This year’s hotness?
Firestorm Armada Razorthorn class battleship
As I find myself drifting from Warhammer Fantasy and find my enthusiasm for army collecting stalling, I likewise find myself paying more attention to smaller, less well known wargames. It looks like for this year, Spartan Games has captured my attention.
This company out of the UK has spent the last couple of years crafting a series of navel combat games, each drawing from the same core mechanics. What they have done, in essence, is create a fairly simple and elegant system for fleet battles in fantasy, deep space, and steampunk settings.
I’ve started my journey with Firestorm Armada, the space combat game. If I have your contact info, be forwarned that I’ll be bugging you to try this with me.
While I haven’t fully sussed out the system yet, here are some pros and cons.
Pro:
- The cost of entry and maintainability is refreshingly low. Less than $100 will get you the rules, extras, and models you need to play for a long time. I can’t see even the most ambitious fleet costing more than $200 including new paint and brushes. In fact, the models, especially with Firestorm Armada are simple and elegant enough that one could build his own fleet from humble materials and a bit of modeling know-how.
- With a few broad strokes, the rules system does a good job of capturing navel combat. The importance is positioning your models is essential for securing victory, making the game tactically satisfying. At the same time, things are simple enough for casual players to have a good time moving around without needing to put a great deal of thought into it.
Cons
- The models tend to be fragile. Crafted from resin, they sometimes require an experienced hand in building. In particular, the Firestorm Armada models can be frustrating to get to stay on their flight stands.
- The rules, while they play well, are not written for readers. They feel more like a compilation of notes rather than a polished work. Considering that these are first editions, I think this is forgivable. Spartan games seems to be improving on this with every subsequent release
I hope to get players in my area interested in this soon. I plan to do some demos of Firstorm Armada at the Game Preserve before Spring and hopefully will be able to generate enough enthusiasm to get the store to stock it.