Firestorm Armada...Not fully dead yet?

[Toxic_Rat]

So it appears that Firestorm Armada may be coming back after all.  Yesterday on the Warcradle discord, user Jonny5 revealed that "There IS a full V3 Beta rules completed, waiting on Stuart to look over it. I completed it a few months ago for him." on the FSA-General Chat channel.  A couple of photos of some printed pages were also shared with the discord.

There wasn't enough text there to really get a feel for the game and how it might be different. 
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/790985841081450507/1143998173732413551/SPOILER_IMG_9060.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/790985841081450507/1143998366104166571/SPOILER_IMG_9061.png

The ship profiles look familiar, but no real way to know how things interact.  Looks like there are four range bands for weapons, but does linking/combining fire work the same?  No idea.

Kinda wondering if I'd rather know that a draft for v3 exists, or that it's been done for a "few months" and it hasn't been released or even officially hinted at.  Nothing in the revealed info really excited me...it's been long enough that I've made my own ruleset that we're playing with.  I do want to see what WC comes up with...but it may just be that the time away from FSA has been long enough to not be immediately drawn back in.

Anyway, thought you all might be interested.

[Ruckdog]

Thanks for the heads-up! It will be interesting to see how the re-tooled Beta rules turn out. I'm cautiously optimistic they will turn out well.

[Ruckdog]

So, there has been some posting by Stuart from Warcradle that they are also tracking the potential re-launch of BFG, and are actually looking to time the re-launch of FSA for about a year after the re-launch of BFG, to avoid competing with the hype. That's interesting, as it suggests that:

1. WC is pretty sure a BFG re-launch is coming

and

2. We are probably 1.5-2 years out from any potential FSA launch.

Hopefully they still do the beta in that time, though.

[Kelly]

Kinda wondering if I'd rather know that a draft for v3 exists, or that it's been done for a "few months" and it hasn't been released or even officially hinted at.

I am in the same boat, and do not know whether to be excited or not… nothing since 2020, and now an indefinite hold?  I would think there would be enough confidence in the core of Firestorm to compete with anything out there on a rules basis, maybe there will be some reconsideration after the dust settles from Epic / not Epic.

[Toxic_Rat]

@Ruckdog, I hadn't heard that they would be looking to time it so far after the release of BFG.  I never got into playing that game, so it doesn't hold any special power over me.  I can understand not wanting to compete with a rival product.  On the other hand, isn't that kind of the point of having a rival product?  Develop a solid game before your competition and get it to market before they do?  It seems like this thinking will simply haunt the Firestorm brand for as long as BFG is out there.  "We don't want to compete with the BFG launch, so we'll wait a year."  "We don't want to release set XYZ because BFG just came out with their expansion." And on it goes.  If you always wait to avoid competing with the other guy, don't you just end up waiting all the time?

Was BFG really that popular?  I know Games Workshop is a juggernaut in its own right,  but it seems odd to let them call the shots. 

[Ruckdog]

Was BFG really that popular?  I know Games Workshop is a juggernaut in its own right,  but it seems odd to let them call the shots. 

That's a great question, and I think it's a fundamentally unknowable one in the sense that the hard data either doesn't exist or isn't publicly available. All I can speak to is that BFG seems to have an enduring popularity based on how I've seen the community evolve over the last 15+ years (yikes, I'm getting old), and that it has a pretty large built-in fan base thanks to the popularity of the 40k universe.

Regarding the second part of your question about "letting them call the shots," it seems to me that Warcradle drew a few lessons from the rise and fall of Spartan, one of those lessons being that rapid release of new games is a path to ruin. So, I'm not surprised to see them slow-roll an eventual FSA reboot. However, I'm generally in agreement with you that there will never be a perfect time to launch the game, so eventually they will have to bite the bullet and launch it.

[Toxic_Rat]

Was BFG really that popular?  I know Games Workshop is a juggernaut in its own right,  but it seems odd to let them call the shots. 

That's a great question, and I think it's a fundamentally unknowable one in the sense that the hard data either doesn't exist or isn't publicly available. All I can speak to is that BFG seems to have an enduring popularity based on how I've seen the community evolve over the last 15+ years (yikes, I'm getting old), and that it has a pretty large built-in fan base thanks to the popularity of the 40k universe.

Regarding the second part of your question about "letting them call the shots," it seems to me that Warcradle drew a few lessons from the rise and fall of Spartan, one of those lessons being that rapid release of new games is a path to ruin. So, I'm not surprised to see them slow-roll an eventual FSA reboot. However, I'm generally in agreement with you that there will never be a perfect time to launch the game, so eventually they will have to bite the bullet and launch it.

You're right on having a large fanbase for WH-40k.  Everything seems to reference back to that game.  My brother and I played in a 'learn-to-play' event at Gen Con for Mantic's Kings of War this past August.  The guy teaching the game kept referring back to 40k on how the game was different and "if you know 40k, then you'll understand this" kind of teaching.  Even in teaching a different game system 40k rears its ugly head.  So I guess it's to be expected.

And it's a good point to learn from what Spartan did right and wrong.  Too many games to support, and not enough staff to support them makes for a fatal combo.  A slow roll...very slow with 6 years and counting.