Infinity reinforcements and a British mispurchase

Well it seems that Infinity products are back in stock at Maelstrom, as my last two orders have been combined and shipped after a delay of three weeks.  I wasn't at all worried as I have plenty to do in the painting department, though it's always nice to have a reason to check the mail in the morning.  Damned addictive internet purchasing.

Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun

So a fair few Haqqislam reinforcements are winging their way towards me as I speak.  Once this order has deployed I'll have the following miniatures:

• 3x Ghulam with Rifle and Light Shotgun;
• 1x Jannissaire with AP Rifle;
• 1x Naffatun with Rifle and Light Flamethrower;
• 1x Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle;
• 2x Naffatun with Rifle and Heavy Flamethrower;
• 1x Djanbazan with Sniper Rifle; and
• 1x Djanbazan with Heavy Machinegun.

Naffatun with Heavy Flamethrower

As a "WYSIWYG" list without any proxying, this comes to the following:

 HAQQISLAM

──────────────────

 GROUP 1 (Regs: 9/Irrs: 1):

  GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    Lieutenant

  2x GHULAM Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife (13)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  NAFFATÛN Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (10)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  2x NAFFATÛN Rifle + Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, Knife (12)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:10  WIP:14  ARM:1  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

  HUNZAKUT  Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife (25 | 0.5)

    MOV:4-4  CC:13  BS:11  PH:12  WIP:14  ARM:0  BTS:0  W:1  

    Irregular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    CH: Camouflage, Infiltration, Deployable Repeater

  JANISSARY AP Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, CCW (45)

    MOV:4-2  CC:15  BS:13  PH:14  WIP:14  ARM:4  BTS:-3  W:2  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, No Cube

    Religious Troop

  DJANBAZAN Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW (33 | 1)

    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube

    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2

  DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, CCW (36 | 1.5)

    MOV:4-2  CC:14  BS:12  PH:11  WIP:14  ARM:2  BTS:0  W:1  

    Regular, Not Impetuous, Cube

    Multiterrain, Regeneration, Multispectral Visor L2

 212 Points | SWC: 3

ARMY CODE: eNozMVQ1VbNQM6wxVTOAk4ZQ0hBBWkIoE4iMoZoRhAJCAOWYDnw=

Army Infinity v.3.0. - http://www.devilteam.com

Hassassin Fiday

I'm unlikely to play a game at 212 points and I want a little more flexibility in my  options for 200 points, so I think the above will give me plenty of options to try out for 150 points, which is the limit that Garth and I are looking at starting with.  I'm not really interested in fielding a Hunzakut with Sniper Rifle as I'd much prefer to go with the Light Grenade Launcher option which will be a proxy.  I also have little interest in fielding a Naffatun with Light Flamethrower as I'm told they're much less effective than a Heavy Flamethrower at a small increase in points cost.  However, it is a 10 point miniature that I could slot in as an afterthought if I have 10 points leftover sometime.  Its also a nice model, and I'd be comfortable proxying it for a Heavy and using it.

Hassassin Lasiq

As for additions from here, I'd like to add a Muyib with Light Grenade Launcher (for a regular replacement for the Hunzakut, with higher BS), a Fiday for the brilliantly nonchalant pose and the potential for some close combat fun, and a Lasiq for the great sculpt and the supposedly deadly Viral Sniper Rifle.  I will also pick up the Khawarij miniature as I absolutely love it; I understand that it isn't particularly effective in the game at the moment, but I'm willing to give it a try purely because of the aesthetics and the fluff behind them.

It will be quite some time before Garth and I manage to get some Infinity on the table; I doubt we'll have had a full game by the end of February judging by the way I've been going with getting my Flames of War army painted (though I'd like to try out the rules mechanics with unpainted miniatures and slapped together terrain much sooner than that).  It's not just the painting though, it'll take me quite some time to get sufficient terrain together.  I'm also a little worried about the quality of my painting when applied to such lovely sculpts; I very much want to do them justice, so I'd like to get this 15mm Flames of War army under my belt, and hopefully some other 28mm figures, before I slap anything onto these miniatures.  I'd be grateful if anyone could point me towards some painting tutorial resources!  I'd like to carefully plan how I'm going to paint my Haqqislam miniatures.

As for the other half of the title, I fear that I may have made a bit of a misjudgement in my Flames of War purchases.  You see, I ordered the British Late War Rifle Company box and the Royal Artillery Battery box as the basis for my British Rifles force in the Italian theatre for Cassino or Fortress Europe.  However, the Rifle Company sculpts really are intended for Normandy/France rather than for Italy.  Indeed, Battlefront do produce British infantry for the Italian theatre in blister.  I was prepared to paint them in the Italy colour-scheme and just live with it; however, given that Battlefront has announced the release of the book "Burning Empires" covering the early to mid war periods in the Mediterranean, I think that this theatre will become the main focus for Garth and I in Flames of War, so I'd like for things to look right.  I will be patient, though.  On the off chance that Battlefront will release new sculpts in support of this book, I'll paint my British (Italy) MG Platoon next and hold off on making a decision on the late war company box.

The Games of War website has the following product for the Burning Empires book:

Burning Empires, The Battle for The Mediterranean, is a 184 page hardback book that includes:

• The history of the Early War battles in Greece, Crete and Syria;
• Italian Briefing: Fucileri, Blackshirt and Alpini forces;
• Greek Briefings: Mechanised Battalion and Infantry Company;
• German Briefings: SS, Gebirgsjager, Fallschirmjager and Luftlandesturm forces;
• French Briefing: Infantry force playable as either pro-Axis Vichy or pro-Allied Free French;
• Rules for Airbourne Assaults;
• British, Italian, French, German and American Raiding and Garrison Forces for Early and Mid War raiding battles;
• Four Raiding Missions and the Seize Outpost Mission, featuring the new Desert Fort; and
• Painting Guides and inspirational colour photographs.

I'm pretty excited!  I'll go into the reasons for my interest in this theatre in a future post, but suffice to say both Garth and I are very keen to take a look at this book, and fortunately it ought to pit my British/Commonwealth Infantry against his Fallschirmjager again!

In addition to this blog, I'm also considering starting up a google group for our gaming group so that we have somewhere that we can keep each other apprised of progress, have a yarn, and organise ourselves for games.    If anyone has experience with using google groups and has any comment as to whether this might be worthwhile, I'd appreciate a chat!

Lastly, you'll note that I've been a little bit more creative with the placement of pictures in this blog post.  With the consequence that some of the picture margins aren't quite right and are encroaching onto the text.  If anyone knows an easy way of fixing this, please let me know!  I'm new to blogging (indeed, I'm new to anything but reading webpages), so I'm willing to take all of the help that I can get!

Cheers!