Firefight: Rolling Thunder

Unfortunately sickness still lingers in the camp again so once more we haven't managed to start the Napoleonic's campaign but I have been working on a Forge Father tank so all is not lost!

The kit comes with the parts to make four different variants and by leaving a few pieces off and making a small kit-bash for one variant you can easily field all four from the same kit.

First up we have the anti-infantry variant that mounts four Hailstorm cannons to chuck plenty of lead at a target. It's also a good anti-air option for the Forge Fathers but as the Veer-myn don't have any flying options (at present) it will no doubt be primarily engaged in mowing down hordes of rats.

The Sturnhammer comes with the Heavy Armour rule that means if you do manage to damage it then you need to role again to confirm that damage, unless you are using an Anti-Tank keyword weapon. So these things are built to last.

The Brandr variant comes with a dozer blade which I left off so you could see more of the front of the vehicle (also making it easier to get to the front detail). It's weapon is a large flame-thrower and it's (missing) dozer gives it the Defensible special rule increasing it's defence by an extra 1. It also has the capacity to fit 5 Forge Fathers inside giving them a safe ride into battle and meaning it has instant infantry support once it reaches the action.

The second Sturnhammer variant comes with a Heavy Magma cannon which has the longest range of the weapon options and also the highest Armour Piercing value. This one is your tank hunter/killer and could also be useful for some long range sniping.

Lastly we have the Drakkar APC which is used to transport up to ten Forge Fathers into battle. It does have a bit of a ranged threat and can always ram and opponent. Mostly though it will be something to travel in and possibly hide behind once it's passengers get out.

For this version I 'borrowed' an idea from someone on the Facebook group and stuck the top of a spare plastic GW Squat onto a couple of bottle caps. This nicely covers the hole in the hull and clearly shows this to be a non-weaponised version.

That's all the Forge Fathers I have to paint up at present so I'm going to start on some Veer-myn whilst I await the arrival of the FF weapon platforms.

Firefight: Maximum Forge Fathers (Almost)

Sickness spreading through the camp has once again delayed the start of the campaigning season in the Peninsular with Mr T this time succumbing to a case of the chills, hopefully the plague will have left camp by next week.

I have however been making good progress with the Forge Fathers for Firefight with lots more short angry Dwarfs joining the ranks. 

Leaders are crucial in Firefight for generating command dice and also giving special abilities to spend those command points on. This is a mechanic used both in Deadzone and Vanguard so it's one Mantic like to use. As well as having generic and faction specific abilities you can spend the CP's on each leader also adds its own ability on as well. Generally speaking you need to be in range of the leader to receive an order so you probably want a few of these dotted about.

The Steel Warrior Huscarl improves the shooting of nearby units which is handy in a shooting army. All leaders can also come with a small bodyguard to take some hits so they don't die straight away, in this case I've painted up a couple of spare Steel Warriors to go along with the Huscarls.

The Forge Guard are heavily armed and armoured specialists who can come bristling with heavy weapons. The Forge Guard Huscarl's order gives him and nearby Forge Guard units the opportunity to regain lost wounds, which could make them a pain to shift. They already have Armour 7+, so the enemy needs to roll 7+ to cause a wound, which puts them amongst the most heavily armoured infantry in the game. I'd already painted up six of these for the Deadzone strike team so twelve of these could take the field.

We already had five Brokkr so I did another five out of the spares pile and added on the spare weapons for the Steel Warrior kits to make up some more of the melee focussed little chaps. The Brokkr leader increases the charge/sprint range of nearby Brokkr and could help them get into cover or combat more quickly. It would have been nice to paint up some more of these classic metal models but the only ones I now have left are meant to carry heavy weapons.

The starter box come with an Iron Ancestor but only had the part for the standard hammer & dual cannon configuration. As I wanted to make up a different one from the one we already had I raided my bits box and stuck a second cannon onto the model to make the dual cannon variant. It feels likely that lots of bullets is going to be the way to deal with the ratty hordes these Forge Fathers are likely to face.

Carrying on in that vein we have the last two units of Steel Warriors, this time with two autocannon carrying Dwarfs. I also changed up the unit leader to use a Hailstorm Rifle rather than the pistol & hammer of the default version. This means he can add a bit more to the long range shooting but isn't so handy in a fight.

And this is what I've done so far, with plenty of options and probably around 1500-2000 points worth of Forge Fathers completed. I'm currently working on the tank with it's many configuration options and I'm waiting on the field artillery kits to be delivered. Once all those are completed then the Forge Fathers should have well over 2000 points worth of options. From reading reports it looks that around 1500 points is the game size to play to get a battle completed in an evening.

Firefight: Steel Warriors

The backbone of any Forge Father strike force is likely to be made up of Steel Warriors. You get 30 of these chaps in the army box with options to make up to six of each special weapon. When I did the Deadzone team I'd not built any of the standard Steel Warriors with Hailstorm Rifle which have now been added to the options avaliable.

Firefight uses squads as the basic unit of the game which tend to range in size from 5 - 10 models. Units fit into one of the following unit types: Troop, Specialist, Support or Command. Buying Troop options allows you to unlock Specialist or Command options (the first Command option is a free unlock) and then multiples of three Troop/Specialist/Command are used to unlock Support options. This is an easy way to make sure you end up with plenty of line troop selections in your force.

An individual unit is made up of a leader model from which all measuring is carried out and then a number of squad members. Models in a unit don't need to have the same weapons so you can end up with a variety within one unit.

After asking for some advice on the Firefight Facebook page I went with building five more missile launchers to go with the one we already had to make up three squads of six Steel Warriors two of which had the missile launcher. 

Firefight uses D8 for it's tests

As you need plenty of Troop options to unlock the more powerful Specialist & Support options the Forge Fathers probably need to go for smaller units as they are individually more expensive. The missile launcher gives them long range capability which is good against armour and armoured opponents. The missile launchers can also split their fire onto a second target from the rest of the squad so you get a good amount of flexibility in picking targets as well.

I expect these chaps will want to get into cover to try and reduce the effectiveness of incoming fire but no doubt their tough Forge Father armour will keep them in the fight should they come under pressure.

Firefight: Something to Fight Over

Continuing on with the new terrain for Firefight I've completed some area / blocking terrain pieces. The oil pump and tank, walls and almost all the barrels are from Fogou Models. Chris at Fogou makes a great range of scenery and I've bought a fair bit of his product line over the years. The concrete walls are also his and I even managed to snag a few pre-production short wall pieces from him. I have some more of the very short pieces to one side to use with the Veer-myn.

Using the pump, tank and barrels I decided to put together a few pieces themed around an pumping operation that probably shouldn't have gone ahead. No doubt a GCPS corporation had been operating outside the limits of what was legal and used shoddy processes to maximise profit. 

The radioactive spillage is a mixture of LIT powder, gloss gel medium and some green contrast paint. This was then topped with a wash of green paint once dry. As the LIT powder is luminescent it glows in the dark but also has a vivid green colour even in daylight.

The large red containers are repurposed from Covid testing kits having previously held the fluid reagent. Chopping the top off gave a good sized container to go with the rest of the terrain.

The big tanks are some plastic containers I'd kept to one side with some added bits from a Fogou set and an old bit of pipe. I also had some Green Stuff World decals that I'd bought a while back to add onto them.

The  rocky ground markers are made out of cork chunks from Geek Gaming who also supplied the copious amounts of red sand used.

Along with the Ogres I showed last week I'd also purchased a turret as part of the TT Combat Kickstarter and this has been turned into a strong-point. Firefight doesn't have any rules for this sort of thing so it may just be blocking terrain until I can think some scenario based rules up.

Lastly we have the Fogou Models concrete barricades, very useful for anyone/thing looking to put something solid between themselves and incoming fire.

And as I had the bits out I put together a little scene showing some Forge Fathers coming under Veer-myn attack as they try to make off with material that probably killed the original human prospectors.