like a character in Assassin's Creed, which his coat reminded of. His features are very craggy, which made for easy painting. 

Below, I used the limited edition Kaizoku Spec Ops figure as another Keisotsu. With his extra gear on his helmet and backpack, he is usable as a Keisotsu Forward Observer or Medic. I like how the figure is drawing a handgun; this adds to the strength of the physical connection between the (separate) arm and the torso.

Below, an Oniwaban master assassin. Kept it simple, using Panzer Grey for the zenithal highlighting, instead of white. The figure is basically black and grey, with appropriate highlighting for armoured or cloth areas. The pose is very dramatic.

Below, a Daiyokai Dengekitai. Not subtle at all, this is basically a model of a 7-foot tall guy wearing Samurai-inspired armour. The figure stands on a 40mm diameter base. I painted it with various GW greens (Drakenhof Nightshade, Kabalite Green, Sybarite Green) to give shape to the interesting armour and banner contours. I used lots of point highlights on the armour. The undersuit, as for all my JSA figures wearing green/teal armour, was in tones of dark blue and indigo. The large (~3 scale feet tall) brass crest was painted using NMM techniques; the new light source makes for a striking point of focus for the figure, whose features are mostly hidden by his posture and the high-tech jingasa-style helmet.

TERRAIN

Getting a burst of energy at the end of my vacation, I completed 13 terrain elements - Japanese and sci-fi buildings, lanterns, and a large Torii gate. These were all pre-painted, laser-cut MDF items from Bandua Wargames. I just needed to use white glue and clamps to get them together.

The sci-fi buildings are two different sets of their Q-Building, which can stack or be used separately. The Q-Building Beta better hides the edge seams associated with pre-painted structures.

The Torii gate, lanterns, and Japanese buildings are parts of Bandua's Edo District table bundle of building kits, that my dear wife Jen got me for my birthday. The Edo District components are usable for both historical Japanese skirmishes as well as sci-fi.

Coupled with some pre-existing holo-advertisements, cars, planters, etc., I placed most of the new terrain on the mounted Operation: Red Veil map to create the setup seen below. I think it gives a very Blade Runner type feel. 

FIGURES IN ACTION

Below, a Yu Jing light infantry figure stands beside a Tourou lantern.

Below, several JSA figures in mid-game action. The Daiyokai is huge!

Below, the Oniwaban surprises a Yu Jing heavy infantryman, while an Imperial Judge stands unaware in the distance.

Below, a Kuge Delegate is protected by a Keisotsu.

All in all, I am pleased with the progress of Phase II. I now have two painted factions, so I can always have a game of Infinity even if my opponent is new to the game. I think that I only need to paint 4 more figures (mostly heavy infantry) to make a full, 300-point ITS-Tournament-legal force for the JSA.