The New OSO! SeerK's First Look

Greetings all! SeerK here to talk Firestorm Armada. Spartan Just released the stats for the new OSO ships this past week. We had all our old favorites see updates in the model department and we had some new ships added to really flesh out the fleet. The new ships are following the trend set by Firestorm Task Force. That is we had a light cruiser and escort carrier added to the mix. The addition of an actual cruiser has helped immensely in terms of fleet building. Lets take a look at the three new vessels.

New Marauders! Syndicate and Omnidyne OSO!

Greetings all, SeerK here to talk about the new releases from Spartan Games for Firestorm Armada.  It looks like we are getting into the Marauders finally.  This month and June we have the Syndicate and Omnidyne fleets releasing.  I am pretty excited for these releases for the sheer fact that we are into the Marauders book,  Not only that but we have new models for ships we have had stats for and a substantially expanded OSO fleet.  It is more of a core fleet for the Marauders fleet now. Tier 2 is really fleshed out by the look of things.  Is this going to set a new trend for the Marauders.  I hope so, but I digress Lets take a look at the new models.

Marauders Fleet Manual pt 2: STL Traders

Hi all! SeerK here. Well its Monday the 24^th and you know what that means. Tonight registration begins for Adepticon. At 8 pm. Central time the web cart opens and you can register for all your favorite events, which should include our Firestorm Armada tournament The Schaumberg Prime Offensive!. Please sign up early as we are currently limited to 20 spots. Ok enough shameless promotion for now.

I wanted to continue talking about the Marauders Fleet manual. In the last installment I went over the Oroshan. In this installment I wanted to cover a few things in the STL. I have to say there are some real gems in this fleet manual and the STL, the Traders specifically, have quite a few of them. So lets delve into the STL Traders a bit.

At first Glance several of the vessels do not look all that impressive. You really have to look deeper at the stat blocks to see the true value of the ships. You also have to look at them in relation to other fleets as they can be included as allies in any fleet. It just costs more for Zenian League members. Terrans can really take advantage though as the STL is natural allies with the Terran Alliance. I know Dreadbeard swears by one of the STL vessels.

Our first Entry is the Reformer class Battle Station. This is the only battle station available in the Marauders Fleet manual. It is also the poster child as to why I think Battle Stations should be excluded from tournaments, but I will cover that in a minute. As Battle Stations go I think this one is appropriately priced. It is equipped with Primary Turrets, A Gravitational weapon turret and any direction torpedoes. This is contrary to how Battle Stations are usually armed as most stations have weapons in all directions that can fire in all directions at the same time. I think the Reformer is equipped the way it is, is because of the fact you can buy its movement up to six inches and it has a fold space drive. So essentially it is a Dreadnought. The Gravitational weapon on it is unique in that you can only use it to push and pull things. The Penitentiary class escort it can take is also equipped with the same kind of weapon. Given the assault options you can take this is pretty nice. You can pull ships into better weapon range bands and pull them in to assault them. The station also has a 9 wing capacity so you can launch some pretty heinous bomber attacks.

The reason why I view this as the poster child for no Battle stations in tournaments is that you don’t have to pay for a fold space drive and given its ability to move and dreadnought class weaponry, this allows you to drop it into the midst of a fleet and really lay the hurt on. The only real balancing factor is, points wise it is priced like a dreadnought kinda. With upgrades and wings it can be about 290 points. Now this is dreadnought cost, but starting dreadnought cost. So yeah cheap dreadnought in Battle Station clothing.

Our next gem is your usually tier one choice for the STL traders. The Prospector class carrier. This is a poor mans carrier. It only has a 5 wing capacity and its stat line is basically a heavy cruiser possibly battle cruiser. Not awesome. Now what if I told you its base price is 75 points and comes in squadrons of 1-2 ships. You can also have Accompaniments. STL Cruisers or Frigates. So with wings one of these guys with a couple upgrades is like 110 points. So about 220 for 2 of them. That gives you 10 wings which are a split berth. Their weaponry is what we like to call “Knife fight” range, which is kind of ideal. With the right escorts you can pack a pretty good punch at short range with Primary weapons and Torpedoes. This is of course after you make a bombing run with a full 6 wing SRS bomber token. It also gives your opponent a very target rich environment. Lots of ships can make fire discipline break down pretty fast. Combining this Tier one choice with our next tier 2 choice makes for a very Target rich environment.

There is a running joke in our group that Hawker Frigates and Terran Frigates, mostly Hawker though, Are not frigates bu actually light cruisers. We had to adjust that statement to “Heavy Frigates” now as the STL Traders have an actual light cruiser now. Firestorm Armada does not have a Light Cruiser class as of yet. When it does the Opportunity class Cruiser will fall into that category. They have the DR and CR of a Cruiser but only 3 hull points. They also have the weaponry of a hawker Frigate. A primary Turret with 3 decent range bands and any arc torpedoes in 2 range bands. This does not equate to a really nice ship until you see they cost 40 points come with sector shielding, giving them a shield in one arc, and they can be taken in squadrons of five. Yeah you heard right five.

In their ideal range band the Opportunity Cruiser squadron, with 5 members, puts out 18 dice with their primary weapons and 18 torpedo dice. Granted this is a limited range. You have to be farther than 8 inches, but no more than 12 inches away. The typical tactic is to shunt deploy this squadron in the rear of the enemy fleet. You get one good strike with it before your opponent starts taking it apart. Granted its kind of a trap as you cannot take them out in one go easily. Five of them can absorb a lot of fire and its 5 crew points make it a little difficult to de-crew. The squadron is a bargain at only 200 points. Its a great addition to a Terran Alliance fleet. I know many Terran players complain about the quality of their cruisers. This is a good alternative to Terran Cruisers especially if you fulfill your tier 2 requirement with the Terran Destroyers, which are probably the best destroyers in the game.

Well there ya go, my two cents about the STL traders. I will be touching on the OSO Omnidyne vessels in the next installment. I know some people have been expecting some Planetfall coverage as well. It is coming. Our guys are getting their sets and Evolution Games in Lansing now has a good stock of Proteus Prime Starter boxes, support helix’s and rule books from the launch. We are learning the rules and getting a good grasp on things before we start writing about it. I am waiting for my Relthoza, which are not released until December 10^th. So in the mean time I am learning the ropes. SO fear not Planetfall will be covered very soon. Also keep an eye our for a post from Spellduckwrong. He has been busy. His weapon lab is churning out a very nice looking Pathogen Fleet. I will leave the Pathogen section of the Marauder Fleet manual to him.

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always....

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!

Maruders Fleet Manual Pt 1: The Oroshan

Hi all! SeerK here once again. So I have been going through the new Marauders Fleet Manual since Spartan was good enough to put it back up with some fixes in it. Most of the updates were just omissions and such and there were not any real major changes. With the impending drop of Planetfall this month I wanted to kinda go through the Marauders before the obligatory series of Planetfall posts takes up the blog for a bit.

So Lets start with my personal favorite in the book. The Oroshan. I have always liked these models. The Armageddon Dreadnought is big. The Defiler Cruisers are also have a good heft to them. The only ship I am not a fan of design wise is the Slayer class frigate. The snail like design is a little weird to me. I am hoping when they eventually release the new models we have a big more consistency in design. I digress a bit though.

The Oroshan are strait up mercenaries, which means it does not matter if you have a Kurak Alliance or Zenian League fleet. Even though the Blood Tribes of the Oroshan hail from Directorate controlled space they work for anybody who has currency. This means any fleet can have up to 25% of its points total made up of mercenary ships. For the Dindrenzi and the RSN this works out rather well as the Oroshan add some major fire power and have a fleet tactics rating of 3. SO Dindrenzi and RSN fleets do not suffer from a lower tactics rating by including allies. Lets take a look at the ships.

The Armageddon class Dreadnought lives up to its name and class in every sense. This ship is big, extremely well armed and very tough. The Armageddon sports impressive and long range fore power in pretty much all of its arcs. Range band 2 is lethal distance for all of the weapons. For max fire in the fore arc you need to be at 20 inches. In the side arcs you need to be about 16 inches. You have many options for your 3 hard points. I personally like to take weapon shielding, +2 move and second assault. I then add the Special Forces MAR and give the Torpedos Decimator Warheads. Being able to force disorder checks on individual ships and squadrons is nice. You can also add wings and more AP, which is nice if you give the ship Grief Escorts. The escorts are armed decently and you have the choice of adding point defense or assault points. I usually give it the point defense upgrade as I tend to use the escorts to bolster the Armageddons point defense and take out small ships. I love the Armageddon. The couple games I have fielded it, the ship has really decimated my opponents tier one vessels. Its ability to engage several targets effectively is impressive.

Sadly you cannot take the Armageddon in a patrol fleet. So we have a new addition to the Oroshan fleet in 2.0. The Harbinger Battle Carrier is your Patrol fleet, any fleet really, tier one choice. The Harbinger is not really lacking for fire power. It has slightly less dice in each arc when compared to the Armageddon. It does lack the torpedo weapons though. It has a max wing capacity of 9 wings with a hard point upgrade. I would use one of the hard points for this upgrade. The other I would use for weapon shielding. I personally think you get more for your points giving it the weapon shielding upgrade rather then a second shield die. You can take Grief Escorts. I would probably take at least two geared for point defense. This ship, on paper, looks like it can tangle with most battleships and other battle carriers. It would need support though. I have yet to use the Harbinger in a game. So I will reserve any major judgments or comments until I have a few games under my belt with it.

The Oroshan's only tier 2 choice is the Defiler Cruiser. I really like this ship. You can take them in a squadron of 4 and give them the Pack Hunter MAR. Its Beam weapon is only in the fore arc, but it does go out to range band 4. With the Pack Hunter MAR this gives you 7 dice and 40 inches. Not to bad. The Torpedos can be fired in any arc. They can also be given Decimator warheads. The Defiler is on par with a heavy cruiser in terms of fire power. It cannot take fire like a heavy cruiser though. It does have a DR of 4 and a CR of 7 with one shield die so they can take some fire. I like to send my Defilers after big ships as they have 22 beam dice in range band two when they are at full strength. This can really lay the hurt on even dreadnoughts. The only real issue is they become targets after one good volley of fire. All in all the defiler is a real solid cruiser class vessel.

The Tier three choice is the Slayer class frigate. These ships can be fielded in squadrons of 6 and have the Pack Hunter MAR. They are decently armed, but only have a fixed fore weapon. This can mean it can be a little difficult to get all the Slayers lined up on some targets in a full squadron. The other issue you can run into is the fact they only have 1 crew point. This makes the ships unsuitable for hanging out in debris fields, surviving boarding assaults from pretty much anybody and also makes them easy pickings for assault robot torpedoes. The Grief Escort also has one crew point so be wary.

All in all the Oroshan are a good hard hitting fleet. They are a good anchor for a Marauder or mercenary fleet. They also are great additions to regular fleets. I am going to be using them a whole lot more since I acquired a fleet. I may start running them in tournaments once I also get another frigate squadron. The minimums for a battle fleet fit into 900 points as fate would have it. A dreadnought, 4 cruisers and 12 frigates. Not to bad.

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!

New Marauders Of The Rift: First Impressions

SeerK here.  Well as many of you may or may not know Spartan has updated the rules for the Marauders Of The Rift.  The Fleets from the old source book are now updated to 2.0 rules.  There have been some major changes and it would seem the story line has been moved forward a bit.  You can find the new rules on the Spartan Games Blog.  Well at least you could until they had some site problems and it crashed. They lost about a days worth of data, which would include the new rules.  I am sure we will see them back up Monday or Tuesday.  I downloaded a copy though just in time and printed it out.

Spellduckwrong and I tore right into the new rules and played a 1000 point game to try them out.  I decided to field a strait Oroshan Fleet while Spellduckwrong went with the biggest threat currently facing the galaxy.  I speak of course of the fleet known as only The Pathogen.  The Syndicate is back and merged with the Rift Traders.  They form the STL or Syndicate Traders League.  The fleets are still distinct though.  The STL is loosely affiliated with the Alliance of Kurak although they will still alley with Zenian League fleets, albeit at a higher points cost. STL Syndicate and STL Traders are Nautral Allies with the Terran Alliance.  Omnidyne and the Corsairs have banded together as OSO or Omnidyne Special Operations.  Both fleets are also still distinct though.  They are loosely affiliated with the Zenian league, but will work for the Kurak at a higher points cost.  The only real exception is any Works Raptor fleet cannot contain Omnidyne ships.  They are corporate rivals and would not be caught dead working together.

The Oroshan are strait up mercenaries.  They will work for anybody willing to pay as contracts have been thinning out in the Directorate systems.  The Pathogen is an entirely different kind of fleet. They have several vessels that are named as they are "full grown".  The rest of the entries are composed of stat blocks for infected ships.  They also have only one kind of SRS token.  It covers basically the job of a fighter, interceptor and bomber.  They also regenerate lost wings when they destroy an opposing wing.  The pathogen are kinda scary.  They are like a storm.  Building momentum as they go.  played right they can quickly outnumber you.  As you loose ships they add them to their ranks.

I am pretty impressed with the first presentation of the rules.  I know there may be some tweaks and changes before they see print, but there is a lot of cool stuff in this new fleet manual.  I would have to say the flexibility and ability to customize the fleet and even the ship squadrons in the fleet is what has me most impressed.  The Traders and the Corsairs have so much flavor and customization options.  Adding shields at the expense of crew, adding to the damage and critical rating at the expense of mobility. Adding wings and weapons in exchange for MARs and other stuff.  The combinations are many and let you design a fleet with flavor and a specific purpose.  Also the Reformer class Battle Station available to the STL Traders is kinda scary.  It is very similar to the old Supermax-89, which sadly is not in the book for Supermax fans.  It has Tractor beams...........that is it has grav weapons that can only be used in control mode.  With the potential of being able to move 6 inches and have launch tubes, that is kinda scary.

So back to Spellduckwrong and I's game.  As we were trying out unfamiliar fleets we opted for a strait up Border clash mission. We had 1000 points each.  I ran the following list.

Armageddon Dreadnought with 3 Grief Escorts

4x Defiler Cruisers

2x 6 pack of Slayer Frigates

1x 4 pack of Slayer Frigates

Spellduckwrong ran the following.  He has the Pathogen Section of my print out currently so forgive the lack of names.

Named Battleship

Named carrier

2x 3 named cruisers

2x 6 pack named frigates

I have to add one thing to this abbreviated battle report before I go further.  My dice were on fire and we were both using fleets that were brand new to us.  This was very apparent as the game progressed.  The Oroshan have a fleet tactics of 3 and the Pathogen 1.  I took the first activation for most of the game.  Turn one was relatively uneventful.  I managed to reach out with the beams on the Defilers and damage one of the Pathogen cruisers.  Despite not having and port or starboard weapons, other than torpedoes, I have to say I like the Defiler almost more than the Cerberus.

Being able to take them in a squadron of 4 and give them Pack Hunter is pretty awesome.  They are a DR 4 CR 7 with a shield rating of 1.  In range band 2 a full strength squadron can throw 22 beam dice.  Yeah you read that right 22 dice.  I was in range band 4 when I opened up and that was with 7 dice.  Not to shabby.

Turn 2 saw our fleets close in to lethal range.  I started lighting up Spellduckwrong's cruisers with mine and the Dreadnought got into the mix.  His Cruisers were taking a major pounding.  He did however get his 2 squadrons of frigates in and a huge frigate dogfight ensued in the middle of the board.

I managed to destroy most of the cruisers by turn 4 and I also thinned out his frigate swarm despite his capturing of 2 of my frigates.

The real clutch manoeuvre happened in turn 4 for Spellduckwrong though.  His carrier finally decided to join the show and dropped a mine in the midst of my frigate swarm.  Now a few of the Pathogen ships have mines.  They do not have real high ratings, but they do have one aspect that can be pretty deadly for small craft.  The mines can have the

Bio hazard MAR.  So if it damages your frigate it may not do enough hull points to kill it, but if it only has 1 crew point its dead.  I managed to loose almost 2 squadrons of frigates to one 3 die mine.  This tipped the balance.  In the end It was a duel between my Dreadnought and his heavily damaged carrier and battleship.  Granted I may have been on the loosing end of the duel as all Pathogen ships have self repair.  The game did not go past turn 7 though and it ended with a 12 to 2 victory for me. 

All in all I was impressed with the Oroshan and will be adding some ships to my fleet.  They pack a punch and with the addition of the Battle Carrier to their fleet roster they can actually be fielded as a patrol fleet.  I feel as though a rematch is not going to go as well for me.  Spellduckwrong is a very canny opponent.  It was very clear to him that playing the Pathogen as a standard non tentacle space herpes clear fleet was not going to work.  The real key in our game was he should have shunted his cruisers in.  This would have put them in assault range of my big ships.  Also taking a full sqaudron would have maxed out the assault points.  They have 5 each so I would have been hard pressed to repel boarders even with my dreadnought.

In closing I just want to say I love the new manual. It really pushes and tests the game mechanics.  It also adds a lot of flavor.  Now if only I can get me some Planetfall......


Until next time Crush the Alliance and as always....



REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!