Aquan Prime, I choose you!

For the last week or so, I've been doing some crazy research into Firestorm Armada.  I really enjoyed my first game with the starter sets and I can't wait to play more!  The most exciting thing about this fleet-based game is that it's different.  By different, I mean a different game system and balance design philosophy than GW.  Spartan Games actually shows off its timeline of what's to come and lets the community playtest their rules before finalizing them.  Even then the rules can change should the model become too imba because all the unit stats are online in .pdf files.  I have never played any fleet games before and this looks like the best game system I can get into right now.  Time, money and support is what I care about these days.

So what army did I eventually decide on?  I chose Aquan Prime out of the 6 factions currently available.  They have some of the fastest ships in the game (fastest Battleship), good defensive measures (high PD and DR) and they're one of the hardest factions to play.  Now maybe it's the elitist side in me thinking that I can handle the most tactically challenging factions, but I absolutely love a good challenge.  What makes Aquan Prime hard to play is their subpar ship damage.  Their main batteries are weak across the board except for the BB.  With 8" speed and 11/14 broadside lasers at RB1/2, the BB can put out a respectable amount of damage.  To nullify the weakness of the onboard weapons, the Aquans have retro-fitted all their ships with guns that can shoot in all directions.  Unlike the ships from other factions where they have torpedoes or guns on a fixed or specific arc, Aquan ships can deliver their payload (including torps) from all directions.  This, in combination with their ability to drop mines on the enemy, opens up another layer of stratagems.

In terms of tactics, the Aquan Fleet likes to engage fast and and deliver simultaneous damage from all directions. They do best when they stay together and fly straight up the middle of the enemy fleet.  If you have a BB and Cruisers swimming together into an enemy fleet, they can deliver powerful broadside and fore damage from all angles.  With torpedoes coming out of every direction as well, Aquan ships do the most damage up close and surrounded.  That's when they acquire the most targets to shoot at.  I think in terms of 40K, their playstyle is closest to Seer Council Eldar.  They like to get up close and personal with their opponents, but they have to use their tricks and maneuverability to survive prolonged engagement.

Addition to weapons on all arcs, most of the heavier Aquan ships come equipped with mines.  These are normally MN4 or 5 rating with the heavy cruisers and the battleships having MN5.  This means that when I fly over a batch of enemy Frigates or even Cruisers, each ship that flies over can drop a mine from their aft port up to 4" away.  If any enemy is within 4" of that mine on their next activation, they're taking 5 dice worth of damage.  Imagine the possibilities when 3 MN5 ships fly over and drop mines.  Awesome.

Finally, the last reason I went with Aquan Prime is because of their models.  I'm not a Star Trek fan, but I really like the look of the Enterprise and the AP BB reminds me a lot like it.  My friend tells me it looks more like the Mon Calamari cruisers from Star Wars, but who cares.. it's all good!  The rest of the ships are decent looking, but the capital ships (the BB, Manta and Triton) look fantastic.

The "I hate Apoc" rant

Every time I've played Apoc, I've hated it.  There's nothing more mindless and chaotic than putting every single model you own on the table with a bunch of other guys.

To spare you guys of a full-on nerd rage, let me sum it up with bullet points:

• I don't have unlimited resources aka money to buy a billion tanks.
• The same can apply to time and energy to assemble a billion tanks.
• Both of these applies to buying, building, painting and putting a Titan on the field.
• There's nothing I hate more than moving a billion models.  That's why I have things in transports and use a good amount of tanks.  Now I don't know about you guys, but I don't have a tank for every 10-Marines I own.  I would need something like 50 tanks.
• There's nothing more depressing than watching a 10-year old kid paint up his minis, put them on the table, and telling him to take them off because some a-hole on your team dropped a apoc-barrage on his mans.
• I hate those strategems that they use.  What did it for me is the lack of actual control you have over the game when entire armies start outflanking from your side of the table.
• Speaking of structure, there's no such thing.  I've seen 6 Grand Masters walk through 6 Hierodules because that's how we roll.
• Did I mention Apoc barrage and explosions?  I was walking along side a friendly Baneblade before with my Marines and I went to the bathroom because the turn was taking forever.  I came back to a giant ass crater and all my models relocated to the empty table next to me.  Apparently, the Baneblade went critical and bad things happened.
• The time it takes to play a TURN.  You might make it to 3 turns after a whole day.

What about you guys?  The biggest apoc game in history is coming up and that should be a lolstorm to hear about.

BR: 500pt Terrans vs. Sorylians

I played a test game of Firestorm Armada today and I'm very satisfied with the game.  I'm going to keep this in note format so people can follow along a lot easier.  I played Sorylians and Dimitri played the Terrans.  We played with no wings and no game cards since this is our first learning game.

First, the army lists.  The starter boxes can produce the following lists:

Terran
"Razorthorn" Battleship
3x "Sentinel" Cruisers
3x "Pilgrim" Frigates
3x "Pilgrim" Frigates

Sorylian
"Swordbreaker" Battleship
3x "Skyhammer" Cruisers
3x "Scythe" Frigates
3x "Scythe" Frigates

As you can see, the two armies are very similar to eachother with 1 mainstay ship, 2 squads of smaller ships and 1 squad of medium ships.  Here comes the quick BR:

Grey Knights by Robin Cruddace?

Well, the cat's out of the bag guys.  Grey Knights is definitely coming in April but we have no idea who the author of the book is.  Now.. let's look at a very narrow timeline of who wrote what recently for GW:

5th Ed. books:
Space Marines - Mat Ward
IG - Robin Cruddace
Space Wolves - Phil Kelly
Tyranids - Robin Cruddace
Blood Angels - Mat Ward
Dark Eldar - Phil Kelly

Somewhere in there, Jervis Johnson wrote Battle Missions.  I think that was between IG and Space Wolves, but honestly I can't remember.

Anyways, let's look at these authors' track records.  Let's start with Phil Kelly.  This guy is amazing and has written some of the best books ever produced in terms of fluff, design, cost effectiveness and overall power.  Mat Ward, on the other hand, has forever tainted himself with 7th Ed. Chaos Daemons.. which is the book that broke 7th Ed. Fantasy all together. On the other hand, aside from butchering fluff left and right, he also wrote some of the most balanced books for 40K.  Both Space Marines and Blood Angels are balanced books.. despite some minor oddities.  This leaves us with Robin Cruddace.  He wrote the best book in 5th Ed. 40K right now, his personal and favorite army, the Imperial Guard.  He also wrote arguably the worst book to hit the shelves since Chaos Space Marines by Gav Thorpe:  Codex Tyranids.  Needless to say, he can either go hardcore powerful favoritism or rush-job terrible spider monkeys.

Going by the trend of books above, let's make some educated guesses to who is writing the Grey Knights codex.  Ward looks like he's got a thing for Space Marines so let's not count him out just yet.  One could say that writing a book so soon will produce something of a rush job.. but if you look at Cruddace's Tyranids that came right after Kelly's Space Wolves then you won't argue.  The most likely candidate looks to be Cruddace.  He hasn't done anything since Tyranids and this might be his chance to redeem himself.  God knows that book was a major disappointment to the Tyranids community and GW would have to be blind to not see that.  On the other hand, we might just see a rush job by Mat Ward.. but that's unlikely because Daemonhunters needed a rewrite for a long time, and with an entire line of minis coming out to go with the book, I doubt GW would make it a rush job.

So what do you guys think?  Are we going to see the high-low bi-polar writing style by Cruddace or are we going to see something from Ward?  I'm still pretty bitter about 7th Ed. Daemons, but I do enjoy Ward's balanced work in 5th Ed. 40K.  I can't say I like how he butchers fluff, but game balance is more important to me because I'm a gamer first.  If anything, I just hope I don't get something overpowered like IG or god-awful like the Nids.

Firestorm Armada

I'm really thinking about getting the game.  First of all, it reminds me of Battlestar Galactica.  Second, it's about epic-scale space battles where ships blow apart other ships.  Third, a starter set that plays at 500 pts is 50 bucks.  That's pretty freaking awesome.

For those that want to check out what the factions of the game are like, check out this short pdf file here.  It's a link to Spartan Games' website where they have a bunch of files up for the game.  The game itself is relatively new since it came out in November '09 and there seems to be a good amount of support for it.  I never played BFG before, but from what I hear: the game is massively imbalanced.  I'm going to be honest here:  I absolutely hate game imbalance.  Aside from terrible game design, nothing puts me off faster than a imbalanced game.  I don't care if your game is beautifully designed, if it's imbalanced to a point where I can't field a army because it face rapes everything it touches, there's no point playing it.  My friends tell me that Necrons in BFG is laughably overpowered.

Let's talk about Firestorm Armada really quick.  The game has 6 factions and each faction has like 6-7 ships.  Each ship does something different with the big Battleships being the mainstay of each force.  There's also Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers, Frigates and Escort ships for each faction.  What makes each faction different is that their ships are designed differently; from the looks to the stats of the ship themselves.  There's nothing crazy like in BFG with Holofields or Lance-type weaponry.  Instead, there's more subtle changes to the ships stats like their armor, weapon systems, crew rating or defense stats.

WM: Retribution Tricks

Rahn
Playstyle: Movement manipulation via magic spells.
Feat: Magic spells gain +2 RNG and boosted attack and damage rolls.
Gimmick: Move your opponent's army around into favorable positions for you.
Units: Phoenix, Discordia, Battle Mages, Magisters

Rahn is all about the Feat turn.  When he pops Arcane Alignment, every magic user in his army gets +2 RNG to their attacks and they're automatically boosted.  That means more accuracy, more damage and a lot of rearrangement and death for the enemy army.  This is why most of Rahn's lists are based off of arc nodes, tons of Battle Mages and Magisters.  Obviously, the Phoenix offers the heaviest arc platform at a fairly affordable price and is Rahn's best friend.  The newer Discordia works very well with Houseguard Halberdiers because a reforming Shield Wall under Discordia's Imprint is just insane.  On feat turn, the Battle Mages spring into action to open up charge lanes and other opportunities via push and pull.  The army is very capable of pulling an enemy caster out into the open and to his death.  Rahn's spellpool is also fantastic:  Telekensis moves things around and turns targets around for backswings, Polarity Shield keeps your Halberds safe from charges and Force Hammer is a POW12 slam that can knock things down.  If any of your arc nodes get in trouble, Force Blast pushes enemy models back and the rest of your army can charge them afterwards for a quick kill.

Kaelyssa

Playstyle:  A very solid, balanced warcaster that has plenty of tricks to throw around.
Feat:  Everything in her control range gains stealth and cannot be charged.

Gimmick:  Allowing units to shoot through walls or killing the warcaster with Backlash.

Units:  Hydra, Mage Hunter Strike Force, Sentinels, anything really

Since Kaelyssa is one of the most balanced casters for Retribution, she can run with pretty much anything.  I've seen her do well with Dawnguard units, Houseguard units or Mage Hunter units.  Kaelyssa likes running with two full units of MHSF w/ Commanders just because she can.  The best thing about her  is her ability to give Phantom Hunter to one of her models.  The Hydra is a fantastic choice to give this to because he can shoot a POW15 shot from 15" through a wall and into your warcaster's face.  Her feat denies many opponents from getting the first charge and stealth keeps the army safe from shooting.  To sum it up, her feat is mainly a defensive one but can also be used to get your units into position.  Safety from both melee and ranged threat allows units like Sentinels to move into charge range next turn and force the opposing army into retreat.  Mage Hunter Strike Force(s) also add a great deal of threat not because of their stealth, pathfinder, AD, Phantom Seeker and 'Jack Hunter abilities (lol), but because any jacks with low DEF also fear Kaelyssa's Backlash.  If you think your warcaster is safe from damage because of their obscenely high DEF and ARM, Kaelyssa will just backlash a low DEF jack and go to town with her ranged units.  There's really nothing that Kaelyssa can't do and that's what makes her awesome.

Alright, I'm back

Prepare for some article spam coming up.  Here's a highlight to what's to expect:
- Next Tuesday I'm playing a 2k game DE vs. BA, so expect a BR.
- I might also play some Warmachine games with Khador by that time.
- I'm putting out the Retribution and Khador faction tricks articles, in that order.

Sorry for the lack of updates.. but Australia and New Zealand was awesome!