Return of the Overseers - The First Clash!

So after yesterday's blog update on seeing the Return of the Overseers 2-player starter set ships, I thought I'd give you the rest of the dirt on what went down when the new models first exchanged blows...

To start with, we didn't bother balancing points, use TAC cards or have hard points or upgrades - this was a simple "put 'em down, line 'em up 'n' shoot" type of engagement, so not really exploiting much of the depth of these ships (and believe me, there's a lot to these new ships... :-) ). It also leaves some things for you all to speculate about before release....what? A tease? Me??? No!! ;-)

OK, so you all know what the ships look like (if not, you need to look at yesterday's blog post!). We played on the 4x4 Proteus demo board used at Claymore in 2014, with the Aquan's placing first after the Directorate surprisingly won initiative.

The Directorate went first, and activate the Turmoil R&D cruisers, which made a hard burn forward towards the local asteroids, and lined up the Sulis Heavy Cruisers with their experimental (and sometimes dangerous) Compressor Beam Cannon. Unfortunately being so new, the crew were obviously not used to firing with them, so they failed to hit.

In reply, the Aquan Shiva gunships dashed up the flank and laid some beam fire into the nearest Turmoil, taking a crew point and giving it a Hazard marker.

Now it was payback time from the Directorate Gunships - moving up, they fired their weapons (the same as the cannon on the Persecution Dreadnought!) into one of the Shivas.

Exceeding the CR, the gunships blew a chunk of the hull into space, along with a whole lot of fish-men. As the Gunships were packing Decimator warheads, the Shiva was forced to take an immediate disorder test, which after a spectacular failure, resulted in the disorder of the squadron!

The Aquans took revenge by toasting a Liquidator Frigate.

The Anarchist waiting until the end of the turn before making its move, and didn't make much of an impression in the first turn...biding its time, I felt...

Likewise the Sulis had a quiet early start to the game, just making a move forward.

Not wanting to go through every turn in precise detail, here are some moments through the next turns.

Liquidator frigates making a hard port turn to take out some Chimaeras.

Turmoils hiding behind an asteroid field....

The Anarchist taking fire from the Oannes...

The Anarchist takes some more damage as the two Sulis cruisers pass by in pretty bad shape.

...and here's why - the remaining Annihilation doing what it does best...unfortunately its squamate was vaporised by the Shivas.

The Oannes and Anarchist trade blows as they part ways.

The remaining Sulis trying to escape the Annihilation's attention.

The Turmoils took some more damage from the Chimaera Frigates before they dealt with them.

The end of the game as we called it - The Aquans took a beating, but the Oannes was almost undamaged, compared to the Anarchist which was quite beaten up. The Turmoils were in good shape and the remaining gunship was untouched, unlike the Sulis which was decrewed and damaged.

Of course, had we chosen hard points and upgrades, the Aquans hadn't forgotten about their bombers (!), and we'd used battle logs and TACs, the outcome may have been different. However, this was a bit of an excuse to see the new models in action, rather than be a proscriptive battle report.

Despite this, I hope you enjoyed seeing some more of the gorgeous new models coming soon in the Return of the Overseers 2-player start boxed set (Shipping from January 28th from the Spartan Store, but also generally available in stores a little in advance of that).

Return of the Overseers at Spartan Games

Oscar and I visited Neil and co. over at HQ today, having a look at the new Planetfall Heavy Helix models (which look great!) and also at the newly painted studio models for The Return of the Overseers 2-player boxed set which is released in January. We played the first game ever with them, and rather than spoil the fun of what's in the Scenario Booklet (which is very cool!), we just played a straight game on a 4x4 board with base models, no upgrades. To find out what happened, you'll need to come back tomorrow, but for the time being I thought I'd put up some nice photos of the painted ships, which are super-sexy!

First up is the complete RotO set line-up - it's a lot of stuff!

For a closer look, here is the Directorate fleet, looking smart in hex grey:

At it's core, the Anarchist in all its evil glory:

The subtly named Annihilation Gunships. I was a little on the fence with them on the renders - where they looked good but didn't "blow me away"...in reality, they are beautiful - really nice and they've convinced me completely.

One of my personal favourites, the Turmoil R&D cruisers with their compressor beam weapons:

On the other (wrong) side of the conflict, we have the Aquans:

Leading them, the huge but graceful Oannes, flanked by two Sulis Heavy Cruisers:

The Shiva Gunships by themselves - they proved incredibly dangerous in the game, even after taking a ton of damage...Zenian players beware, these should definitely be a target priority!

Of course the centre of all this fuss is the Overseers ancient Dimensional gate, awakened above the skies of Proteus:

Here's a closer look at the Anathema Probe...it's a lovely model isn't it? Well, in the Firestorm universe it's a nasty little thing....Beware!

So hopefully that gives you a better view of the models in the upcoming Return of the Overseers 2-player starter set from Spartan Games, come again soon to see the ships in action!

Planetfall & DZC side-by-side

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

So 2015 is with us, and I want to increase the amount I'm posting on the blog to give shorter, more frequent posts, so keep a close eye out!

First up, Oscar and I got some Planetfall stuff before Christmas, so I'll be putting a load of that up soon, but first I wanted to give a quick side-by-side of Planetfall & DZC for all of you 10mm fans out there!

So, here it is, based on the two 2-player starter sets for the rival systems - Spartan's Battle for Proteus Prime and DZCs set. Both come boxed with scenery, rules, dice etc, but at the end of the day it's all about rules & models, right? As the rules are subject for another post and require some delving, lets have a look at models.

Now both these sets are "10mm" and set in a far future SF universe where humans battle each other and aliens. Planetfall already has a space-based game, whereas DZC is going the other way, having started in 10mm and going to space - we're expecting to see that in 2015 sometime.

So after opening the boxes, there is one major difference between the two - Spartan have crammed their box with resin, whereas Hawk have gone to injection moulded plastic (presumably to keep their costs down). This means a bit more assembly for the Hawk models than Spartan's, but not too much more. We've done all of that, so we can do the comparisons more easily.

So here we have the contents of the two sets (not including scenario objective pieces);

So the immediate impact is that you seem to get more stuff in the Spartan set, but then it is a little more expensive than the Hawk set (£80 vs £60). So, let's do some comparisons;

This is a Directorate Cyberwarfare tank compared to a UCM Rapier AA Tank. Now, the fluff in DZC explains that the tanks only carry a single person, but the size difference is marked nonetheless. Here is a Sabre compared to a Directorate Medium tank and light buggy;

So you can see that the Hawk main tank is much more comparable to the light unit of the Spartan set.

Now DZC uses dropships whereas Planetfall doesn't (at least not so far), so the comparison here really is between the aerial units and the Heavy units in the PF set.

Once again, although comparable length wise, the Spartan heavy unit dwarfs the Condor in terms of bulk. Now you do get three of these in their set, so there is kind of equivalence here.

Now, onto APCs. You get 3 in the DZC set, and just one for the Directorate in the PF set. That, however, doesn't really tell the story;

If we also show the infantry they're supposed to carry, we get another view;

Even with DZCs fluff, I'm not sure all those guys are getting into that APC! The PF unit is big, but I can believe those dudes getting into the unit with all their gear. That, of course, brings us to the comparison of the infantry, which is where the PF set really steps up;

To me, the DZC infantry are wooden and simplistic - they have no features and unrealistic poses - my son remarked that they look like the symbol for a guy on a toilet door...Just to highlight this, let's show you a comparison with the Pewter individual infantryman that SG give you for the inserts on the bases;

now the resin infantry have the same detail, but you can see it much more clearly here in the metal. Now, it's not just the detail which I find compelling about the PF infantry, but their poses - they're dynamic...they look like guys fighting, not a bunch of drones lining up to be shot. This changes how they "feel" to play - I care more about them if they look like they're fighting for their lives, rather than sticks to be lined up and shot down. Now, there IS a size difference - the SG infantry are supposed to be in power armour, which adds to their bulk, but they do stand about 12mm tall to Hawks 10mm high guys, SG do quote 10mm as foot-to-eye, whereas Hawks seem to be 10mm head-to-toe. So, there's about a 10-15% difference in scale, I'd say.

To me, however, this difference does not differentiate the level of detail and quality between the two sets. I was substantially disappointed in the size of the models in the DZC set, and the other items in the box and a £20 lower price point don't fill the void between it and  the SG Planetfall set. The resin items in the box are beautifully cast, substantial and extremely good value compared to the small, flimsy-feeling and simplistic Hawk offerings. Given the material differences between the PF set and Hawk set, I'd have expected a much lower price point for the Hawk 2-player set or there to be substantially more in there. If I put it side by side other 2-player sets, for example Mantic's Deadzone, or GWs Shield of Baal, it feels light and expensive. When put side-by-side with the more expensive PF set, I'd shell out the extra £20 every time.

Of course, there are many Hawk fans out there, and I know I'm a traditional Spartan convert, but I got DZC long before Planetfall, and I approached it with an open mind. Now, however, I think it will be a case of sticking it of ebay, as I just can't see a good reason to carry on with it in the light of Spartan's entry to this relatively new market.

Sneak Peak of Return of the Overseers ships....

I spent Saturday with Neil at the SG office for a long overdue catch up about all things Firestorm (plus Planetfall and a few other bits and pieces!). One of the things we had a look over were some of the new ships in resin for the Return of the Overseers 2-player box that will be out in the New Year. He was quite happy for me to give all you FA fans out there a sneak preview of some of the first castings...

So first up we have the Oannes, the new Aquan Heavy Carrier. After working on the stats for this for the last 6 months or so, and having seen the renders for almost that time too, the Oannes surprised me with its sheer size - it's a monster! Here it is with a Maelstrom Battleship.

And the underside;

You can't see it well here, but the underside is scalloped in, making the Oannes look very sleek and fast.

 Overall, she's probably one of my favourite Aquan ships ever.

Another of the new Aquan ships is the Sulis, a rather different Heavy Cruiser from the previous stock. The Sulis utilises the standard cruiser body, but the add-on dwarfs and shields that;

Here you can see the large redirection crystal:

Of course, on the other side we have the Directorate, and we have an impressively large slab of resin in the form of the Anarchist Battleship:

This doesn't have its cyberwarfare turret, but you get the idea.

Underneath she has dedicated broadsides

 

Whereas up-front she has multiple bay doors for SRS...

I'm quite excited to field this one!

I also spotted a few other ships awaiting release....any RSN fans? Starting with the humble (but deadly) escort, the Siren - this got a bit of a makeover in the transition to 100% resin - definately an improvement.

The other small is of course the frigate:

The Destroyer is also very close to the older casting, but completely resin;

Last ship I have to show today is the Heavy Cruiser

Well, that's it for now, hope you enjoyed that sneak peek of upcoming resin for 2015!