Played 2 Missions of Firestorm: Planetfall...

Yesterday Jerico and I sat down to learn Firestorm: Planetfall. I have been in love with the models ever since Jeremy first posted up the news about em way back. I held off just knowing there'd be a ton out there to play. Disclaimer, this was a learning game, anything below could be wrong and incomplete since we were playing through the starter box. Also, just random impressions throughout this, but thought some may be interested.

So the first mission is a simple move and occupy, no opposing forces. These intro games are played on a 2'x2' and each gets larger.

Now I've been told that its is standard Spartan Games ruleset with some obvious caveats, differences, and unique rules, but for me it was my first time playing a Spartan Game so it was all new to me. Its the exploding 6 dice, etc. so I won't go into that.

As far as occupying a building can be done with infantry units and once they're inside they are hard to dislodge, especially if you get up close (see Close Quarters Combat below). This is one of the main ways to score points in the game, grabbing and controlling objectives. A secondary way to score is for every squad you kill of your opponents (as they have points associated with them).

So the second mission is where we got to see the Directorate (me) face off against the Aquan Prime (Jerico). This was fun. Victory is obtained by getting your planetfall (forget name) tracker down to zero. We started at 12, this is done as I mentioned before by killing squads, but more importantly by controlling victory point scoring buildings (there was one). Besides having infantry occupy to control you can have entire squad that has the "Track & Hold" ability (like my scout buggy).

Think it took about 5 turns to get the game to a finish point. It was quite close, but once my infantry got in the building it was just time that i needed to really win. We did identify that tanks should not try and move up on a building to shoot for any real reason (at least the units we used). As you would expect its best for the tank to sit back and just blast the building. The reason for this is one of my favorite parts of planetfall....Close Quarters Combat (CQC).

CQC is sort of reminiscent of ARO in Infinity. Basically if a squad ends a move within 4" of an enemy squad the chance for CQC occurs. The attacker decides first if he/she will CQC, then the defender. This is great because, like Infinity ARO, it keeps both players involved and you both feel like you're really doing something even though it isn't your turn. Then each squad rolls their unmodified CQC die (different stat) for their entire squad and starts reporting damages. In this case, during CQC attacks, squads don't get to use their shields to defend so the damage can help turn the tide before the main ordinance attack which is about to come. This is also why its bad for a tank to move up to a building which is occupied and try and take out infantry because it gives them free shots.

So after both sides complete CQC and casualties are removed (closest ones to squad first), the main ordinance attack occurs. This is where a vehicles/troops main weapon is fired. You can do things like focus (if you haven't moved) or consolidated shot where all vehicles in the squad fire at an enemy (which some reduction in dice pools but still helpful when a bunch of buggies are trying to take out a tank).

Anyways, I know this is long, but its random thoughts from the game. Loved it a bunch. Here are some photos I took before the game.