Mantic has kicked off their release of Firefight 2nd Edition by releasing the rules for free! Let’s take a look at what you can get.
The rollout of Firefight 2nd Edition begins this month and has commenced with the rules dropping for free. They are available in PDF form from the webstore, as well as an Errata & FAQ document and a “Command Dice Conversion” document which is just a picture of the proprietary D6s the game uses.
The Getting Started Rules and Errata & FAQ PDFs are exactly what you would expect from a large company like Mantic: highly produced, well laid out, full of beautiful pictures of minis and professional artwork. There are no hyperlinks embedded in the documents, as other companies have started doing with their rules, but modern PDF viewers with keyword searching make this less of a problem. The PDF rulebook is 52 pages long and includes two sample armies but not full Force Lists. Those are in the printed rulebook, which is still on preorder.
But this is not the only way to access the rules! By creating a free “My Mantic” account you can access the rules through an online database that is hyperlinked, but that’s not quite the whole story. For some reason, parts of the rulebook are behind a paywall. That’s right, Mantic has subscription services for their games, that restricts online access to rules that are printed in core rulebook PDFs, which you can download for free. Clearly they believe that the advantage of having access to rules that can be updated live is something people will pay for, but I wonder.
I have a hard time imagining this is a good experience for new users, but it’s not required to play the game, it’s just a perk. What do you think? Are you going to give Firefight 2.0 a try? Does the idea of a subscription service on your rules bum you out? Let me know in the comments, and happy hobbying!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
