Firestorm Planetfall - Painting Restart

As you may remember, Ziggy and I were collecting Firestorm Planetfall miniatures just prior to Spartan's collapse. Since then, we've bought up loads of clearance stuff, but the painting has been slow to be sure. This week I cleared the unfinished items from the queue which was an Aquan Prime Recon Helix.

I think some straggler infantry from the Command Helix (still in the box) made it into this lot. Zig and I may but PF on the table this weekend. It's been a while and they're such pretty miniatures. It'd be a shame to not let them get out and play!

Well Dang!

Apparently Spartan Games is closing up shop. I've enjoyed Dystopian Wars for many years and Firestorm Armada / Planetfall more recently. Announcement Here.

It's sad, but this sort of thing happens. The original WarZone suffered a similar fate and really stung for me. FASA's Crimson Skies was a terrific airplane shoot-em-up that had a short run.

I'm sure Zig, Mike, David and I will continue to play. The games fit good niches and we've got enough stuff for a lifetime. That said, I did just order a Firestorm Armada box from Amazon - some ships I've had my eye on and just never picked up.

I'm feeling GREAT about having downloaded Firestorm Taskforce and Dystopian Wars Fleet Action, both faster-play rules for the flagship games, within the last few days. Having perused the rulebooks and Orbats, they're solid and will certainly get table time.

Farewell, Spartan. Your games were a blast, your models terrific and your customer service exemplary.

Wrapping up a Good Week

I had a great week from a gaming perspective. Completed loads of painting, began a mechanical overhaul of Stardust: Ground and got in two quick playtest session of those changes!

First are those Aquan Prime walkers for Planetfall. I went with the camo legs. I think it came out looking pretty cool.

And then we've got the 15mm Space Marines I did up for SDG. I rather like the final result, although it looks like some of the Terminators could use a shave! I'll tidy them up soon enough😉

So... getting bitten by some bug that made me re-think how SDG played, I spent a lot of thought cycles re-considering game play. The only thing that ever bothered me about SDG was speed of play / turn length. The problem is endemic to alternate unit activation games - Dystopian Wars has a similar issue. With the new activation system (closely tied to morale), it also means fewer markers on the tabletop which I know some gamers strive for.

My first test of the new activation system was actually with 28mm sci fi models last Sunday during some solo playtesting.

After 45-60 minutes, it was apparent that the system was quite useable (although my skirmish system needs some tweaking). I wedged it into SDG during the week on paper and Saturday morning I completely re-designed my QRS, now version 2-compliant.

My nine-year-old, Cameron, agreed to help test. He's still a bit "flighty" for gaming so it was a weird parenting and gaming experience but in general, the game worked very well.

Sniper no sniping!  *blam blam*

As usual, the Khan's tanks are complete death machines.

I rather liked this die-rolling action shot. Cameron won the scenario.

We had dinner, then my bride and I played a second game. Same forces, same setup.

She thought the sniper looked cool up there.

It didn't take long for her to start killing my stuff - witness that one of the stands on the elevated highway is missing already, even with all of her crap still back in the deployment zone.  :/

My grav armor pummeled the enemy troops capturing one of the strategic points, but had a terrible time scoring kills.

A cool brawl under the highway. The Dawgs - who are quite nasty in close combat - kicked the Red Guards' asses. You can just see the sniper on the road above, still plugging away, kept alive by his stealth and cover.
So, two nice runs through involving infantry, special weapons and vehicles. Vehicle Close Combat is on the list of items to be addressed, then the dreaded rulebook re-write. Whaaaaa! I also need to re-visit the Robot and Bugs special rules and make required adjustments as they pertain to the new morale and activation system. Maybe next game the sweet Orange Marines will get a baptism of fire.

Firestorm Planetfall AARs - Two Very Short Ones

Zig and I broke out the Firestorm Planetfall stuff for our first game of that on Saturday afternoon. We fumbled through the a couple scenarios in the Battle for Proteus Prime campaign book that came with the box set.

This also is the debut of my wintry battle mat and trees. I may give it a bit more white, but I'm happy with the result. Here I've got a big honkin' heavy tank and a support tank. The support tank's job is to feed drop coordinates to the boys upstairs. The red markers in the middle of the battlefield are the drop sites. I also had three medium tanks bobbing along off-field in reserve.

In retrospect, I should have left this guy idling on my base line, sniping. But for game 1, he zipped forward and game the infantry carrier both barrels and was one hit away from killing it!

And then this happened. Ugh. Stupid infantry.

Big 'un hit the retros and tried his luck elsewhere. Just for grins, I killed the infantry carrier. It was a spite kill more than anything.

The big Directorate tank then took aim at my Sedna and with one mighty blast sent it careening.

My cavalry showed up and sniped one of the Directorate recon vehicles capturing the objective in the center. Too little, too late.

Those medium tanks were soon overrun by the roaming pack of infantry. Game over man, game over!

OK, lesson - infantry is the queen of the battle in a phone booth. AP guys are more suited to the long game. On to the next one!

The play area was expanded to 36" x 36" and we deployed our forces. I failed to realize that the support tank was supposed to be attached to the medium tank squadron. You can see my recon skimmers which have zipped forward early to occupy the objective.

Not pictured is evidence of my decision to float them over to the EW vehicles on the right to shoot them up. Well, I got too close and those EW vehicles decided to initiate a CQB firefight. Turns out EW tanks are the bee's knees in close quarter battle and wiped my squadron. Oh well, game 2, rookie mistake. In the picture above you can see that the tank squadrons have traded shots and the Cyber Warfare tanks have obscured the advanced targeting systems of my tank squadron with pop-up ads. The Directorate infantry has occupied the objective building.

The gray hordes continued their push forwards. I had dropped two missile launchers onto the board, but I just didn't have the firepower to deal with anything. After another turn, all that was left were my missile launchers. 

Lesson - the "intercept" aspect of CQB is not to be underestimated. Especially when it comes to big silly EW vehicles which apparently are crawling with the guys from The Expendables.

We did play the shield rules wrong - we were adding up total shields for the squadrons, not just those of the vehicles that would be damaged by an attack. Noob mistake. It seemed very broken during the game 😅

I'm certainly looking forward to more of Planetfall. Its combat mechanics are a big improvement over DW's slow arithmetic-laden dice counting system. A bit more experience will sort our my stupid mistakes of Saturday's games. I have not been perusing the forums looking for tactical advice and how-to guides, so really was going in blind. It did not take long at all to determine that the Aquan Prime guys prefer a battlefield that looks like this:

Long ranges, fast movement. The pool table is where it's at...

P.I.T.A.

Sometimes you end up with a model that's just a bear to assemble. I haven't had one of those in some time, but the Aquan assault helix I received as a birthday prezzie came with two real patience-testers.

The "three-legged walking things," as my son would have described them years ago, required me to use putty at the ankles and enlist my wife as a second set of hands. The very loose ball-and-socket joints were just impossible to work with by myself.

I did finish up the other contents of that box set - some missile tanks:

Zig and I are supposed to get in our first game of Firestorm Planetfall this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it (and looking forward to putting my red lovelies out on the tabletop).

On a much cuter note, my son busted out some of my scenery and minis last evening and had a bit of a dust up.

These sheep are in deep kimchi.

Space men and the army duke it out

Planetfall - A Group Shot

I've been positively zipping through the Firestorm Planetfall minis lately. Ziggy hooked me up with some a Terquai Recon Helix and an Aquan Assault Helix for my birthday. The Terquai got handled right away.

I took some group shots of all of the forces together - vehicles, infantry, etc.

 The whole shebang so far...

Aquan infantry

The big silver flier is a Terquai ground attack unit.

Terquai infantry. I gave all of the infantry a paint scheme more in tune with their wintry surroundings. I think it looks pretty swell - kind of an Imperial Stormtrooper vibe. I don't think I've ever painted "white" infantry before and I'm real happy with the result.

The walkers I've got now are the models shown above. I'm strongly tempted to do the legs in a white scheme, similar to the infantry while leaving the body red.

It'd make the legs (presumably the weakest point of a walker) more difficult to visually discern, much like the gun barrel of this Firefly. Let me know if you think it's a stupid idea or brilliant.

Not ready for the prior pictures, I completed these portals last evening. The Terquai infantry can walk through one and appear from the other portal. Should be nifty!

A Mixed Bag

I've been hard at work over the last week or so, mostly finishing models or projects that have been languishing for some time. Last Sunday, I finished this off:

It's a 6mm scale scratch-built chemical storage facility that's been hanging out, assembled and half-painted for many months. It turned out nicely, for a scratch-built thing I made.

Next we have some odds and ends from the Firestorm Planetfall box Ziggy and I split. There are some artillery strike markers, SAM launchers and crystals. I started assembling the infantry stands yesterday, so those will be done sometime in the next six months. :)

I also completed a Modern Spearhead battalion's-worth of T-64s.

I picked these up months ago when I ordered the odds and ends to complete my Naval Assault regiment. The models are CINC and really show off their high quality castings.