Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 two games intertwined on so many levels but boiling down to simply…. Fantasy and Science-Fiction.
Kings of War, while being Warhammer’s stunningly charming cousin you wished you’d met before you got married, it’s Sci-fi side has always been lurking at the side of the dance floor waiting for it’s turn. Not that it’s not fine looking in it’s own right, it’s just overwhelmed by the colossal warlord titan of Warhammer 40,000 filling the dance floor. It’s hard to comprehend the size of 40k, the background literature, the insane amount of models created over decades, best selling video games, you will find players in every club/shop in the land….. It’s accessible and well supported and can’t deny it’s pretty awesome.
So…. What have we got? Apparently there’s a game called Warpath but I’ve only met one person who’s actually played it and it’s so unbalanced it’s not really worth it. I read the source book for the game and the background for the universe is actually pretty cool, but I’m sure as hell not going to blow a load of cash on an army I’ll never get to play with. At the other end of the scale, set in the same universe we have Deadzone, which is pretty awesome. I’ve only played 4 games and already fallen in love with it. It’s simple, fun and reminded me a lot of youthful sleepovers playing Necromunda until dawn. But, similar to Warpath, I don’t have many people I can play.
And now along comes Firefight, nestling happily between the two for scale, not a mass battle nor a small skirmish. In fact it’s pretty much the scale of Warhammer 40k, and this I find extremely interesting, because although I’ve mainly moved to Mantic Games these days, I still love the Warhammer 40,000 universe and really miss playing sci-fi games. But the problem with the actual game of 40k is…. It’s a bit poo! When the current edition arrived I adored the new simple ruleset but within months it became the same garbled mess of garbage the previous editions had been.
So, having painted up the GCPS from my Deadzone box, (And a Warpath box my sweetie got me for my birthday and some snipers) I headed up to The Pit gaming shop in Borehamwood near Watford.
As the game was so new (apparently there was a 1st edition which seemed to sail largely under the radar) it was the first ranked Firefight tournament in the world! The Kings of Herts were organising it and seeing as they were instrumental in building the hugely successful south east Kings of War tournament scene, it’s a hope that they can do the same with Firefight. So….. what’s all the fuss about?
Having only been out a month, it was a bold move to run a tournament so soon but there were no painting restrictions and it was kept to a reasonable 750pts.
3 squads of marines, 4 Autocannon teams, 5 Ranger Snipers, Strider, Major and Medic! Didn’t quite get finished painting them…… but they’ll do for now!
Having barely read the rulebook, and having had no practice games or demo I was right into;
GAME 1! This was against Mark Robinson who is on the rules committee for the game and marvellously offered to play me first as I knew bugger all. As an introduction to the game it really showed what it was worth. The rules, a beautiful blend of Kings of War, Deadzone, Vanguard and 40K meant I picked it up incredibly quickly and although Mark won convincingly (and rightly so!) I did make him at least sweat for it. Compared to the 40k ‘I have the best army so you lose on turn 2’ style of gaming it was a breath of fresh air!
We had dispensed with the building rules for the tournament as we were mostly new and it was an extra chunk of stuff we didn’t need to remember so I had 2 big chunks of terrain in my deployment. I placed virtually my entire force in-between, as the mission was to capture the centre (the Kings of Herts guys had specifically chosen missions similar to Kings of War so we wouldn’t get too lost!) and I reckoned I had enough firepower to create a kill box in the centre and just walk in with my reserves for a win. It almost worked….
I managed to gun his 2 marionettes squads, cyphers and sky razors down for the loss of just my sniper squad (using my major and medic to keep my losses low) but I learnt the true strength of the Asterians pretty quickly. While it was fairly easy to strip shields, you really have to focus fire to take things down before they can bring them back up. His spectra neatly cut down my strider and then teleported to worry my centre and his Black talon prime and bodyguards in cover with stealthy AND shields meant I simply couldn’t kill enough to make a difference.
Main lessons;Use small arms fire to strip shields and THEN hit with the big guns. Polaris cannons have a long range so you don’t have to run forward like an overexcited newb. Medics are awesome.
Game 2 was against Niall’s Marauders. This mission was control the table quarters and he had a bunch of big tough squads to chew through. We were also using reserves. Again I kept my squads (mostly) near my medic and major to get the most out of them and whittled his squads down in order to make them break. The single ripper suit left managed to pass his nerve 3 turns in a row on a 7+ while laughing at me but the focus firing managed to work on 3 of his other squads. It was just enough for me to pull off a win but it could have quite easily gone either way.
Main lessons;Play the scenario. I was used to this one from Kings of war so kept an eye on my Unit strength and where it was. Marauders are waaaay better than me in combat (the brawlers diced me without even a sweat) so I couldn’t push forward. Instead I had to shoot the right squads in the right places to make sure I had my two and deny him one of his.
Game 3 was against Matt Ramsden himself who runs the shop (it’s a Mantic premier store with a huge stock range and great discounts and mail order too!) and it was also his birthday so he gave us all cake! This didn’t help him at all as I blew his rats to smithereens. We had to evacuate civilians and again, I was nervous about pushing forward into close combat range. A couple of things helped me win. Obviously Matt’s terrible dice rolling, but Veer-myn shooting isn’t all that great….. while I managed to again make the best of my medic and major to keep a stable centre and use my mass shooting to take his units out a bit at a time so even the nasty stuff that did make it in thankfully didn’t have enough punch left.
Main lessons;I have the Veer-myn models from Deadzone and an extra box which is the start of a new force. I learnt some valuable lessons about their strengths and weaknesses and they have the potential to be devastating if used right. Luck helps too!
So in the end I came 4th which is pretty good for my first try and Tactical War-games World is running the world rankings and as this was the first tournament I’m officially 4th in the world! Not exactly a major achievement but I shall shout about it while I can!
GCPS are my army of choice to start with. I always liked the Imperial Guard in 40k and these models are cooler. All my troopers get the fully enclosed helmets and they’re all painted like Master Chief from Halo. I’m also a big Starship Troopers fan….. there’s lots of scope to do what you want with them despite the lack of variation in troop themes.
They’re not individually that good, but with a medic to keep them resilient and returning wounds and officers to inspire and issue orders they can really stand up. They’re not great in combat so suffer from that lack of flexibility BUT they’re a great choice for a tactical shooting force. Huge amounts of shots, sacrificial units to put enemy troops in bad positions, using pinning and flamer weapons to dictate how much damage you suffer in return…… It all sums up a really fun army to use. I learnt a LOT, even at 750pts and now I have a better understanding of the game I can look at the list and see what I need to upgrade and what weaknesses I have to mitigate. Next is some anti-tank rangers in a drop ship. I’m sure they’ll help mitigate my combat weaknesses a bit but mainly they’re totally cool.
All in all even after only 3 games, this has immediately captured my imagination more than any other Mantic game (after Kings of War of course!) and I was genuinely astonished at how much fun I had playing it. I’ve been waiting nearly 5 years for Games Workshop to get the Horus Heresy game back up to scratch and they’ve finally released a new edition that looks great with loads of new toys and books….. and I’d much rather play this! I walked out of the shop with an extra GCPS mega force under my arm!
The next tournament is up north at the start of July which I sadly have to miss due to a 2 day Kings of War tournament at Tabletop Republic in High Wycombe (a brilliant excuse if ever there was one!) but the Kings of Herts have another lined up at The Pit on August 6th! Be there or be square! The South East has a thriving tournament scene and the Kings of Herts were instrumental in building it so it looks like the same might be true with Firefight too.
One of the big issues facing the game is players, after all you can get a game of 40K in virtually every town in the land but if there are no visible Firefight players to play with then why would you invest in a game you’re not going to be able to play? A thriving tournament scene will certainly address that issue and compared to 40k the clean balanced ruleset will appeal to competitive gamers, indeed it will attract many disgruntled 40k refugees (I am one). There’s an interesting argument about using proxies and any 40k players coming in may very well want an alternate 40k. Several of the races are fairly easy to proxy and if it means someone can start playing straight away….. then why not? I’d rather have a game against someone using 40k orcs than not have a game at all. We only had one out of 10 players in the tournament using an old army and he’s already looking at Mantic stuff. If that’s that way it’s looking going forward then it’s all good.
Word on the street is that it’s been a big success for Mantic and I’m not surprised. There’s only a few races to start with but it’s a big galaxy and there’s plenty of scope for new races and background.
I’m in.X
Get older. Don't grow up. 