The Great Terrain Debate: The FSA Meta Big 3!

Greetings all!  SeerK here to talk terrain.  That is Terrain for Firestorm Armada.  I might even mention terrain in some of the other games I play for reference, but I am mainly going to be discussing the current meta of Terrain in Firestorm Armada.  As it stands there are 3 distinct terrain metas out there.  The Canadian Meta, The European Meta and the Lansing Meta.  I wanted to touch on all three and give a breakdown of what makes them unique.  I may not fully understand all of the nuances of the Meta's I have not played in, but I wanted to give my opinion on them and maybe offer a different outside perspective on them.

Adepticon is right around the corner and the web cart goes live on November 23rd.  The Schaumburg Prime Offensive returns this year.  We have 32 initial spots with room for more if the demand is like it was last year.  I wanted to really be preemptive and plan better this year.  I also wanted players to be in the loop so they are fully briefed and battle ready for the tournament.   So here we go, the "Big 3" FSA Meta's.

Planetfall Terrain! A Closer Look

A typical table at the FLGS

SeerK here once again.  I had a request from Spartan Community Forum member Ryjak, to talk about terrain in Planetfall. That is terrain interaction and some examples of the terrain coverage on the tables when our group is playing.  Terrain has been one of the big concerns for Planetfall. with everybody learning the system and feeling out the game it has been hard to gauge how much terrain is appropriate.

There has been quite a bit of debate and opinions given on the forums and on the Facebook groups.  The group at Evolution Games in Lansing, my group, has been playing with about 55%-65% table coverage.  We have found this to be an appropriate amount of coverage.  Some groups have been playing with less though. We had thought terrain was going to have an affect on game length and it does to a point.  After I got some confirmation from Spartan Alex that games should average about 3 turns, we realized we weren't playing wrong and the game really is that brutal.

Firestorm Armada: How do you get to 25%?

Since the Grand Tournament at Adepticon has concluded, a conversation has been emerging about terrain in Firestorm Armada. Wargaming in general seems to have always had an issue with some players not using enough terrain, regardless of which game is being played and we, as a community, are still working out what 25% board coverage seems to look like on our space boards. 

At Adepticon, we tried to get all the boards reasonably close to 25% covered, some were a little less, and some were a little more. I'm not writing today to discuss whether 25% coverage is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned, that is the way the main rule books says to do it. Also, one would think that that was the way it was play-tested as well. Ultimately, it is up to the players to decide where on the spectrum of vaccuum of space to space junk yard they want to battle.

What I would like to ponder though, is the options to get to 25%. We tend to use medium and small chunks of terrain which litters the board, about 25% of it actually. What we discovered during Adepticon, where all the great metas converged was that other people get to their 25% by using less pieces because they are much larger. Some people said our boards were "mazelike" which was very interesting. 

Part of the research and development for next year will to have a variety of board styles, some with many pieces like we had in 2015 and others with fewer but larger ones.

How does your gaming group grapple with terrain coverage? 

Tutorial: Making a Gaming Board for Spaceships!

Example of a pretty NASA photo and kind of what
we are going for with these boards.

Making a new board to play your war game of choice on is usually a fun experience. It gets a bit tricky in the planning stages when you attempt a completely new style or genre though. I'm no stranger to making grassy fields, hills, ruins, etc. However, when it came time to make a board that looked like "space", some Internet research needed to be done as I had no experience in the matter. Firestorm Armada was taking off in popularity at the store, and it was time to upgrade from black fabric and make some legitimate boards to play on.

After reading a number of articles, tutorials, and examples of what had been done before, I was a little disappointed. I was really looking for an "easy button" step-by-step that was both cheap and looked good. Thankfully, nearly all the places I researched had a gem or two of information, and when combined, actually had all the parts we needed to get this project done. So far, we have made six of these boards for our FLGS, Evolution Games, and they are all a bit different and universally well received. The following is a run down of how to make one.