The Official Firebase Issue 5 Feedback Thread

[Chaos and Evil]

Seems it falls to me to announce here that Firebase Issue #5, plus an accompanying Specialist Games Feature Presentation have been put up for download.

We hope you enjoy reading them!


Downloads can be found here:
http://warseer.com/firebasemag


Any and all feedback is welcome.

[Deamon-forge]

Woow great i like the other firebase issues this one is ace,

And its just made me want to do Epic DKoK!!!!
were do you get the Gorgons from????

[Wintermute]

Its time for a Firebase feedback thread, this time for the Issue 5 (December 2007).

A couple of other requests. If you post the score you have given to the current Firebase on the thread, would you please explain why especially if you have voted 1 or 10. I think this is useful (and interesting) for other WarSeer members reading the thread, it also provides useful feedback for others who read the thread especially the Firebase staff.

The other request is related to the previous one. Do not criticise people for posting their score and views about Firebase, I believe we are all entitled to voice our opinions without the fear of them being criticised.

As always, all off-topic posts and spam will be deleted without notice.

Wintermute
The WarSeer Inquisition

[TwoKingMick]

Finally a real 40k mag. Much, much better than anything GW have produced in years.I only scored a 6 for a few reasons. I know that firebase is produced by the Warseer forum regulars, but the problem for me was that a lot of it read like forum messages rather than really well thought out magazine articles. A lot of typos, self references and a bit too familiar among the crew of writers. Same with unpainted minis and what not, nothing there that would be out of place in any of the painting logs in the MPT section.

[Jomee]

6 - Good overall, but suffered a bit in comparison to some previous issues. A lot of the pics weren't great, and some of the models could have been nicer. Also I don't like battle reports, though I know that a lot of gamers do. Hilights were the Vostoryan army, the Necro Redemptionists, and the FW model review.

[RedSarge]

I can't find the link to number 5, it just shows issues 4 and lower. Help?
Oh, never mind then I had to be logged in first.. Lol I love this issue *starts reading*

[Latro_]

hmm yea some of the models and pictures are um well not eavy metal but meh, still better in content than white dwarf

woop thought 1-10 as in 1's good. so i put 2 ugh.

[scarletsquig]

*cracks knuckles*

Layout - best layout so far. This thing's looking professional and coherant now.

Photographs are nice and big, good to see them as an integral part of the page rather than small paragraph insertions.

Artwork - Where did it go? Front cover is fantastic as usual, but apart from that nothing. Are you leaving this until you can get a "house style" or a dedicated illustrator for the magazine? Or are you using this issue as a sort of reset button for firebase..getting everything else sorted to a high standard before dealing with extras like artwork?

Page 1-24: Preferred the vostroyan article with all it's shiny painted stuff and interview. Unless there's conversions involved, I'm not too interested in seeing unpainted things. Pages 4 and 8 were the most interesting of the 1-page apocalypse features, just because they had some neat conversions to look at.

15-26: Decent photography on this report, aerial montages aren't the easiest thing to pull off. I liked the background flavour text.. fun little report, wasn't very tactical with both armies charging at each other, but the "tactical" slot is filled by the second report anyway, so it's no big deal.

Page 27-29: Don't play half life, still read this article because I'm interested in game design, and it was well-written.

Page 30-41. Neat.
Kill-team has so much potential as a game, it's good to see some extras for it. Especially liked the acts of heroism and villany mechanic. All the system really needs is a bunch of extra scenarios and some solid campaign rules for it to really take off. This is the kind of article WD should be printing... it doesn't hurt to make extra content for a game that is purely designed for casual fun and none of that "WAAC RAW tourney legal" nonsense. The extra rules don't even have to be properly balanced, they just have to be interesting.

42-46: Writing was good, kept me reading despite not being all that interested in kroot. One minor thing that would have been good is a few close ups of the converted kroot hounds that he was describing.

47-48: Woo, reviews. These remind me of the little parts I used to read in SFX.Nice addition.

49-50: Not so good. Overly negative view of wargaming clubs in general based on a few bad personal experiences. The words "speak for yourself" came to mind when I read this:

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I'll never understand why people take the game so seriously to the point of cheating in order to win, or why games clubs seem to harbor these kinds of people.

Firebase should focus on useful community articles, such as interviews with club chairmen, articles on how to set up your own wargames club, even a listing/ catalogue of local wargames clubs across the UK/ US would be really handy.

51-59: Pretty much the best battle report I've read in a few years. Only flaw I can think of is that most of the action happened on the side of the table that was blocked by a big hill in the main photographs. Other than that, great tactical description of why the players did certain things and proper transcription of everything that happened in each turn.

60-66: Solid modelling/ painting articles, both pretty good.

Specialist games section: More really good stuff. Highlight for me was the mighty empires campaign rules for epic. Simple system that fits on one page and looks like it might work out well.

Gave it an 8. Good luck with the new team.

[Iron_Wolves]

I F^%&*%ING hate this one. HOW dare you put in a LatD army list in this one. Thank you for pouring salt water on my wound that GW has caused.


Besides that,,another good Firebase.

[Chaos and Evil]

Originally Posted by Deamon-forge

were do you get the Gorgons from????

As is mentioned in the introduction to the 'siege' presentation, the Epic scale gorgons are scratchbuilds... if you want to buy them, ask FW / SG for them!

[Smokedog]

Best one to date. Better layout, better content. Pictures can easlity be improved.

Specialist section also good. i think i voted 9 it may have been 8 tough you know...

[Belisarius]

I gave it an 8, but that is with Firebase standards in mind not WD...Heck if this was a WD it would have scored a 103, compared to the crap they have been churning out the past few years. The Kill team thing was great as was the specialist games section. did not like the club review was overly negative IMO. would have liked to see more conversions. The aquilla lander article was spot on. am not a big fan of bat reps but realize a lot of people are. Overall a very good issue and far better than WD for the past 3 years.

[Voleron]

Nice solid issue. I liked the batrep (Better than the WD ones, at any rate), and the Specialist games section was wonderful. Also, being an avid computer gamer, the 40K Half-life article was really interesting.

Layout and presentation was very smooth, too. it's definitely gotten better.

[Hena]

First impressions as I've only read few stuff so far.

1. Clickable links in table of content are missing. This is rather annoying and hope that they get done again. To me this is larger thing as I usually want to read only some things (and most likely in multiple sessions).

2. Pictures. A lot of them are just too small and scaling upwards has caused pixelation. Simple thing to fix though .

[lord_blackfang]

Looks very nice at first glance. Seems you finally got the pdf layout stuff sorted. It's compact, quick-loading and good looking!

[horizon]

Best Firebase so far. Under 10mb is appreciated heavily! Lay out is readable and neat, good work.

Nice goings,

Horizon
Warp Rift editor

[Easy E]

7

I like the new layout. Each page filled my screen wonderfully and I didn;t have scroll or do any strange eye contortions to read everything.

The Apoc section was disappointing as most people just made a list of things, without talking about why or how. Also, what was there plan of attack to complete their goals?

The BatReps were good and it is always nice to see LaTD. That's two appearrances in Firebase. Take that GW!!! I am just a bit curious on what Firebases fascination is with using armies that are either heading out the door or being redone in the immediate future. Trying to stay relevant, but not meeting deadlines I guess.

I had high hopes for the Clubquest article, but was let down by the content. How did you find these clubs? What is a good way to locate gamers of like mind? Is one visit or a game or two enough to determine if a club is good? How do you determine what is important to you in a game club? These are all questions that the article could have answered and tried to ask, but didn't.

The specialist game is great. I liked the page or two where they explain how to tie 4 systems together for the complete package.

The Siege of Messino (sp?) is fantastic and everything that the hobby needs more of. My hat is off to the people who put that together. That is why we need a Campaign section of Warseer, so thing slike this can be shared and talked about instead of lost in 40K General.

However, this is my biggest issue. A lot of content seems to be generated by Firebase staff members and not by hobbyists. This is either becuase of a low submission rate, poor submissions, or need to fill the content by deadline. I am curious which it is?

Light years beyond WD and Black Gobbo. Even better than what Black Gobbo use to be in its heyday.

[Chaos and Evil]

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The specialist game is great.

Thank you kindly.

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I liked the page or two where they explain how to tie 4 systems together for the complete package.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, we hope to include variations on this theme in future issues, with a different emphasis each time (Longer-term campaigns, more narative-driven games, etc.)

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The Siege of Messino (sp?) is fantastic and everything that the hobby needs more of. My hat is off to the people who put that together.

On behalf of the team, cheers for reading!

The spelling is 'Mossino', because it's emphatically *not* a riff on the Siege of Monte-Cassino.

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However, this is my biggest issue. A lot of content seems to be generated by Firebase staff members and not by hobbyists. This is either becuase of a low submission rate, poor submissions, or need to fill the content by deadline. I am curious which it is?

I can only speak for the SG section, but a dearth of submissions didn't help.

On the other hand, I am not just an editor for the rag, but also a writer, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the majority of articles for each issue to come from the regular staff.

That being said, if anyone has any SG-themed articles they'd like to submit for the next issue (Which will be out comparatively soon as Ed. wants to catch up on our original schedule), drop me a PM.

[Darkseer]

Originally Posted by scarletsquig

*cracks knuckles*

Artwork - Where did it go? Front cover is fantastic as usual, but apart from that nothing. Or are you using this issue as a sort of reset button for firebase..getting everything else sorted to a high standard before dealing with extras like artwork?

Correct!
Considering there wasn't much time to produce this issue, artwork was left until later

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49-50: Not so good. Overly negative view of wargaming clubs in general based on a few bad personal experiences. The words "speak for yourself" came to mind when I read this:

This article was intended to be a lot more upbeat, but was written before and during the 'club quest', resulting in the bad encounters dragging it down. At least they found a good club at the end. Perhaps it's due to the region? Nottingham clubs and Portsmouth/Southampton clubs always seem very friendly.

Quote

Firebase should focus on useful community articles, such as interviews with club chairmen, articles on how to set up your own wargames club, even a listing/ catalogue of local wargames clubs across the UK/ US would be really handy.

Good question. How do you set up a games club that isn't infested by screaming kids or undesireables?

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51-59: Pretty much the best battle report I've read in a few years. Only flaw I can think of is that most of the action happened on the side of the table that was blocked by a big hill in the main photographs. Other than that, great tactical description of why the players did certain things and proper transcription of everything that happened in each turn.

Due to the room, the camera could only be set up on a tripod at that one point.
In hindsight, perhaps we should have turned the boards around with all the models on them (risky!).
We write batreps as we play them, so it's not always going to be perfect sadly.

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Specialist games section: More really good stuff. Highlight for me was the mighty empires campaign rules for epic. Simple system that fits on one page and looks like it might work out well.

I wonder if this could be adapted for 40K campaign play too?

[Chaos and Evil]

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I wonder if this could be adapted for 40K campaign play too?

It could be but you'd need to set it over a smaller area IMHO.

In the Epic campaign rules each tile is representational of a large area (Probably at least ten square mile), which is obviously an impractical area for 40k-sized forces to be operating in, as across the width of an entire map they'd never even find each other!

I'd probably look at abstracting each tile to represent an area the size of a 6x4 gaming table, and modify the rules accordingly from there, with the full campaign representing the events that occur during a week or two's worth of fighting (Perhaps even only an hour or two's worth of fighting!), rather than the years of fighting represented by the Epic campaign rules.