For The Federation: Firestorm Armada Battle Report

Last evening's gaming club session heralded my third ever game of Firestorm Armada and to celebrate this i have decided to do a battle report on the game. The real reason behind doing this report is that it helps to promote the game (which i believe deserves promotion) and i know the rules well enough to be able to write a battle report for a Firestorm game.

For this battle i was playing the Dindrenzi Federation (whose ships are slow, heavily armoured and have powerful rail guns that only have a very limited arc of fire) and my opponents were playing the Directorate (similar to the Dindrenzi but with less powerful guns with better arcs of fire) and the Relthoza ( a stealth and ambush orientated faction). We decided to plan a basic Battleline type mission where the only goal would be to wipeout more enemy squadrons than the other side. The Deployment zone was 12 inches in from the board edge and while i did win the roll off for deploying first i let my opponent place the first squadron. They deployed a Battleship and a squadron of Cruisers behind a debris field on the right side of the board and deployed a Battleship and a second Cruiser Squadron as well as a Corvette Squadron on the right hand side of the board.

My Opponents right side Deployment

My Opponents left side Deployment

I clustered all my ships near the right of the center with my Battleship and frigates taking the far right flank.  My Battle and Heavy Cruisers took the center and the Corvette squadron deployed just to the left of the Heavy Cruisers.

My Deployment

The opposing side won the first activation roll of, in Firestorm players take it in turns to active one of their squadrons of ships that they have yet to active once already in the current turn, once all the squadrons have been activated a new turn begins.They began by opening fire with their Cruisers on my Battleship, on the left flank, to no effect. I countered by moving my Frigate squadron towards their Cruiser, opening fire and scoring a few hits. That flank saw two more activations that turn with both my Battleship and my opponents Battleship, with neither doing any real damage.

The other flank saw little action as my opponent ships on that flank had special rules and abilities that nullified long range attacks, mostly halving the total number of Attack Dice rolled per attack and a ability that forced me to re-roll successful hits. As such that flank mostly just saw moving and little else.

Next turn things got interesting. On the left flank my Frigates and Battleship continued to trade blows with then Cruisers and Battleship. This time i lost a Frigate with another heavily damaged (they dont take alot of punishment and so dies easily) and my opponent took damage on a Cruiser and the Directorate Battleship got damaged by my Battleship, success!

On the other flank there was a bit of action and more moving about. The opposing sides Corvette Squadron shot at my Corvette to no effect. In addition my opponents Battle Ships and Cruisers also joined in but didn't do anything to my ships. While all this was going on my Battle Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers began to move towards the left flank, although there was a bit of a traffic jam at first.

Turn 3 was a turn of heavy damage. Firstly my Frigates got hammered by the maimed Cruisers on that flank (6s were involved), as well as my Corvettes on the other Flank. However through the combined firepower of my Battleship, Battle Cruisers and Heavy Cruiser i took down one of the enemies Battlehsips, the one of the left flank. Huzzarh!!

However it wasn't all one sided, in the process of taking down the Battleship one of my Battle Cruisers got baldy hurt, and my Heavy Cruisers were left exposed to my opponents ships on the right flank which would hurt them later on.

Turn 4 was the last turn of the game and it was the turn that i suffered the most damage.  My opponent shunted in (Shutting is like Deep Strike just with less chance of mishaps) a Frigate Squadron behind my Battleship and damaged it. In response i turned my Battle Cruisers their way and destroyed one and wounded another. On the same flank the maimed Cruiser squadron destroyed my Frigate Squadron.

On the right flank i took a beating for little in return. My Corvette Squadron was destroyed and i lost a heavy Cruiser while only taking out one enemy Corvette and damaging some others.

At that point we deiced to call it a game, my opponents won and it was a well earned victory for them.  Overall it was good game for me, with a lot of well learned lessons for me as well  as increasing my familiarity with the rules. Hopefully this report did a good job of representing Firestorm and i hope it encourages you to take a look at Firestorm and Spartan games, they are well worth a look. Until next time.
Rex