Forge Fathers - Firefight

Mantic are without doubt one of my favourite miniature wargame companies and I have played Deadzone since first edition. When they announced a second edition of their Firefight ruleset earlier this year I knew I wanted to give it a try.

Luckily for me a friend at my gaming club (Ricky) bought the starter set and we had a few games using the models inside. After only two games I was hooked and knew I had to make myself an army.

Having moved house this year and cut my work hours, I didn’t really have the spare cash to buy a new army so I dove into my pile of plastic ‘potential’ to search out some unloved models to perhaps repurpose for a Firefight army.

My search unearthed a couple of gems. I had the second edition Deadzone starter models unassembled, a Forge Father faction starter from around the same time and a very old box of the original ‘steel warrior’ models, which are now called Forge Father militia in the current range. This was a lot of Forge Father infantry and I just needed to form it into a list.

Using Ricky’s army list book and my available models this was the list I came up with.

Forge Father Huscarl                                                                              70 points

Two 5 man Steel Warrior units

          Leader upgraded with hailstorm rifle

          One trooper upgraded with a hailstorm cannon                     115 points each

Two 10 man Militia units                                                                       110 points each

A 5 man Forge Guard unit

          One trooper upgraded with Mjolnir missile launcher           180 points

A 5 man Stormrage Veteran unit

          Leader upgraded with hailstorm rifle

          Two troopers upgraded with Magma Cannons

          Two troopers upgraded with Mjolnir Missile Launchers      190 points

                                                                                                   Total cost 970 points

It is really important in Firefight to be able to differentiate unit leader models as all movement and range are measured from these models.

The Militia models are one piece plastics with limited accessories so I was going to have to differentiate the leaders with paint.

The two units however could be divided into a unit with cloaks and unit without cloaks (see picture) which would help on the tabletop.

The Steel Warriors, Rekkhyr and Stormrage Veterans were all built from the same sprues so I could look at differentiating the units and leaders during assembly.

The Forge Father sprue has two main helmet types, full visor closed helmets and open helmets showing faces and beards.

I decided to use open helmets on the Veterans and enclosed helmets for the other units.

With the full helmets there were some enclosed variations with ridges on top so I used these for the unit leader models in the Rekkhyr and Steel Warrior units.

The sprue also has two types of shoulder pads and I used the more decorative variation with studs and a groove (see picture) for the leader models and plain shoulder pads for the regular troopers.

The torsos on the sprue have a ‘standard’ variation and some more unusual ones so I used these alternative breastplates on the Veteran unit. The differences are really subtle though so I was sure that I would need to use paint for differentiation as well.

Lastly the backpacks on the sprue had a few different configurations but there was one example that had a distinctive ridge running over the top so I used these for the Veteran unit as well.