Firestorm Armada 2.0

Well after a good month off from most things gaming I rolled out three games of the latest version of Firestorm Armada today. After skim reading the new hard cover rule book (which I must say is just awesome) the changes we have come across in play are all pretty much well accepted. The major change for me was the mines. (Being a Aquan player) They changed to what exactly our group had been talking about since we started playing FA, and we had even played a couple of games with these rules to test them out. Even though I didn't play my Aquans today, I’m still very happy with the changes.

We played starter pack games to keep things fast and simple, I used the Relthoza in all three games. The fleet of Relthoza is only half painted, I’m very pleased with the look so far, although a little disappointed in the inking stage that has washed out alot of the underlying layering I did on the cruisers.

The first game was a cracker, against Phil’s Sorylian’s. I really managed to blast Phil’s ships to bits, but it came down to a very close finish, with Phil obtaining his primary objective with only two ships left on the table, and I missed mine primary objective, so a win to Phil.

Game two I played Mark and his Directorate in a one side slugfest, as my die were on fire. I only lost three ships in total from memory with a pretty one sided win to me.

Game three was an exact replica of game two, but this time Mark smashed me to bits after I failed to hit anything. I also made a few mistakes in not reading my card fully, not that would have saved me anyway.

A great day gaming and the new rules are have been a good change.

Aquan vs Sorylians

So my first big game, at 1000 points and using three new ships types for the first time.(Manta, Stingray, Tsunami). It was also really nice to be able to field a fully painted list as well. We used Phil’s “Orders Received” scenario generation rules. With a asteroid belt through the centre of the table, a planet with a moon and two mine fields. Things were going to be interesting before we even rolled up our objectives.

The Aquan’s got “Vital Objective” and I choose the planet as my primary objective and I then rolled up a deployment of “Line of Battle” and choose the close side to the planet. There secondary object was “Vital Intelligence”.
The Sorylians had “Bombardment” which was the planet as well and rolled up “Way Point” as there deployment. There secondary object was “Vendetta”.

The stage was set for a full on battle over the planet.

Phil plays a distortion field STAR card and blocks line of sight from my Destroyers that where hiding off to the side at the beginning of turn 1.

I win initiative and plough my Manta and Poseidon up through the ends of the mine fields to clear a path for the small ships and inflect some good damage on a few ships as the Sorylians close the distance.

The Sorylians advanced pounding the planet and inflicting some minor damage across several of the Aquan ships.

The two Cruisers locked in “Vendetta” get in close inflicting some damage on each other.

I dropped quite a few mines out in my first turn, which ended badly for me as Phil guided one of his badly damaged frigates into the first mine to set it off, which cascaded all the other mines, I lost two frigates and damaged one of the cruisers as well.  (I’ll be making sure I leave over 4 inch's between mines in the future)

The Aquan Manta take some serious damage and loses all it’s PD. I then launch all it’s Assaulter Flight Wing’s before looping around two Sorylians cruisers. Then the unthinkable happens, the Aquan Battleship (undamaged) takes a critical hit and then explodes into a distortion field.

The Sorylians then launch a full offensive against the Manta with Assaulters, and with no Point Defence they all board. I manage to hold on just after killing of several of them but losing most of my crew.

We end the game half way through turn 3 after my remaining crew on the Manta die. With no capital class chips left and only two damaged cruisers and two destroyers there is little chance of the Aquan’s making either of there objectives.

It was a great game, the objectives really added flavour to the game, and it was the first time I used flight wings. So still a bit more to get my head around on using the flight wings. The Manta is a definite winner and I’ll be using that more, not sure about the Destroyers thought as I didn’t really get to use them to any great effect having been left out of the main battle.

Here’s a shot of Phil’s awesome fighters. He had them made up by someone, which I can’t recall the name of. They look pretty awesome, so I’ll try and remember to take my macro lens along next week to get some better photos.

Here’s a couple of pictures from the game Mark and Phil were playing, which ended in a draw. (they used a soccer ball sitting on a roll of masking tape for the huge Gas giant planet) I’m not sure how the game played out to be a draw as I was getting smashed in an infinity game while they were playing.

I also rolled out two games of Infinity in the afternoon, losing both of them. But not as badly as I normally do, so I think I’m slowly getting closer to beating Will in a game. (I wouldn’t be betting any money on it for awhile yet )