All New Firefight: Second Edition

Ok, so we’re midway through January. Here in Toronto, we just got hit with an ungodly amount of snow. I’ve been taking some time off from writing but I’m back, baby! I’ve been prowling around on a bunch of wargame forums and checking in with the Games Workshop community for fun, new games coming down the pipe and I landed on a game that I only got a glimpse of back in the day. Firefight is a skirmish style wargame, similar to Warcry or Deadzone. Released by Mantic Games, Firefight had a hard time gaining a foothold with gamers and, sadly, sort of fell to the wayside. Well, get ready for the renaissance of Firefight! Let’s take a look at what to expect.

A Glimpse of Firefight’s Second Season

In 2016, Firefight was released and while it had an amazing range of hard plastic miniatures and amazing vehicles, it never gained a big enough following to be played by multiple clubs, stores, and gaming groups. I have no doubt that there are many of you out there with fantastic miniatures that are gathering dust on a shelf.
With the launch of Firefight: Second Edition in 2021, we intend to change all that. The original has been completely reworked, and this version attempts to bring it closer to Deadzone. D8-based rather than D6-based, and some of the terminology may be familiar to Deadzone fans. In addition, if you’re familiar with how a unit profile works in Deadzone, then it’s likely to work similarly in Firefight.

Commanders have been completely overhauled and given more tools to help shape the battle. As with the leader abilities in Deadzone, commanders can trigger special abilities or use auras that can turn the tide of battle.

Since early 2021, game developers have been running game workshops with the public to generate interest and get feedback to help smooth out the details. It was a chance to make sure the factions felt fun and balanced, the rules were easy to pick up and the scenarios offered variety of gameplay experiences. If you’re interested in trying the game out, there’s still time to offer your input to the developers; though at this point, any tweaking will be mostly small things to make the factions evenly powered. You can download the rules here.

What To Expect From Firefight: 2nd Edition?

Q2 of 2022 is the expected release date for Firefight. A primary focus is developing a brand-new two-player set, a rulebook set similar to the Deadzone rulebook setting, and a complete redesign of the army sets to make them more user-friendly.

Chris Verspeak, who wrote the excellent First Strike and worked extensively on the Warpath sourcebook, is updating the lore and background to make sure it’s up to date. Additionally, there’s been a ton of fantastic art released for the game with some of it being featured in this article!

However, one of the major highlights of the Firefight is that, unlike some other sci-fi games, it includes rules and stats for ALL six launch factions: Asterians, Enforcers, Forge Fathers, GCPS, Plague, Veer-myn, and Marauders. The Marauders are no longer a member of GCPS as they have become their own, separate faction. A separate force list book will also allow us to release a new force list book containing all the factions in the future if we launch new factions (or update stats) to ensure that it is always up-to-date.

What’s Going To Be In The Box?

The ruthless Enforcers will be taking on the Marauders in a new two-player set. The Council of Seven has sent the Enforcers to crush the Marauders a la the Mandrake Rebellion.

Our awesome hard plastic Marauders are included in this new set, which can be used to build a variety of armies.

There are also some resin pieces available for the Marauder force, including the pretty Commando Skyscrapers.

To finish it out, the Marauders will be getting help from the goblin weapons team. I love the look of that big mounted gun and those goblins are straight-up ferocious.

Enforcer fans need not worry, a new Peacekeeper Captain with vicious Phase Claws is on their way to help you deal with those pesky Marauders.

Let’s Talk Minis!

One thing I just want to call out is the awesome detail going into the minis. While the images look to be renderings, today’s 3D resin printings are better than ever and these units looks really solid. I hope Mantic games sees more success with this new iteration of Firefight as it sounds like they’ve already got some plans for expansion in the works.

So maybe plan on making a little room on your games shelf for Firefight: Second Edition. I know I will be!

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