Every Wednesday, our Field Test blog brings you new rules, missions and ideas to supercharge your games! A few weeks ago, we released a mission called BUSTED! Now, it's time for another custom mission for Infinity entitled 'Under Siege!'
As the possibility of open war increases, ALEPH’s simulation suites are working tirelessly to wargame the various scenarios that might come to pass. As trillions of phantom soldiers fight in billions of virtual corridors to seize control of millions of starships that exist purely as figments of an AI-peripheral’s imagination, ALEPH receives a myriad reports to help shape a strategy for when the Combined Army finally stages its invasion.
In this mission, players will compete in simulated boarding actions. As usual, players will prepare for the mission by building their army lists and attempting to achieve more objectives than their adversary. However, one player will have access to onboard ship systems that can be used against the boarders.
Mission Objectives
- Dominate the same number of quadrants as the adversary at the end of each game round (1 Objective Point, but only if at least 1 quadrant is dominated by the player).
- Dominate more quadrants at the end of each game round (2 Objective points).
- Have your Data Tracker in a quadrant dominated by the opponent, not your own army, at the end of any round (1 Objective point, this objective can only be scored once).
- Have more consoles activated than the adversary at the end of each game round (1 Objective Point, but only if at least 1 Console is activated by the player).
- Put the Boarding Party in Retreat! (if the Boarding Party starts one of its turns in Retreat, the Defender gains 2 Objective Points. If the number of Objective points accrued becomes higher than 10, treat it as 10).
Classified Objectives
There are no classified objectives in this mission.
Confined Area
Only the first 2 levels of the Airborne Deployment skill can be used in this mission.
Top Secret Stealth Tech
In this mission, players may name troopers in camouflage or TO camouflage state as their Data Tracker. Troopers in hidden deployment may not be the Data Tracker.
Take Positions!
The Boarding Party has planned its incursion well. Any troopers in the Boarding Party (the attacking player’s army) that have the Stealth skill specifically listed in their profile (or have Martial Arts) gain Forward Deployment Level 1. If they already have Forward Deployment Level 1, they gain Forward Deployment Level 2.
STOM Features
In this mission, the player who takes the first turn will be the Boarding Party. The other player will be the Defender. The Defender begins with access to the Ship’s Tactical Ops Mainframe (STOM). This has 4 features, which are active from the start of the game.
Sensor Net: if the Defender has access to this STOM feature, at the beginning of each round the Defender may select any enemy trooper in marker state anywhere on the table. The trooper’s marker state is immediately cancelled and that trooper may not regain marker state for the rest of this round.
Advanced Comms: if the Defender has access to this STOM feature, the Defender treats all Irregular orders in his army as Regular orders.
Firewall: if the Defender has access to this STOM feature, the Boarding Party suffers a -3 WIP penalty to all Hacking attacks (but not supportware or non-attack hacking programmes such as Cybermask, or Reset). All troopers in the Defending army gain +3 to their BTS against hacking attacks.
Transmission Intercept: if the Defender has access to this STOM feature, the opponent may not use more than one Command token during this round.
Consoles
There are 4 consoles, each one placed in the centre of a quadrant.
All 4 STOM features will be active when the game begins. However, when the Boarding player activates a console, that player may choose one STOM feature and immediately deactivate it. Once deactivated, a STOM feature cannot be reactivated.
In order to activate a console, a specialist trooper must spend a short skill in base contact with a console and pass a WIP roll. Engineers gain +3 to this roll. No trooper can attempt to activate a console more than once per order. Once a console has been activated by a player, that same player cannot activate that console again unless it has been subsequently activated by the opponent.
Players may activate a console that has been activated by an opponent, effectively stealing it back from the enemy. If a console that has been previously used to deactivate a STOM feature is subsequently activated by the defender, the boarding party player can try to regain control of the console by the above means, and if successful, use it to deactivate another STOM feature.
A console counts as being activated by a player if that player has activated it, and the opponent has not taken control of it from them by subsequently activating it themselves (in which case the opponent would control it for the sake of earning Objective points).
Baggage
Troops possessing the Baggage skill provide the extra army points this skill grants when determining control of a quadrant.
Quadrants
Follow the arrangement of quadrants as per the official mission Quadrant Control. A Quadrant is dominated by a player when that player has more army points in the quadrant than the opponent at the end of a round.
End of the Mission
This mission will end after the third game round, unless one army enters retreat (see below).
Negotiable Surrender
If one player starts their turn in Retreat, the game will end at the end of that turn.
We hope you enjoy this mission. If there are any queries, just ask, but please do go ahead and modify this mission in any way you like. We’d love to hear your experiences with these optional rules, and how you approached this mission in terms of army selection and strategy.
Happy gaming!