Aristeia!

By: Dozer

Aristeia! is now a thing.

I heard about this at Rumble at Route 66 and you can think Bobby Whisky for that. Warcors getting drunk, loose lips sink ships... or drunk Canadians become easy friends with folks and get ignored when the secrets are being whispered among the drunk.

I kept my lips sealed and enjoyed getting the behind the scenes look as some of the leaders of the USA Infinity Scene talked about the new game. There will be fancy dice and cards it will not be like Infinity mechanically - it's a whole new game. They just share the fluff. Same idea for the Infinity RPG but they did craft a conversion set for putting your characters on the table.

Beasts of War posted the first reveal of the minis and an interview with Carlos on who's the who of the game. My sole question is yet to be answered: What scale are these minis?

These come right after the leek of the characters from Outrage. Leaving us with a ton of character minis from Corvus Belli instead of nameless unit minis. The change of paces is nice and I like the minis so far.

So I'm going to do a quick review on the minis we've seen and how I would proxy them into my Infinity lists.

Excerpts from Wotan - Opening the Door

Wotan has been a great experience so far. The stories comming out of the battle reports have been brilliant and very interesting. Below is a quick write up from the game that Ontos and Burns had during Phase 1.

Excerpts from Wotan - Opening the Door
By: Ontos

"Mike Niner this is Uniform Romero request : Jones get up there and blast this door open!

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) attached shaped charge to door, (one order spent)
- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) Sets off charge (Second Order spend), door intact only take 1 Str damage

The smoke cleared and there was little damage to the door

"Damn it what the hell is this door made out of? Hit it again Jones!"

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) attached shaped charge to door, (Third order spent)
- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) Sets off charge (Forth Order spend), door intact no damage done.

"Sir  I am all out of charges!"

"Alright Ill try cutting it open."

Unknown Ranger, Spends order to CC attack door with T2 CC weapon, (two orders spent), door intact no damage done.

Active turns ends, CA active turn.

Next Active turn for USA

"Golf India this is Mike Niner (1 do you have eyes on that Plasma?"

"Golf India, Roger"

"Mike Niner, take him out"

Inferior infiltration grunt moves into positions to take out Plasma Batroid covering Armoury door, wins face to face with light shotgun and takes down batroid, sacrificing himself for the mission going down to a hail of Mk12 fire form the CA. (One order Spent)

Foxtrot One, Plasma Tango down, Golf India KIA"

Uniform Romero this is Mike Niner, cost is clear get that door open.

"Jones get this door open!"

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) rolls WIP to open door, need 13 rolls 20 (one order spent)

Damn it sir the door code has been changed!

"Mike Niner this is Uniform Romero the door code has been changed sir we need the new one"

"Mike Niner, Roger Wait out will contact higher."

"Uniform Romero this is Mike Niner new code is 11394"

"Uniform Romero Roger out"

"Jones new code is 11394"

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) rolls WIP to open door, need 13 rolls 15 (one order spent)

"Sir that's not it!"

"Mike Niner this is Uniform Romero that code is no good!"

"Mike Niner, Roger Wait "

Mike Niner, Higher says that code is good as off midnight, try again!

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) rolls WIP to open door, need 13 rolls 17(one order spent)

"Mike Niner this is Uniform Romero still no go, Working on issue"

"Jones do you think this door was set to local station time or DWAN standard?"

"Don't know sir I'll try both!"

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) trys the code using local station time with encryption set, rolls WIP to open door, need 13 rolls 20 (one order spent)

"No luck with local station time sir switching to DWAN standard"

- Specialist Jones (Dozer Eng) rolls WIP to open door, need 13 rolls 1 (one order spent) doors to armoury opens!

It only took 11 orders to safely open a door!

A Hobby Update

By: Dozer

This has been a wild ride of a year.

Infinity launched a global campaign in collaboration with Beasts of War Strike Zone: Wotan. They also got out their first fiction product; a manga titled Outrage. It was also very good. While their second two player boxset Operation: Red Veil continues to do well.

Games Workshop has released the hotly anticipated Warhammer 40,000 - 8th Edition to a fanfare of reviews that normally start with admittance that they left the game a few editions ago and they've only played a bit here and there with last edition. Most of the review I've watched and read have been positive and that's a good thing to hear for the corner stone of the Tabletop Miniature Wargame hobby.

Knight Models released their Flash and Arrow rules expansion for the Batman Miniatures game. They followed it up with a new two player starter set and news of a second expansion that is currently on pre-order and based on the Arkham video games.

Warmachine and Hordes are settling into 3rd edition after a really rocky start. The forces books are finally coming along. The CID or community led development and testing is about to churn out its first project a source book on Cygnar's Trenchers led by a new Siege! Cards are no longer packaged with products. Lastly No Quarter will change from a magazine to a full on regular released sourcebook similar to the way Pathfinder produces campaigns in installments.

Dropfleet Commander finally started showing up after a crazy Kickstarter. Guildball is starting it's 3rd season and released a two player starter called Guild Ball: Kickoff. Osprey Publishing's game Frostgrave is about to receive their next main expansion... you get the idea. I'm only scratching the surface. Our hobby has blown up and we are deep into our golden age of gaming.

My summer has not been as free as I'd have liked. Family is moving away while other parts of my family are growing. I and most of the contributors here at Canadian Tabletop Gamer are going to GENCON 50 in August.

I have plenty of work to do regarding my Nomads and having them ready for GENCON but a few things have been posted over the last couple of days and I felt inspired to bust open a new post.

Batman Miniatures - Parliament of Owls

My experience with Batman Miniatures has been a one sided experience. The game looks brilliant. Mechanically it has a neat take on ranged combat, objectives, and lighting. Seriously this game has got lighting down pat. I've only played a single demo game which was enough for me to pick up a few minis.

My relationship with Batman is also strange and antagonistic. My favorite story arc was Dark Knight, Dark City by Peter Milligan. Outside of the odd story arc here and there, Nightwing and Batgirl (Casandra Cain) were my favorite following by Robin. Batman was always boring until Scott Snyder came along and took me on the longest Batman ride of my life starting with the Court of Owls.

So I picked up everything Court of Owls. I picked up both sets: The Court of Owls and Court of Owls Crew. I still need to pick up the Gotham Butcher and hopefully they will make a Talon (Calvin Rose) miniature. Now 'I still need to pick up' is a silly statement. All of my minis are unpainted and un-assembled and yet this new Parliament of Owls set get's shown off and I want to pick it up right away.

Three new Talons and a new sidekick - the High Court Lady. The Court of Owls always felt like it didn't have enough minis compared to everything else in the game so it's nice to see them get some more support in the game. I think my plan post GENCON is paint up all my Owls and then ask teh local group to run a few games for me.

Infinity - Outrage

I loved the Manga. I'm glad I snagged the pre-order that came with the fancy mini of the main character Knauf. When this leaked online I was floored. First off this is a MERCs faction box the first of it's kind. It also gives me hope that the MERCs will be getting their own faction rules sooner rather than later. Maybe alongside Aristiea! the next game for Infinity that will be seen by the public for the first time at GENCON.

The minis look great. There is a character for each faction - almost. Nakadai Shunya is a JSA Ninja who looks almost like an Oniwaban in the comic. Emily Handleman is a PanO agent. Vania Nevski is a Dog Soldier for Ariadna. Uhahu is a Nomad hacker and Jethro works with the Druze (so a Haqq). Only Beba has not 'faction' ties outside of her TAG.

Now that I've started my Infinity painting and am churning out minis, I look forward to snag the Outrage character box. They will be perfect for the Infinity RPG when it finally comes out and the minis look great.

With GENCON around the corner I was really surprised to get as inspired as I did with these new bits of information in such a saturated time in our Hobby. I'll keep you posted as I prep for GENCON and get ready for another crazy season at the table.

- Cheers

Dozer

Event - Dire Province: Capital Conflict

Capital Conflict is a 4 round ITS event for 12-24 players within our nations capital located at the Major Holland VC Senior Ranks Mess.

When-
23 September 2017
Event check in starts at 0900 EST.
Games to start no later than 1000 EST.
Closing ceremonies will be no sooner than 1900 EST depending on lunch and round length.

Where- 
Major Holland VC Senior Ranks Mess
2100 Walkley Road, Ottawa, Ontario

Rules - 
ITS Event, 300 point, 2 list, 4 rounds, two hours each round.

Scenarios are (from ITS Season 8 v1.4) in no order:

Capture and Protect
Rescue
Safe Area
Supplies.

Prizes include -
A tournament box from Black Sheep Industries for our winner!

Prizes also include ITS Season 8 prize pack, a painted HVT by EMP Studios for Best Sportsmanship, from Angel Giraldez a signed Studio Giraldez mug to be filled with other goodies for the winner of Best Painted, and more!

Additional prize details to be announced as I get final confirmation while we move closer to the event.

Swag - 
Measuring template, patches, and more to be confirmed.

Accommodations -
Location provides free unlimited parking, private large clean washrooms, and access to a bar in the event room.

A lunch is included in the event price and will be provided at the location. If you have any dietary restrictions please include that in your registration e-mail.

A private Bar will be open for 1130 for players to purchase drinks (alcoholic* and non-alcoholic) and snacks.

To Register - 
$35 Canadian Dollars for anyone who registers before 1200 EST on 18 August 2017, 40$ CND afterwards.

Send money via paypal or e-mail to: capitalconflict@gmail.com

Once your event payment is received organizers will send a confirmation e-mail with registration instructions and future updates.

- Cheers

Olen Gravel

*Minors will not be served alcoholic drinks and if caught will be removed from the event per Federal and Provincial Laws.