Infinity History: Social

Infinity is moving onto a 3rd Edition and last week I reviewed it's growth as a game. But what of this small group of friends who made Infinity? This compilation could not have happened without Magno and Yasbir's informative posts on the Infinity Forums and Data-Sphere.

Who are the gentlemen at Corvus Belli? A collection of artists, historians, hobbyists, LARPers and RPG fans. Some of the character units in Infinity are characters from the original game of Infinity: Uxia McNeil, Carlotta Kowalsky, Zoe Nemova, Brando Castro and Cassandra Kusangi are playable models from the original RPG. Vasily, a Missile Launcher toting Kazak, is the only unreleased model with the continual screw-up that is Fusilier Angus is a model but only as a civilian.

Middle Uxia is original cast of RPG model, the ones on Left and Right represent current in-game profiles

Prior to Infinity, CB made 15mm historical battle miniatures which probably drew greatly on their historian background and LARP as well. When they started Infinity, they originally called it Tunguska, which then became one of the Nomad ships. Gutier, who is known as Interruptor on the forums, does the majority of the story and rules while Bostria is responsible for the art and the two are the face of Infinity.

They played this RPG for years, with some days just spent developing background story, such as the introduction of Dog Warriors and Antipodes resulting from the gang's love for a movie called Dog Soldiers.  Bostria was selected specifically because he had never played a war game prior to Infinity.  If a playtester wanted to change a rule, they would need to duel Interruptor with their LARP kit. The Caskuda was based off a large cockroach that lives in the area and Achilles was a giant mecha. This play testing really got started around 2003.

Corvus Belli managed to snatch up some of the sculptors from Rackham when Confrontation died. You can notice an immediate jump in sculpt quality. CB ensured to hire Angel Giraldez who last year celebrated his tenth anniversary with the company. The majority of the models on the page were painted by Giraldez, the exceptions being the old Uxia and the "two" Durocs below.  Giraldez occasionally shows up the Infinity comics and a strange video where Bostria berates him. Leave the subtitles off, it is funnier due to how nonsensical the entire scene is:

Look Familiar? Paint job not by Angel.

1st Edition launched in 2006 and was successful due to the interesting ruleset and high quality miniatures. It was late 2007 when the game was relaunched as a revised 2nd Edition with the introduction of ITS - Infinity Tournament System. The game positively exploded in 2009 due to the release of Human Sphere and entire Infinity week on the Beasts of War wargaming channel.  Since 2009 CB has been experiencing a 75% growth each year in sales. The Link Team mechanic made many old hands nervous, but it turned out to be balanced in the rocket-tag that is Infinity.

In 2012, CB does another partnership with Beasts of War for more coverage for their next book: Campaign Paradiso. This is also the first time Infinity is officially at GenCon, who is heroically managed by Magno. Paradiso changed the game entirely with the introduction of what I like to consider a scenario builder. Prior to Paradiso, there were only two official scenarios and a whole bunch of player created scenarios. After Paradiso, ITS became heavily influenced by the options put forth and players got a better sense of how to build custom scenarios for their own games. The player base growth and rules issues outlined last week cause CB to decide to push forward N3 instead of the next Sectorial book.

The last step in Corvus Belli's goal to rule the world is a trio of new character profiles that they've released. Magno is the forum name of a gentleman who has been running the Infinity GenCon events, who was gifted a WarCor model and is a complete gentleman to the point that he mailed me a random Odalisque that is painted superbly.  Yasbir is one of the close playtesters and one of the most active forum posters that can answer questions if only by knowing the people personally. He has been depicted in the Infinity comics as being a master Fiday, but when they came out with a character concept, he ended up as a Muyib (explosives experts). PsychoticStorm is a forum member who uncontrollably spammed cordially greeted almost every forum-goer to the point that he was raised as a moderator. CB gave him a Knight model after his faction that is named as his real first name: Konstantinos.

Magno is a WarCor, Yasbir is an Hassassin and PsychoticStorm is a Knight

The Infinity community repays Interruptor and Bostria for their amazing game with some truly bizarre photoshopped pictures. The Interruptor photoshops aren't that glorious and he seems to be much cooler with it than Bostira who calls these sort of 'shops nightmares, so I'm just going to be posting a few Bostria picks. As for why this started exactly... Hell if anybody knows at this point. I think CB was visiting GenCon, they drank with some of the players and this meme was birthed. Plus Psy's Gangnam Style was everywhere - it influenced a lot of the random pictures.