Crushing Defeat

So, D-Man (of Definitive Geek) and I travelled about an hour and a half to a neighbouring city not too long ago. We were thrilled that Heroe’s Beacon was hosting an Infinity event.

I’ll be honest… while I really enjoy playing with my local group of friends, this was the first time I’d gotten the chance to be a part of a scheduled event with an organizer and judge, prizes, etc., etc. In summary, I had a blast, but I also learned a lot.

There’s a totally different kind of mind set and pressure at competitive events as compared to the normal casual, take a Saturday kind of game day. As a result I made some serious mistakes. The biggest and worst was forgetting that I had certain abilities on my figures. In the third episode of Mayacast, Tom and Kip make the suggestion that you should write all of your characters’ special abilities down on a cue card so you can quickly reference them. Really, it’s just a quick reminder so you don’t end up spacing out, like I did, when the big moment arrives. As veterans of the game will tell you, a single die roll can change the course of a game of Infinity. Even more so, a single tactical decision, use, misuse, or neglect of a character and their abilities can affect the final outcome. This little tip, which is brilliant, really, can really keep you from a misstep, especially if you’re playing at a convention or tournament that has already been going on for hours or even days! Unfortunately, I didn’t hear this little tip until about a week after my crushing defeat.

I brought a couple of Japanese Sectorial lists, and D-Man brought his Military Orders. We each played three games and every one was a loss for me.

First was a mission to examine some objectives, download intel from a primary objective site, and transmit that back to base. My opponent used a Tohaa team, and was pretty much able to pin me down with a well-placed sniper. I kept my opponent from getting the main objectives, but he still snuck one, ending the game at 1 to 0.

Mostly, I blame the table… I know, it’s a poor sport who blames the conditions, but all of the players who had to game on that table groaned. It was basically a circle of multi-level hills surrounding a relatively empty zone that contained the main objective. My opponent was able to position a sniper, part of a Tohaa Triad, covering the main objective, and the rest, as they say, is history. I only had a couple of long range options and when I tried to use them he simply rolled better. Not much anyone can do about that.

I probably could have done better on a different map. However, in hind sight there are a number of things I could have tried. I didn’t have a lot of long range fire power on my team, but honestly, neither did my opponent. Yes he had a sniper, but my HMG should have been a match for it.  Once both my HGM and Panzerfaust were down, I still could have ran my Aragoto bikes up the side and flanked him, or even come around his rear and picked off some more orders. Finally, my biggest blunder was forgetting that Shinobu Kitsune has smoke grenades. I could have dropped a grenade, out of TO Camo, on to the main objective, and super-jumped my Spec Ops on to it to capture 2 more points, possibly 4.

Next time I’m bringing a cue card!

I’ll detail my other crushing defeats in another post. In the meantime, here’s a quick pic of what I took home: