Assemble the Fleet

It's been an exciting few days.

Last week, a special delivery arrived for me at work: the Spartan Games bag I ordered from Battlefoam. I had a custom foam order, so that I could fit in a smaller games into the bag. It has two pluck foam trays, two different figure trays (I intend to use them for Infinity and Malifaux miniatures) and the custom starter foam for the Dindrenzi and Terran Alliance fleets.

Spartan Games bag from Battlefoam

On Friday, a friend, "D" ran me and another friend, "K," through the basics of Firestorm Armada at his apartment. I had already bought the 2-player starter set and the Dindrenzi half of another starter set from D. K hadn't completely committed to the system yet (though, from conversation it was more that he just hadn't decided on a faction yet. He was hooked from the description.), so he was using some of D's models. In our first game of the night, we had decided to play 1000 points a side, with K and I playing one side and dividing the points 500 each. D was playing his Terran Alliance, K decided to try the Directorate with some Works Raptor ships and I was playing my Dindrenzi.

Part of my fleet with a patch I have from the Halo Wars collectors edition.

Deployment - I kept my Thraex frigates in reserve

The game was a blast. I deployed on one side of the board hoping that I could keep my railguns (or MAC cannons) on target longer, but I had the problem of the sun (the shiny gold plate in the centre) being between my ships and my enemy early on. Things also went badly in turn 1, as D's battleship critical damaged K's assault carrier causing it's Fold Space drive to malfunction and throw it into the centre of a nearby planet.

On the second turn, things got slightly better for the Zenian Alliance (K and I), as my Thraex shunted in behind D's ships. One squadron arrived and laid waste to a squadron of frigates (though, they did arrive with some hazard markers). The other squadron of Thraex frigates, however, even though they jumped in behind his Tyrant class battleship, they failed to do squat. D then proceed to smash them with nukes. And things pretty much went down hill from there.

Suffice to say, it ended much like it started: with a battleship (my Nausicaa) having it's Fold Space drive damage and it shunting into a stellar body.

The Terran Alliance gloating over it's victory as the Zenian League's capital ships do their interpretation of the USS Pegasus.

Overall, it was a lot of fun. We did a second game, with all of us going free for all, but yet again, the Dindrenzi didn't turn out to well (training exercises don't count right?). So much fun in fact, in what time I could find over the weekend, I've already applied the base coats to my fleet. K also went out and bought a fleet the next day at our FLGS. He ended up deciding on the Aquans.

I definitely recommend picking up this game. It not overly complicated, but complex enough to give you a varying amount of choice. And the starter set, not only gives you two decent fleets, it also gives you the full hard cover rulebook with all the templates needed to play. At a little over $120 too, it's quite the deal.