“Upon acceptance into the Rense
System Navy, Dindrenzi main fleet officers are assigned to one of the
many Frigate squadrons that make up the outer echelons of a Rense
Navy task force. Would be Captains and aspiring admirals have all
had their first commands and baptisms of fire among the Bulwark
Frigate squadrons.”
-Admiral Markus Stole,
“A History Of The
Federation Fleets”
SeerK here to start my series on the
ships of the Rense System Navy. Its been a couple weeks. I have
just started a new job and the 65 hour work week is kind of killer.
I am planning on posting every Sunday from here on out though, and I
hope the other writers start filling in the rest of the week. Some of
us will also be at Adepticon this weekend. Sadly we cant go for the
full week like normal. As long as all goes to plan the Craftworld
crew will be there Friday night. As I stated last time we are going
to start from the bottom up. We are going to talk about the Rense
Navies Tier 3 ship today. The Bulwark Frigate.
The Bulwark is the main frigate of the
Rense Navy and besides the Siren class Escort is the only Tier 3
choice for your fleet. It is fielded in squadrons of 2 to 4. I
usually do full squadrons of 4 as it is an even 100 points and the
combined fire of a 4 ship strong squadron is pretty decent. Each
ship is 25 points and has no upgrade options. The Bulwark has the
Elite Crew and Difficult target MAR. The Elite Crew MAR lets you
pass command checks on a 3+. The whole Rense Navy has this MAR. The
Bulwark also can move 10 inches so it is very quick. With a
DR,(damage rating) or 3 and a CR(critical rating) of 6 it can be
quite hard for an equal sized vessel to destroy the Bulwark in one
go.
Weaponry
The Bulwark is a very close range ship. It has a fore beam weapon ad
beam weapons to port and starboard. Its beam weaponry has two range
bands. Beam weaponry has 10 inch range bands for those of you
unfamiliar with the game so 2 range bands gives the Bulwark a threat
range of 20 inches.
Range band 2 , 10 to 20 inches, is your
most effective range band. You get 5 dice in the fore arc and 4 in
the port and starboard arcs. With a squadron of 4 this gives you 12
dice. Pretty respectable, especially when attacking cruiser sized
vessels. In my experience you can usually get a critical hit on most
vessels with a critical rating of 6. Of course this is utterly
dependent on how well the dice are treating you.
The Bulwark is very well suited to
supporting your Spook or Cerberus squadrons. While the cruisers use
their range advantage the Bulwark can work in the mid to short range.
They have the firepower to finish off crippled ships the heavier
vessels have damaged. You can use the Bulwarks speed to get in
behind vessels to give it an even better chance of scoring a critical
hit.
Tactics
I have been seeing a lot of mixed reviews of the Bulwark on the
Firestorm forums. It would seem a lot of people have not been having
the same experience I have when it comes to fielding them. It is
true they can be a bit tricky to use. They are out ranged by a lot
of ships and can get picked off before they can close to lethal
distance.
You have a couple of different options for deployment and thanks to
they way game setup is done you can really plan out your fleet and
how it is going to be deployed. I like to keep my Bulwarks in
reserve, unless the mission being played allows for hidden set up.
Either way it allows you to delay your Bulwarks appearance on the
table and allows you to keep them alive longer. Shunting your
Bulwarks, deep striking for you 40kers, into the battle can be a
risky gambit. I like to use shunt deployment, but only if there is a
good target. To get a good shunt deployment you have to really set
it up. The intended target has to be lead into a decent spot so you
can get a good one two punch. Shunt deployment backfires quite
often. You can't shunt into the middle of a fleet and expect the
squadron to survive after trying to deliver a death blow to a
stricken ship.
I prefer to actually bring in the Bulwarks on the board edge if
there is a decent target that is reachable. Flanking the enemy fleet
has its advantages, especially if their attention is elsewhere.
How you deploy your reserve squadrons is entirely situational. As
obvious as that sounds many players do that same things over and over
again and then get frustrated when it does not work all the time.
Firestorm Armada is very much a situational game. This is reflected
in the way you set up and play the game. Many 40K players are use to
the concept of the “all comers” list. In Firestorm you determine
the mission and such before you make your fleet list. All you
really know when going up against your opponent is what race they are
using.
Well there you have the Bulwark. Next time I will be covering the
Siren Escort as well as starting into our tier 2 vessels. I will
also Hopefully be reporting form Adepticon later this week.
Until next time....
Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!
and always
REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!
