Diving into Infinity: A guide for beginners

I’ve been admiring Infinity for a couple years now.

I’ve never really been into wargaming. The idea of buying up a bunch of expensive Warhammer armies and using templates and rulers to determine who wins a battle over several hours of math and arguing over rules does not sound very appealing to me.

(I know that’s a simplified view, but bear with me.)

Then I found Infinity: A science fiction setting, small-scale skirmishes, beautiful models. Those are exactly the kind of things that push my buttons, so I bought some miniatures.

I’m full-on into the game now. I have yet to play a single game, but I’ve been watching videos, analyzing army lists, looking into terrain and checking out painting tutorials.

If you, too, are getting into Infinity or maybe just jumped into the game, maybe my experience with getting into the game can help.

Here are some tips:

Get an army. All the advice I’ve gotten is go with what you think looks cool or what grabs your attention. (That’s not hard. They all look amazing.)

I kicked things off with the Caledonian Highlander Sectorial Army (see above), a tartan-wearing, down and dirty group of Ariadna soldiers who get in close and shut things down. I’m also interested in the look of the Nomads, armored futuristic soldiers.

Every one of Infinity’s eight armies and sectorials (specialized factions of the armies) have starter packs, a set of several figures that will get you into the game. I highly recommend starting there and then going after other specific models.

Many recommend the Operation: Icestorm starter box, which includes miniatures from two factions, terrain, dice and books explaining how to play the game.

Play some games. Listening to people talk about Infinity is like hearing a foreign language. Acronyms like ARO and WIP or references to link teams and chain rifles get thrown around all the time, and you’ll have no idea what they’re talking about.

Hook up with some local players to dive into the game and you’ll learn it way faster than trying to parse through the rules. The game becomes way more clear once you start rolling dice and moving your models through some city streets.

Get some terrain. Like other wargames, Infinity must be played with terrain. Since it’s a sci-fi world, most of the battles happen in urban environments whether it be a shiny, futuristic city street or a bombed out old diner.

You can spend a good amount of cash on beautiful pieces from Warsenal or  Micro Art Studio (or a number of others). That’s great if you have the financial ability to do so. But you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg.

You can make a lot of nice terrain for nominal cost with papercraft printouts or plans to assemble foamboard terrain. I’ve done both with some pretty good results. I have some really cool papercraft shipping containers (including a sweet Weyland-Yutani one) and some pretty cool (and lightweight) foam buildings.

Excellent tutorials (and printable templates) can be found all over the web. Talk Wargaming has a great list of free sources, Toposolitario has a very impressive set of papercraft vehicles and buildings and I particularly love some foam core plans made by Combo Site for buildings, a diner and other stuff. I also love these papercraft containers from Antenocitis Workshop, who makes some pretty great Infinity accessories.

Learn the game. One of the best ways to learn how the game works (other than actually playing), is to check out battle reports on YouTube. Basically, a pair of players film their entire game including their armies, strategy and everything else. It’s a great way to see how games actually play out. Then they usually do a postgame to talk about how everything went.

There’s also several podcasts. MayaCast is probably the most popular, but there’s also The Krug, Totally CRIT and others.

____________________

Do you play Infinity? What else would you recommend for a beginner?