Firestorm Armada is a simple to learn and tactically deep space-naval wargame, where players pit fleets of mighty space vessels against each other. The game is made by the all-round ADHD games company Spartan Games, who are famous for free rules and cheap models.
Played a game recently, Terrans vs Sorylians. The new cruiser squadrons for Terrans is interesting, adding in that shield cruiser to bulk numbers and increase the effectiveness of shields.
I'm trying to get my hands on the old PDF rulesbooks for Firestorm Armada, not for the god awful rules, but for the terrain templates.
Have some paper cutout fleets to get yourself started.
Thomas Bailey
Currently working on my Terran fleet. Going for blue with yellow trim and silver under-structure.
Going for the Army Painter two-tone comic-book look.
Austin Scott
Dindrenzi Fleet, don't tread on me frontier colonists.
Forward fixed kinetic weapons are the call of the day.
Blake Smith
The Directorate. Use more advanced rules, but they are a lot of fun. They use a smattering of rules from all the other races.
Mason Gomez
My ordinary photography. We had poor light and phone cameras.
Played a game over the weekend. 1200 points, Terran vs Sorylians.
My opponent wanted to try the Shunt Entry rules, but for some reason decided that 500 points of his fleet would be in reserve. What was left on the table did fare very well. His cruiser squadron shunted in but rolled snake-eyes on the shunt entry table, not a great result, He burned a TAC card to change the result, but rolled double 6s instead. My battlecruisers availed themselves on his wayward squadron.
He did manage to turn the table quite well when his battleship shunted in amidst my fleet. Nasty.
Lucas White
Well I'm busy cooking dinner right now, so I should probably stop samefagging for a while. If anyone has any questions about this great game, or would like to regale us with a tale of The Little Frigate That Could...
Ask away, I'll be around.
Grayson Cruz
What about support and further releases? This is Spartan "ADHD" Games after all.
Cameron Hernandez
I talked to Neil at Gencon. We're getting a new two player box in Oct. Soryliens and relthoza
Thomas Mitchell
Used to play quite heavily until the folks around me moved away. Ended up selling my pathogen fleet.
Gavin Baker
This shit got way past annoying too. Even DW is dead in the water right now.
Lincoln Gutierrez
Which is rather disappointing, as DW 2.0 was a very enjoyable game.
Gabriel Brown
If only people played this game.
Jacob Murphy
Maybe we should just have threads for dead Spartan games. They can't do any worse than FS:A/DW threads.
Angel Lewis
Still waiting for Spartan to upload the Task Force rulebook as a PDF, but willing to take the plunge at my FLGS until that happens as nobody wants to play 2+ hrs thanks to Xwing
Joshua Peterson
>CoA mah nigga. Only ever managed to play three of four games with my fleet, but It was a ton of fun.
>Playing a land game back before 2.0 >mfw teleporting a Euclid
We called it the "Friendship Ender" for a reason.
Landon Robinson
CoA a best fleet. Imperialists get >teleporting a Euclid But why? Euclid was broken enough to win games without support in 1.1. How the mighty have fallen.
Nicholas Martinez
Because it let me teleport it on the flank of his medium tank line - which then let me Particle Accelerate the fuck out of his entire fighting force. You remember how the PA used to be? You rolled the dice, and what didn't miss got transferred to the next target, and you rolled again? Thanks to those delicious exploding 6's, that one PA strike accounted for 4 medium tanks and seriously damaged his landship. The rockets and laser were icing on the cake.
I wish they hadn't changed the small robots we got whose name escapes me - used to have that Str 2 laser. Which isn't much, but you take your Euclid with the upgrade, plop 4 of them off somewhere on a terrain piece, and you have yourself a wee little block of RB4 death that's just perfect for finishing off wounded enemies.
The CoA were champions of dickery.
Sebastian Nelson
I jokingly refer to their game releaseds. 3 versions of DW. 3 versions of Firestorm. Halo and now ground battles.
Bit of everything comes from them. Pity about Uncharted Seas though.
Lincoln Walker
I tend to agree with the game length. We struggle to make it to turn 4.
I'm hoping spartan can speed it up for v3.
Fluff is a bit quiet. But im planning on writing up about a campaign for a system. And just keep writing. Even the early daus of GW saw plenty of fan writing.
Alexander Robinson
Just listening to The Hub Systems Podcast.
They just recommended bringing back stat cards to accompany ships on the table, that can be used to track damage and keep stats for quick reference.
Sounds like my next project.
Carson Davis
At that point you're really just being vindictive. Euclid, teleporting and in a land game is pretty harsh.
I miss the old Colossus Robots. Maybe they'll change in the next update (if Spartan's ADHD kicks in again), since they're back to that in the new Fleet Action rules. On the plus side, they're 20 points now, and I found two blister packs on clearance prices, on top of the one I had before. Taking up to my max smalls allowance of them was pretty funny, especially when paired with the drone controller buffing them.
And while we're on the update which we can only dream of, maybe they'll fix the Euclid to not be 300 sodding points with only carrier (6) and expensive as fuck upgrades. The CoA can still dick pretty hard though- the 2.0 teleporter lets you shunt a whole squadron of Zenos though, which carry BB-grade broadsides each, a mini-PA and enough Elite AP to make the Prussians wince. Ptolemy minelayers are grade-A bullshit as well, since they have 360 degree 10" move and can drop 2x 4AD High Payload mines each while Obscured. The Diophantus isn't great, but is stupidly tough- DR7/13, Shields(2) with IS and -1 to hit with 10HP. Then there's the Aristotle-Kepler squadron, which has 18AD of E-turrets, which you then pair with a Hyperbius, which lurks in Obscured then Target Paints something from RB2. And finally, Plutarch Heavy Destroyers- it's a small model with a Shield gen!
I'm not even going to start on the bullshittery that is pairing them with Black Wolf mercenary allies...
Lucas Howard
II managed to get our group to pick this up against all odds, mostly because we all like spaceships and are really tired of 40K being bullshit. Everyone seems to like playing so far, but the lack of support for the game makes me wonder how long it'll all last.
I play Dindrenzi btw. The other three players are Hawker, Sorylian and Relthoza.
William Diaz
I get in about 1 game a week. Here is the space station we made for Adepticon
Levi James
Ba'Kash is my main fleet but I also run relthoza, STL Traders, and STL Syndicate
Levi Perez
I also play Planetfall, I need to mess around with system wars more often
Lincoln Cooper
my 2k+ of Ba'Kash
Julian Reed
...
Aaron Martinez
forgive my potato phone but here is my battle carrier that I kitbashed to make the arms appear open. Now that the arms are metal, the mini weighs a boatload
Logan Ross
That's cool as fuck, It's like a B5 on steroid.
Zachary Diaz
the lights blinked and everything (that was mostly my contribution)
I'd like to do a large ship gantry, for like a leviathan or something
Brody Ortiz
What's an army cost at the typical points level? And, at the lowest normal points level?
For example, if a 40k army at 1000 pts was about $300 because I live in Mapleland, what would a Firestorm army at the lowest playable points level that's still a "real" game cost?
Austin Russell
Hawker ships look cool, how good are they? Are they better for a mixed fleet or can they stand on they own?
Gavin Rodriguez
In the few games I've played so far, they're tanky as shit with a bit more quality firepower than the average Terran fleet, so I'd say they can definitely hold their own. That said they seem really good at being the core of an alliance fleet since they have a 3 tact bonus.
Connor Young
normal points level us kinda subjective for each group. I like to play 1000-1200 points and that takes a couple of hours once you get the rules down.
to play at around 800 points you'd need like a patrol box and maybe one other box of whatever. you're looking at ~$100 bucks on ebay. Rules are all free online and every patrol box comes with the tokens and cards you need (I've got a fuckload of extras at this point).
Hawker are very solid. You've got some pretty slow, pretty durable ships.They tend to put out a hurt even when on death's door and each ship really has to be fully sunk or it'll still lay down the hurt. Your cruisers are expensive but workhorses, the battleship is solid and balanced, the frigates are the beefiest in the game but you pay a premium for it, you also can have a carrier with two cruiser accompaniment (ALWAYS do this), it is a glass cannon but it also puts out the largest attack the fleet can muster. I don't see people run the escorts very much in a Hawker fleet or anywhere else for that matter, the terran ones seem cheaper for the same effect.
While Hawker can stand on it's own fine, the game is set up to pretty easily ally in a handful of other races ships without hampering your fleet too. The only real downside for hawker doing this is that they have a high fleet rating (3), and you are stuck with whatever is the lowest fleet rating among the ships you run.
Ethan Collins
>Rules are all free online
Are those paper/cut-out test sheets still available on their site as well? I'd like to play a bit before committing, seems pretty cheap though so I guess it's not a big loss if I have to just buy a force.
Ayden Howard
Sweet, sound good thank bros.
Kevin Bennett
They most certainly are!
Cooper Stewart
not that I know of but the bases/pegs are where all the measurement happens. I don't have any handy but if you find out how big the regular/large bases are you could play with just paper squares with a spot marked in the center of each. The models are just visually appealing for the most part (you can't overlap models but we mostly houserule this away as it's apparent that the rule is there to prevent model damage and it penalizes larger models that use the same base as the smaller ones)
Jace Phillips
I like the Hawker fluff too. A very old shipbuilding corporation so large they operate their own fleet. The war is ramping up so much they are taking ancient ships out of mothballs, slapping some modern weapons on them and rolling them out as fast as possible.
James Smith
I must be stupid, but I can't find them. Would you mind giving me a hint? I did find the free rules PDFs etc. but no cutouts; maybe I'm looking at the wrong term.
Alright fair enough, I will try that if I can't find the other PDF stuff. I'm trying to decide between starting this or waiting until DFCommander comes out.
Josiah Morgan
little details on the ships are noticeable too. If you look closely, every Hawker ship's turrets and broadsides look like they can be retracted into the ship to reflect they have weapon shielding
Carter Wilson
I demo'ed Dropzone commander at Gencon, it was a lot of fun but plays very different, almost more like a skirmish game. The models are also gorgeous but in different way from firestorm.
I think he was actually looking for the old ship template cutouts
Anthony Allen
They are posted above, top of the thread, there are also some other cutouts available at The Black Ocean。
Jack Lewis
>They are posted above, top of the thread,
They only made 3?
Parker Adams
It was just for starters. Black ocean have all major races.
Angel Nelson
I've never seen this played and I'm near Seattle.
Tabletop Simulator port when
Lincoln Wright
How do you measure turning in games like these? Is there some sort of turn-measuring triangle-thing you put down?
Gabriel Peterson
Yes, the bottom one in pic related. Comes as a push-out card piece in the fleet boxes.
Parker Smith
Freshly painted Omnidyne, finished on Sunday.
This years been alright for Firestorm to be fair. Taskforce was basically a glorified way to release 2 extra mediums & an extra small to the core 6, and Xelocians, STL & Omnidyne all got lots of new boxes.
Generally because of time constraints (3 hours) I play 800 points most of the time, which I get is the standard for the UK meta. NA meta seems considerably bigger points wise, think 1000 points. Cost wise, a standard patrol box costs just under £40 most of the time, which contains a large (probably a battleship, maybe a carrier), 3 or 4 mediums (cruisers) and anywhere from 4 to 6 smalls (frigates & corvettes), plus tokens, turning templates etc. It's enough to have a good couple of demo games with at the 500-600 points level.
Ditto to this, tanky as all hell. I generally run them with my Ryushi for some variation.
Weapon Shielding on your Cruisers is a must though.
Ian Sullivan
My current fleet on the painting table. What are other admirals taking?
Played with this list and won 12/-2 against a pure Ba'Kash force of a Battle Carrier, 3 Heavy Cruisers, 2 Destroyers and 9 Frigates (1 4x squadron, 1 5x squadron).
Really pleased with the play I had with Ceto, the carrier Executive: -Knock out Battle Carrier's PD with the Marauder TAC 'Virus Strike' -Win and take the initiative -Shunt in Ceto in a Gas Cloud, conveniently roll 'Main Drive Ignition Delay' so she starts at a full stop -Activate Ceto first, launch bombers against the Battle Carrier, which can't do shit, and double crit it -Follow up with damage from the BBs fore beams, and plink a Destroyer with starboard beams for good measure
Apologies for the potato phone-camera phot, but it gives you an idea of what went down.
Aaron Ross
How is Taskforce?
Jaxson Cox
Eh. It's playable sure, but the turning is way too restrictive, and the way damage works means you're either one-shotting stuff or piling on useless disorder markers. I got went halves on two of the starters with two total newbies, and tried the forces with both Taskforce & Armada rules-sets. Both new players preferred Armada.
But hey, as a way of testing out ideas for Armada 3.0 it was fine. And the models are very pretty, although I guess that particular point has never been an issue for Spartan.
Henry Lopez
How is this game going, anyhoo?
Ian Sanders
>What about support and further releases? Almost every ship in the game has a model, certainly all of the core races and the secondaries people actually play do. They have rules for pretty much every scenario. What more do they need?
Wyatt Kelly
More variety between ships and weapon systems? Rules can always be changed and improved.
Lincoln Gutierrez
I suppose so, I wouldn't mind the weapon effects being rejigged but currently it's pretty simple to play, your ships do handle differently and games move along at a good pace.
Thomas Morris
The pace of the game has been increasing for us. My opponent still takes forever to move though. He just carefully considers how to move even his damaged frigates in the hope of... what I'm not sure? He ends up throwing 2AD anyway.
Have people been shunting out regularly? Listening to The Hub Systems Podcast, it seems like a good tactic.
