Breaking The Malaise: Firestorm Armada 2.0

SeerK here.  I know its been kind of silent around here with the start of the new year.  I am sad to say that GW reorganizing and having a 24% drop in its stock value has not made things better.  As it stands I am the only person playing in 40K events at Adepticon from our local group.  Everybody is still going of course to participate in open events and the comradery the convention encourages in all of us.
the 40K malaise has hit the shop hard and the news about

I am still deciding what to run in the GT.  I guess I am kind of holding back waiting for the FAQ to drop so I can build to suit the rules and the missions.  I know I am running a strait Eldar list possibly with some Dark Kin allies.  I am kind of hoping Adepticon kind of takes the bull by the horns and does some drastic tweeks with the FAQ.  That's a whole other post though.  I digress.


So what are we doing to try and break the malaise?  Hammering our a campaign and forging a rock hard narrative that's how!  We are not doing it with 40K though.  No sir.  We have a fever and the only cure is spaceships.  Firestorm Armada 2.0 has taken hold in the FLGS, Evolution Games in Lansing, and the regular "40K nights" are now filled with the sounds of kinetic, beam and torpedo weapons.  Also the curses that go with them.

The new rules set for Firestorm Armada is very tight.  it is simple to pick up and has a lot of tactical depth.  I almost forgot what tactical depth was.  I have been to busy trying to figure out how things work and arguing over rules interpretations with my "primary game".  Yeah I used sarcastic quotations.

The 2.0 rules are very clear and concise.  We have not had any major arguments at all.  Well other than my war game diva kicking in and bitching about Directorate cyber warfare and bio hazard torpedoes.  I think this has been why its been so popular at the shop.  Its a nice rule set and we can just have fun and immerse ourselves in the game.  Spartan Games has really outdone themselves with the new models as well.  The new Patrol Fleet boxes come with more stuff and got cheaper than the old ones.

I spoke about tactical depth.  I have to say I have lost my tactical edge.  I have to much going on in real life it would seem.  Firestorm has really made it clear I need my tactical edge back.  Being a reactive style game, by reactive I mean you have alternating activations.  This may not be a concept you are familiar with if you have done nothing but 40K in your war gaming career.  Basically the player who goes first does not move and shoot with all of his or her units all at once.  You move and shoot with one squadron and then your opponent goes with one.  You move back and forth until all the units have activated.

This style of game tends to be more tactical by nature.  This is mainly because you cannot alpha strike your opponent like you can in 40K or War Machine.  It makes it more of a game of chess.  In fact Dreadbeard and Spellduckwrong surmise that Firestorm Armada 2.0 really is won in the movement phase.  Position, facing, range and firing arc all have to be taken into consideration as well as the position and disposition of the enemy fleet.

I will be doing some articles about the different phases of the game to try and introduce it to you a little at a time.  I will also be taking about my Rense System Navy fleet quite a bit.  Spellduckworng  and Dreadbeard will also be chiming in covering different topics, including their Dindrezi Federations and Terran Alliance fleets respectively.

They have both conspired to start a store campaign to test out some campaign rules.  It is running 4 weeks and is mostly to get us all in the mood for a bigger campaign this summer and to get to know the new rules.  We have been playing so far with mostly patrol fleet sized games.  That is 800 points or less.  The big campaign, which I am composing a narrative for, will include Spartan games new land based war game when it comes out as well.  Planetfall is set in the Firestorm universe and is in bascially an epic scale.  It pits tanks, mechs and other engines of destruction against each other in a future battlefield.  I am really looking forward to it.


Thats all for now.  I am thinking about topics for 40K.  I am toying with list ideas.  I am really trying not to just vent in a big spazzy post complaining about the stat of the game.  Lets face it things don't look good right now. My resolve may fade...




Until Then.............



Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes War Calls!!!!!!!!!


and always

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!