Greetings! I recently participated in the first Firestorm Armada Grand Tournament (GT) at the NOVA Open, which was organized by Michael (Ryjak on the forum) and William. The event was a total of 4 rounds, each with it’s own scenario. You can find the tournament packet over on Ryjak’s blog, The OpsCenter. Stay tuned to see how I did!

The Set-Up

First off, I have to mention how awesome the tables looked. Michael and William pulled out all the stops; beautiful space mats, 3D planets and asteroids, and custom stations for every table! We were in the same ballroom as the Dropzone Commander events, and as cool as that game looks I think the FSA tables handily stole the show!

Each table in the tournament had its own distinctive space mat, and they were all gorgeous!

My List

The tournament was played at 800 points. I spent a fair amount of time hashing out my list on the forums, and wound up with this one:

+ Tier 1 (170pts) + 

Apollo-Class Battleship (170pts)· Nuclear Torpedoes ·

+ Tier 2 (390pts) +

Teuton-Class Cruiser Squadron (195pts)· +1 HP · 3x Nuclear Torpedoes

Hermes-Class Cruiser Squadron (195pts)· +1 HP · 3x Nuclear Torpedoes

+ Tier 3 (240pts) +

Armsmen-Class Frigate Squadron (120pts)

Armsmen-Class Frigate Squadron (120pts)

As with the Adepticon tournament, I created a pamphlet for each of my opponents that contained my fleet list and some back-story that I whipped up for my fleet. I’ve uploaded a PDF version for your perusal.

Round 1

Here we are in Turn 2, crowding the edge of the table!

For the first round, I would be facing Greg and his Dindrenzi. The first scenario’s primary objective was to occupy more table quarters than the opponent, and featured a delayed arrival for your fleet. On Turn 1, only Tier 3 models could be deployed. On Turn 2, Tier 2 models could either automatically arrive in a deployment zone, or risk a reserve roll for a Flank Entry. Turn 3 was the same, except for Tier 1 models. As it turned out, Kevin and I picked deployment zones opposite for each other and put both our Tier 3 and Tier 2 models into them. We then tried to flank our Tier 1 models behind the other side’s forces; unfortunately for me, I failed my reserve roll and as a result my battleship didn’t arrive until Turn 4.

Greg’s Attack Carrier laying the smack-down on my cruisers.

That gave Greg a round to put a hurting on my mediums, which suffered heavily. Ultimately, I wound up getting some scenario points for having more Tier 3 models on the board at the end of the game, but Greg still pulled out a handy victory by a margin of 11 Battle Log (BL) points.

Round 2

In the second round, the scenario was called Secure The Trade Lane. For this mission, there were two points on the table that players could control by having friendly ships within 6″ of the point and no enemy models within 12″. For this round, I would be facing Kevin and his Oroshan.

My battleship attempts to engage Kevin’s cruisers at range, while my frigates shelter behind some convenient asteroids.

I was excited about that, as this would be the first time I’ve faced the Oroshan on the table! For this game, I put my squadrons of cruisers in reserve to try and shunt in near one of the waypoints and/or behind Kevin’s fleet.  That part of my plan worked out fairly well, as both squadrons arrived where I wanted them too. As it turns out, however, putting my cruisers in reserve reduced the long-range firepower I had available, which meant that I was not able to keep the Oroshan at range. Given that the Oroshan are very deadly at close range, things went quite badly for me once they got to RB2. I ultimately ended up getting tabled on Turn 6, yielding a massive victory margin for Kevin of 18 BL. Ouch!

The triumphant Oroshan, having just finished off my battleship!

Round 3

In this round, the focus was on getting as many capital ships close to a planet in the middle of the board as possible. Each player also had control of a Ghost Station (awesome looking custom models made by Michael and William that sort of looked like Orky Cylon Basestars!), and capturing the opponent’s station was a secondary objective.

Dey ‘ave a plan!! And Toofs! And Dakka!

For round 3, I was facing Niki and her Aquan fleet. Interestingly, we both decided to write off the secondary objective and just focus on the planet! This game started off well for me; I managed to score a double-crit on one of her Terquai cruisers using nuclear torpedoes, and managed to get a critical hit on a second one that was caught in the blast!

Our fleets approach the central planet.

After that, I had somewhat less luck; we were both playing a bit slow, and so we only made it through Turn 4. Niki managed to get more of her ships up to the planet before the time limit, which meant she netted a narrow victory with a margin of 4 BL. If I’d only had one more activation, I might have been able to contest the planet. Bummer!

Round 4

Fighting my way to a gravity tower!

For the final round, I would be facing Mike and his Relthoza. This was yet another fleet that I hadn’t faced before, which was awesome! In this scenario, there were three awesome-looking “gravity towers” in the middle of the table. Players could control these towers and either use them to push or pull models towards or away from the tower, or use a shooting attack if they controlled 2 or more. Ultimately, I found it quite difficult to pierce the stealth and cloaking systems on the Relthozan ships to land hits. It didn’t help that, thanks to this being the end of the day, I was getting tired and kept getting the stealth/cloak rules confused (thanks Mike for helping me on the rules!). This game was full of cinematic moments; in Turn 2, Mike’s heavy cruiser squadron managed to get a critical hit on one  of my cruisers, rolling snake-eyes on the crit table, and causing another critical hit on a neighboring ship!

Later in Turn 3, I managed to return the favor and cause a Reactor Overload on one of his heavy cruisers. And finally, in Turn 4, Mike managed to use a Gravity Tower to yank one of my cruisers into a mine he had laid the turn before, leading to the cruiser’s destruction! It was an awesome action-packed end to the day. Ultimately, Mike managed a convincing win, though I forgot to write down the BL difference.

My happless cruiser has just been drug to it’s mine-induced doom!

Conclusion

This was a really fun event! Even though my poor Terrans got put through he wringer, I had a lot of fun during the 4 games I played. For that, I give a big shout-out and a hearty Thanks to Mike, Niki, Kevin, and Greg; you were all superb opponents, and I would gladly play any of you again anytime. I was also honored to be voted as the Best Painted fleet by the NOVA judges! So, at least I looked good while getting blown out of space ;).

I’ll take it!

I think the fact that this event went so well is a big testament to all the time and energy Micheal and William put into planning and running it. I really can’t say enough about how awesome everything went for us participating in the event thanks to their dedication and attention to detail. While there were a few rough edges on the tournament packet, they were not so bad as to impact enjoyment of the event and I think such things are to be expected for the first time something like this is run. Suffice to say, I can’t wait to participate in this event again next year!

Until next time…