Spartan Battle Report – Leonidas Vs Master Chief?
In support of our favourite ocean and final frontier boating specialists Spartan Games I thought I’d bring to the general populace’s attention a poll on their forums. The lovely chaps that created the “maybe better than Full Thrust” tabletop extravaganza that is really popular with our good selves, have decided that they want to host up a battle report and show us all how one of their games really should be played.
It is up to the consumers to therefore pick which system they want to see, either wave-bobbing Uncharted Seas or the frozen vaccuumness of Firestorm: Armada. When I voted Firestorm was winning by a single vote (deja vu of what is going to happen at the UK general election perhaps?) but with such a tight margin things could swing back and forth.
You’ll have to register on the forums if you want to have a go, luckily I am providing a link to that thread here.
While I have not been trying to classify Humanity as a species, I have been thinking about my tabletop gaming. I made a post a while back asking people how they got into the gaming hobby and shared my own experience in this regard. I was continuing to ponder just why it is that I continue in this hobby, it has been the one that has by far lasted the longest. Even alongside my collection of video games and the various consoles I have owned, the one hobby that I’d be saddest to lose would be my tabletop gaming.
The realisation that I came to really was that in many cases it isn’t the rules, it isn’t the often awesome models that there are, dare I say it isn’t the immeasurable pleasure of the social interactions I get with my friends while we are playing (although that is a big plus point). The thing that keeps me going in this hobby are the universes. I frequent a number of forums that I read on a regular basis, extending my work lunch time considerably while I take things in and revel in the great nebulous cloud of nerd. What I have always been impressed with is that for the majority of gamers there is no end to the number of games that they will investigate and indulge in, providing of course that they can find a community for that game in order to provide the outlet for playing. I have rule books sitting on my shelf at home for games that I am sure none of my friends I play with have even heard of. Some of them I even have miniatures for and capacity to play those games.
Yet, I have been in this hobby for my whole adult life and the majority of my childhood. When I was little I used to read prodigious amounts of fiction and loved watching cartoons set in strange and far off places. Gaming has just brought out those themes in another format. I am effectively a slave to fictional universes. This doesn’t just extend to my gaming, I love things like Star Wars and Star Trek, I may just be labelled as a geek or a nerd because of this, afterall, one cannot really argue that I fit into a stereotype (with the exception that I am married and do not always have maliferous body odour). However, these things just feed my imagination and that is what I love.
I started off gaming with Warhammer 40,000 all those years ago and that is an amazing universe with a lot of depth. I have then become enraptured with numerous others but as I get older and still these things come to pass I am aware that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. My gaming circle is quite small and we are all of differing means. Due to the fact that my wife and I earn respectable salaries and do not (yet) have kids, I have a decent pool of disposable income that I fritter away much to the chagrin of my long-suffering better half. Therefore my outlook is different to the others. Before attending our gaming session on Saturday of the weekend just gone I went to our local gaming store to grab something before heading off to pack my stuff to go. Recently they have started stocking items for a new (to me) game called Secrets of the Third Reich. I grabbed the rulebook and we had a brief look during our gaming session. I took it home and read it later on, I was very impressed with the background but not so much with the minis available from the company (however, the game is designed to be compatible with any 28-30mm World War II models). But it we look at things from a historical point of view I can show you the development of our gaming circle. It started with me and Gribblin playing 40k together and this progressed to Warhammer. I then introduced him to Warmachine and we have played that on occasion. After meeting with Servitob we got him into 40k, then I introduced them to Uncharted Seas and following into Firestorm Armada. I bought the rulebook for Malifaux and once nBreaker and another of our friends came along we started them off on Warhammer, got them into Uncharted Seas and currently nBreaker is my most fought opponent in Firestorm. He also is the only other person to have stuff for Malifaux and I think we’ll be breaking that out soon enough to try.
Both of our two “newbies” are yet to really establish themselves in gaming, especially considering the large quantity of stuff the rest of us have. There I was with another rulebook in hand for another universe. I was very impressed with the background for Secrets of the Third Reich but then we did play our first Mark 2 game of Warmachine as well, which was a lot of fun and the first outing for my Retribution (I lost but learnt a heck of a lot).
It was after considering the fact that I get into all these games and it’s not really fair to “push” these games onto my friends (I don’t really push but I can’t expect them all to jump into every new game that comes along) that I began to wonder why I get into all these things and constantly expand the rules sets that I own. It all boils down to the world in which they are set. If I can get excited about that world then I am much more likely to want to spend time in it, much to the consternation of my friends no doubt. In short, I am those universes which is why I get so excited about this hobby.
I am 40k, I am Warhammer, I am Infinity, I am Malifaux, I am Immoren, I am Earth, I am the Uncharted Seas, I am the Storm Zone, I am all of these things and I am sure more will come along to tickle my fancy. I therefore apologise to my friends for my enthusiasm for finding these new worlds. Especially to our new players that must seem to think every time we meet up I have something new. To be honest though, as of right now, I think I have gone far enough, we already have more games than we can possibly play in a day. I’m going to try and keep to what we have now, especially when I have the least number of painted models of anyone I play with. Perhaps I need to rectify that before throwing myself into a new world.
So I got my first outing with Firestorm Armada recently courtesy of nBreaker, and I must say, it really is very good. Quick, simple, with plenty of suitable opportunites to throw loads of dice, drink DPZ and smack talk. Pretty much a perfect game for the 6InchMove team then. The only improvement I could suggest is the addition of take away meals to fleet selection so we don’t all have to cram into gribblin’s car at lunch time. Oh well, you can’t have it all!
For those of you looking for more ‘beef’ in your posts, here comes the more serious intellectual bit… Firestorm Armada in my opinion is better than Uncharted Seas. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe the setting is more appealing. Maybe it’s pure shooting fun without all the hassle of boarding actions. Maybe the game just has more polish and balance.
More great intellectual analysis coming from servitob soon!