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    • Ask TGN: Spacecraft combat games

    Ask TGN

    We’ve had two very similar questions so we thought it would be best to post them together to get responses.

    An anonymous reader asks:

    I was wondering what is a fun game that is along the lines of Battlefleet Gothic? I was just wondering because it seems like GW isn’t doing so well and I’m a little wary of starting any of their other games.

    Ken Whitehurst asks:

    Given the recent announcement by Mongoose that Babylon 5: A Call to Arms will be discontinued, what Spaceship combat game do people prefer? I have greatly enjoyed Silent Death in the past, and hear Full Thrust is popular. Are their others? Will A Call to Arms live on?

    This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 and is filed under Ask TGN.

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    26 Responses to “Ask TGN: Spacecraft combat games”


    Walsh says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    I started looking at Federation Commander the other day, seems kind of cool.
    stormwolf says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Full Thrust, gets my vote!

    SW
    Herod says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:28 am

    I play Star Blazers Fleet Battlesystem on occasion. Good for large battles as the game is exceptionally lethal, but it is also an “old school” type game, so has some extremely detailed rules.

    http://starblazersonline.com/

    The battle reports on the site are pictures from my games (if you are interested.) :)

    H
    themailedfist says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    The biggest two generic Starship Games are Full Thrust by Ground Zero Games and Starmada by Majestic-12 Games. I believe between the two of them you can play pretty much any sort of spaceship combat game you can think of, providing that you do the legwork and either find conversions on the web or create them for yourself.

    If you aren’t aware of it, Star Ranger’s page is IMO the best resource on the web for spaceships and their games:

    http://www.star-ranger.com/Home.htm
    GS_topcow says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    Full thrust and Starmada both provide simple and varying complexity rules for pretty much anyhting, and they are dirt cheap!
    Bob says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    Full Thrust gets my vote too–lots of fan-produced SSD material available for copyrighted universes and you can play with any ships. FT is also free on the GZG website.
    Thorbjorn Nielsen says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Full Thrust is ok. The ship-generating rules are whack though.
    GS_topcow says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    By the way, Starmada has rules for playing in the worlds of Twilight imperium! thats gotta be worth something…
    Walsh says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 11:39 am

    Does anyone sell the Full Thrust miniatures in the US?
    wildger says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Full Thrust will get my vote if GZG can update the rules. I don’t think anyone sell these minis in US but a direct mail order works fine. The postage is reasonable and even good if you take the benefits of their frequent sales. Federation Commander is not bad. It is hex based and still has a lot of bookkeeping. The minis for FC is nowhere as good as those from GZG.
    stormwolf says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    I have Starmada as well, but don`t like it as much as FT 2 or 2.5, on balance I prefer FT2!

    SW
    cotedelachevre says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    Slightly on topic

    My eight-year-old son seems to like spacecraft games.

    What do you recommend for a simpler, hex-based ruleset?
    PMMJ says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    You can’t go wrong with Full Thrust. Simple, flexible, and elegant.
    CPBelt says:
    February 12th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

    “simpler, hex-based ruleset?”

    You could try Wizards Star Wars game. Pretty simple game. Everyone loves SW. The game is collectible, but the starter is a good deal. Buy it discounted at coolstuffinc.com I deal with them all the time. Plus you can get cheap single models of common ships. Base set is $25.

    If not, try the Starmada demo rules for free. Pretty basic. I think FT would be too much for an 8 year old. BTW that is the age my son got into gaming.
    Zac says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 12:05 am

    The Star Wars game is a good introductory game for kids but it can be easily expanded if you need to.

    I wrote some quick add-on rules for the game and they are available on my blog

    http://minigamer.bitterwise.com/?p=455
    Zac says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 12:49 am

    As well the Mongoose Mods Yahoo Group also has stats for using the Wizards Star Wars spacecraft with ACTA

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mongoose_mods/
    Zac says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 12:55 am

    I second Star Ranger’s as a place to get news and info about space combat games.

    I have limited experience in this genre but…

    I like ACTA and wish there were more stats for other systems. The mini line from Mongoose is officially dead which is sad for some but no big loss for me as I never really liked the size of the figs.

    BFG is a decent enough game but is so grossly unbalanced unless you play Imperial and Chaos that it isn’t a good system

    Federation Commander is a nice simplified version of the Starfleet Battles rules. We reviewed it here

    http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/?p=500

    It can be a bit more complex than many people want and it is a better board game, IMO, than a miniatures game.
    Osbad says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 2:08 am

    Full Thrust gets my vote. The rules are downloadable for free so you can’t lose really. If you use the Fleet books you get some pre-statted up ships, but the basic rules are customisable for any type of ship you want. I recall a game I played with Star Trek ships using Full Thrust which had been statted up appropriately - it went well. If you wanted to use the 40k universe it is easy enough to generate stats for BFG ships.

    I’ve got a BFG Chaos Fleet which takes to the ether every now and again, but as has been said, anything other than Chaos vs. Imperial is a rather more “fluffy” than truly balanced experience. Although having said that, scenarios work well.

    Comparing the models available, as I say FT can use any ships you like, but GZG also produce some very nice metal ships at very reasonable cost, certainly compared to what GW charge.

    If you want a budget game, you could do worse than pick up some plastic Star Wars ships and use Full Thrust free rules, as long as you are prepared to put in a couple of hours statting them up.

    And regarding the OP point about being “wary” of a discontinued game. Obviously it makes sense that if you reckon some models are going OOP then unless you want to haunt eBay for the rest of your life you should buy up what you need right away. But if you have the rules and have a fleet or two, what’s the problem? Why does it matter if the rules and models go OOP after that point? You’ve got your stuff, what more “support” do you need?
    Zac says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 2:13 am

    You can grab Full Thrust from the GZG Downloads page.
    Ogma says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    I’m an enormous fan of ‘Federation Commander’ myself. I grew up ogling ‘Star Fleet Battles’ but its complexity was always a bit of a turn-off. When ‘Federation Commander’ was released, I grabbed it up and quickly discovered that it was absolutely perfect for me. There is still some bookkeeping (as a previous poster has said), but it’s all handled on full-color, laminated ’ship cards’ where you’re just marking off damage and energy boxes, etc.

    It’s a terrific game, especially if you have any interest at all in classic ‘Star Trek’ (eventhough it isn’t REALLY ‘Star Trek’…) ;-)
    briguy says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Personally, I played BFG for a little while, but I found even that amount of book keeping was more than I was interested in. And it didn’t allow me to fight BIG battles, which I wanted, so the game disappeared for me. I have no idea how much book keeping these other games have, but I found trying to remember which of my 8 ships had already lost their engines, or shields, or whatever, to be more work than I wanted.
    artbraune says:
    February 13th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Full Thrust and Starmada both fill the reader questions well.

    Full Thrust might be a better match for B5 as a Full Thrust B5 game has already been done - Babylon Project: Earth Force Supplement.
    Bob says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    I’m putting on a Star Trek Full Thrust game this weekend at a local store. I got SSD from Star Ranger’s page and have converted the game to hexes by halving ranges, reducing thrust by half and having ships turn half the number of hex faces (rounded up) as their thrust number. Works great with all of the necessary rules on half an 8.5×11″ page.

    Bob
    stonehorse says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    I’m a big fan of a game system called Space Dreadnought 3000. It is a hex based game, with some very nice models that are quite cheap for their quality.

    The game is more about fleet actions in a solar system. The game is D10 based, the game mechanics are easy to learn, but hard to master.

    http://www.kallistra.co.uk/SD3K%20Rules.html
    Proclivity says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Huge BFG fan here, for the simple fact that my favorite part was the exchange fire of torpedoes and fighters/bombers…what game has that part of play in it? Seriously there was nothing cooler that that moment when you could see the battle forming in the first visible salvos…
    stormwolf says:
    February 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    “Huge BFG fan here, for the simple fact that my favorite part was the exchange fire of torpedoes and fighters/bombers…what game has that part of play in it? Seriously there was nothing cooler that that moment when you could see the battle forming in the first visible salvos…”

    Full Thrust & Starmada will cover all of these things with little fuss!

    SW

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