SFR, Inc.

[DialFforFunky]

When I was introduced to this game, I was around the age my in which my English skills where barely sufficient to understand the rules. I played with a good friend of mine, and enjoyed the game none the less. I even bought some kicker packs of Firewalkers for myself (which produced some horrid losses for me). Sadly, not much later the game was discontinued, and I was left with some pretty, but game-less dice. Still, being slightly more of a dice lover than I would sometimes like to admit, I bought a small collection from someone who quit. Undead, goblins and swamp stalkers made my collection grow from 40-ish to 252 dice. They where good for playing a few 'for old times sakes' games with my friend, but ended up in the closet (or below, in my case) gathering dust for some long years after that.
I hardly paid attention to my dice, aside for an occasional peek at the prettiness. During my last peek however, I got the playing-itch again, and decided to go and google about the fate of my beloved dragon dice. I presumed to find nostalgic sentiments and wonky home-made rules... only to find the game alave once again! woo!

So, time to share some happiness! I got frantic once again, and the idea of building armies once again is stuck in my head. The armies I came up with so far:

Undead

Campaign:
6x zombie
4x wight
1x death knight

Horde:
7x apirition
4x heucuva
1x lich

Home:
1x ghoul

The plan: melee-part goes to where the opponent is trying to grab an 8-th face, thereby inevitably passing along melee, and hopefully a thorough skull-smashing along the way. In case of a range-persistent terrain, the melee part will retreat to seek better grounds.
The magic part is there to either support the melee part in pounding away, probably doing so from the reserves. It can also cast fade and night moves on the sole ghoul if left unattended on a terrain, or it could go to a magic face and cast some more offensive stuff. That's the short version of the story anyways.

Swamp stalkers:

Campaign:
1x destroyer

Horde:
9x bog runners
3x marsh swimmer
1x wave rider

Home:
1x swamp giant
2x bog adept
2x marsh mage
2x swamp wizard

Quite similar to the previous army, once again with a muscle and a magic part of the army. Except this muscle is build for resilience and movement. It should not be a problem securing a second swamp against most armies, thereby also securing the main strength of this army.

I'm sure these short descriptions are full of noob, so plese feel free to criticise. I left out dragonkin, dragons, terrains (both armies would probably go standing stones or stones/temple) and the likes, for I do not have enough of those.

As for a quick overview of my collection:
Undead
hvy melee: 6/4/-
light melee: 7/1/2
skirmish: 5/43
light magic: 11/5/3
hvy magic: 7/4/1
crawler x3, dracolich x1, fenhound x1, minr death x1, skeletal steed x3

Swamp stalkers:
heavy: 6/3/1
light: -/2/1
missile: 3/-/-
cavalry: 9/3/1
magic: 2/2/3
crocosaur x2, mudmen x2, swamp giant x1

Anything you wish to critique, feel free. Even if it goes beyond my meager collection. I'm dying for some good strategy talk, so I welkcome all.

As for a last happy side note: regardlessly of having exactly zero opponents in my entire country (Netherlands), I bought another small collection of dice . 3rd fireshadow, 2nd troll and a beholder incoming .

[chuckpint]

I do believe a number of your countrymen are on the forums. Feel free to post a notice in the "Looking for players" forum topic. You may be surprised. I am very sure there are a number of Belgium players.
_________________
You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[DEEPBLUEB2]

For the Undead:

I would add a Ghost...
if you like fade,
this works on any Undead unit...
it's not health based.

Fade protects the unit from a dragon attack.
The Ghost can vanish to a terrain...or reserves for that matter...
if it goes to a terrain..you can then use the Nightmoves.

maybe drop a wight and a zombie and replace it with a ghost.

[DialFforFunky]

thanks for both the replies!

@ Cliff: I've looked around, but they are rather scarse. As for the few people who live nearby, that's still a 3 hour drive by train, at it's quickest. I don't own a car (nor a drivers licence for that matter), and happen to live in the top northen region of the Netherlands... Still, I'll keep an eye out . And I'm really happy with you guys already .

@ Jim: I've thought about the ghost for quite some time. Initially I was really happy with your suggestion. The Ghost has quite a bit of power in that SAI indeed. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt.
I want a die that saves 50% of the time, for I want the army to save really well. But I also don't really like wasted space on my dice. The maneuver on the ghost will be one of those wasted parts, as my army will lose maneuver rolls regardlessly (and I don't think I'd mind). So in the end it's down to a comparison between the death knight and the ghost. Ghost: 6 melee, a nice save-SAI and a wasted die-face vs. Death Knight: 7 melee, a rather poor but not yet useless melee SAI and no wasted die-faces. I'm still torn.

Which does raise an interesting question: how far will you go for SAI's? Which is worth more: Good but specialised SAI's vs. general but well-covered dice?


As for other armies: I'm still working on those. Something with firewalkers coming soon. I'm still unsure about a few things though. My armies tend to look alike in theme. The all-melee-no-maneuver army was one of those, and I feel it's quite a bit different from most armies I see around here (I found the on-line battle-selection, that stuff is epic). Has anyone got experience with this type of 'slow' armies? Are they actually viable? Or do they just make scary faces as they get rushed past by other armies?


F

[cliffwiggs]

[DEEPBLUEB2]