40K Friday - Return to Tranicos: Against the Stompa!

Back in early 2013 I came up with a loose background for what I thought would be an ongoing series of 40K games. As it turned out we played a few and then it fizzled out. The two I did write up are here and here. The idea was to do an escalation-type series of battles with more points each week to give us time (and incentive) to get stuff painted. It didn't stick and so we have just been playing one-off battles for the last year and a half.

The new edition of the rules stirred things back up for us, and the new Ork Codex added to the frenzy. Apprentice Red decided that he needed a Stompa since they are now in the codex so he ordered one and built it over two days. Then of course he needed to try it out. It just so happened that I had a day off from work and Apprentice Blaster was around too so on a rainy Thursday we returned to the disputed planet of Tranicos where the Crimson Fists are trying to reclaim what was once theirs. Clearly the campaign has had mixed results at best as some ork has had enough time to build a stompa, but it's time to fix that problem.

This was 3000 points per side, one of our bigger battles. Red fielded the Ork army (including one Stompa!) and Blaster and I combined his Space Wolves and my Crimson Fists at 1500 each.

The only annoying thing here is that I have been focused on my Chaos Space Marine force for 2014 trying to get it organized and painted up and as complete as any 40K army can be. I haven't looked at a loyalist marine codex in quite a while, yet that's what I was going to have to play to make any sense of this. I briefly considered deploying the Deathwing, but a) it's hard to make a DW army at 1500 that I like as part of a combined arms force and b)  I figured 20 terminators might get swallowed up too easily in a 3000 point ork army. The Crimson Fists made a lot more sense. My final force is below:

Crimson Fists1500 Pts  -   Space Marines:  Imperial Fists Army

1 Pedro Kantor (HQ) @ 185 Pts
     Warlord Trait: Iron Resolve; #Iron Halo; #Dorn's Arrow; Power Armour;Power Fist; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Warlord

1 Librarian (HQ) @ 90 Pts
     Infantry; (character); ATSKNF; Chapter Tactics; Independent Character;Psyker (Mastery Level 2); #Psychic Hood; Power Armour; Force Weapon; FragGrenades; Krak Grenades; Bolt Pistol

9 Tactical Squad (Troops) @ 235 Pts
     Infantry; ATSKNF; Chapter Tactics; Combat Squads; Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Multi-Melta; Flamer; Frag Grenades;Krak Grenades

     1 Veteran Sergeant @ [59] Pts
          (character); Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades; Power Fist (x1);Combi-Flamer (x1)

     1 Rhino @ [35] Pts
          Vehicle (Tank, Transport); Capacity: 10; Fire Points: 2; Access Points: 3; Repair; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter

9 Tactical Squad (Troops) @ 210 Pts
     Infantry; ATSKNF; Chapter Tactics; Combat Squads; Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Missile Launcher; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Veteran Sergeant @ [29] Pts
          (character); Melta Bombs; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Rhino @ [35] Pts
          Vehicle (Tank, Transport); Capacity: 10; Fire Points: 2; Access Points: 3; Repair; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter

9 Tactical Squad (Troops) @ 210 Pts
     Infantry; ATSKNF; Chapter Tactics; Combat Squads; Combat Squads; Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x9); Bolter (x7); Missile Launcher; Flamer; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Veteran Sergeant @ [29] Pts
          (character); Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Bolter; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Rhino @ [35] Pts
          Vehicle (Tank, Transport); Capacity: 10; Fire Points: 2; Access Points: 3; Repair; #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter

1 Predator (Heavy Support) @ 115 Pts
     #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; 2 Sponson Lascannon; Turret Autocannon

1 Predator (Heavy Support) @ 140 Pts
     #Searchlight; #Smoke Launchers; 2 Sponson Lascannon; Turret TL Lascannons

5 Devastator Squad (Heavy Support) @ 144 Pts
     Power Armour; Bolt Pistol (x5); Bolter (x1); Missile Launcher (x4); Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Space Marine Sergeant @ [14] Pts
          (character); #Signum; Bolt Pistol; Bolter; Frag Grenades; Krak Grenades

0 Land Speeder Squadron (Fast Attack) @ 170 Pts

     1 Land Speeder Typhoon @ [85] Pts
          Multi-Melta; Typhoon Missile Launcher

     1 Land Speeder Typhoon #1 @ [85] Pts
          Multi-Melta; Typhoon Missile Launcher

Models in Army: 45

Total Army Cost: 1499

Blaster took his usual core of 15 Blood Claws + Wolf Priest in a Land Raider Crusader, plus Long Fangs, plus a unit of Grey Hunters, some bikers, and a triple-lascanon predator. He also had a squad of Grey hunters and a Multi-Melta Dreadnought in drop pods. 

Red took the Stompa, a unit of 10 nob bikers (his other new favorite toy), 10 burnas in a trukk, 20 boys on foot with a big mek w/KFF, 20 more boys with a weirdboy (in the stompa), 10 nobs on foot with the warboss, a flyer, a big unit of deffkoptas, and 15 lootas with a mek with the Shokk Attack Gun. He went unbound for this one, our first experiment with that. I suspect he could have fit this into a normal set of force orgs but he went the other direction.

We ended up with lots of heavy stuff on the right side, less on the left. We all wanted to use the Maelstrom Missions so we went with the "hand of 3" type and started the game. Red had first turn.

Turn 1

On the left there was some movement, but not a lot of firing.

Our goal was to secure the bridge objective then head across to take the other objective in the woods. Between the Long Fangs, Predator, and speeders we had lots of firepower but only one tactical squad to maneuver so we were going to have to be cautious here. Red's foot nobs moved up to take the woods objective.

In the center the LRC moved up to block the truck and the foot boyz from coming between the storage tank and the river. This would drive them towards our heavier concentration on the right. That's pretty much what happened.

Pedro and the boys hang out in their rhinos as the fight begins

Over on the far right Blaster decided to bubble-wrap my rhinos with his bikes - actually I think he was just hugging the cover but it was funny. With the Stompa, and nob bikers rapidly advancing covered by the lootas this was going to get ugly quick. We had a lot of trouble sorting out who was going to move where on this side and it never really sorted out in the early turns.

Red managed to blow a side lascannon off of the wolf predator, and strip a hull point off of the fist predator. We blasted 3 hull points off of the stompa and that was about it for turn 1.

Score: Orks 0, Marines 2 (first blood, #55 psych warfare (making a psych test)

Turn 2

 On the right: 

The nob warbikers come roaring in and kill a few more grey hunters. The deffkoptas move up. The foot boys and the trukk burnas swing around the storage tank hotly pursued by the LRC full of blood claws. 

The Lootas kill my predator, the stompa shoots up some stuff and it's generally unpleasant for us but manageable. Then we get to shoot and the nob warbikers take fire from all over the board - both remaining predators, the devastators, the grey hunters, the wolf bikers, and more. The Wolf bikers charge what's left, wiping them out - ten nob bikers dead by turn 2!

On the left: 

The foot nobz claim the objective and the ork fighta-bomma flies on.

Everything the orks have shoots at the pair of land speeders. One dies, but the second defies all attempts and lives on with a single hull point. The fight for the wooded objective is shaping up to be pretty nasty. The rhino moves up and deploys the squad while the speeder screams over to support.

Score: Orks 1 (#53 killing units, he almost had 3 of them for a D3 VP's), Marines 2 ( #31 Obj #1, 26 Obj #6 ) Totals = Orks 1- Marines 4

Turn 3

On the right: 

Everything moves up. The stompa is getting very close to our back objective in the woods and he has a lot of help on the way, plus the lootas are blasting stuff pretty handily. The fists are forced to deploy from their rhinos to ensure we don't lose this one, instead of zooming across the table to take one from the orks. It's a traffic jam in our backfield, despite ork efforts to help clear things up.

End of Ork Turn 3

Behind the storage tank the Crusader moves up and unleashes the blood claws on the foot boys with the KFF 

The poor wolf bikers, left out in the open after crushing their ork opponents, are gunned down mercilessly by the greenskins. In something of a repeat of last turn, the deffkoptas are targeted by multiple units, thinned,  then charged by the grey hunter squad and defeated. They flee back towards the ork backfield. The burna trukk is blown up and the surviving burnas spill out. 

In Orbit: 

Apprentice Blaster realizes he has two drop pods waiting to come on and manages to bring in the one full of grey hunters. Following the plan he drops them nearly on top of the Lootas. They emerge from the pod and with flamer and bolter do a number on the ork heavy weapons specialists. This solves a lot of problems.

The drop pod is borrowed from my old Howling Griffons army.
It's a relic from the time before, as in "the time before there was an official drop pod".
(End of Marine Turn 3) 

On the left

There's not a lot of movement.

The orks take a few more shots at the speeder and kill one tac marine. The ork plane drops a big bomb on bridge, killing two marines and causing them to flee the objective.

The stompa, seeing exposed marines, launches one of his big stupid rockets of doom and lands it perfectly - Str 8 AP 3, no cover save, large blast. Instead of nine marines I now have one. It is the one with the missile launcher, but he's no longer an objective-taking force - he's going to sit there and fire missiles as long as he can.

Massed fire has slowly cut the ork nobz down to the warboss and one nob. There aren't many bodies left over here.

Score: Orks 0, Marines 3 ( #56 Harness the warp (casting a power) Obj #1, 24 & 34 Obj #4 ) Totals = Orks 1- Marines 7

Turn 4
There is a general feeling that this is the headed for the finale. We've whittled the stompa down to about half of his hull points but the thing is right up on our main group of units right and something is going to have to give.

On the right:
The Stompa deploys his passenger boys mob (and weirdboy). shoots the grey hunters off the table, and moves to assault the Crimson Fists who are now in the wood.  This squad is lead by the librarian and has the multi-melta so I need it to live. Fortunately the librarian manged to cast invisibility on them on the previous turn. This helps keep them safe although the Stomp attack does not roll to hit and so does not care if you're invisible or not. The marines take a couple of casualties but hold.

(Unfortunately this means the stompa is locked in combat with them and we cannot shoot him! I'm sure there's a rule somewhere but we couldn't find it and what we did find had no special exception for super-heavy walkers  that keeps them from being locked up so that's how we played it. This was worrisome because in melee i have one sergeant with a powerfist that has a chance of hurting the thing and that's all. With no lascannon/missile launcher/multi-melta help he's probably not going down.)

The blood claws, having won their fight, load back up into the Crusader and rumble towards the main arena. The Grey Hunters blow away the remaining deffkoptas and take the ruins objective while their drop pod claims the hill objective which are both now free of orks.

On the left - things pretty much stay as-is. We did manage to gun down the warboss as he was all by his lonesome. Regardless, this fight will be decided on the right.

Score: Orks 1 ( #56 Harness the warp (casting a power), Marines 7 ( Slay the Warlord, #44 Ascendancy (control multiple objectives - gave us 2 points ) 52 blood and guts for killing a unit, 53 no prisoners for killing multiple units gave us 3) Totals = Orks 2- Marines 14

End of Ork Turn 5

Turn 5

The ork plane bombs my devastators but we only lose one.

The stompa pounds on the invisible marines some more, stomps a couple and they break! Hallelujah! They run back a bit but not far.

Pedro Kantor takes a charge (with 5 tac marines) from the boyz behind the stompa and wins the fight, barely - but the orks stay put. On the marine turn, Kanto's squad gets the invisibility.

The last drop pod slams down behind the Stompa and a dreadnought with a multi-melta steps out.

As the marine shooting phase begins the big target is the smoking stompa. He takes lascannon fire from the predator, and multi melta shots from the Crusader, the tac squad, and the dreadnought and explodes! Fortunately most of the blast goes upwards and only a few of the foot orks and the drop pod are hit.

End of the line for the Stompa and the rest of the ork army

We called it here as he had a couple of boyz a weirdboy, and a plane left on the table and was losing pretty badly in VP's.  It was a great game, we spent probably six hours playing it, and though Red felt a little bad he still had a lot of fun too.

Parting Thoughts:

• The Stompa is extremely nasty. There's a reason it's 800 points. I think he would have been better off loading it up with his nobz foot mob instead of the boys. He could have moved up, dropped them out, then charged into the land raider and the hunters on the ruin objective to try and change things up. 
• He set his lootas up in the open and that was bad. Even then they were fine until the drop pod landed as we had bigger targets to worry about with the bikers and the big guy moving up on us. 
• You have to play to the cards. Red and Blaster are both learning this. We had two cards for objective #4 by Turn 3 and Blaster wanted to discard them as it was "too hard". We didn't, and  a turn later we scored both of them because we sent a unit after it. The cards are supposed to represent incoming orders and that's exactly how to play them - look at card, then do what it says on this turn, or set it up so you can achieve that goal next turn. It's not always going to be easy and it may cost you a unit, but that's how you win! There are no VP's for units left on the table sitting in safety at the end of the game. Red had cards for killing our leader (Pedro) and a psyker (my librarian) and he would have gotten Slay the Warlord as well and he was right there on them at the end of the game, he just ran out of time, so he was almost there.   

Hopefully we will get the chance to do another of these big battles before summer is over and schedules get complicated again.

Distraction of the Week - Deadlands!

I talked to the boys about working in some RPG time beside our miniatures and boardgames and asked what they were interested in. There are always superhero options but this time Shadowrun and Deadlands both came up big. Something with magic and guns both that's not strictly superheroic was mentioned in the conversation.  I still like Shadowrun but I've been thinking about doing some more Savage Worlds and decided it was a better fit for now.

I've had the game for years and only run a few sessions. maybe this time we can string together a whole adventure. I decided to run some published stuff to begin and as I figure out what they like I can mix in more of my own.  I do like the plot-point campaign approach so I may end up sending them into The Flood if this goes well but with Red heading for college in a month I don't know that we will hold together that long. It could be a very long campaign if we only see him on holidays.

Going back through the original edition material has been a lot of fun. I needed to brush up on my Deadlands History to figure out when I wanted to start things. I'm still working on it. Right now I'm looking at the old stuff and they're thinking up characters. First session will happen next week sometime.

I also finally managed to pick up a copy of Hell on Earth Reloaded. I'm about halfway through it and so far I like it. I don't think we have room for two side games but with an introduction to the mythology through the Weird West, I suspect a visit to the Wasted West would be welcome too.

It's yet another setting I love but have not spent nearly enough time actually playing. Maybe that will change now. I'm a sucker for the post-apocalyptic game anyway but this one is a little different and runs on a very playable system ... we will just have to see.

Wrath of the Righteous - Mid-Summer Update

Looking back it's been a while since I updated this. I'm going to have to do some catch-up session summaries. We've played 16 sessions, the PC's are running 5th-6th level, and are a few sessions into the second adventure in the series. It's been a lot of fun so far and I see no reason for that to change. We've been on a pretty steady every-other-week schedule for the last few months and though it seems so basic it's really one of the keys to keeping a campaign going.

Some details:

• Mythic Power - It definitely gives the characters more options but it does not seem overpowered so far. There are echoes of 4th edition in some of the abilities too, which is a little fun. They are only at the lowest tier of Mythic right now so this could change dramatically. Coolest thing so far: Mythic Web adds spiders - biting spiders - to the regular Web spell and that was a nice little wrinkle to a spell we all know so well. 
• Mass Combat - Another attraction to this campaign is the chance to lead an army! The built-in use of the mass combat rules from Ultimate Campaign makes for a nice change to traditional combat encounters or general hand-waving of the clash of larger forces. There are mechanics and numbers the players can affect with their character actions and so far it works well and plays fast.
• Adventures - Both of the adventures so far have an excess of NPC's. They are presented logically and there are reasons to include them, but I still think they can easily turn into a DM distraction or crowd out the party. The first adventure throws them in with the party similar to the characters in a disaster movie. You don't get to pick your companions when escaping from a natural disaster and it does make sense in that view and switches things up from a more typical party-only dungeon crawl. I still kept them in the background as much as possible. The second adventure does a similar thing but since they're leading an army anyway I embraced the madness and let them bring along whoever they wanted as far as NPC's - what's one more at this point? The scenario and the encounters and the adventure as a whole are still great and I will make sure my PC's are center stage regardless. 

Anyway, I'll put more detail into the individual session write-ups as I get to them. More to come!

A Reminder to All Captains - Count Those Drones!

So we played a little Federation Commander over the weekend ...

Contact!

I took the CC Yorktown and the old CL Arizona out on a "keeping the cats out of the yard" mission against Apprentice Blaster's Kzinti BC and CM.

End of Turn 1

My idea was to have the CL stay in close and play wingman to help keep the drone wave off of the CC. Things went well until Turn 2.

Middle of Turn 2

Each of my ships had launched a drone on Turn 1. The Kzinti launched on Turn 1 and early on Turn 2. As we closed in we lit each each other up with phaser, photon, and disruptor fire. After some close-in maneuvering, I realized all four Kzinti drones were going to hit the CC on the same impulse. I managed to turn off so that two were hitting the #2 shield and two were hitting #3. "It's only four drones, I can handle that". This was a tremendous error and shows just how rusty I was.

So the drones hit, I line them up for defensive fire and say "OK, four drones - " and Blaster says, no, that's four drones. "What, I have four drones out there-" No, there are eight drones he says. "OK, eight drones-" no, eight drones on this shield, eight drones on that shield he says. "Wait, those are four drones PER COUNTER?!" - yes, he says, "I wondered why you weren't shooting at them before."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

Apparently at some point a few weeks ago I told Blaster to use one counter for all the drones he launched the same turn at the same target. He remembered this, I did not. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I didn't notice that his pair of ships with 8 launchers had only lunched 4 drones over 2 turns - at least going by the number of counters on the board. The outcome was pretty bad. I did manage to stop 7 of the 16 drones. I stopped two more with tractor beams though, and when I lost the tractors those two hit the ship as well. Been a long time since that's happened to me.

At the end of Turn 2 the CC is in pretty bad shape but still has some teeth. It's not going to outrun anyone but with a fresh shield towards the enemy and some charged phasers I should be able to stop drones long enough to get some more shots off.

(I did manage to rip up the Kzinti Battlecruiser before this happened - overloaded photons are still nasty up close (even with only 2 left) - but not as badly as the CC was hit)

Turn 3 was pretty much the game. We were still in close but I was reloading photons and the Kzin had disruptors and drones ready to go. The poor Yorktown did manage to turn a new shield but did not have enough phasers to stop the incoming drones. After a final volley of phaser fire the CC went down hard.

On Turn 4 the CL disengaged with no internal damage other than armor, ending the encounter.

Notes:
It's been a long time since I marked off that many boxes on a Fed CC and an even longer time since I've actually had one blown out from under me. It was largely stupidity on my part with the whole counter-counting thing. All I can say is I won't forget that anytime soon.

One tricky thing with drones vs. old-school SFB thinking is that given the turn structure a drone can move 3 hexes before you will ever have a chance to fire at the thing. This makes the job of an "escort" quite a bit tougher as once the drones close to zero range only the target can shoot at them. That 0-3 hex range is where phaser-3's are most effective, and it can be tricky to make that work, especially on slow moving ships. I'll be puzzling that out more, especially since Blaster seems pretty attached to his missile boat Kzinti ships.

A dislike: Federation drone racks in Fed Commander are terrible. Most ships only carry one, and it's the hybrid-loadout type, i.e. the G-racks from SFB. Now in SFB they are fine  - against the Klingons I could load up with all anti-drones, giving me an 8-shot defensive system. On the Romulan border I could load all drones, giving me an extra offensive system. In Fed Commander the Feds go halfway - 2 drones, 4 ADDs. Against drone-heavy opponents I can burn through the ADD ammo in half a turn and against non-drone opponents I only have two shots and then have to reload. It's inadequate either way. Beyond that, with only one drone on the ship, any halfway decent penetrating volley will kill it anyway. I've played a few battles with them recently and I'm not loving them at all.

Not my lights, but a nice set.

One big like: The Federation Old Light Cruiser - It's not terribly expensive, it has a lot of power, a solid phaser suite, and it can take at least one good volley from any direction thanks to the armor. I've always had a soft spot for these ships and so far they've worked pretty well. Sure, I expect to lose both torpedoes and the drone rack on any significant amount of internal damage but with 8 phasers and 30 power I should have enough energy left to move and take some shots afterward.

The New D&D Starter Set - Pros and Cons

Reviews for the new starter set for D&D have been popping up over the last week and they are almost universally positive, which is good, but surprising. I keep thinking back to the reviews of the 4th edition starter and they were mixed at best for what is a very similar approach.

• The new set contains pregen characters, a small rulebook, and an adventure that will take a party to 5th level (and dice).
• The 4E Red Box contained a limited character generation system through a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style short adventure, a small rulebook, and adventure material to get characters to 2nd or 3rd level (and dice).

The main criticism of the 4E set was the limited long term value of the material. You could make a few characters, run through the adventure (and a downloadable adventure) and then other than future use of the poster maps and the tokens there was not much left to do with the contents.

I see the same issue with the new set, but it seems to be less of an issue for people this time. Pregenerated characters are an issue I will address below but this set has the same limited-use issue: once you finish the adventure there is not much utility left in the box. Sure, it has a longer adventure, but it doesn't have the poster maps, tokens, miniatures, or pawns that some of the other recent starter sets had that might be useful components for games down the road, so there is a tradeoff.

Later 4E starter

Finally - pregens. Including only pregenerated characters in this set is a real negative in my opinion. The 4E set had limited character creation so that at least the player got to pick a race and class and some details - like a name - to make it their own. Making players take a character they didn't create lessens the connection and the feeling of having a personal stake at risk in the game. This isn't Conan, Gandalf, Sinbad, and Lancelot teaming up for some epic quest - this is a party of beginning heroes so give the players an option to create them right there in the box!

Pathfinder Beginner Box

Bonus comparison: The Pathfinder Beginner Box had pregenerated characters (the iconic characters for the 4 main classes) but also included basic character generation rules so that it had the best of both worlds - the speed of play of pregens plus the more personal touch of player-created characters. It was more expensive, but I suspect that was more due to the 80-plus pawns included in the game rather than a few extra pages of rules.

Original 4E starter

The earlier 3rd and 4th edition starter sets included miniatures and poster maps or dungeon tiles but did not have character generation rules so there has been a general trend over the last 14 years towards making these kinds of products a very limited introductory item and less of a true gateway like the old Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer Basic sets. I thought the Pathfinder set might change this trend but apparently not.

3.5 starter

Now the ray of sunshine with the new box is that the new D&D "Basic" rules are available as a free PDF download. That's good. I was thinking the decision not to put character creation rules in the game was still driven by the idea that people might not buy the Players Handbook when it comes out if they had basic rules but clearly that's not the reasoning anymore. Could they really not include some of that in the box? A printed version of the basic rules for character creation for the 4 core classes and a few of the races, through level 5, would have made this a much stronger product for actually exploring the game. I expect the $20 price point forced a ruthless paring down of material though.

3.0 Starter

For me, a huge part of the fun of the game is making up your own character, not playing someone else's. Thinking that it's not essential to me is missing the whole point of why people play the game. Including them as a quick start option, sure - including them as the only option, well, that's just bad. It's saying that individual characters aren't that important and I think that's a bad way to get started. Sure, those of us who have been at it for awhile know that you can have fun playing almost any kind of character if the other players and the DM are good and into the game, but for new players "my character" moments are one of the first things that distinguish RPG's from boardgames.

Also, practically speaking, with the modern emphasis on selling books full of character options, I don't see how de-emphasizing character creation in your first product is a smart move. I'd think the plan would be to emphasize that instead but maybe this is part of the new approach to the game they're supposed to be taking.

In the end this isn't aimed at me and it's probably not even aimed at the apprentices anymore considering they have a fair amount of RPG experience now. I may give them a copy to try out but there's not really a burning urge for a new edition here since they're happy with 4E/Pathfinder/Savage Worlds/M&M/Shadowrun. I do have some interest in running at least a few sessions so I can talk about it with some experience but I am not sure when that will happen. If I do, I'll post about it here.

Motivational Monday

Motivational Monday

The Good Old Star Fleet Universe - The Future

The Future
The game had been on a downward spiral as far as my level of interest was concerned. A year or two back I introduced Apprentice Blaster by playing a game of Fed Commander with him and he was interested but it got swallowed up in 40K/Pathfinder/D&D time. Recently I was going through my box of SFB miniatures and decided to get them out and see what I could do with them and we both got interested again. We've played a short game now and he mentioned wanting to play more just this week (without being prompted by me) so that's a good sign.

There is a dark cloud though. He had really only seen the SSD's and some of the reference sheets. I picked up the reference rulebook when it looked like we were going to be playing some more. He looked at the cover and said "How old is this game?" - that's the cover up above. To me, it looks like a Star Fleet Universe cover, and that's the problem - it looks old. Most of their art looks pretty old or amateurish. It doesn't bother me that much, but it has to have an impact when people see it on the shelf next to other stuff.

When it comes to other Trek games, look at the packaging for Attack Wing up above.  If I didn't introduce the teenager to Fed Commander myself (to both actually) then I can tell you which one he would have picked up. Also, for the price of the Klingon Border starter set - which is rules, ship displays, counters, and mounted hex maps - you can get the AW starter plus another ship and have a couple of bucks left over. If you aren't already interested in FC for its own sake, the pre-painted mini's will win that one every time.

This makes me think there are really two issues here. 

1) The whole presentation looks dated. I know ADB is a small outfit and I know they made a lot of updates to the look with Federation Commander, but it still looks dated next to other current games.

Illustrations in the Fed Com big rulebook

2) They are stuck with a game line where their most recognizable iconic figures are from the 60's TV show, and there's no easy way to fix that. Sure, I think the original Constitution is a great-looking ship but there have been multiple Enterprises since then and a whole lot of Star Trek since then too, in addition to 50 years of changes in design in general. ADB's original creations (like the Lyrans or Hydrans) could be updated and revised and given a whole new look if they wanted to do so but no one outside the game knows anything about them. The "bring 'em in" shots are going to have the TOS Enterprise CA, the TOS Klingon D7, and the TOS Warbird and the TOS Tholians because legally that's all they can use from canon. How many teenagers today are going to a)recognize those and b) get excited about those like we did in the 80's?

I don;t know what the long-term outlook for the game is, but it feels like it's aimed at a shrinking group of people who think TOS is the main thing for Trek, and people who want a really detailed hex and counters board wargame  built around that. I don't know how you expand that group but one thing that might help would be a starter set for the game that included miniatures. Take another look at that Attack Wing set up there and picture it with a Fed CA, a D7, and a Kzinti Strike Cruiser, with red and white old school lettering and a Constitution-class CA as the main illustration. No, I can't see them going pre-painted, but it still might help aim people at the miniatures aspect of the game right from the start. Also, a rulebook built around gridless miniature play, in full-color, with some illustrations/diagrams would also help.

Again, I don't know for sure what the answer is - Federation Commander was definitely a step in the right direction. Miniatures are popular and cards are popular. Find a way to use those and I could see things expanding. Maybe a simplified game that uses cards for the ship information, something between Battleforce and the STAW cards (above) but still rolling on a chart for damage and manuvering over 8 "impulses" could work as an introduction.

Going beyond just Star Trek starship combat games there is a whole universe of competition out there, from Warhammer 40,000 type games to Fantasy Flight's big boxes to other niche board wargames like Command and Colors. Note that none of those are really pushing hex and counter games with complex rules that take six hours to play. There is a huge emphasis on simple rules, faster play, and tactile components of some kind, from wooden blocks to full-on miniatures.

Beyond even those, if I just want to "fly an Enterprise and shoot some Klingons", there is Star Trek Online, where I don't need to buy anything, I can be playing in minutes, and it looks amazing.

So there's a ton of competition for people's time and money and there are other ways to scratch the itch for Trek space combat there did not exist in the 80's when this all started. If I ask "why should my kid and I spend time playing this instead of one of those other options", the only answers I have are "familiarity" and "the universe". Let's leave familiarity/nostalgia aside as "my thing". The setting is tremendously well-developed - cultures, planets, ships, empires, technology - all have been explored in various sub-games of the SFU and it makes for a very interesting alternate universe for Star Trek. Anything you can do to promote that as a strength is a good move I think. There is the large-scale game of Federation and Empire, the tactical games of FC and SFB, the card game of SFBF, and the RPG of Prime Directive - which has some problems. Get the RPG and a ground combat miniatures game going, and you have an awesome array of options to explore this universe. Expanding .. .

RPG: The original Prime Directive was mechanically terrible though interesting in concept, and it's a great name for a game. There was a d20 version also which did not last long and looked pretty bad to me. A GURPS version was developed as well but GURPS has almost gone dormant in the last ten years, which is not helping things. They have been talking about a Traveller version for a few years now, and supposedly it's now a priority with ADB, and that could be a really good game. With no other Trek RPG on the shelves right now, coming out with a Trek game tied to the Traveller name could be a real win. A good RPG will help people discover your setting and fall in love with it, people that have no interest in SFB. Write it, support it, and aim it at people who don't know the universe and there's a venue for some real growth.

Again with the cartoon art but I think there is potential here for something

Ground Combat: ADB talks about Star Fleet Marines as a game on it's own but I don't think they see it as a miniatures game necessarily. A 40K-style man-to-man scifi combat game with miniatures would open up some new options and draw in some new people as well, bringing even more life to the setting. Keep the rules on the simple/fast-play side, support it, talk to  40K/warmahordes players and you could have a real winner out there. I think an emphasis on ship boarding actions would help differentiate from the other games too, and that would keep it tied to the core of the setting as well.

So despite my pessimism on some areas of the setting, I see some real future potential for the Star Fleet Universe. I've been rediscovering it myself over the past month and have worked my way through things to this point. I am cautiously optimistic, and will be trying to restore my own little pocket of SFU-awareness with the Apprentices and maybe some friends as well.

The Good Old Star Fleet Universe - The Present

The Present
During this long mid-90's onward lull part of the reason I stopped playing SFB was the "hassle factor" - there are a ton of ships, a ton of rules, and a ton of ways to play. Setting up a game can be like a treaty negotiation to clarify what era and types of ships are involved, then once that's all settled it takes a fair amount of time to play out a battle. Filling out energy allocation forms seems really old-school after playing everything from 40K to Full Thrust. A bunch of small flat counters on a flat black hexgrid are not as attractive as they used to be either. Sometimes it's worth all of that hassle, but increasingly it was not. There were two bright spots here though:

The Star Fleet Battle Force card game came out in 2001 and is a fun little combat game. It should be, as it's a shameless clone of Naval War (from Avalon Hill), a WW2 battleship card game that was one of my main casual/in-between game games in the 80's. If you have fond memories of Naval War you should SFBF up as it's probably easier to find now and has much higher production values.

Star Fleet Command was a series of 4 computer games that was effectively SFB on the PC. The ships looked different, some of the names were changed (the Kzinti became the Mirak, presumably due to legal concerns), but it was very faithful to the original game and added an exploration/upgrade element that made for a really fun solo game. This was probably the last time I really dug back in to my SFB stuff looking at lore and details.

About 2005-2006 word came of a new game coming out - Federation Commander. This was to be a simplified version of Star Fleet Battles, which I had some concerns about at first - how much simplification could you do and still have it resemble SFB? The answer is "a lot" and after buying the first boxed set I knew this was probably the future of the SFB universe for me.

The simplification is in cutting out a lot of the extra options and complications that have built up over 3 decades of SFB. Things like 20 pages of drone options, smaller stuff like transporter bombs and scatter-pack shuttles, big things like fighters and PF's for every race. In Fed Commander drones are speed 24 and do 12 points when they hit - period. There are some mentions of optional speeds for different eras, but they are "options" and not a core part of the game. Not having fighters and PFs (and the associated drones) all over the map makes a huge difference in speed of play.

The single biggest change though is the elimination of the energy allocation form. No longer is paperwork for every ship - a fairly big stack in the kinds of battles we used to play -  a part of the work for every single turn! Instead, each ship starts with a pool of power points generated from the warp engines, impulse engines, and reactor power on the SSD just like SFB. Instead of having to allocate those up front every turn, instead, Fed Commander is a pay-as-you-go system. The beginning of the turn means choosing a base speed of 0, 8, 16, or 24. Everything else is spent during the turn - want to fire that disruptor? Pay your 2 points, 4 to overload!

The sequence of play is simplified too - instead of the old 32 impulse chart with 32 separate opportunities to move and make firing decisions, it's broken into 8 "impulses" with 4 movement phases each. So, plasma torpedoes are still speed 32, but there are only 8 chances to agonize over firing/turning/speed changes each turn which makes a tremendous difference to the speed of play.

Beyond these changes the game still uses ship displays and if you ever played a Fed CA or a Klingon D7 in SFB the SSD's for them for Fed Commander are immediately recognizable. They do use color now which is a nice upgrade, and they come on laminated cards in the box to help eliminate the need for photocopies. I think it's a little funny that they've come around on this now that many of us have scanners and printers in our homes but I appreciate the effort.

So, energized by this new interpretation of an old familiar game I dove into it whole-hog, picking up the first two big sets and some "booster packs" with more ships in them. With a local wargame con coming up in the near future I thought I would take the new game up and run some demos. I came up with a scenario that would accommodate 6 people, I made up a new planet miniature, a new doomsday machine/planet crusher miniature, and I even picked up micromachines of Next Generation ships to use to give it some visual distinction and show that it was a new game. I was set to run a session on Friday evening and two more on Saturday, and I was pretty pumped.

I took my big box of stuff up that afternoon, set up at my table and was pretty pleased with the look of the whole thing. I poked around the rest of the hall for a while and found that 4 people had signed up for my game - awesome! The time came to start and found that 2 of them had crossed their names off the list and the other two never showed up. Sessions 2 and 3 had zero takers. I still did my duty and sat by my table when the game was supposed to go but I ran nothing that weekend. I had some good talks with passers-by about the new game, and I played some stuff myself in other timeslots, but as far as actually getting Fed Commander out there it was a total bust. I thought my "pitch" in the con guide was good but maybe not. I'm pretty sure it wasn't me personally because no one ever made it to the table for me to run off! I took it as a sign that getting people interested in an SFB type game was probably going to be an uphill fight.

My interest dropped after this, not solely because of the con but also because none of my old SFB-playing friends seemed all that enthused either. We played a few times, but I was the only one bringing it up and no one else was interested in picking up their own copy - a telltale sign. I couldn't get strangers to play, I couldn't get friends to play, and the kids weren't old enough yet to play.  I started to wonder if maybe the time for the game, and the setting, had just passed. I still followed the game online, but I stopped pushing it and stopped adding new material. There's a ton of it as it is covering all of the same ground as SFB, but even I eventually stop spending money on a game when I'm not playing it.

The Good Old Star Fleet Universe - The Past

Designer's Edition Cover

The Past
I got started in the Star Fleet Universe in 1982 when a friend brought over a copy of "Federation Space" and we spent an afternoon playing Tholians against Klingons. It was interesting and fun and he mentioned that Michael's (yes the craft store - they used to sell games too!) had another game like it but he bought this one because it was $2 cheaper. Within the next week or so I talked mom into taking me over to said store and picked up the "other" game on the same subject and spent a good chunk of the next 20 years playing Star Fleet Battles.

Commander's Edition starter set

It's a complicated game and it takes a fair amount of time to play. Back then we had plenty of time and with birthdays or Christmas or just allowances to pick up the occasional expansion we had plenty of material to work with too. I started with the Designer's Edition when Expansion #2 was the new hotness and Expansion #3 was out pretty quickly after that, When the Commander's Edition came out we jumped in and kept up with it in Nexus and Captain's Log. We even picked up a few miniatures along the way though that was never our primary way of playing - we liked ridiculously huge fleet battles too much to ever have enough mini's to fight our kind of fights. It was 90% counters on a hex grid for us.

Along the way the universe expanded considerably too. Keep in mind that in the early 80's the only canon material we had was the original series, the animated series, and two movies. There was a novel line that had some interesting books but Trek was pretty quiet as far as developing the setting compared to what it would become later. The only two ongoing "universes" that had regular releases were Task Force's Star Fleet Universe and Fasa's Star Trek RPG universe. We had both, played in both, and liked both. The SFU added new races, new ships, a detailed future history, and just a ton of material all based around the original Trek series. There was no overt movie material, although some nods were there if you looked.

With the arrival of the 90's we had yet another edition of the game and bought all of the material for a third time. It seemed like it was worth it because this was the "doomsday rulebook" that promised to clean up all of the errata and errors and glitches that had cropped up during the rapid expansion of the Commander's Edition and was only going to clarify and fix, not add new material via errata. I wasn't as enthused about this repurchase, but I did it, and true to their word, this edition of the game is still the current edition, twenty years later. There's a bunch of it, but to have kept the game to the same edition for that long may be unique in the gamin industry, whether RPG, miniature game, or boardgame. That's a great way to treat your customers and keep a huge game sane on at least one level.

Where it all started for me

Despite that my playing time dropped precipitously in the 90's. It was a combination of things from finishing school and getting a real job (and later a family too) to other games like Warhammer, 40K, and Epic moving into the spotlight. So oddly, even though it's been out the longest of any edition, Captain's Edition is the one I have played the least. I have most of the stuff for it, I just haven't played it much in the last 15 years.

They have redone the counters a few times over the years, but that SSD looks the same as it did in 1990

More to come!