Teaching the Directorate

It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of battle report, so I’ll toss this one up.

I got a game of Firestorm Armada in last weekend, the first one in about four months, I think. Ryan had picked up the Directorate faction and wanted to learn how to play. So I pulled out my Dindrenzi box set and we took the table against each other. It was my second game against Directorate, though the first time was a long time ago.

We spread out a few planets, asteroid fields, and nebula. Since Ryan was just trying to learn the game, I tossed assaults and wings out the window, and didn’t bother with any of the more fiddly tricks I’ve learned over time (splitting torpedoes, for example).

The game was a lot of fun. I split my forces in two, sending my battleship and six frigates after the bulk of his force and my cruisers along a different path. I started out strong, putting four damage onto his battleship and destroying three of his frigates. But the next few turns went decidedly against me as he healed all the damage to his battleship I had done with two repair cards, bruised my battleship with three damage, destroyed two cruisers and a bunch of my frigates. By the end of the game, I had a battleship and cruiser with one life left and he had a battleship, frigate and cruiser. My battleship got the first turn and put one damage on his battleship and destroyed his frigate, but needing 4 hits on 9 dice, failed to scratch his cruiser. His battleship went and destroyed my cruiser and crit-hit my battleship. I called it there – if I had been able to roll down to my battleship and a cruiser against his battleship, I thought I had a good chance, but at this point it wasn’t looking good.

The loss drops my overall record to just above .500, and is my fourth loss in five games. Maybe I should stick with Malifaux – I think I’m better at that one.

One thing I did find with FSA is that it really is a game that benefits from scenarios. Lining up ships across each other and just flying around and shooting is okay, but the game really takes off, I think, when the missions get pulled in. When your primary objective is not just trashing your enemy but rather maneuvering in such a way that you get to other objectives, the game really takes off.