When I was at Claymore yesterday, my eye was caught by the Spartan Games table. They were demoing their new shiny, Firestorm Planetfall.
It's a 10mm scale game (hellooooo ToD. Calling ToD...) set in the same setting as the Firestorm Armada game. Their demo staff chappy was very chatty and informative, and I figured some folks here might be interested. So, here's what I know:
It's designed to be integrate-able into games of Firestorm Armada. In the demo game they had 3 tables side by side. On the FA table, big ships were shootin lasers at each other round a table. Then, on the FPfall table, big robots (and wee men) were landing (from the spaceships on the FA table) and assaulting/defending some big anti-spaceship missile bunkers. The better the attacking force were doing in the FA games, the more reinforcements arrived on the FPfall table. Furthermore, there was a as-yet-unreleased 28/32mm game going in detailing the action inside one of the aforementioned missile control bunkers. If it looked like the attackers were winning in that game, the defending player in the FPfall game had to start consider attacking and blowing up the missiles, so they wouldnt lose control of them. It was all very clever how the games interacted with each other, and I'm told it's all worked into the game system.
Firestorm Armada
FIrestorm Planetfall
The 28/32mm scale skirmish one.
Other than that, the army composition chart was clever, with a hex in the middle (basic stuff) and 6 hexes off that one. If you took units from one of these outer hexes (specialist units) you lost the ability to take units from their opposite hex. Fr example, if Heavy Support was across from Scouty Infiltrator, you could take one but not the other. I thiiiink you could actually take one from each surrounding hex before they started cancelling their opposite number, but if you took more than one itd start weighing your army more and more in that direction. Twas quite clever, and makes more sense when you have the army FOC chart in front of you
The minis were nicely done, especially the infantry, which were well detailed for 10mm scale. I like that the bases have 4 guys dynamically posed on em, and a slot-in for a sergeant, heavy trooper, or whatever. (see photos below)
BIIIIGGGG ROBOTS. Well, this is kind of the point of playing in 10mm scale, really, innit? Their mechs were big as all hell, and the nice table they were on made em look even nicer. See photos for more info.
This was a very nice piece of terrain.
Interestingly, the wee tiny bunker to the left is an example of a bright idea. Apparently, every mini you buy for the game will come with a flatpack building, so the more minis you buy, the more terrain you get. It aint a picasso, but it's a nice idea for getting terrain onto the table, and its certainly not too shabby looking.
So, I hope that was of interest to some folks out there. I'm not saying I'm all super mad keen to get involved in it, but I thought it was a nice looking game, with some good ideas. Just throwing it out there, y'know
PS - 5000 posts! w00t!
Firestorm Planetfall
- me_in_japan
- Moderator of Swoosh!
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Firestorm Planetfall
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things
Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things
Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...
- The Other Dave
- Destroyer of Worlds
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Re: Firestorm Planetfall
They posted the basic rules up on their site a bit ago, and I was quite taken with them - it's a clever little system, if they can avoid the rules bloat that seems to plague most of their games. Models are nice enough, too. Painting up my 10mm LOTR stuff (as well as DZC) has helped me appreciate the scale's strengths - infantry in particular can be more nicely-detailed than 6mm, for all that I do love that scale best.
All the same, eh. I've already got one 10mm game that only one other local person has any interest in, heh.
All the same, eh. I've already got one 10mm game that only one other local person has any interest in, heh.
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 17 infantry
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 17 infantry
Re: Firestorm Planetfall
I'm on the fence about this one to be honest. The minis look nice, especially those big mechs, Spartans rules look ok from the set they released a while back, my biggest concern is the company itself.
Spartan make 5/6 games:
Uncharted Seas,
Firestorm Armada
Dystopian Wars
Dystopian Wars: Armoured Clash
Dystopian Legions
Firestorm Planetfall.
Of those, they don't support US any more except for direct sales from their website. Dystopian Legions is by all accounts, not so popular and for their other games, they just keep churning out mini-factions so players keep buying new armies/fleets. I think they are a small company suprised by their own success and not really sure what to do with it. The idea of a 3 layered game sounds appealing, but I'm not sure I'd want to buy three forces for essentially one game with the foreknowledge that at some point they may randomly drop support for one or all of the scales.
Hmmm.....
Spartan make 5/6 games:
Uncharted Seas,
Firestorm Armada
Dystopian Wars
Dystopian Wars: Armoured Clash
Dystopian Legions
Firestorm Planetfall.
Of those, they don't support US any more except for direct sales from their website. Dystopian Legions is by all accounts, not so popular and for their other games, they just keep churning out mini-factions so players keep buying new armies/fleets. I think they are a small company suprised by their own success and not really sure what to do with it. The idea of a 3 layered game sounds appealing, but I'm not sure I'd want to buy three forces for essentially one game with the foreknowledge that at some point they may randomly drop support for one or all of the scales.
Hmmm.....
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450