Friday, December 30, 2011

The Starfleet Wars that never was


Photo from stellargames.com (Game Masters) website via the Wayback Machine
Did you know that the original Starfleet Wars was once on the verge of re-release?  Galactic Knights uses the same ship models, but the rules and setting are totally different from the older game.  I thought the minis went out of production in the 1980s, but apparently not.

Sometime in the late 1990s, a San Francisco-area company called Game Masters (the distributor for Superior Models, which manufactured the castings and published the original rules) was offering the SfW miniatures for sale.*  According to the old Starfleet Wars web page at stellargames.com,* Game Masters planned on publishing the SfW rulebooks:* 
Starfleet Wars, Books 1 and 2, are being re-released after 18 years. We'll let you know when and where you can obtain the rules.
I don't think that company ever got around to releasing the Starfleet Wars books.  Instead, it proceded to license the castings to Monday Knight Productions, which now sells the ships as its Galactic Knights line, with an eponymous combat game system.  Too bad, as I've come to like the Starfleet Wars rules.  It would be nice if they were more widely available.

*Links via the Wayback Machine, a great boon to internet archeology.
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7 comments:

  1. Chris KutalikDecember 30, 2011 at 6:09 PM

    What the hell is that thing in the upper right of the pic?

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  2. Jeff RientsDecember 30, 2011 at 7:08 PM

    IIRC that's an Entomalian Web class space station. Or something like that. One of the neater 3D designs in the line, IMHO.

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  3. Desert ScribeDecember 30, 2011 at 9:10 PM

    Jeff's correct, that's a Web space station. Here's more: http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/457280/

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  4. MalcadonDecember 31, 2011 at 3:12 AM

    As a kid back in the '80s, I remember seeing those ships in a comicbook shop. (great store: they had a good range of miniatures, and costumers would play RPGs in a back room)

    One of the most striking figures from that line was that ball-shape space station. To me it was like the Death Star (everyone and their dog copied off of Star Wars, so it never bothered me), but it looked like it could split into two domes. They even had thrusters - unlike the Death Star.

    Me and my sister wanted to get them, but our folks wanted us to get some fantasy figures for our D&D games.

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  5. Chris KutalikDecember 31, 2011 at 1:00 PM

    I want one of those.

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  6. GonsalvoDecember 31, 2011 at 11:52 PM

    IIRC the Death Star look alike (much smaller than the Entomalian station) was called the Mace. I have one in my collection, painted as Avarian, IIRC. I really will have to get around to taking some pictures of my ships/fleets!

    There was also a "modular" space station, with six modules in a sort of hexagonal configuration.

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  7. THE HESSIANJanuary 13, 2012 at 10:34 AM

    You can buy both the Entomalian Web and Mace among others at:

    http://www.thepanzerdepot.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=panzer&Category_Code=mk_gk_fleets

    ReplyDelete