Hi everyone, first proper post in a bit, not counting the fluff as that's been written in advance, except that last one which was written off the back of last night's game, Just want to delve into the system itself and explain a little bit about it for all those who don't know what it is.
Firestorm Armada is a space naval combat game, essentially you fly ships around space and try to blow each other up in that arena. Getting a little deeper it's developed by a British company called Spartan games, who also came up with Dystopian wars (same basic premise but replace space with oceans and space ships with Victorian Steampunk ships with weapons ranging from normal guns to Tesla coils (someone ought to mention water and electricity don't mix)) and Uncharted seas (same as DW but in a fantasy setting, think the old GW system Man O War and you're there more or less). The system has been around now for 8 years and is entering it's 3rd edition in August this year. It's a relatively cheap system to buy into as a patrol fleet is normally in the £40 - £50 range, little more in other countries, but it's still relatively cheap as an entry point as you have all you need for a basic fleet in the box. Most games are played at around 1000 points which doesn't seem a lot, but consider the smallest ship you can buy is 15 points and the biggest is somewhere in the 300 range you can build a relatively large fleet quite easily and one of the best things is that the rules for the core races and the rulebook itself are free to download from Spartan's website, nice touch if I'm honest and makes it easier to decide if you want to dive in and who with.
The system has been likened to being "the game Battle Fleet Gothic wanted to be", I haven't any experience in BFG so I can't say either way, but from last night and previous other games I've had many moons ago, it's great if you don't want hundreds of models all over, though it's still a very smart game in that there's still a lot to think about, positioning, firing arcs, and various obstacles, so by no means does 'less models' mean less is happening on the board. It can be a little slow to play at first, as with any game purely due to getting to know what everything does what rules mean and if you've come from other gaming systems where you are used to moving men and tanks around, you'll learn the way these ships move is quite a bit different to that. One of the things I do like about in the system is the variety of weapons and the way that weapons have "range bands" in other words their damage output goes down or up the closer or further away you are, which I found in Shadow War Armageddon (which gives buffs to aiming for being nearer) forces you to stop and think, not only where are you putting these shots, but onto which ship? and the ability for ships to combine their shots or "link fire" as it's known is a nice touch as it means frigates can bring down battleships, partly thanks to Spartan's Hallmark rule across all their systems: The exploding dice mechanic.
This isn't a system where you need to duck for cover when this happens, so I'll get that joke out of the way. It simply means that every six becomes two successes, so in the example of a cruiser shooting another cruiser that 1d6 roll of a 6 becomes two hits, it also then allows you to roll another d6 for having got that 6 result in the first place and there is no limitation on that, if you keep rolling 6s you keep getting more dice. The largest I've seen this occur to was about 19 dice from a 12 dice attack, making even the small ships potential David's in a field of Goliath's. It is a mechanic which a lot of people don't like due to the sheer nature of it, though personally I feel as we're playing a dice game it's part of the nature of the beast, it's no different to rolling a sting of 6's in 40k causing someone's Land Raider to blow to kingdom come or Destruction armies rolling 6's for every 'free move' they get for being Destruction in Age of Sigmar, my point being it happens and sometimes it does get ridiculous, but the same token it's the nature of our games, random stuff happens and that's partly where the enjoyment stems from it of not knowing if your plan will work or fail on an epic scale.
I hope that this brief glimpse into Firestorm has been helpful. In the next post I'll briefly touch upon the 6 core races, their pros and cons and explain what made me go Terran (other than the fact that I'm not a massive fan of flying saucers, I'll explain that next time) and hopefully will help in your further exploration of the system
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