Seeing a lot of our new PanO player across the table! He was kind enough to stay late at the LGS to get a game in against me after he finished a 200 point game against one of our veteran players fielding ALEPH. They played one of the PanO missions from Strikezone Wotan, and with the hour already being late we just left the table and mission as-is, sans a few minor terrain tweaks.

I’m really digging the Strikezone Wotan missions, as well as the excitement they generate in the Infinity community. It’s been nice to have people leave encouraging comments on battle reports, even though I know they’re probably doing it to pad their exp!

Overview

Nomads INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25)

BANDIT Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Light Shotgun, Adhesive Launcher / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 28)

GRENZER Missile Launcher / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 29)

ZERO Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21)

DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)

ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)

JAGUAR Adhesive Launcher, Panzerfaust / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 13)

JAGUAR Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 10)

MORAN Combi Rifle, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 21)

KRAKOT RENEGADE 2 Chain Rifles, Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 14)

TOMCAT Doctor (MediKit) Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22) 9 1 1 | 3.5 SWC | 200 Points | Open in Infinity Army

PanOceania FUSILIER Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

FUSILIER Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)

AUXILIA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle + AUXBOT_1 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)

AUXBOT_1 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4)

AUXILIA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle + AUXBOT_1 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)

AUXBOT_1 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4)

BULLETEER Heavy Shotgun / Electric Pulse. (0 | 17)

BULLETEER Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1 | 23)

KNIGHT HOSPITALLER Doctor (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 37)

NISSE HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 34)

AKAL COMMANDO Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 21) 10 | 3 SWC | 200 Points | Open in Infinity Army

Deployment

Zero Cool (Interventor) claps loudly to grab the attention of everyone in the briefing room. “Ok. Everyone’s here. Listen up! This op is completely off the books. There is no backup, and there is only one window for extraction. We will not have EVO support running interference, and we have no assets in theater. No Intruders babysitting us, no Corregidor Wildcats blowing holes through bulkheads to pull us out.” He nods to Acid Burn, the Bakunin Zero lounging on a supply crate nearby, pink hair pulled back in a ponytail. She thumps the supply crate with her combat heels as she hops off. The crate hisses open, revealing a cache of PanO weapons. Acid Burn reaches a hand inside, pulling out a PanO combi rifle before tossing it to Zero Cool, who catches it and holds it out for those in the room to inspect. “Our friends in Bakunin have skimmed some goodies off the top of the usual arms shipments for us. Last year’s models, of course. Too old and busted for the hyperpower, eh? Anyway, we’ll be following the usual black ops SOP. No unit insignia–not like we do much of that anyway. All weapons and ammo come from that crate or they don’t go with us. No Nomad gear. Tunguska wants complete deniability. The only exception is our Morat friend over there,” he continues, gesturing to the back of the room. The Krakot Renegade grunts in reply. “If they tie this op to the Combined Army, that’s better for us anyway,” Zero Cool explains, handing the combi rifle to the Daktari sitting nearby. “Okay. The target is the Targeting and Correction deck of Sygtir-2,” he reveals, eliciting a low whistle from a Jaguar, who had until then been cleaning his fingernails with a knife. “Acid Burn will do the heavy lifting, we’re there to provide cover and support for her. We’ve arranged to hitch a ride in a shipping container slated for the Targeting and Correction deck. We insert, secure the immediate area in radio silence, and cover Acid Burn while she hacks the planet–I mean the PanO. What she’s doing is need-to-know. Our RoE is don’t engage if you’re not compromised. If you’re going to be seen, shoot first, shoot to kill. No witnesses. Questions?” The Grenzer, who had been rummaging around in the supply crate, hefts a PanOceanian missile launcher and raises a single eyebrow at Zero Cool. “Heavy weapons are a go,” the Interventor replies, before repeating himself. “No witnesses, but you are on weapons hold unless we’re compromised. Anything else?” A Crazy Koala beeps pleadingly at Zero Cool, arms outstretched, begging for a hug. “Don’t hug me, Koala-chan. Hug the PanO,” he admonishes it. Zero Cool gestures at something that only he can see. “Okay. I’ve backed up and scrubbed all your comlogs. You should only have the mission parameters and Sygtir-2 schematics. If there’s nothing else, we suit up in 30.” The assembled troopers begin dispersing, but before the Tomcat Doctor can walk away, Zero Cool clamps a hand on her shoulder. “Doc, I need you to run interference outside the immediate AO. Check your comlog for details.”

My opponent deploys first. Bulleteer shotgun watches over his beacon along with a Fusilier. Auxilia FOs are on both flanks, with his Lieutenant in the back corner of his deployment zone. His Bulleteer Spitfire covers my approach on the left, and there’s a Fusilier hacker and a Hospitaller Doctor on my right.

He sets up to secure the right midfield objective (from my perspective) with the Auxilia and the Hospitaller Doctor, but cedes the left objective (my perspective again) to me, more or less. There’s a big open area to cross for his Auxilia on that side, and the Bulleteer Spitfire can only do so much. I counter-deploy him. Hard. I put the Moran covering the approach to the right objective that his Hospitaller Doctor and Auxilia FO are by, with my Interventor lieutenant actually exposed and watching the approach. This will give me a hacking ARO against his Hospitaller, which has Stealth due to Martial Arts. I put the Bandit KHD on my left, intending to hack his hacker through the Bulleteer’s repeaters if necessary. Acid Burn the Zero (this time with a AHD) goes in the middle, ready to hack either the Bulleteers, the Auxbot, or the Hospitaller as they walk by. I cover my beacon with two Jaguars and a Daktari, who is watching for AD:2 troopers. To add another layer of defense, I park the Krakot Renegade (proxied by the Authorized Bounty Hunter model) all the way on the left to cover that board edge with chain rifles. The Jaguar ADHL is exposed, along with a Grenzer ML (proxied by my Mobile Brigada ML) in a sniper nest. I put the Daktari’s Zondbot behind the Grenzer just in case.

I forget what I held in reserve. I think it was Acid Burn? Or maybe the Moran. In any case, his reserve is the Nisse HMG, which goes on a building behind his Spitfire REM, in view of my Grenzer and my Jaguar ADHL.

Turn 1

Top of Turn 1 – PanO

My opponent rightly decides to get rid of the Grenzer to give him freedom of movement, and activates the Nisse HMG, splitting burst between my Grenzer and the Jaguar ADHL. I ARO with missile and panzerfaust, respectively. This is a big order, where everything comes down to dice and the fact that I have MSV1 on the Grenzer. The Jaguar takes a hit but makes ARM, and my Grenzer blows the Nisse off the table.

Zero Cool’s mouth twisted into a frown below his visor as he watched the video feed of the Grenzer’s field of view. Things had Since the Interventor had ordered strict radio silence to conceal their position, the Grenzer had clambered up to a high point overlooking the Sygtir-2 access terminal to provide top cover and to serve as a tightbeam laser comms relay. Acid Burn was barely visible even to the Grenzer’s multi-spectral visor as she crawled her way carefully across a catwalk, attempting to find a save approach to the access terminal. A Bandit crouched near an energy relay, ready to power-cycle the access terminal to allow Acid Burn to intercept the terminal in its boot-up sequence. The Grenzer’s vidfeed highlighted a pair of Bulleteers, antennae twitching as they patrolled the area near the access terminal. Zero Cool risked a transmission over tightbeam laser to the Grenzer. “Check Orange 2 again.” The vidfeed shifted up towards the building they had designated “Orange” and zoomed in on the area surrounding the second window. The Grenzer’s MSV picked a Nisse out of the darkness. HMG slung at a low ready, the Nisse was shifting his weight from foot to foot idly. With the Grenzer’s attention focused elsewhere, no one noticed the Auxilia and his Auxbot approaching the secondary energy relay until it was too late. Acid Burn’s Assault Hacking Device began scrolling a new datafeed across her visual field, detailing the link between the Auxilia and his companion. Although the control stream was heavily encrypted, she quickly noted that the maintenance subroutines were still running on the Auxbot and listening for a connection. Acid Burn pulsed a few spoofed control packets at the Auxbot’s maintenance subroutines with PanO’s four most commonly used passwords: love, sex, secret, and god. The second one was accepted, bringing a chuckle to Acid Burn’s lips. It was then a simple matter of sending the bot into a series of exhaustive self-diagnostics, effectively isolating it from any efforts to control it by the Auxilia. Slow to react, the Auxilia rounded the corner, now in view of the secondary energy relay, before looking back to puzzle over his suddenly disconnected companion.

He then activates the Auxilia FO on my right and runs it up the table to try and get at the console on my right. I reveal Acid Burn and Oblivion the Auxbot, removing that particular threat. He charges ahead to push the button, but one of my Crazy Koalas makes a lifelong friend (the friendship is very short).

A small, lonely robot was imagining how wonderful hugging must feel when the Auxilia came around the corner into its field of vision. Combat subroutines kicked in, focusing the Crazy Koala’s optics array onto the Auxilia and classifying him as “Hostile — PanOceananian — Auxilia.” Splashed below the classification in all caps was the Koala’s prime directive, given to it by the l337 h4x0r Zero Cool: “HUG THE PANO.” Squealing in delight, the Koala leapt off the shipping container it had been standing on and rushed to meet his new friend, crashing into the Auxilia in a full on glomp hug. Some devious Praxis engineer had filled the Koala’s audio buffers with only one sound file, which it now played at full volume: “HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG HUG HU-” The Auxilia had enough time to be startled before everything went black, his chest turned into a mess of gore and lonely robot parts. “We’re compromised, GO LOUD!” shouted Zero Cool into the previously silent Nomad radio frequency. Now on alert, the PanOceanian forces snapped into action. The Bulleteers stomped forward, angrily scanning for threats. A Hospitaller Doctor began dashing up the field to see if he could do anything to save the downed Auxilia. Behind them, the Nisse HMG had enough time to shoulder his HMG before the trails of a panzerfaust and missile intersected his position, leaving only a crater where he previously stood. The Jaguar ADHL tossed a smoking tube to the ground before pulling another off his shoulder and pointing it at one of the Bulleteers. Right before he turned his target into scrap with his last panzerfaust, a second missile impacted the other Bulleteer. The HESH warhead of the missile made short work of the Bulleteer Heavy Shotgun’s armor, and turned the inside of the REM to debris. “Hostile HI!” warned Zero Cool, attempting to penetrate the Hospitaller’s anti-hacker profiles to no effect. “The password is not ‘God,’ which is somewhat surprising,” he added.

He’s only got two specialists left on that side, and the Hospitaller Doctor is the more durable one. After moving the Doctor right up to the edge of where my Grenzer can see, my opponent declares a move-move coordinated order with the two Bulleteers and the Hospitaller, in hopes that I’ll take the bait of shooting the Bulleteers with the Grenzer instead of the Hospitaller. This is another huge order of the game, and is what I consider the major turning point of the game. My AROs:

Bulleteer Spitfire – Jaguar ADHL declares Panzerfaust

– declares Panzerfaust Bulleteer Shotgun – Grenzer declares Missile

– declares Missile Hospitaller Doctor Zero Cool (Interventor) declares Oblivion through the Moran ‘s repeater, as I have actual LoF to the Hospitaller . Acid Burn (Zero AHD ) can’t do anything because the Hospitaller has Stealth, even though he’s in her ZoC.



I make all of my rolls, he fails pretty much all of his with the exception of BTS on the Hospitaller. Granting unopposed AROs is dangerous, even if the odds aren’t great.

With his last order, his Hospitaller successfully pushes the button, and passes his BTS against Acid Burn’s hacking ARO.

Bottom of Turn 1 – Nomads

The Jaguar is frenzied and out of Panzerfausts, so I just jump him off the building out of LoF of anything for some free Impetuous movement. He passes ARM from the falling damage. I choose to cancel the Krakot’s Impetuous order, because I don’t want to run straight at an Auxbot and two combi rifles. I make a slightly less bad move with the Krakot, and successfully dodge the incoming combi fire from one instead of both combi rifles, staying out of flamethrower range. The Bandit pushes her button on the left in total cover with her Irregular order, and Acid Burn starts hacking away at the Hospitaller Doctor. Two orders later, and he finally fails a BTS save against immobilization. I stand my Moran up and take a shot at the Doctor. I land three combi rifle hits, and the Doctor fails his ARO: Reset and all three ARM rolls. I’m low on orders at this point, so I recamo Acid Burn, and climb her off the building to hang out next to the objective. One of the Fusiliers manages to discover her in the process, but no one gets to shoot her.

“The password is ‘God’,” retorts Acid Burn, “just with an exclamation point at the end!” Now granted access to the Hospitaller’s systems, Acid Burn tricks the armor into thinking that the Hospitaller has suffered a spinal injury. The armor immediately locks in place, effectively immobilizing the Hospitaller. “He’s frozen, but is right where I need to be!” she exclaims into the battle net, having crawled to the lip of the building overlooking the Hospitaller’s position near the downed Auxilia. A burst of combi rifle fire shatters the Hospitaller’s visor and pitches his corpse over like a fallen statue. “Path clear,” radios the Moran as Acid Burn rolls off the building. The Bandit chimes in: “Power cycled, you have 2 minutes!”

Turn 2

Top of Turn 2 – PanO

We quickly check that my opponent’s not in retreat, especially with the Akal BSG off the table.

PanOceania FUSILIER Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

FUSILIER Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)

AUXILIA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle + AUXBOT_1 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)

AUXBOT_1 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4) 4 | 0.5 SWC | 53 Points

He’s not, and sets about grabbing as many points and setting up for the best turn possible. He wants to get rid of my Krakot to open a line for the Akal BSG, so he starts driving his Auxbot up. His second short skill is a successful Forward Observe on the Krakot, getting him a classified. The Krakot fastballs a grenade at the Auxbot before it gets too close, stopping it.

The Auxilia tries to shoot my Krakot, but he dodges behind the some boxes, making sure to face the side of the table for the inevitable Akal walking on. He spends his last few orders walking the Akal onto the other side of the table (probably a good idea). The Moran can’t see, but Acid Burn can!

“Krakot, go give them a show!” orders Zero Cool. The Krakot breaks cover and rolls a grenade right at an Auxilia and his Auxbot. Sacrificing itself, the Auxbot leaps onto the grenade before it reaches the Auxilia. “COMBINED! Combined Army is on Sygtir-2,” shouts the Auxilia into an open channel. “SUPPRESSING FIRE!” he screams, emptying his combi-rifle into the pile of supply crates the Krakot ducked behind. “Well, that’ll do just fine,” chuckles Zero Cool. “Contact, quadrant four!” alerted Acid Burn, spotting an Akal Commando rushing into the area of operations. Quickly settling into a supported kneeling shooting position, she feathered her combi rifle’s trigger, hitting the Akal center-of-mass with a short burst, neutralizing the threat. “X-Ray down,” she updated. “Cover me, I’m making a run for the console!”

He splits burst on the BSG against Acid Burn and the Moran, but he whiffs both and Acid Burn crits the Akal. With that, it’s back to me.

Bottom of Turn 2 – Nomads

I cancel the Krakot’s Impetuous order again, and walk the Jaguar forward with his. I recamo the Bandit and the Zero, and then walk the recently re-camouflaged Acid Burn up the table. She surprise shots the Fusilier hacker, recamos, and attempts the same on the Fusilier guarding the beacon. He passes his ARM saves, so I activate the Bandit, who shoots as well, but he passes his saves.

I’ve got one order left, which I spend on Acid Burn to open the box and then dodge the incoming fire. The Fusilier whiffs his shot, and now I have the objective!

“Two contacts, Fusiliers, one right by the console and one at your 2 o’clock,” updates the Bandit. “Suppressing the console Fusilier!” adds the Bandit, pumping a few shotgun rounds downrange to keep the Fusilier’s head down. Acid Burn, now in a full sprint, rounds the corner and heads straight for the console. As she dashes past the Fusilier hacker at her 2 o’clock, she lets go of her combi rifle with her strong hand, palming an antipersonnel mine from the dispenser on her belt and tossing it at the Fusilier with an expert flip of her wrist. The mine detonates in mid air, shredding the Fusilier hacker with flechettes. Acid Burn slides into position, crashing into the console breathlessly. She pulls a cable from her helmet and inserts it into the waiting connection port on the console and goes to work, trying to catch her breath.

Turn 3

Top of Turn 3 – PanO

We do another retreat check, and yep, retreat is active.

PanOceania FUSILIER Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

FUSILIER Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

AUXILIA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle + AUXBOT_1 / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)

AUXBOT_1 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4) 3 | 0 SWC | 35 Points

We call it. He got his classified (1) and one of the consoles (1). I hit one of the consoles (1), have his beacon (4), and prevented him from getting mine (3).

“I have the logs, worm is uploaded!” crows Acid Burn. “Good work!” replies Zero Cool, before addressing the rest of the force. “Fall back to extraction! We have a 10 minute window. Doc, you know what to do!” The Fusilier Lieutenant, alerted to the presence of Combined Army forces on the Targeting and Correction deck, calls for backup: “We’re falling back! Combined Army forces on Deck 7! NEED IMMEDIATE REINFORCEMENTS!” The two surviving Fusiliers and Auxilia regroup and begin retreating down a hallway towards an armored barricade which has risen out of the deck plating in response to the commotion. Before they can reach the safety of 3 inches of reinforced armor, a Tomcat steps out from behind their own barricade! “Sorry boys. No witnesses,” she says before dousing all of them in napalm. “We’re clean, boss,” she updates Zero Cool.

8-2: Nomad Victory!

Notes