Hi everyone! Michael here, Ryan's bro. I've been living in Spain for the last year and there was no way I was gonna miss the Inteplanetario. It's Corvus Belli's international tournament for Infinity and Aristea! Here are a couple of the highlights of the 2023 Interplanetario event.
Infinity Terrain Tables
I think there were a lot fewer people this year than in 2019 when the last Interplanetario was held, but the tables looked great! It made me wish I had my Ariadna/French faction with me to play! Play-wise there were a couple of issues or misunderstandings between the players as the Spanish and English rules can be interpreted differently and there were players from all over the world.
But back to the tables, here are my faves:
Definitely missing some Brutal Cities terrain, but I may be slightly biased. If bleak, dominating and beautiful concrete is your style, then we've got a guide on how to paint your wargaming terrain.
REM Racers
The best game! I didn't get a chance to play this year but got to watch. It gives off massive Mario Cart vibes. Each player has a remote (racer) and chooses to accelerate or decelerate, using different length rulers with a set trajectory. The challenge is going fast enough to be in the lead, but slow enough to have proper control of your racer. Add in shenanigans and you've got a great game.
Bumping into other racers makes them swerve off course, hitting the wall and getting damaged. Choosing to ram other racers can make it so they spend their next turn trying to right themselves. 
A very dangerous racetrack.
There are some cards that give you abilities like leaving oil behind your racers and every time I walked past the demo tables there was always a chaotic scene happening, like a triple collision or racers veering off course. I'd played the game when it was in development, but now it looks so much better.
Look at that beautiful art!
Warcrow Fantasy Skirmish Game Demo
Hoopoe, the Corvus Belli ambassador for Warcrow, ran me through a game of the new Fantasy Dungeon Crawler/Skirmish game. About a year ago now I played the dungeon crawling version but was much more keen to give the skirmish game a go. A highlight has gotta be my Spanish accent being called precious. But that's enough flexing.
I was the Northern Tribes, consisting of orcs and varank and fighting against the Hegemony of Embersig. The models themselves are absolutely beautiful and my 7 year old iPhone doesn't do the detail justice.
A mix of different units from the Warcrow skirmish game.
The game is still in the development phase, so we were playing a dumbed down version of what will later be the full rules. Even with extra rules added I can imagine it will still be a quick game to pick up, organise and teach to other people so that's a win in my book. The downside for Infinity is it's so mentally draining and takes a couple of hours, so more games like Aristea! or Warcrow would be great for more casual play.
The scenario was to control the two objective markers at the end of each round. Each player gets to activate a unit to do two actions like move, then move again, or move and shoot, or cast spells. You can reactivate a unit that's already been activated but it gets stress tokens, and can only be activated up to about 4 times (depending on the unit morale).
Each unit has a captain and the other models have to be within 2 strides (the game's measurement system) of the captain or else they lose unit coherency. There are special characters you can add into the units as well. Here's a quick example:
The unit cards change depending on how many models are in the unit, and whether there's a character attached.
The combat uses the same dice for Aristea!, Defiance and the dungeon crawling version of Warcrow. I like the interactions and choice between choosing to block or take damage but dish it out on the attack. There were about 5 different units in our playtest. The game ended in a tie as I didn't take advantage of the multiple activations to actually get stuff done, but the combat worked well.
A really neat rule is that if the opponent has had their activations (one for each unit, but you can sacrifice an activation and use it on a different unit), whichever unit is the furthest away gets one free move at the end of the round to try and catch up to the rest of the faction.
There were other interactions too, like the infamous Fog which exists in the Warcrow Universe and is the reason for all the changes in Lindwurm (the world of Warcrow). It's a malicious fog that has it's own turn, and once in play it settles over the nearest unit based on a dice roll and associated random action.
Activating in the fog led to one of my units being wounded by an unseen menace, so I quickly got out of there. The only annoying thing is having to place a thick card template under models. With a thin template to slide under the models it would work better.
The fog over my band of orcs. Some evil tentacles wounded them!
Big thanks Hoopoe and my opponent for the demo, it was great!
Acheron's Fall Demo
I haven't got much experience with spaceship type games. I'd played a bit of Battlefleet Gothic back in the day, so Acheron's Fall was a new experience for me.
There were a group of four of us playing. Two Combined Army ships verse Panoceania and Yu-Jing (who ever thought they'd be on the same side!). 
The four ships ready for war.
The concept is simple: each ship generates a set amount of energy every turn to activate it's engines and weapons. You can choose to save them for future turns or for a bunch of different combinations like firing twice, fixing your damage or converting more energy for movement. Once you start moving, you continue on that trajectory unless you make changes, so it's an obligatory part of your turn.
As far as movement goes there's a navigation console made up of a 7x7 grid. The facing of your spaceship is important, as is the trajectory. There are four thrusters (back, forward, left, right), and you can rotate left or right. I really struggled at first to understand it, as each thrust moved a yellow token in a direction depending on where your facing was, the velocity and whether you're turning. 
I positioned my ship (purple) on the left to get in some flank shots. Too bad they fluffed.
Otherwise the game was really enjoyable! There are currently plans to have one ship for each race in the Infinity Universe.
I played as combined and thought I could take on Panoceania. Everything was going well, I had fired some plasma cannons (very fast missiles that only travel in a straight line) and got two hits on the side of the Panoceanian ship. The ships have a set of shields to block incoming damage, but once they fail it's easy to cripple the internals of a ship. I was so close to one-shotting the ship, but he made some saving throws. 
Two turns after this photo I got destroyed. You can see some of the command cards and where I put my energy (two 45 degree turns to the right).
You have armour values, like frontal arc 10, on a 12 sided dice. The weapons have a damage modifier like -1 or -2, and usually deal 5 damage. So in this case I had armour 10 at the front and got hit by a -2 weapon, so I had to roll 8 or under 5 times to ignore the damage. I tragically rolled three fails, so my 5 shields didn't stop it as the Panoceanian weapon causes 3 damage each shot, and immediately destroyed my ship. My ally managed to carry the day with his torpedoes that hit the side of the Yu-Jing ship, killing it. As it was 1v1 and a severely damaged Panoceanian ship vs a healthy Morat ship, they called it in our favour.
The torpedoes get fired a set range, then have two turns where they can rotate up to two times at 45 degrees while they still move. So you've got to think about where the ships are heading in advance, or can block off sections by firing torpedoes. There are defensive measures, but using your energy to stop enemy projectiles probably means you can't fire your main guns that turn.
A look at the energy, ship status, weapons, and navigational cards for Acheron's Fall. My ship is facing diagonally, but I haven't used my thrusters to change directions, so it's still moving straight forwards and not diagonally.
The aspect I really liked in the game is that you have your command console to allocate your energy and have to select which manoeuvres you'll make at the start of the time. The choices are hidden so you've got to not only think ahead for where you'll need to turn, but where your enemy is trying to get to, and whether you should fire torpedoes on that trajectory or save them for closer ranges where they can't dodge them.
Overall Thoughts
The Interplanetario is always a blast. Last time I was with Ryan and a mate from Aus and we hung out with a big group of English speakers which was a lot of fun. This year I didn't play any Infinity but there's enough fun activities to get you through the weekend as a spectator. But I don't know if you can call solving this clue fun:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! Please tell me in the comments for my sanity.
There were painting challenges, questionnaires, shooting games and about 4 or 5 demos: Aristea!,Tag Raid, Warcrow, Acheron's Fall and REM Racers. Corvus Belli has really been expanding their games since Infinity and they're all a lot of fun.
There's a painting competition held at Interplanetario, with a bunch of different categories. This one looked amazing.
They take everyone over to their workshop/factory but I couldn't make it this time cause I'm off to Portugal and Argentina next!
But if you ever get the chance to attend, the Interplanetario is an absolute blast and a great event. Thanks to everyone who made it a memorable experience!
And if you're heading to an Infinity tournament yourself, having some terrain that looks great, packs up nicely and is affordable is a must have. Which is great cause the new Genesis Modules are designed for that exact purpose!
