AAR - Firestorm Armada - Tarakians v Terrans

At last Ziggy and I got to put out Firestorm Armada ships on the table Saturday afternoon for our first game of FSA! I used my Tarakians (the only ships I have) and Ziggy used his Terrans. Technically they're allies, but the Terran governor in this sector was getting mouthy so we sent a patrol out to do the speaking for us.

Our fleets were 610 (me) and 620 (him) points. The only upgrade I took was extra SRS wings and 6 wings (2 Int and 4 Bmb), while Zig only took free Nuke upgrades where available. Since neither of us had played FSA this game was to be as much about us getting used to employing our ships properly as anything else.

Our battle zone. Lots of asteroids and two gas clouds. There is also a comet waiting to appear.

Zig wins initiative and moves his destroyers forward. They have no targets.

The Rulak cruisers slide forward and unleash the power of their gravitational weapons on one of the destroyers. It explodes in the blink of an eye. The Terran commander takes a deep breath.

Shortly, the Tarl-class frigates swing to their left and unleash a volley with their gravitational weapons at another destroyer, damaging it severely.

The Terran frigates get a bit of revenge and blow up a Tarl.

Turn 2 begins with a bang, as the Terran battleship hits another Tarl with its nuclear fore weapons, exploding it - the explosion destroys another and damages a third!

The remaining two Tarls muster a solid shot at the damaged destroyer, breaking it apart.

Their destruction is joined by the Rulaks which finish off the destroyer squadron!

On turn three, I pushed my Ganak forward to get some powerful gun and grav-weapon shots. I was out-of-arc with the grav gun but smashed two frigates and crippled two cruisers. A wing of bombers failed to make an impression on the Apollo.

The Rulaks turn their attention towards the wounded cruisers and again unleash another devastating volley with their grav weapons, destroying two of the Hemes-class ships! 

The last of the Hermes pulled around the asteroids for a shot at the Tarakian cruisers, but was then attacked by the last Tarl. The vengeful crew crippled the Terran cruiser with one mighty shot of its gravitational weapon!

The Terran frigates snipe my last frigate. Oh well, they performed admirably!

To start turn 4, the Apollo swang around and unleashed a hail of torpedoes and nuclear shells at my cruiser squadron. The two closest cruisers were damaged quite seriously and the rear ship was damaged a bit less.

The Rulak squadron closed and returned fire, causing a critical hit! Their torpedoes were ineffective.

Captain Zig consults the rules. You can see that the comet finally decided to arrive!

A miraculous long-range snipe by the frigates results in a destroyed cruiser! Crikees!

My Ganak gets into to prime shooting position and blasts the Apollo, taking it to half its original hull points.

We called the game there. The Tarakians were in the catbird seat and things were looking bad for the Terrans. I think the score was 7 to 1 in favor of the Tarakians.

Enjoyable! As similar as the game is to Dystopian Wars, it is different enough to be a solid change. The varying range bands and preferred ranges do make things a bit less predictable. Although we avoided the terrain, simply having a lot of terrain made maneuver important. Because torpedoes and grav weapons effectively ignore terrain, it wasn't a huge deal, but it will be in the future, I'm sure.

Grav Weapons are just nasty and Zig has something new to hate. His Nukes were pretty effective and I imagine I'll be seeing more of them too! On the whole, I was very happy with the way the Tarakians held up, although Ziggy has now seen the breadth and depth of their fleet. On the other hand, Terrans and their ilk have a lot of options and looks, so although Z has a lot of toys to figure out, I have a lot of toys to account for. I do have some reinforcements on the way as we build up our fleets.

Zig realized quickly his mistakes with the destroyers and frigates - their long-range sniping power was not fully realized this game and I'm sure he won't repeat that.

My dice, especially when rolling attacks with the grav weapons, were ridiculously good. Sixes and sixes and sixes - it was unbelievable. Combined with their ability to ignore shields, it made for a miserable afternoon for the Terran ships. Interestingly, when I'd follow-up with a torpedo attack, it was all ones and twos. My bombers made a beautiful attack run at the Apollo but hit on ONE out of TWELVE attack dice! Truly abysmal.

Looking forward to another game some time soon. Good Gaming!