Futuristic battles fought on alien worlds.
Mantic Games have been generously sending me their new games lately, and it’s really interesting to see the flood of quality product that is coming out of that company. Their new one is the second edition of a sci-fi skirmish system called Firefight, and there’s a lot to love here.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first—their miniatures are really not in the same league as Games Workshop’s, either in design or manufacturing quality, and I wish they’d make them less frustrating to build. But that aside, Mantic games are cheaper, better value, don’t hold to sneaky shenanigans like making you buy umpteen extra books, and most of all – the rules are great. And frankly, after stabbing my fingers for the hundredth time on GW’s spiky, fragile miniatures, the chunky simplicity of Mantic’s models is somewhat refreshing!
Firefight is a clean, easy to use rules system that isn’t afraid to simplify a few things in the pursuit of playability. It doesn’t get bogged down in obsessive detail, preferring to keep movement and ranged attacks a bit abstract by measuring them all from a unit’s leader (a bit of a tip of the hat to defunct classic AT-43 there). Combat is a simple two-roll affair. Close combat is considerably enlivened by a serious of keyword options that allow some troops to respond to being attacked in interesting ways. It all adds up to easy to play rules with an emphasis on fun, not fiddly detail.
One of the great things about this game (and its even easier-to-play sibling, Deadzone) is that a book is included that gives you all the stats you need for all the factions in the Mantic sci-fi miniatures range, not just the armies in the starter sets. No buying extra books! That instantly increases the value of this starter set tenfold.
I’ve completely rewritten this rules & reference from scratch to cover the latest edition of the game (from the Command Protocols book).
Thx so much for this! Btw, i believe if a unit is left with just 1 model, it should only have Unit Strength (US) 0. 🙂
And in your description above, it should be Enforcers (marines) from the starter instead of GCPS. 🙂
Kum is right about the Unit Strength. If a single model is left unit strength is reduced to 0, instead 2 is stated in your reference. Could you please update it? As a reference, this is described in page 51 of the manual. It literaly states:
“Last one standing
If a Troop or Specialist unit is reduced to a single model, it will have a Unit Strength of zero. This does not apply to Support or Command units”
Thanks in advance
My apologies to you both, you are both right on all counts. Fixed!
This is great. Any chance of an update covering the changes in Command Protocols?
Didn’t even know there was an expansion. They haven’t sent me a copy so I have no way of updating unfortunately.
Thanks for getting to the Command Protocols, Peter, I’m printing out multiple copies as we speak for a pack of games today. Cheers!
Thanks for doing this guys it looks great and very helpful for new players. Loved the batrep you guys recently did, great to see Firefight getting some love. Obviously a couple of rules you missed but I think you either picked up on them in-game or have been mentioned here or in the comments. One of the small but very important rules changes we made which I think you missed is that the player who has the initiative can choose to activate first or second. Two reasons for this, one being that it may be an advantage to leave as many units to activate as possible late in a Round, but the main one being that the Extra Activation order cannot be used by the player going first in a Turn. So, you either get to use one of your hard-hitting units first or you wait to double activate after your opponent has gone. We wanted to stop any “alpha stricking” nonsense as much as possible.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for reminding me – that’s all in my rules summary but we forgot during the filmed battle report.