Hello folks! Well this is a wargaming blog and I was worried about the whole “He rolled a four and I rolled a two” stereotype imposed upon our noble hobby. Well, today my friends, I will indulge that stereotype!
Firestorm Armada…
Fire six Terran Torpedoes! Pew pew pew!
Take that, Sorylian scum! Time for the rerolls!
Eat crits galore! What’s this? Double six on the crit table? Sorylian battleship vanishes in a puff of jammy dice rolls…
Now we return to our regular, scheduled programming.
Again I’ll apologise for yesterday’s diversion, but these kinds of news stories really get to me. I know that there are countries around the world that even have a thing against tabletop games and wargames in general. None of the games I have played with toy soldiers over the years has ever led me to thinking that I can replicate it in real life, but that’s not what we are talking about today.
Fire up those Fold Space drives and Railguns, we’re back in the world of Firestorm Armada.
As mentioned in previous posts we finally got around to our first play of this game over the Christmas break. I’d ordered my Dindrenzi after nBreaker had sided with the Sorylians, since that game Servitob has been and sold-out to the Terrans. We played the game using the standard starter fleets, no wings but everything else was on. We played the standard “kill or be killed” mission and played on the recommended 4′ * 4′ board. This was actually the board that Servitob had prepared for Uncharted Seas use, hence it was blue (nebula cloud perhaps) but during our lunch break KFC had apparently run out of cooked chicken (I know, who says they cook it anyway) so during the 20 minute wait for bukkits half the gang went off to procure black paint for the reverse of the Uncharted Seas board.
As this was the first game we played minus terrain, I do have some ideas of what we might add to this by using the Oasis balls you can get for flower arrangements. I am sure this is at least one valid excuse for me getting an airbrush! nBreaker deployed in a line across his side of the field while I set up with my Battleship and a squad of supporting Frigates while on the other flank I had my Cruisers and the second Frigate squadron. The Dindrenzi have a lot of firepower in their forward guns so I was deploying in order to maximise the amount of time I could use the forward guns.
Now, I’m not going to do a turn by turn battle report, we might save that until another time when we can do a decent job of it with some nice piccies etc… (most of my stuff isn’t even on flight-stands at the moment) but to let you all know what the rules are like in action. As you know Firestorm is based heavily on Uncharted Seas and therefore the conventions from that game are present in this one which makes things quick and easy to play. I like the new way of rolling for iniative where each side gains a bonus to their roll, it didn’t stop me from rolling some howlers despite the fact I had a +3 Fleet Tactics bonus to nBreaker’s +1. What stands out for me is that you have much greater long-range firepower in this game. No matter which fleet you are playing you should have something that is respectable out to range band four, so on the way in you’ll be unleashing something at your enemies. The added rules for Shields and Point Defence give you an incredible array of options you can use to try and protect your fleet from the various weapons of the opposing fleet.
nBreaker will agree with me that the forward guns of the Dindrenzi are amazing. You get decent range on them and a lot of dice, in turn 2 my Battleship Opened fire on a Cruiser and caused a critical hit (there were several times when I multi-critted a Cruiser and almost double-critted the Battleship). The critical table in Firestorm is a little more severe than in Uncharted Seas and there are two results that will cause a vessel to go nuclear. We started off our Firestorm crit record with a double 1. *BOOM* In this instance the ship explodes and leaves behind a template that will damage anything that moves through it. Not a bad start, I like the fact that things going bang can have a lasting effect on the game due to creating a terrain piece that you then have to navigate.
Another change with Firestorm in its current incarnation is the generic card deck. You can use one per player or share a deck (as we did for this game) although we got a lot of cards that affected wings there are still a lot that will find use turn to turn, we each rolled out plenty of cards during the course of the game and I like it that there is this interaction, it does seem that the cards get used more than in US and the fact that everyone has the same stuff with no game-breaking/winning supercards that only one fleet has access too levels the playing field.
The main difference in the games comes through the combat phase. You are still able to fire all guns in an arc during your activation but with Shields, Point Defence and Torpedoes there can be more to do in this phase. I love opening up with gun batteries trying to weaken a ship before launching Torpedo attacks trying to make use of the reduction in Point Defence fire. There were occasions when, between Shields and Point Defence, I had damaging attacks reduced to insignificance. Making use of the overlapping of other models Point Defence ranges certainly helps and also provides evocative imagery of a hail of bullets trying to gun down Torps as they head for the bigger ships.
Using the Dindrenzi was also vastly different in experience to using my Bone Griffons, I now have Frigate level ships that can shoot (5AD at range band 2 is awesome) and enjoyed them making a dent in Cruisers as well as the opposing Frigates. I don’t want to go too far into all the rules here, Spartan have put their efforts into this game and I don’t want to reproduce their work on a blog when I’d rather you check it out and send cash into their pockets to reward them for what they have done. I’ll also need to post a rundown of the Dinrenzi to go alongside this post, I picked them at first purely off looks and I’m glad I got this fleet as they certainly pack a real punch, their broadsides aren’t great though and once the Sorylians get up close they can dish out a huge number of attacks themselves. Although the Dindrenzi prevailed in this first outing I don’t expect the same result in ensuing games.
Overall I am very happy with this game, I need to get a few more games in but I believe it to be a better version of Uncharted Seas with a lot of extra depth and thought behind it. It isn’t just a carbon copy of the previous game, there is enough in there to keep things interesting and we haven’t even got to using Carriers/Wings yet. If I had the choice over the two games, at this time I’d probably sit myself in the Firestorm camp, although I do like both games for me the extra bits added into Firestorm help make it stand out. The rules are easy to pick up and you don’t have to wade through a rulebook the size of an encyclopedia to learn how to play.
I have three of four posts running around in my head at the moment and I do realise that it is the 6th day of the new decade and this is the first time that I am actually posting up something. Christmas and New Year was busy and now my wife’s birthday is in 4 days and I have yet to get anything at all. She doesn’t have any hobbies so I was thinking of forcing encouraging her to start one, however, I don’t think 1500pts of Imperial Guard is really her thing.
Anyways, back to those topics, over the festive period a number of things happened which lead nicely into things I need to post on the blog. You’re already heard Servitob’s expose on Sgt Thumpy, the Thunder Hammer armed Terminator from Space Hulk. We played mission 3 over Christmas and this one chap managed to kill thirteen Genestealers in close combat before finally biting the big one, an impressive tally. In the next game where opponents switched sides (Gribblin was getting his gribble on in the first game taking the filthy alien scum against Servitob doing his best to get his marines killed to a man) Gribblin showed that he too had a Space Marine hero recruited, Joe Storm Bolter, bog standard Terminator who must have wracked up at least 30 solo bolter kills guarding a spawn point. Evntually his luck (or ammo) failed him and he got his face torn off, either way we had two memorable games that will live on.
The same day saw the debut of Firestorm Armada, my own Dindrenzi Fleet took on nBreaker’s Sorylians. I must say that we had a lot of fun with it, I plan on writing up another post detailing the experience we had with our first run of what is definitely not Uncharted Seas in space. Winning my first ever solo game using a Spartan Games ruleset hasn’t tinted my glasses though.
After the hilarity of New Years entertaining friends we took our newest tabletop gaming compatriots on their first trip to Warhammer World in Nottingham, the geek mecca of the Games Workshop world. Our Hajj saw my Orks take on Gribblin’s Eldar, a first for both armies played on the tables in the gaming hall, we took a couple of photos so I may post them up and finally get around to changing the custom header on the website. I have been asked to write-up this report from the Orks point of view. It was a great game and vastly enjoyable. I won’t ruin the outcome by telling you the result, wait for an Orky themed battle report.
Gribblin is of course counting down the last 10 days before his Xenos of cheese get an update, I am thinking things are going to be bigger and gribblier but still killable with a tide of green and I am working on refining my Orks army list, not specifically to counter the Nids, just changes that I feel need to be made on some levels and a few other things I want to try out on another.
Something completely non-blog related too, I got to see Avatar over the Christmas break, if you haven’t seen it yet you need to. I saw it in 2D and am pretty happy I did, there is so much going on that seeing it in 3D probably would have caused my head to explode! There is an opportunity to maybe go and see it again tomorrow and I am chomping at the bit to go back for another slice of Pandora. It gets a massive 10 Zombies out of 10 best film that I have seen in a long time.
I should hopefully get a proper post up later this afternoon, either the next of the “First” Impressions for Firestorm or the Orky report from Saturday’s trip to Nottingham.
Things happening in 2010… we’ll see if I can paint an army and I’ll also see if we can get more tutorials and pictures of just what we use around these parts.
Happy New Year and Happy Gaming from the 6 Inch Move team.
