First experiences with ITS: It Kinda Sucks

[Math Mathonwy]

OK, the thread title is a bit extreme, but hope that got your attention

I took part in my first Infinity tournament. I have been playing the game since first edition but in a small group and not super actively, so I'm not the best player around but I like to think I'm not a complete tosser. For the tournament I played three practice games using the ITS scenarios.

The tournament had Supplies, Quadrant Control, and Emergency Transmission. I played the Shasvastii Sectorial.

In Supplies I got paired against a really, really good player with a really good list (French Ariadna). I got one package, he got two and that was that. Once a player got a package, taking it away seemed impossible (this was true in the practice game I played, as well). Still, I think that this one was by far the best scenario of the three and I can see that it might be possible for the game to develop in such a way that stealing a package back would be possible.

Quadrant Control was a complete fiasco. I played against vanilla Ariadna with lots of camo (so killing one another was pretty difficult) and the player going second wins this scenario every time unless he does something utterly idiotic. The advantage on going second is insanely huge.

Emergency Transmission. Well, I used 15 Orders to synchronize three consoles, my opponent used six to synchronize four plus the antenna. I essentially lost an entire turn due to bad rolls. Now, naturally, Infinity has a big luck thing going on. If I crit with all of my AROs, I win (well, OK, if I'm a complete nincompoop I might not, but you get the point). But the -3 WIP roll is brutal and there is no way to stack it in your favour (other than using high WIP specialists, but it's still possible to fail several times) and it's mission critical. It was very frustrating. In the two practice matches I had of this scenario, similar things happened in both, though not quite as extreme.

How would I fix these scenarios, then?

In Supplies I might try implementing a limit on the number of Orders you can spend to move the package in a turn. Not sure whether it's a good idea, but it would be worth a try, I think.

Quadrant Control - these sorts of scenarios are just useless in IGO-UGO systems like Infinity. In alternating activation systems such as Hell Dorado (or Alkemy, or Malifaux, or Eden, or several other skirmish games I play) they are often some of the best but not here. Scrap it.

For Emergency Transmission I would add an option to use a Long Order for synchronization to make it auto-succeed. Would improve it immensely, I think.

All that said, I must say that I like the sense of urgency to the ITS scenarios and that you are often too busy so that killing the other player's models is too time consuming and you need to do other things with your Orders. So the topic title is an exaggeration for sure.

[ToadChild]

I agree that those are all valid complaints. I feel like a number of ITS missions have some serious issues.

Hope you were still able to have fun at the tournament anyway.

[Math Mathonwy]

Hope you were still able to have fun at the tournament anyway.

Oh aye, it wasn't a bad overall experience. All of my opponents were very nice people to play against, the tables were nice and the atmosphere was good and relaxed. From a competitive gaming perspective it sucked, though.

[Icchan]

I kinda disagree with the quadrant control criticism. It's true that having the second turn is an advantage, but so is having the first turn. This is one of the few scenarios where you can win by tabling or putting your opponent in retreat right on the first turn.

QC is all about ramboing.

It's a shame you played the Emergency Transmission as that's not usually played in tournaments and about Supplies scenario i've not had much experience yet so won't say anything about that.

[Morze]

I kinda disagree with the quadrant control criticism. It's true that having the second turn is an advantage, but so is having the first turn. This is one of the few scenarios where you can win by tabling or putting your opponent in retreat right on the first turn.

QC is all about ramboing.

It's a shame you played the Emergency Transmission as that's not usually played in tournaments and about Supplies scenario i've not had much experience yet so won't say anything about that.

It's true you can win QC by tabling the opponent, but it only wins ylu the game, not the tournament, as you need to play all three rounds to max your points. I should know, as I played in that tournament, won all games and placed second.

[Math Mathonwy]

I kinda disagree with the quadrant control criticism. It's true that having the second turn is an advantage, but so is having the first turn. This is one of the few scenarios where you can win by tabling or putting your opponent in retreat right on the first turn.

QC is all about ramboing.

Camo vs camo without MSVs it's pretty rough going trying to kill your way to victory.

[Kinsman]

Coming from (and still playing) Warmachine, ITS is par for the course. Something to do other than kill each other is great, adding lots of changes to what happens on the tabletop.

I dig it.

[Math Mathonwy]

Coming from (and still playing) Warmachine, ITS is par for the course. Something to do other than kill each other is great, adding lots of changes to what happens on the tabletop.

I dig it.

Yeah, but compared to the scenarios found in, e.g., Hell Dorado, Eden, or Malifaux, it really kinda pales in comparison when it comes to providing a balanced environment for competitive play.

[Kinsman]

Coming from (and still playing) Warmachine, ITS is par for the course. Something to do other than kill each other is great, adding lots of changes to what happens on the tabletop.

I dig it.

Yeah, but compared to the scenarios found in, e.g., Hell Dorado, Eden, or Malifaux, it really kinda pales in comparison when it comes to providing a balanced environment for competitive play.

Never played those, unfortunately. That said, Privateer adjusts the Steamroller pack yearly. It's gotten better every year. Hopefully ITS follows that pattern.

[Guarda de Assalto]

ITS is adjusted every year as well and if the things we've seen from Icestorm are any indicator a wider variety of units should end up seeing tournament play once we jump to N3. That will go a long way towards broadening ITS' appeal.

That said I'd encourage to continue playing tournaments; I used to be one of the biggest critics of ITS in my region but I've been able to adjust and accept the beast for what it is and it's been a blast ever since.

[ToadChild]

Never played those, unfortunately. That said, Privateer adjusts the Steamroller pack yearly. It's gotten better every year. Hopefully ITS follows that pattern.

From what I recall the first couple of years of Steamroller were pretty meh. This is only the second year of ITS scenarios; I'm willing to give them some time to mature.

[saturatedFat]

I find ITS missions a lot more fun when you can build a specific list for each mission. It sucks all the fun out of the game when you didn't bring enough specialists, or your list is not designed for a kill based game. For example, if you bring a Sphinx to quadrant control, you'll have a good time.

I'm not a fan of the point system for tournaments though. It encourages players to continue beating down their outmatched opponent to gain maximum points. Also the most exciting, close games feel like losses afterwards because you both won't have many points.

I would say keep practicing ITS though. It takes a long time to figure out the right balance for your list building. It also takes a long time to learn when to kill and when to secure objectives. Also your luck with WIP rolls will balance out in the long run. You may very well win some games when your opponent flubs all his WIP checks.

[Math Mathonwy]

I find ITS missions a lot more fun when you can build a specific list for each mission. It sucks all the fun out of the game when you didn't bring enough specialists, or your list is not designed for a kill based game. For example, if you bring a Sphinx to quadrant control, you'll have a good time.

True, I'm partly hampered by my extremely limited Shasvastii collection.

I'm not a fan of the point system for tournaments though. It encourages players to continue beating down their outmatched opponent to gain maximum points. Also the most exciting, close games feel like losses afterwards because you both won't have many points.

Agreed wholeheartedly! I think that it is silly that you can be the sole winner of all of your games and still end up not winning the tournament. I vastly prefer systems that give out tournament points for wins and the in-game victory points are only used as tie breakers. This is especially important in ITS, since different scenarios don't yield comparable amounts of VPs in practice.

I would say keep practicing ITS though. It takes a long time to figure out the right balance for your list building. It also takes a long time to learn when to kill and when to secure objectives. Also your luck with WIP rolls will balance out in the long run. You may very well win some games when your opponent flubs all his WIP checks.

But it's not enjoyable to win like that. When I win, I want to outplay my opponent, not be better at rolling dice. I would vastly prefer the "Long Order to succeed automatically" I suggested since I don't think that mission critical should be that much down to luck.

I do appreciate the general sentiment of your post, however. I won't be abandoning Infinity or anything silly like that and if a tournament comes along that fits my schedule, I will attend.

[dtjunkie19]

I would say keep practicing ITS though. It takes a long time to figure out the right balance for your list building. It also takes a long time to learn when to kill and when to secure objectives. Also your luck with WIP rolls will balance out in the long run. You may very well win some games when your opponent flubs all his WIP checks.

But it's not enjoyable to win like that. When I win, I want to outplay my opponent, not be better at rolling dice. I would vastly prefer the "Long Order to succeed automatically" I suggested since I don't think that mission critical should be that much down to luck.

The issue with allowing a long order to succeed automatically is that it somewhat lessens the impact one of the key tactical options that exist in Infinity, namely taxing your opponent's resources (order pool). Often, by forcing your opponent to deal with your models on their active turn, or make them move in a less than efficient manner towards objectives, you can drain their orders and force them to make hard decisions. If I can lock down an objective so that it will likely take you most/all your orders to clear a path to it and grab it, and will leave you exposed on my active turn, or maybe you wont even be able to grab the objective and will have to spend another turn after it, then I have accomplished something. If you can just be certain that you will grab an objective after # of orders to move there +1, it removes some of the decisions you would be forced to make. Allowing auto successes, will remove some of that variance that, at least I feel, contributes to the decision making process in ITS scenarios.

I have lost plenty of games at least in part due to a slew of bad objective rolls, so I understand where you are coming from. But I do think the inherent variance is useful in creating situations in which you have to plan for uncertainty, rather than be able to set up your play and guarantee it will happen.

[Harlekin]

In our local meta ITS works quite well and sees a lot of use even for casual games.
While there are a few issues, those are more about different levels of player skill than about the missions in general.
As we play ITS a lot, everybody knows what to do to win.
And for most scenarios your usual tactics for tabling your opponents or for YAMS don't work if you want to score high.

Besides Lifeblood, we almost always see challenging games and enjoy it most of the times.

[IJW Wartrader]

As a minor aside, going first in Quadrant Control can lead to some really nasty minefields and Suppression Fire corridors for the second player to try and advance through.

[Nidzilla]

I would think Shavastii specifically would actually make it harder for certain players in QC. Once your a spawn embryo you are still considered valued at that models points no? Granted it limits your movements but perching up on roofs with expensive models can make it quite a pain sometimes if they somehow have to get up there and finish off the embryo. Overall glad you at least enjoyed the tournament!

[ToadChild]

I would think Shavastii specifically would actually make it harder for certain players in QC. Once your a spawn embryo you are still considered valued at that models points no? Granted it limits your movements but perching up on roofs with expensive models can make it quite a pain sometimes if they somehow have to get up there and finish off the embryo. Overall glad you at least enjoyed the tournament!

Indeed, with Shasvastii you could have only one model still conscious, not be in retreat, and dominate all the zones.

[tinfish]

Infinity needs to move away from missions where certain models are required, well.. certain statlines, like hackers for example.
Malifaux for example has some very balanced missions, none of which require specific minies to be involved, and all of which offer nothing for killing, but evertything for objectives.

I don't mind a specialist or hacker, or engineer gaining a bonus, but no game should ever require specific statlines.

[Gwydion]

I actually disagree with this concept. I think it's very neat that there are missions where a specific sort of model is required - it encourages uses of some of the things that don't have the immediate usefulness of "point this dude with heavy armor and a huge gun in that direction."

Also, I find it to be really evocative in terms of conveying the feel of the Infinity world, although I understand that may be a YMMV situation.

Now, whether or not too many of the scenarios in ITS require that sort of thing is a separate question. If a couple of the missions were changed so that anyone could grab the MacGuffin, but specialists had a bonus, that would probably be a bit of an improvement.

Overall, though, I like the idea that you need to bring what would normally be classified as support personnel.