Infinity History: Rules

The 3rd iteration of Infinity is arriving within a few weeks and it's going to change some rules. People are excited and nervous. For what we know right now on N3, here's a breakdown.

Point values of models are going to change but that has happened within the run of N2. The SAS and Morat Missile Launcher both received points reductions.

Airborne Deployment troops with HMGs are being removed from the game, which is not the first time that profiles have been removed. The Jotum once upon a time had a Heavy Grenade Launcher load out but this was removed in favour of using an ARM 10 to get in there instead of sit back and bombard. In fact, the entire line of Exrah are being removed from the game for N3 due to poor sales. There has even been a 'character death' with Ko Dali in YuJing being Sepsitored and is now a Combined Army unit.

There have been changes to weapons. Pretas used to have Bio-Mines which functioned as Antipersonnel Mines except the only models considered friendly were Gakis. They got a buff in that they've reverted to regular AP Mines. Viral Ammo in a PDF document only gave one BTS Save, in addition to Shock and anti-Transmutation. Imagine everyone's surprise when Human Sphere Viral Ammo was suddenly Double Action. It seems that MULTI Rifles are returning to the original state of AP Ammo and Shock Ammo, though MULTI Sniper Rifles are retaining Double Action Ammo. Hell, Shock Ammo received an upgrade in Paradiso by destoying Shasvastii Spawn Embryos.

And so much errata. N3 will hopefully bring a clean slate to all this baggage.

Climbing+ used to be the model's side was attached instead of the "Batman Style" as depicted to the right. This caused Climbing+ models to too easily gain Cover, attack at an unexpected angle which negated Cover and proceed to lock down a corridor with ease.

The Ghost: Jumper unit Post-Humans were probably the earliest version of the forums screaming bloody murder at the implications of errata. G: Jumper allows for a single mind to be split between two to three bodies. As you declare Orders or AROs, the model switches to another body and takes control. The issue was one of the selections used Thermal Optic Camouflage, which allows a miniature to exist without being on the board. The issue was using G: Jumper to the invisible model, how do you properly show this? Many had the miniature be invisible, others said it would switch to a Marker. The game's rule guru's solution shocked many: the miniature is revealed and placed on the board.

Other debate rage-a-thons include what is known as the 'Quantum Movement'. This delves heavily into the game mechanics of N2 Infinity, so you may wish to avert your eyes. Everything is declared sequentially; however, their resolution occurs simultaneously. This is fine if you have a model move, get shot at, move some more and then get shot at some more. Sure, even if they were shot dead where they started, their body somehow teleports to the destination, no matter what. With one small exception that sent everybody into confusion.  If your model touches an enemy model, all Movement is halted as they're now in Close Combat.

Any Excuse to Pimp

So, if a model can be shot dead and still arrive at it's destination but if it slightly bumps into a hostile enemy then they're frozen in carbonite was inconsistent. This lead to examples of going around a pillar with your enemy going to other way and if they succeeded in their movement, then you would 'snap back' to your original location despite them never seeing you until you moved to your supposed destination. I know that N3 has made some changes to avoid these quantum headaches, but there were a few good erratas that came from this.

This also solved issues where if you declared Climb/Jump and then Shoot, models would need to declare AROs based on your success. This could be problematic if you're holding a TO Camouflage unit in your back pocket. If your opponent passes their Climb check, then the AROs go off unhitched but if they fail, then those actions never happened. The change was to make it that you always succeeded, but if you failed you'd take damage as per Falling to stop some of the foolhardiness.

There were a few changes to melee by the way of clarification from the creators. Special Skills like Berserk or Martial Arts 3 only worked if your opponent used a "CC Skill" in response, so if they shot at you as you advanced the abilities couldn't be used. It took quite a few months for that clarification to come forth, as many Galwegians had kamikaze charged at a TAG to slice it in twain.  Another errata to Smoke, which severely hampered this sort of CC shenanigans, was that if a model was outside of LoF but threw Smoke into LoF who then walked into LoF, the Smoke throw would be unopposed with victory cancelling any AROs. It was really silly with 6" Moves from Duroc and Wallace running around.

A nickname that I personally developed for a strange rules occurrence was 'Double Rainbow'. That is if you fire a weapon, you fire only that weapon except if you have an additional identical weapon which increases your Burst by 1. A Light Shotgun is Burst 2, two Light Shotguns are Burst 3. Models that have two Direct Template Weapons could fire both for Burst 2. The problem arose when that model had two different Direct Template Weapons - giving Burst 1 to a Chain Rifle and Burst 1 to Nanopulser, for example. The creators decided to rule that it worked, for some reason, until Campaign: Paradiso was released which officially corrected that to gain an additional Burst requires an identical weapon.

The final piece of massive errata I recall is the change to laying a Mine in ARO. In English, you could lay a Mine in ARO whenever someone breached your Zone of Control. Where this got silly was that Martial Arts 4, which cancelled the ability to issue Turn Around ARO, did not cancel the ability to Shoot which is effectively what laying a Mine was. So, the sneaky Ninja would enter a room and discover it was already boobytrapped due to all of the ZoC breaches. The strange part is this ruling didn't exist in Spanish, it was mistranslated and stood as official possible FAQ for two years.

For those who missed out on the heady days of strange ARO declarations or teleporting miniatures, I'm sure we'll get some strange interactions with the new edition.  With N3 just around the corner, I'm sure we'll get a flurry of FAQs but Corvus Belli has demonstrated that once they are aware of a problem, they cautiously think of a solution instead of issue one forth that creates further problems.

Tune in next week for the social history of CB's Infinity.