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pixelgeek wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Maybe BFG 2E can steal some of this... I'd like that!

Or you could just buy this game and build some stats for your BFG fleets?

Why hold out hope that GW will toss you a scrap with a new version of a game they've basically abandoned when you could spend some money rewarding a company that comes out with new games.

That might be because I already own loads of BFG, and am generally happy with how BFG works, whereas I'm not particularly interested in buying an all new game that overlaps 100% with an existing game that I own.

A little minor rules cleanup in BFG, and it'd be awesome.

JohnHwangDD wrote:That might be because I already own loads of BFG, and am generally happy with how BFG works, whereas I'm not particularly interested in buying an all new game that overlaps 100% with an existing game that I own.

A little minor rules cleanup in BFG, and it'd be awesome.

BFG is a solid space combat game and especially fun if you are into the 40k universe (and who isn't) But other space combat games such at B5 and now FSA handle larger fleet actions better. So if you like bigger battles, you may want to look beyond BFG.

I think some game balance issues also snuck into BFG with some of the later fleets and some of the ordnance rules, but that might be reasonably easy to clean up with some house rules or something.

So... are there any UK online shops that have the book in stock?

As I see it, BFG only has a few rules issues tied to Ordnance / Turrets. If those were modified, similar to as described for FA in the OP, BFG would be be fine for several more years.

As a clean sheet, FA sounds leaps and bounds over any of the old stuff like SFB.

Saint Anuman wrote:Another nice thing I noticed was how nice the resin was cast how well the parts fit and the care taken in preping the models before shipping. My Sorylian Fleets and Carriers took just under a hour to set up.

How do the larger models balance on the stands? From the pictures I've seen some of the miniatures, the battleships in particular, look like they could be a bit top heavy, so I'm just curious what people who have the stuff in hand have to say about them.

Groundhog wrote:

Saint Anuman wrote:Another nice thing I noticed was how nice the resin was cast how well the parts fit and the care taken in preping the models before shipping. My Sorylian Fleets and Carriers took just under a hour to set up.

How do the larger models balance on the stands? From the pictures I've seen some of the miniatures, the battleships in particular, look like they could be a bit top heavy, so I'm just curious what people who have the stuff in hand have to say about them.

I'm pretty sure they are resin so they don't have the weight of big chunky metal BFG ships...

JohnHwangDD wrote:As I see it, BFG only has a few rules issues tied to Ordnance / Turrets. If those were modified, similar to as described for FA in the OP, BFG would be be fine for several more years.

As a clean sheet, FA sounds leaps and bounds over any of the old stuff like SFB.

Well, presumably FSA will be actually supported for years to come, and not consigned to the IP graveyard that is Specialist 'Games' too...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Firestorm_Armada:_Initial_Response_to_the_Rulebook

Tried to edit as much as I could, Russ-god. Hope the final product is legible.

The bigger ships can be a bit tippy. It might be worth adding a washer to the bottom of the base (or magnet) but I'll have to see after a few games. As others mentioned the minis are mostly resin so that helps but the larger ships are big and the base is just 40mm square.

More pictures:

People are in some of these pictures, so you can get a good sense of scale.

'The Sherpa' has posted pics and a brief battlereport of the first Fire Storm Armada fleet action. Link: http://bit.ly/606JBx

My book is on the way
I think I'll wait for the second batch of miniatures though, as quite a few people are reporting horrible miscasts.

Yayy! My book arrived on Saturday. I can join the fun at last!!

Ironically I will be playing BFG on Thursday as the space
ship juices were flowing...

First FA game scheduled for a week Thursday, using proxied GZG ships. The new FA ships are nice (and the big ones are bigger than most ships out there - perhaps because they can be, being resin and not metal), but the last thing I need right now is a pile of more stuff to paint. My 2010 resolution is "No new, unpainted, models"! Hopefully, if I stick to it, I'll have made a decent dent in my lead mountain by next Christmas.

Here's a blurry pic I took for scale.

I found by drilling the peg slot deeper the models sit great on the table with no need for any weight.





Love these ship
Cheers
Gordon

I really need to get into this game.

This game is already popular at my local store. I just need to decide which faction to play. Terran Battleships are great, but the other Terran ships seem meh. Relthoza shoot metal spiders so I'll probably end up playing them

OK, I am not sure if your review explained this and I am blind but...how adaptable could this be if you were to change the ships to a different IP? Mainly, if I brought in, say, Star Trek ships to replace the factions that are there, are the rules flexible enough to make the change?

The rules are, but the scale is way off. Your ships will look tiny compared to the FA stuff.

lord_blackfang wrote:The rules are, but the scale is way off. Your ships will look tiny compared to the FA stuff.

Like I said, replace the factions with something else...So I would not have any of the Firestorm Armada ships on the board..

If you have enough for your opponent to use, too, then there's no problem

Like just about any space game, FA only uses the ship's base for game purposes, the models are irrelevant. Bases are square, 40x40mm. Te size and shape of the base is important.

ProtoClone wrote:OK, I am not sure if your review explained this and I am blind but...how adaptable could this be if you were to change the ships to a different IP? Mainly, if I brought in, say, Star Trek ships to replace the factions that are there, are the rules flexible enough to make the change?

The Rulebook actually contains ship design rules so you can create stats to match whatever ships you have. Like BFG, all measurements are done from the peg on the flight stand so even if your ships are a little out of scale it won't effect the game.

The base is important for fire arcs and turning, though. Luckily FA bases are larger than most, so you can probably just stick 40x40 squares under your existing bases.

The ship size is immaterial. Its all a representation. The center of the stand is the important part. So any scale will work for the most part w/ FA. Some of the fleets are fairly analogous to BFG so you can just say "my terrans are imperial" or "my dindrenzi are tau" And so on and so forth as well as the aforementioned Ship creation rules.

So just rebase your model with an FA base.

My Dindrenzi Battleship was a little lopsided but i moved the peg up further on the model and if you lower the center of gravity (read: make the pole shorter) it helps tremendously as well.

Overall a classy product , and after a few games our group has gotten into the swing of things slowly. There's a lot of depth to this one that Uncharted Seas didn't have. And I eagerly await to use my Carrier next game.

I've been looking for a decent space combat game and this truly does look awesome.
Thanks for this.

There are rules for ship construction as well, so if you didn't just want to proxy models for the existing factions but wanted to create a ship that *was* (for instance) the Enterprise, then you can. Also they have rules for cloaking technology, so Klingon ships are go!

Ship design rules are opponent's consent only, and for good reason. Took me all of 5 minutes to break them to heck. They're ok for designing slight variants (like the many BFG cruisers that only differ in their broadside weapons configuration) but if you start from the ground up you can make totally slowed designs. Like a rear-firing railgun strapped to a big thruster with 1 crew and no armour.

How do the larger models balance on the stands? From the pictures I've seen some of the miniatures, the battleships in particular, look like they could be a bit top heavy, so I'm just curious what people who have the stuff in hand have to say about them.

The ships being resin will help keep them from getting banged up if they fall over, but I have a feeling they are pretty top-heavy. I had an idea about this... If you took a steel base (one of the FLGS here in Chicago carries them) and glued it to the underside of the plastic base, that would add some needed weight. The best part about this is that there are counters that are used in the game to keep track of damage and such, so if you mounted these onto RE magnets, they could stick to the base, so moving the ships about isn't a problem.

The thing that I could see coming up a lot is that when you check a weapon's arc, you measure from the center post of the target ship. I could see this resulting in ships getting nudged, and knocked over a lot. Other than that, the ship's top heaviness wouldn't be that big of an issue. You could also lower the really big ships on their posts so that they were closer to the table. This would also help add some dynamic appearance to your fleet.

I went through a bunch of the book last night, and while some of the fluff writing is pretty weak, I have to say that the game is pretty slick. I am looking forward to some trial games. The rules writing has some gray areas, but is way more concise, and clear than many GW army books. The fact that they supply cut out sheets for several of the fleets, and they try to cover rules exceptions very carefully shows that this game was made by active gamers, for gamers. I am not at all disappointing that I picked the game up. I was really surprised at how big the models are for this! The battleships are massive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Noisy_Marine wrote:This game is already popular at my local store. I just need to decide which faction to play. Terran Battleships are great, but the other Terran ships seem meh. Relthoza shoot metal spiders so I'll probably end up playing them

The Terran frigates have a torpedo sweetspot at range band 4 (I think), and can fire in any direction. In a small game that I played they were great raiders. I think once I get a chance to experiment with linked fire, the smaller ship squadron tactics will start to mature.

xenite wrote:
The thing that I could see coming up a lot is that when you check a weapon's arc, you measure from the center post of the target ship. I could see this resulting in ships getting nudged, and knocked over a lot. Other than that, the ship's top heaviness wouldn't be that big of an issue.

I'd recommend you stop playing gamers with fat fingers, xenite

malfred wrote:
I'd recommend you stop playing gamers with fat fingers, xenite

I like your fingers just they way they are. Don't change a thing baby.

Chubby chaser.