A Firestorm Armada Renaissance

2026-01-06 Spaceships / Firestorm Armada /

My Dystopian Wars Americans remain shelved because of crippling painter's block, despite wanting to try the new 4th edition whose changelog is nearly point by point every complaint I had about the game. But a local fellow posted in the group last year out of the blue, asking if anyone would like to join him for a game of Firestorm one Sunday. I piped up, dug through my box of old models, and decided to proxy in my Scourge and showed up to play. He had an absolutely massive collection, was adept at teaching and playing the game, and I had a pretty good time of it. He also gave me a spare set of command cards he had.

So the next day I took stock of my models, chucked a few things in the sonic bath for stripping, and got to painting the rest. I had all four original fleets from the pre-sale Spartan ran at game launch, and the Aquans were speaking to me. I knocked out a few models and met up with the same fellow and a few other people two weeks later and we had a massive 4 player 4 hour battle with tons of cool looking ships.

I've played probably once a month since then, finished painting my Aquans and Dindrenzi*, started on the Sorylians, bought more Aquans, and gave my Terrans to a friend. I've also taught the game to a few people myself know and completed a few supplementary projects for the game; play aids, terrain and such.

I've been putting off posting about this whole project for a while, largely because my camera has been terrible lately and I knew I was getting a replacement for the holidays.

It's not a perfect game, but it's easy to get on the table, and it's got a lot of cool looking models. As infrequently as I play and as broad as the factions are, there's a good few years of gaming to be had here.

More focused posts forthcoming.