2014 in Review

Its that time of year when I look back and reflect on some of the major wargaming related events of the past 365(ish) days, and thank those who have had a positive influence on my wargaming experience for 2014 . So without further delay lets get to it.

One of the big things to happen this year for me was the release of the new Wood Elf book, finally after all those years of a 6th edition book we got a brand new 8th edition book and did it live up to the wait? Well no not really. If you were following the rumours about the book as much as I was then you couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the new book especially since some of the rumours that came out right before the book went up for pre-order had skirmishers in core with the Strenght-4-at-short-range-bow being given to all and hatred Beastmen being an army wide rule. Despite all that the book isn’t bad just disappointing especially in the areas where the book got nerfed, forest sprits where never broken and didn’t need the -1 strength, dryads were fine as skirmishers and removing that rule hasn’t really done anything for them at all. On the positive side the new book did modernise the Wood Elves with ASF and access to all 8 rule book lores as well as High and Dark. Overall the book is good but I wish it were better.

On the topic of GW codices and army books there were a lot published this year with 8 40k codices and 2 Fantasy army books being published this year alone as well as a new 40k edition and the Shield of Baal Wh40k campaign, and while they score points for quantity the loose points for quality with most of the codices from Orks onwards being dull and uninspired; the last 3 40k codices didn’t have any new units in them and all the new kits that came out were unnecessary redos of old kits, some of which (the Dark Eldar Archon leaps to mind) didn’t need the redo.

Welcome to Firestorm: The Terran Alliance

Continuing on with the Welcome to Firestorm series it’s time to take a look at the 6 main races of firestorm, starting with the Terran Alliance. This post will focus on their background, military strength and how they are currently positioned in the Firestorm lore, Enjoy. 

The Terran Empire Symbol

In the Firestorm universe humanity had colonised all the planets in earth’s home system (referred to as the Sol system) by the end of the 22nd century and the governments of earth had united into one, mainly in order to pool each countries resources which were rapidly dwindling. With the stars open to them humanity’s innate drive to explore kicked back into life and many thousands of human colonists flocked to sign up for these expeditions, which were referred to as extra solar expeditions. It took 3 centuries for the first wave of colony ships to settle and another 2 for these newly founded colonies to thrive.

For Dramos

Last night i was able to get in a 1000 point game of Firestorm against my friends Terran fleet, and i decided to write up the report in a narrative style as i enjoy doing narrative battle reports more than the more kind. So sit back and enjoy.
 
Fleet Admiral Randa Yount stood gazing out upon the vast expanse of space before her and tried to quell her nerves. Around her the crew of the “Hitchens” went about their jobs with a slight air of excitement, for many this was their first voyage aboard a warship as the crew of the warship and the same went for all of the other ships in the fleet, and for Yount herself. The fleet, called the Voice of Dramos, was a newly founded patrol fleet on its maiden voyage before it headed into the Storm Zone to assist the Dindrenzi war effort. Yount herself had recently graduated from the naval academy and through a bizarre series of events had found herself as the fleet admiral for the Voice of Dramos, she still periodically pinched herself to ensure wasn’t dreaming.

“This sector is clear Admiral” called out one of the command bridge crew, “Shall I signal the fleet to move the next sector?” Yount answered with a simple nod, and watched as her fleet prepared to enter Fold Space. As the Hitchen’s own Fold Space drive powered up Yount found herself absentmindedly wondering if they would find anything in the next sector, so far all they had found as empty space, which was what they were expecting. 

The Voice of Dramos patrol fleet

Planetfall Incoming

What with the dispatching of my Planetfall order on December 10th I feel its time to talk about Planetfall, my feelings about it so far, how the models are shaping up the just the game in general. Firstly I just wanted to say that I am impressed with how Spartan handled the first Planetfall wave; they encounter unexpected demand for the starter kit and recon helixes that came with it. In response they let their customer know, via email, that the release would be delayed for a while as they produced more boxes to fill their pre-orders. This is how you handle “unexpected demand” for a product. As of the time of writing this post (9/12/2014) I have yet to receive an email telling me that my shipment will be delayed so all looks well for this release being sent out on time.

Welcome to Firestorm: The Story so Far

Welcome to the first of the "Welcome to Firestorm" posts. The aim of this post, and the ones that follow, is to introduce new players who are unfamiliar with the Firestorm universe to Firestorm lore and perhaps inspire a few people to start a Firestorm fleet. First up is the overall story of the Firestorm universe.

The story of the Firestorm universe starts as many sci-fi universes do. Humanity experiences a golden age of technological advancement  and colonises much of the galaxy. As they explore humanity came into contact with alien races, namely the Aquans, the Relthoza and Sorylians,and fought a war with these races that became to be known as the Wars of First Contact.

A map of the known Firestorm galaxy

Content Shift

There has been an issue weighing on my mind for sometime and it involves GW. You see i love WHFB but hate GW as a company (it used to be that i strongly disliked GW but with recent developments i can now fairly say i hate them), and so the question was: Do i keep playing GW games and continue buying GW models? 

For the longest time the answer has been yes, i still really like WHFB as a game and Wood Elves as a army and my like of the game system and army has outweighed my intense dislike of the company and its practices, another factor keeping me from abandoning GW was that i hadn't found a game that i liked as much as or more than WHFB, until recently.

Enter Spartan Games, Firestorm Armada and Planetfall. I started really getting into Firestorm a few months back and with the release of Planetfall my attention is being drawn towards both those systems and the potential they hold. For those who don't know Firestorm is a Sci-fi Fleet based wargame and Planetfall is a Sci-fi ground based wargame set in the same universe as Firestorm and all signs are that Spartan Games (the creators of Firestorm and Planetfall) will be making a way for games of Firestorm to be combined with games of Planetfall, so fun times ahead. With me getting into these two games i found myself enjoying them more and enjoying WHFB less, not enough to the point where i want to sell all WHFB related things and jump fully into Firestorm but enough so that instead of constantly thinking about WHFB and thinking about what new unit to buy for the Wood Elves i now find myself thinking about Firestorm Fleet tactics and what new ship to add to my fleet.