Six Days to ITS

I’ve been avoiding all the local ITS tournaments as I didn’t feel quite ready for them. But this last Saturday my club organized our first ITS, so I couldn’t miss this one. I’ve been keeping a short of diary with my preparations.

My initial plan for the JSA was to ban me from building anything new until I finished painting what I had built (and half painted). That changed with the ITS. While I didn’t want to buy anything new, I needed to build a few extra models if I wanted to go with a somewhat competitive list.

Day 1

I did all the building and cleaning for the extra miniatures I thought I was going to need. I even built a suitable HVT from one of the Dire Foes boxes… and while working on the bases her arm fell. Like with Yuriko, I don’t think it’ll hold without pinning. Oh, well.

Talking about basing, I wanted the bases to have a little more character while keeping in line with the already based miniatures. I scavenged looking for all my suitable urban style resin bases to copy some of the details with Oyamaru.

After leaving the green stuff to cure for a couple of hours I glued them to the bases and applied a layer of Vallejo Dark Earth texture to blend the green stuff with the base.

Day 2

No time to work on the minis as I had a game to play. Realized when picking the miniatures that I didn’t have any Raiden on the list. As they’re usually an auto-include I must had taken it for granted and forgot to add one. Whoops.

Got my ass kicked by a veteran player from the club. I knew my list was weak against hackers, and using a hacker with a remote as a repeater against my Haramaki, he showed me how weak it really was. I had a couple of Keisotsu hackers to throw Fairy Dust, but he went first and left me no chance to do so.

It was JSA vs ISS, at least it was a fluffy defeat. The Yu Jing Imperial forces hunting the Japanese rebels.

Back at home I didn’t have much free time so I just did a little extra work on the bases.

Day 3

Changed the list a little to make room for not one, but two Raiden. Had to let go of the Oniwaban. I had another match, this time against Merovingians.

I left my HRL Raiden as the last mini to deploy, and it was a good move as she had a really nasty link team including a sniper I didn’t want around. I was able to shot them when they where close to each other, breaking the link team killing two (including the sniper) and leaving another one unconscious.

Most of the rest of my first turn was spent with the other Raiden, this one with Spitfire, trying to kill a HMG Zouave on a foxhole. A nearby medic had to revive it a couple of times and in the end I was able to down the Zouave.

That left me with enough orders to advance with my Haramaki and position them. It was a really long turn, with 16 orders. We weren’t able to finish the match after more than 3 hours. So while I liked the list, it wasn’t a good list for an ITS where you have timed matches. Better to substitute some of those Keisotsu for more elite troops.

Day 4

Time to finish the list. Or lists, as you could bring two list (from the same faction).

For my first list I reduced the number of orders from 16 to 13. A main group with only the Haramaki link team and a second 8 man group with 5 specialist to complete objectives. You can check it here.

The second list was made for the last mission, Quadrants. Just one group with 10 orders. I wanted to try a ninja heavy list, and this looked like the perfect chance. I wasn’t sure if it was a smart list or a very silly one, but I liked the idea of a camo heavy list. You can check the list here.

I wasn’t going to use any ninjas at first, but I ended up with a list with 3 of them (exactly the number of ninja blisters I had). I spent the day building the 3 ninjas.

The first one was the ninja hacker, which I already had the body built. She has a really cool pose, but it makes it not fit on the base. Needing to add some kind of scenic element to the base is what made me add bits here and there to the rest of the bases in the first place, as I didn’t want this base to look out of place.

My last ninja was my least favourite one, the male ninja. Both female ninjas have very dynamic poses, while this one is standing in a very static pose. I wanted to add a piece of a sidewalk to the base to try to add a little interest to the mini. While trying to bend the torso a little so it wasn’t looking downwards, but that was too much pressure and the miniature broke at its ankles. That was a real letdown and I didn’t do anything else for the day.

Day 5

I was a ninja short and I had already sent my two lists to the Tournament Organizers, no chance to change them.

I went to the two nearby stores that carry Infinity, but they only had the sniper ninja, which I bought anyway.

When building my 3 ninjas I saw that you could swap the arms of the male and sniper ninjas with just a little bit of work. Allowing you to buy another copy of one of them and have 4 unique ninjas. I decided against it because I didn’t want to complicate myself. Plus, I wasn’t very fond of having two male ninjas (with their boring pose) and two sniper ninjas aren’t very useful either.

Now I needed to make the arm swap if I wanted to go with three ninjas. On the bright side, I’ll have three female ninjas with dynamic poses and I’ll avoid buying the male ninja, hoping that Corvus Belli releases a new ninja with tactical bow with a cool pose.

It was a quite easy conversion. I just needed to file the joins here and there, then pin the arms and fill the small gaps. I took the chance to also pin the arm of my HVT mini.

Even if it was sad breaking a miniature, I ended up with a ninja team that looks way cooler.

Day 6

Last day before the ITS!

I primed all the miniatures I had built, even the ones I wasn’t taking to the ITS. No time to paint anything, but having everything primed will allow me to paint them in small groups that make sense (ie. all the Keisotsus or the two Raidens and the remaining Haramaki).

Then I made sure that I had everything I needed. Double checked I was taking all the miniatures I needed, I had printed copies of the lists, the templates, measuring tape, tokens, Classified Deck,… I had the bad first print, but during the week my replacement copy arrived.

Once I made sure I had everything I needed I spent a little time checking some rules I was not too sure about and reading all the special rules of the weapons on my lists, in case I was forgetting something cool I didn’t know the weapon did.

Next post, my ITS experience!