New Alliances for Firestorm Armada

Spartan Games finally came out with the promised PDF documents for their Firestorm Armada game. If you're at all interested in seeing them, check them out here.



I haven't looked through them in great detail, but what I've seen looks really cool. Each "alliance" gets its own document that talks about how to make mixed fleets. Basically, your Sorylians, Aquans and Terrans are able to work together, and your Dindrenzi, Relthoza and Directorate are all working together.

The Alliance documents tell you how to mix your fleets and use parts of one faction with parts of another. The flexibility in ship choices is countered by losing some of your tactical flexibility with your hand of cards. Basically the more flexible you are in building your fleet, the less flexible you are in what you can do in game with your cards.

In the balance, I think the advantage gained from the Alliance fleets over the pure-faction fleets offsets the disadvantage, and I think Spartan Games wants it that way. It feels like they're encouraging people to expand the game from the small selection of ships each faction has by, instead of increasing each faction, increasing the ships available to each. Probably a good idea given how Spartan Games is very slow in putting out more ships of late. Instead of being excited for a single new ship hitting the store, I can look to the entire Directorate and Relthoza lines to see what they have available.



Another thing they have added are the minor factions for each Alliance. These are groups of 2 and 3 ships that different small groups can bring to the table. These are the systems that could not fight with the big factions alone, but they can join with them to face down larger factions.

A great concept in my eyes. They have a ton of new options for each ship class. Instead of being limited to one type of Escort, you can start attaching other Escorts to your ships to let them get different bonuses. Plus, this brings to the table a bunch of new ship types. Dreadnoughts, Assault Carriers (carry a lot of Assault Points instead of Wings), Leviathans, etc.

My only worry is that, on the whole, I was really excited as I thumbed through one of the faction ships until I realized they were the ones I DIDN'T get to play with my Dindrenzi. Then when I looked at the other faction, I was a little disappointed. On the whole, it looked like the 'good guy' faction had cooler ships than the 'bad guy' faction. Though I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the interactions of these ships. While the good guys have better firepower all around, the bad guys probably have some nice synergy that I just haven't seen yet.



Finally, there is a document of Model Assigned Rules (MARs). These are a whole slew of special abilities, similar to what they have in Dystopian Wars, that get assigned to different ships. Some may have Medical Craft which can launch out and try to regain lost Crew Points from nearby ships. Others are very maneuverable, letting them turn faster. Others are good at working in tandem and get bonuses when linking shots.

Overall, I'd say these documents were very much needed to keep Firestorm Armada going. They offer a ton of great changes and new ships to allow the game to expand. I feel like they're moving from a six-faction game to more of a two-faction game with an s-ton of variety in each faction. It's very easy to play two of the same alliance fleets against each other and have them be completely different builds.

In the end, though, I think it's a matter of too little too late for me. I have only a couple people I could play FSA against at this point, and I don't think any of us want to spend more money on the game, no matter how cool the new stuff looks. Got a lot of games in before, but I'm not about to jump in on the new stuff since I haven't had a game since last October or so. Too bad. If this was the game that was brought out some 8-10 months ago, it would have been awesome.

My Abusive Relationship with Spartan Games

I have a full Dindrenzi fleet for Firestorm Armada, including two Battleships, six Cruisers, twelve Frigates, six Escorts, a Carrier, three Heavy Cruisers and three Gunships. At least one full squad of everything available for Dindrenzi.

I love the game. I think it has its flaws (I don't believe the fighters mechanic works right, I have specific issues with the Dindrenzi carrier, I think it works better with missions which are not provided by the company), but overall I think the game is solid and it fills a niche in my collection. It's my sci-fi fleet-sized game, and I love it for that.

But more and more I feel like the company that puts the game together, Spartan Games, is dropping the ball. They have too many games they're trying to support, and in the end, the only one that gets any love is the game that's out most recently. In this case, Distopian Wars.

Spartan Games promised the Firestorm Armada players that they would not be left behind in 2011. They promised updates to the website (the disorganization of which is another issue) in January, pdfs of the new "Alliances" in February, etc. Here we are in March and we're still holding our breath for the scenarios they promised in January. Word on the pdfs is that "It's not ready." No clue when it will be, or what we'll be seeing.

In the meantime, they continue to push Distopian Wars and essentially neglect anything else.



I've taken a look at Distopian Wars. It looks like a good game. It looks like the next evolution of the mechanics that have gone from Uncharted Seas through Firestorm on to Distopian Wars. If Distopian Wars came out before Firestorm Armada, I would probably have a fleet of them instead. But the thing is that now I've spent enough money on Firestorm to build the fleet I want, and I won't start that all over again.

In our playgroup, we have a few players with Distopian Wars fleets and a few with Firestorm Armada. Neither wants to play the other game. Those with Distopian Wars feel it's the superior game (and I can't really disagree - it looks like the rules are more refined). Those with Firestorm Armada don't want to abandon this fleet only to jump to DW and have that game stall and stop when Spartan Games comes out with their next big game. As such, Spartan Games just doesn't really get played.

I love the game Firestorm. I want to play it more. But I'm faced with a company that does not support it to the level that I would want, and constantly slips with release dates and promises. That's not how I want my game of choice to be treated. I wish Spartan Games would stick with Firestorm Armada, but even if they picked it back up again, I would be hard pressed to jump back in with both feet. Been burned enough by it.

Dindrenzi Reinforcements Clear Space Dock

I haven't played Firestorm Armada since the beginning of November, but after seeing the topic of the newest d6 Generation podcast (check it out if you enjoy gaming podcasts), I got the itch to pull out the fleet once more. I went back through my bag and found two squadrons that had not been painted up yet, so in my home-bound illness days over the last couple days, I painted up my squadron of Heavy Cruisers and Gunships.




I have played only a couple games with the Heavy Cruisers, and only once with the Gunships, but I did post up my thoughts on them. Check them out back in this post.

After Distopian Wars came out, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. From everything I was seeing, it looked like Firestorm Armada would end up being the game Spartan Games left behind. There were still plenty of boats coming out for Uncharted Seas, and they had just received their new book. Distopian Wars hit the tables with far more options already than Firestorm Armada currently has, and their push of that game made it feel like Firestorm Armada was being left in the dust.

But yesterday I came across a post on the Spartan Games website that talked a little about their plans for 2011:

Hi,

I'm sure there is going to be a lot of speculation about these books. Right now I will share the following, but the rest will have to wait until January:

2 Books
64 pages each (could be more, but use this as a baseline)
1 for the Alliance of Kurak (Terran, Sorylian and Aquan)
1 for the Xenian Alliance (Dindrenzi, Directorate and Relthoza)

The Book Contents:

Each book will introduce Alliance Races to the Firestorm Universe, races that can join forces with your existing fleets. As a player you will be able to build an alliance fleet using a core fleet as the backbone. So you could have 50% of your fleet formed from Terran vessels and build the rest from Aquan, Sorylian or one of the other 5-7 new races we will introduce for each Alliance.

New ships designs, new ship classes will be introduced to you. And in preparation for large scale planetary invasion in 2011, ships that will allow you to transport giant armies from planetary system to planetary system will arrive.

Each Alliance will gain 20 new ship types from the various races.

The books will also pull together any necessary statistic and any rule extensions for all current fleets and any upgrade models.

More information in January, but I hope that helps you understand the two books.

All the best,
Spartan Neil

Digging around, it looks like they'll be doing a few website updates this month, and then the two free pdf books will be coming out in February. I have to say it's made me excited for the game again.

Dindrenzi Reinforcements

There was a while where I was playing Firestorm Armada every week or so, sometimes multiple times, getting in game after game with my Dindrenzi and generally having a blast. Sometime down the road, other things got in the way. Not only Malifaux, the miniatures game that ended up stealing away my number one game slot from Firestorm, but also the whole wedding thing, plus the honeymoon, and other stuff like that.

Recently, though, I've gotten back into Firestorm with the advent of a couple new ships to diversify my fleet. I used to run with the basics - battleships, cruisers and frigates, with occasional escorts thrown in. My carrier never made the field, mostly because at speed 5", it never got anywhere and since it was large, it turned far too slowly. So the games got pretty repetitive.

Not anymore. Two new ships streaked out into my lineup and I'm ready to rumble once more.



First, Heavy Cruisers. What isn't good about these guys? At 20 points more a pop, they're a bit pricey. Two of them weigh in at just under a battleship's cost, and three of them are a good chunk more. But they're quite worth it. Where in normal cruisers, the only powerful gun was the front fixed gun. The side guns weren't all that fantastic. And even though they sported a nice 4/8 damage rating, they'd still drop pretty quick to concentrated fire. Not so much anymore. Their gun racks max out the same as their fore fixed, meaning with proper maneuvering, the Dindrenzi could finally threaten two ships at once. Their damage rating bumped up to a 5/8, and they gained two more hull points meaning they're not going to fall too easily. Frigates have a much harder time reaching that lucky shot that does a damage to them, and they'll stick on the table for a while, waiting for that heal card. Plus, link their side guns (which are an arc, not fixed like their fore guns) and you're launching a nice 16 dice. Very pretty.



Not to be outdone, soon the Gladius Class Gunship hit the tables. Again, a squad of only three, but these guys don't really need more than that (don't get me wrong - I'd take more than that, but they don't need it). Their damage is further godly at 5/9. They lose their mines, and take a hit on crew and assault, but they make up for it by pretending they're Sorylian ships. No more picking one of the two flanks to fire on - these ships have guns aimed both port and starboard, as well as their standard heavy railgun. They're going to launch a nice 10 dice to each side, linking to a hefty 20 dice. I've seen these guys take out a handful of ships in a couple turns, and they're ready to take a pounding themselves. You pay for these things - 95 points a pop - but they're worth it. Being medium ships, they can maneuver better than a battleship and hit just as hard (or harder).

Overall, my fleet has finally found a reason to drop its second battleship and start fielding something that can maneuver a little. I shudder to think how the other fleets are going to compare before they receive their own gunships.

Spartan Game Night

A couple days ago I hit Huzzah to play a couple games against Dan. They had a bunch of stuff I had special ordered in (thanks Chris and Ryan!) so I got to increase both of my miniature loves: three Gunships for Dindrenzi and two sets of the siblings and the Hooded Rider for Neverborn. I glued the Gunships together in preparation for facing down Dan.

Our first game was Uncharted Seas, my Imperial Navy against his Railguard. Once again, the wind started against me and I couldn't really maneuver that much. Our ships shot at each other a bunch with me getting an early advantage until he evened the playing field. Soon he was down to a badly damaged battleship and a couple of damaged cruisers against my barely damaged battleship. We sailed around an island for a couple turns as I tried to fight the wind and get an angle where I could hit him with my broadside but... well, frankly it got a bit boring and rather than play it out, we stopped the game there.

Besides, we both had three new Gunships ready to field in Firestorm.

So we hit the table with 1000 points each, each of us trying to destroy a target on the far side of a moon opposite us. That was really less important. More important was just seeing how many antics we could get in with our ships. He took a strong lead, blasting through five or so of my frigates as I downed only one of his cruisers. Then my Gunships went. Ohmigod. Blasted 10 dice into three different frigates on one side of me, and linked fore guns into one of Dan's Gunships, nearly killing it from full. Next turn, I won initiative (yay Dindrenzi tactics!) and my Gunships went again. Three frigates fell to their barrage, and Dan's Gunship was finally trashed. Good times! His responded in kind, and destroyed one of my Gunships, and the battle kept swinging back and forth. My Heavy Cruisers were putting a pounding in as well, and with my Battleship being the nice center of that attack, I was able to control the middle of the board while Dan took the flanks. A few well-timed boarding assaults, one by him that eliminated one of my Heavy Cruisers, and two by me that eliminated his Battleship, turned the tide. In the end, he had three cruisers left (one damaged, and split into two squads) and I had one Battleship (damaged slightly) with an Escort and a Heavy Cruiser left. We called it there since we were both just going to concentrate on getting our objectives at that point and it would take a while for our fleets to re-engage. I think I would have the advantage if I was able to destroy one of the cruisers from his squad of two - at that point he'd have trouble hurting my battleship, but it would take a while for that to happen.

Overall, good times! Dan's Heavy Cruisers are on their way. We'll have another match up then.

Dan and I agreed that Uncharted Seas is clearly the inferior game of the two. Granted we have more options in FSA, but the gameplay and the style just seems more... fun. We'll be sticking with that one.

Warstore Weekend

Saturday morning I woke up at about 3:15 to get ready for the Warstore weekend. I set out everything the night before so that hopefully I could get ready and out the door with minimal waking of the wife. I think I did pretty well.



Jay came by to pick me up at 4:15. I was already exhausted given that just the previous night, I had been up until 11:00 fighting desperately to save the world from the evil machinations of one of the Great Old Ones. We were too slow to stop him from coming in to the world, so we had to fight to put him back where he belonged. Well, we failed. Bummer. So a total party wipe, and the world ended. Good times – we haven’t lost a game of Arkham Horror in a while.

So anywho, Jay and I get on the road, grab Dan by 5, and start heading north to New Jersey for Warstore Weekend. It was set to be a five hour trip, but favorable traffic and nice driving by Jay (thanks, Wookie!) got us there by nine. We decided we’d leave everything in the car to begin with since we couldn’t check in to the hotel yet and stepped out to head to the convention.

I’m going to pause here a moment to briefly describe how foreign New Jersey is to me:
1. They have roundabouts. Not nearly as many as England, but seeing as I just got back from a trip in the mother country where roundabouts were nearly the death of me, I figured it was worth drawing the parallel.
2. They smell bad. Really bad. Not the people, mind you – they seemed to shower and engage in proper odor control, but the state itself was unpleasant to the nose. There was a faint stench of trash with perhaps some soggy acidic tint to it. Inside the hotel, the smell was less, but it was still there somewhat.
3. Rope and twine are foreign concepts. When fastening something together, evidently it is better in New Jersey to use a plastic bag than twine. And no, the article in question (in this case a bed) was not inside the plastic bag. The bag was pulled into a makeshift string and used to fasten the bed together.
4. Driving politely is seen as a weakness, and those with the heaviest horn-hands should receive the right-of-way in all traffic situations for developing their skills at pounding on an automobile horn.

There are certainly other lessons about New Jersey, but I will satisfy myself with those four major ones I learned on my vacation.

So we arrived at about 9:00 at the convention hall inside the hotel in which we were staying. As I said, we decided to leave our stuff in the car for the moment since we could not check in to the hotel and went to check in to the convention instead. They had taken a bunch of the event rooms for the Warstore weekend. Essentially there were four rooms.

The first was a painting room. You could go get someone to teach you the basics (or more advanced techniques) of painting, etc. I had wanted to go to a session they had on conversions, but it was only offered on Friday so I missed it. In retrospect, I probably could have gone in and asked who had done the session and try to get them to offer it again – it was a pretty laid back convention hall – but I didn’t have much time to spare, so I missed out on that.

The second room was a hall with a bunch of tables set up for various demos. They also had a silent auction that I wanted to check out, but nearly everything there was for 40k or Warhammer Fantasy, so I didn’t bother to bid on anything. This room housed pretty much any miniatures game or board game (there were very few of those) that was not Warhammer, Warmachine, or Heavy Gear.

The third room was the Warstore. They brought a bunch of things from their store to sell there, but unfortunately didn’t have anything new I wanted. Both the new Malifaux and the new Firestorm models for my factions don’t start hitting the stores until this week – a week too late for the Warstore Weekend.

The fourth room was down a long hallway and housed a ton of tables for miniatures games. Here is where the Warmachine and Warhammer crowds stuck around, playing pickup games and tournaments. When we arrived, we all headed here first as we were told that there would be a demo available of Heavy Gear.

Dan and I headed up for a demo while Jay went to check out some of the Warhammer stuff. We got paired against each other with two opposing mecha factions. The models looked pretty cool, and the game seemed pretty detailed. And then we got into the interesting parts. Evidently, there are dozens of modifiers (Did you move? What speed? Did he move? Are you in cover? What ammo are you using? What’s your range? Okay, all that comes to 1+1+1-1-2+1-2+1 so you can roll a die against Dan with no modifiers! Dan and I went blind on the modifiers. Then blind on the damage. You hit with four levels between each other? Well, your gun happens to do eight damage per level, which is 32, which compared with his 15 wound threshold means you do… 2 damage to him! Okay, that was your first shot. Your next guy want to shoot?



After remembering high school math (and also learning that guns are no match for a good grenade… He dropped my squad to 4 people and I dropped his to 4 with a lot of shooting, and then we both lobbed a grenade at each other and killed off three people each… why do we even use bullets?) we tried out their gladiator combat game. This was a little more beer and pretzels, they said, though it involved more record keeping and more math. It was just over fewer models, so there wasn’t as much an issue. Fun games, but between all the mental math and the price (the 5-on-5 initial demo Dan and I played would have cost us $90), we decided it wasn’t for us.

The guy gave us each two tickets for playing, and I was a bit confused. I didn’t really want a raffle, but he told me they were for you to collect and trade in later for prizes and goodies at the Warstore. Good deal!

By the time we finished our gladiator combat game, we looked around and realized that we had misplaced a Wookie. No easy feat, so we headed back to the other rooms to see if we could find him. We stopped at the store where Dan found all the ships he wanted to pick up for his Sorylians weren’t available. Someone had evidently bought them out the previous day. I confirmed there were no models I needed, and we headed on to find the Wookie. We found him a little down the hall looking for us. There was a Malifaux tournament about to start, he said, and they needed players.

Now those who know me know I dislike tournaments, but since they needed players and since Dan and Jay were going to play, I figured I might as well. We got our models, tried to argue the merits of playing a 30 stone tournament instead of a 35 stone one, lost that debate, and got paired up. There were six players: Dan and Jay with Ressers, me with Neverborn, and then three other guys – two Archanists and one Guild.



First round I was paired up against one of the Archanists who was playing Rasputina. I had Lilith because the mission was Slaughter. And really, who other than Lilith would romp Slaughter. This game was not all that fun, unfortunately. I had a really hard time hearing or understanding anything my opponent was saying, and even my drawing direct attention to that fact and explaining that I was hearing impaired and having difficulty understanding didn’t change anything. Here’s a sample of the conversations we had:

Him: “Rasputina blasts her spell. Needs an 11.” Flips an 8. He folds his arms and looks at me.
Me: “Are you going to cheat? Or use a stone?”
Him: “No.”
Me: “…Okay.”

Me: (thinking I must have misheard something here) “So you miss?”
Him: “No, I have an 18.”
Me: “Oh, okay. So you’re already hitting me, okay. Do you want to cheat it up or use a stone to make it harder for me to resist.”
Him: “I’m hitting you.”
Me: “Okay, fair enough.” I flip a card 4. “Okay, I have a total of 12 here – I’ll cheat it to a 19. It misses.”
Him: (rolls his eyes frustrated)

Somewhere around turn two I decided I really did not want to play this game anymore and didn’t care whether he was newish to the game or not and wanted to end it as quickly as I could. I spent the next two turns wiping him off the board to a model losing only one of my Younger Nephilims and took full points. I was done in about a half an hour of the hour and a half we had available. I’m glad I finished quick, because if there was another round, I was very close to apologizing and withdrawing from the tournament. As it was, I had enough time to cool down, then we got lunch, and came back for round two.



I was paired off against the second place person at the time, Ed (Guild). He had just beaten Jay, taking 7 points for himself, which put him a half a step behind me. I knew I needed to at least hold even with him this round. I took Lilith again and he took Predita. The table we were offered had a massive open area in the middle with a few fences for a little cover. But against the Ortegas, it was a deathtrap. The mission was something I’d never seen called Get the Stuff or something like that. We each placed two tokens of stuff out there and had to get a model to them to (1) Interact to get some stuff. Each token could only be interacted with twice and then it was gone, and you gained a random amount of stuff when you interacted with it. We each had a token that was impossible for the other person to reach fast and another that was kinda close to the other person too. The basic game would resolve with each person getting their two tokens, and then fighting for schemes. I decided that as fast as Lilith was, I wanted to steal one of his interacts from him. With judicial use of Earthquake, then carrying my Tot, and having him Sprint, I was able to get one of my Tots to his stuff on turn one, but I didn’t interact with it yet. Meanwhile, I nabbed one of my other ones and landed next to the other. I won initiative on turn two and my Tot stole the second interaction on one of his stuffs and proceeded to get blasted apart. With my 5 interactions, I had 11 stuff and with his 3 interactions, he had 4. Knowing if I kept Lilith safe until the end of the game, I would tie him 6-6, that’s what I opted for after my gamble in the beginning resulted in my losing nearly half of my army in the counterattack. I ran around with Lilith, kept safe, and forced a tie on the Strategy. I felt bad doing it, but he shook his head and said it was the smart way to play, and he didn’t take it personally or anything. He was a really good player – outmaneuvered me and killed everything I had but Lilith and the totem, but I was able to play the strategy just a little faster and pulled out some solid points that way.

At the end of the second game, I was in first, Dan and Ed were tied in second one point behind me, and Jay was coming up one point behind them.



I ended up paired against Dan for the last game. Both of us were tired and neither of us wanted to face the other’s killer list. So instead we went to an old standby from our Warmachine days – we made each others’ lists. I gave him Nicodem, two Vultures, two Canine Remains, a Hanged, a Punk Zombie and Killjoy (his only request for the list since he’d never played him). I got Zoraida, Bad Juju, two Slurids, two Waldgeists, and then gave me the option of three more stones or a Tot. I took the Tot. Our mission was to break through to the others’ side with more models. The game was fun on a bun, at least for me. I think Dan got frustrated from the get-go when I Voodoo Doll-ed his Punk Zombie on turn one and had it charge and kill one of his Vultures, then popped out Bad Juju near the second one and killed it. From there, I kept Obeying his models to charge his master and force him to burn through his stones. Finally Killjoy popped out and tore into my Waldgeists, hurting them a bit. I got the Punk Zombie to charge his master once more and force a solid hit. I cheated the Red Joker for damage and flipped a moderate for a total of 9 damage, but he flipped the Red Joker on prevention. Damn! My Slurids jumped into the fight but the Hanged took care of them before they could do more than a couple damage to Nicodem. Finally I got Killjoy to kill off Nicodem. I lost Bad Juju, but at that point he was running out of models and couldn’t replenish them. I booked it to the far side with a Waldgeist and Zoraida while Bad Juju popped back out over there. He had two models, his Hanged and his Killjoy, left at the end. I scraped together full points and he got 4 from me.

In the end, I took first, Ed took second, and Jay claimed third. I won a metal storage case for 200 models, but I have no idea what to do with it. Maybe modify it for my paints and the like. We also got a ton of tickets – one for each hour we played, plus 5 extra for me (first) and 1 for Jay (third). That took our total to 26 as a group.



We hit dinner and then came back for a mega game of Firestorm. Nobody other than the three of us showed up, so we each put out 1000 points, split them into two roughly equal fleets each, and spread them out over the massive table. There were a few planets along the middle strip that we could get points for controlling. I decided not to bother with that and just shoot a lot. The game was a lot of fun, and took us nearly 5 hours to finish. By the end, Dan had taken first, Jay second and me third. We claimed our additional 24 tickets, Dan got his $30 gift certificate for winning (to a store local to New Jersey) and we passed out.




The next morning at breakfast (which had some of the best buffet-style French toast and bacon I’ve ever tasted) we decided to give Dan our tickets because he really wanted to get one of the Uncharted Seas boxes and they were 40 tickets. We finished eating and found one of the guys willing to do a demo of Uncharted Seas. He was a really funny guy, and with the addition of one of his friends who wanted to learn, we had ourselves a nice four player match.



Dan came in with his new box fleet (which was reduced to 30 tickets, so he gave me the rest of them) and we started playing. Dan took an early lead, but Jay ended up outlasting us with his ironclads, I came in strong with the Cruisers and a Battleship near the end with one Frigate trying to outlast them. Jay rammed one of my Frigates and ignited the powder room, blowing up it and my other two Cruisers, plus two of his Frigates and damaging his battleship. Finally, he rammed me and we fought hard, but soon I was overtaken. His battleship sailed away and shot down Dan’s last cruiser. Game over, Jay won. So over the course of the tournament, we each took first in one of the three games. All in all, a good showing. We got our tickets and had enough for me to go and pick up an Uncharted Seas fleet too. I picked the Imperial Navy, the human ships. I liked the way they looked, so went with that as my reason for taking them.




I picked up a few terrain pieces to try to put together a new feature. No idea how it will turn out, but it should be fun. Dan picked up a Sodapop miniature he liked, and Jay got another couple ships for his Uncharted Seas fleet, as well as a few terrain pieces of his own. On the way home, we stopped at the gaming store Dan had the $30 for and he picked up the rules to Uncharted Seas.



We drove home, tired, and celebrated when we heard the Redskins win their game. All in all, a capital weekend.

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.

A Few More Things Done

Last night I was going to start working on my Waldgeists when I got home, but it was raining pretty hard, so I couldn't really do much. Instead I went up to my Firestorm Armada stuff and pulled down my dozen fighters. They're pretty small, so they weren't very hard to get painted up. I decided that I'd paint one wing up to be grey like my Dindrenzi and paint one up a bit blue like Brian's Aquans.




After that, I just sat around for a while. Did a little work on Rembaldi, played some computer games, watched some West Wing, and then finally it was dry enough outside that I could start looking around for twigs and stuff for my Waldgeists. I ended up finding what I wanted and based both Waldgeists. They're ready to be based-coated and painted up now.



Looking forward to seeing how they perform on the table. They're as much as a Younger Nephilim, so they've got a lot to stand up to. But they're a bit more survivable. Armor 2 and a (-) flip to all charges and ranged attacks against them while they're completely in the woods. Good deal. Just need to start using forests, I guess.

War Without End

Dan and I played another game of FSA yesterday. We were both off from work, so we got an early start on it. Rolling randomly, he was the attacker and he went after Tarnag again. We rolled up a battle, and then randomly got the War Without End mission. We decided on 1000 points and went forward from there. My secondary objective just gave me an additional 100 points, but gave me no benefit if I won the mission, so with my 10% discount for not controlling the system he attacked, we both ended up back at 1000 points.

The mission was that each of us could put our ships within 16" of our back edge. Then, as ships and squadrons were destroyed, they could replenish the field on the following turn, provided we had the ships available on our register.

Dan hit the table with his Sorylians, using a battleship, two groups of four cruisers, and four groups of four frigates. I came in with two battleships and five escorts, two groups of three cruisers, and three groups of three frigates.



Dan deployed first, putting his ships as close to the 16" deployment line as possible, trying to take my long ranged guns out of the game as fast as he could. Seeing his strategy, I deployed as far back as possible.

From the first movement, he crashed the my front lines, closing into Band 2 as fast as he could. On the right flank, I pushed forward with both groups of cruisers against his cruisers and battleship. A lucky shot from one of my cruisers rolled a critical, and then double-ones on one of his cruisers, destroying a second, already wounded one, and damaging the rest of his squadrons there.



His retaliation was swift, though. Two groups of frigates came around the side and blew up one of my cruisers and started closing in on another. Soon thereafter, they tried to board my cruiser. The fighting was fierce and when all was done, the two groups had fought each other to a stalemate. The ship was left listing with no crew, but no assaulters were left to take it.



On the other side of the field, my two battleships, escorts, and frigates were facing off against a few groups of frigates and a group of cruisers waiting for an opportunity to launch an assault. His frigates came in and did damage to my battleships, but their effectiveness was soon cut down by my escorts.



By the end of the first turn, the battle was in absolute chaos. Our lines had met and ships were being removed wholesale.



The battle stretched on with Dan gaining the upper hand early, destroying nearly twice as many full squadrons as I was able to do of his. His battleship was damaged and couldn't turn, but another of mine had already taken six points of damage. As I destroyed the last of one of his groups of cruisers, he came on the table with another one, charging straght towards one of my battleships.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, my cruisers pulled alongside his battleship and attempted to board him. He had already launched his assault boats to try to take down another ship, but had failed. Two turns of fighting and I captured the Sorylin battleship!



Not to be outdone, his cruisers attempted to board my battleship. After shooting down a bunch of his pods with my point defense and having the advantage over his attackers, I felt confident. I killed five of his assaulters, but he managed to score a hit on every die he rolled, slaughtering the entire Dindrenzi crew.



Both captured battleships shunted off the table the next turn, as did my second battleship which had taken 6 of its 10 damage, only managing to heal one of it from a repair card.

The battle wound into its final phases. My reinforcements in came in the form of two battleships, three cruisers and three frigates while he brought in four frigates and four cruisers. I took the opportunity to even up the kill points a little, destroying the last pieces of several squadrons. The battleships rolled through and blasted several Sorylian ships trying to turn away from the field to give worse shots.



In the end, between the two fleets, there were 39 destroyed frigates, 21 destroyed cruisers, 2 lost escorts and 2 lost battleships. I had destroyed more ships of Dan's, but he had destroyed more full squadrons of mine. In the end, what pushed him into the victory was the battleship I had shunted away. A massively bloody battle which left both of our fleets wrecked. We both opted for reinforcements with all of our appeals and made them all, building back up 600 points for both of us. That left us each with a net loss of about 400 points for the battle.

Second Group of Fighters

None of them are painted yet, but last night I put together the second batch of six fighters. These ones have a distinctly Aquan look to them (thought backwards).



The box I had came with an extra two fighters, but no flight stands for them. So I'll have to find something else to mount them on. It should look pretty cool when a bunch of actual fighter models are swarming the table too.

Fighters Fight

Yesterday after work I stopped by the Game Parlor to pick up a few things. It's been a couple of weeks since I made the trip, so I had a bit on my list: No Quarter, small square bases to start working on mine counters or fighter counters, and check out their small fighters to see whether there were any I liked that were relatively cheap. I managed to grab all of those things, plus a few bayou-themed pieces for my Malifaux models and a Warhammer 40k scenario book that I intend to farm for ideas for new Firestorm Armada missions. So far, after looking at only a couple of them, I already have ideas for new stuff to toss out.

When I got home from the store, I decided to try to put together the first box of six fighters. The bases were all wrong for the FSA system, so I knew I'd have to be a little creative with how I was going to assemble them. Overall, not too bad, I don't think. They're short enough that they can still sit on the bases of their "parent ship" without hitting them, and they look far cooler flying around the table than the counters do. Just have to figure out how to get more of the same kind of fighters, I guess. Throw on a little paint and they'll look awesome!

Aquans First Flight

For Brian's birthday, Ryan, Jay, Dan and I got him a bunch of painted Aquan ships, some painted terrain, a piece of cloth to cover the table, and the cards for FSA. Last night Brian and I got in the first game where he played his ships. We decided for a small game - 550 points - so he could play his entire fleet. Since I was attacking and chose a location he wasn't owning, we had to increase the point level by 50 to let him take his full fleet.

I had my basic box (battleship, three cruisers, six frigates) with three escorts and an Interceptor helping along. He had the basic box configuration.

We rolled up a Cruiser Clash. It's a basic fight with the added mix of escape pods being launched from medium and large ships as they're blown up, and of capturing them granting extra victory points. The map was set up with two small planets, a large asteroid field, and a meteor passing along the map between the asteroid field and the orange planet. Any ship it collided with was destroyed.




He started off by moving most of his ships into the cover in the middle of the map while the oncoming meteor forced my ships to move up past the half-way line or risk being destroyed. A very solid strategy on his part.



Unfortunately, some days dice are with you and some days they're not. His shots bounced ineffectively off my ships while I was able to come through and destroy things I had no right to hit. My frigates on one flank took some shots at his, destroying one, and then decided to throw their four dice into an asteroid field-protected Cruiser. Not only did they hit, they scored a critical hit, catching the ship on fire.



On the opposite side, my battleship, escorts and second squad of Frigates joined around the blue planet and prepared to make a strike against his battleship before it reached the safety of the asteroid field. Awesome dice rolls on my part scored a double-crit with my battleship which took out his engines, and my escorts finished off the group of frigates he had protecting that flank.




Unfortunately, this is where my camera ran out of batteries, so I don't have any more of the mission in film. The frigates that were with me on that flank came around and shot at Brian's battleship again, also scoring another critical hit, putting his damage to 6 on the ship. He shunted it, not wanting to lose the ship, and I brought my battleship around to finish off his burning cruiser. At this point, I had lost a single frigate and he had lost his battleship, a cruiser, and four frigates. We called it there.

With repairs, most of the destroyed ships were brought back. Neither of our fleets were hit too hard by the raid, so we both decided to try for something other than reinforcements. Brian went for a refit on his ship and got Improved Astrogation Charts on his battleship, which allows it to shunt immediately after being given the order. I went for a Special Tactics card and rolled the necessary 5+, and picked Targeting Sensors. Soon my battleship will be blasting through planets and asteroid fields! Huzzah!

Dindrenzi Fail at Raid

Last night Dan and I got in our first game in the new campaign. We didn't have a lot of time to play, so we agreed on playing a raid from the onset - the smaller of the two game types. Rolling up our mission, we had an ambush where I was coming in with a force half as large as his and trying to do more damage to him than he did to me. With all the rules tallied in, he had 500 points (two groups of three Cruisers, two groups of three Frigates and four wings) and I had 225 points (a group of two Cruisers, two groups of two Frigates and a wing). Early on, I pulled in reinforcement wings so I had four Interceptors running around trying to keep my ships alive.

The mission was this: his ships were coming through and my fleet, smaller, ambushed him. I had to do more damage to him than he did to me. I had less resources, but all I had to do was kill as much of his stuff as I had and it would be pretty good. Also, he set up first facing a single direction.



Meanwhile, my ships hit the table from any single table edge and I got the first turn. He outgunned me more than two-to-one, so I had to make my surprise action and my better positioning count. I stuck two of my squadrons behind an asteroid field to give them a little protection from counterattack while the first squadron I was going to activate took prime position.



A pair of Frigates moved out and took shots on two of his frigates, destroying one and damaging the other. I was hoping for two destroyed frigates, but it was still not bad for an opening. As long as I was able to capitalize on each of the turns like that, I should be okay.



Unfortunately, that's about as good as I did the whole game. I moved out another pair of frigates and failed to kill a single enemy ship. My cruisers came around and did manage to destroy one of his cruisers (his ships had just come through a meteor swarm on the way in and two of his cruisers were already crippled), but his fleet was fast and maneuverable and managed to swing back into position by the end of turn one. By that point, I had destroyed one of his six frigates and one of his six cruisers while he had destroyed two of my four frigates.



Now outgunned five-to-two and with Dan having twice as many activations in a turn as me, I was really hurting. By the end of turn two, he had destroyed my last two frigates and was starting to put some damage into my two cruisers.



A quick calculation on my part and I realized I would have to finish off two more cruisers and a frigate before I lost my crippled cruiser and fully fixed cruiser. The obstacle was a bit too high. I shunted my ships in the end and Dan let them go.

Conversation afterwords revolved around trying to figure out how best to change the mission to make it more competitive. Evidently Dan and Jay had played this mission before, but they had misread the mission and used even points on both sides and it made for a pretty good match. Rather than making it a straight-up fight, Dan and I came up with a few other ideas. Give the ambushing force 2/3 the points of the defenders, and have the ambush be on a fleet that is leaving a different battle, so they're all slightly damaged. The defending force would start the game with d3+3 damage tokens spread out among their fleet for every 500 points (or part thereof), just to keep the mission a little more unique in flavor.

Anywho, I still managed to get a couple of renown points out of the mission, even beat down as hard as I was. Both Dan and I rolled up reinforcements and our fleets are bigger now than they were when we started the mission. Not too shabby.

Dindrenzi Fleet Breakdown

What with the new campaign starting up for Firestorm Armada, I've been getting excited about the game again. Escorts hit the streets, the images for the new Heavy Cruisers were posted, etc. I've painted up some of my terrain and Laura's painted up all my Dindrenzi ships and a couple of my civilian ships. All in all, a good time to play FSA.

I figured I'd talk a little about what I thought of each of the different ship types. I've had probably a dozen or so games under my belt now and feel like I'm getting a handle on them better. There are some new tactics I'd like to try out, so all of this is subject to change in the future, but here are my thoughts currently:

We'll start with the Conqueror Class Battleship, the biggest ship on the line so far. This ship boasts a massive 16AD Rail Gun, the best attack dice in the game from a single ship at the moment, and the flexible Gun Racks that allow me to shoot either starboard or port each turn. While it lacks the flexibility of, say, the Aquan battleship, it makes up for it by pricing in at the cheapest ship of its type while still being among the hardest to destroy (best CR and HP) and the hardest hitting with its Rail Gun. It runs into problems in that its main gun is fore fixed only, and it's a little on the low side of crew and assault points making it more vulnerable to boarding actions than most, but between its massive gun and its solid torpedoes, it can pick a target and wreck it pretty solidly. I've had games where a pair of them moved together to blast in 4-6 points in opposing battleships in a single round of firing. However many of these things I can pick up based on points, I'll have.

I feel like where I lose some ground is with the Fury Class Cruisers. They've got a decent gun, but they cap out at three ships per squadron and are outclassed by both the Sorylian Cruisers (due to their better guns and two of them) and the Terran Cruisers (due to their shields and equally solid guns). Even with their disadvantages, though, they'll still make it into almost every fleet I run based solely on the fact that, ignoring everything else, cruisers are the best class of ship in the game. They move fast enough and turn fast enough that my fore fixed rail guns are never a liability, and they combine for enough dice to really hurt any enemy ship. They carry over the high CR of my battleship, so they're not as quick to drop as other ships. Also, starting in band 3 and into band 4, my cruisers have the best firepower. They may not clock in high in band 2, but they'll do a lot before you close in.

Wrapping up the main ships is my Hammer Class Frigate. I'll start with the bad: they cost 5 more points than most frigates, and they're the only faction that can't get more than 3 in a squadron. Okay, that's the bad. Now for the awesome: they have AP 5 main guns with AP 4 secondary guns, they have 2 PD, and they have a CR of 6 instead of 5. That last part means where most frigates get blown up in a single shot, mine are usually taking a point of damage instead. I may have sub par cruisers and a middle-ranged battleship, but I have the best frigates in the main factions, easily.

Okay, on to the second set of ships. The Claymore Class Carrier. Sucks. First, the ship design itself doesn't look all that great. If you take a close look at the back of the ship, you'll see that all the engines are on those top two decks of the ship. The bottom deck, which is more than half of the ship, has no engines. So if I press the engines without any compensation, I'll just be spinning around end-over-end. I'm sure there are some minor compensators spread out among the rest of the ship to allow it to avoid this fatal flaw in the design, but they must not be very powerful because the ship can't move very fast - 5" a turn. That may not seem bad until you realize that due to the fact the ship is large, it must move 2" before taking the 1" turn. So it can turn only 45 degrees each turn. Like the rest of the ships, I have fore fixed guns. But with a single turn, they're easy to avoid. Add to that the guns aren't very good in the first place. The only reason to take this ship is as a holder for six wings of fighters, which you have to buy in addition. 100 points is the cheapest carrier, but still far too expensive for a floating piece of scrap.

My Buckler Class Gun Escort, on the other hand, is another awesome ship, carrying on my tradition of having the best small ships in the game. It's the only escort currently out with guns on it, and the guns aren't bad. Hitting up 4 dice at the port and starboard sides, it can actually do a number against trailing frigates. Also, their PD adds in to help block against those annoying assault runs, shoring up some of my big issues with the Dindrenzi battleship. Finally, they're on the cheap side of the escorts as they don't focus on PD or Mines. All in all, a solid choice. I've only used them once, so I'll have to try some more, but so far I like them.

Finally, my heavy cruisers. Alright, I admit that I have no idea what they do yet, but man, they look awesome. I just had to get a picture of them in my blog again. Compare them to the regular cruiser above. I think these guys are going to come out with very strong port and starboard guns, maybe even hitting as high as 9 AD. Mix one of these into a squadron of regular cruisers and they're going to be pretty harsh.

So those are the ships of the Dindrenzi fleet. Hoping to get a quick game in tonight, but we'll see how that rolls.