Saturday I had a chance to play the spaceship combat game
Starmada Admiralty Edition and the
Starfleet Battles conversion called
Klingon Armada, which fellow gamer
Holdfast brought over, along with some
Starfleet Battles miniatures for some Trek gaming.
It was the first time for both of us to play the game, so we each took about 560 or so points of pregenerated starships from the
Klingon Armada book. I chose to play the Klingons, with two D-7 battlecruisers, the
Razor Blade and the
Knife's Edge. Mark had two Federation light cruisers, the
Hood and the
Wasp, and a frigate from his
Prime Directive roleplaying campaign, the
Stauffenberg. Since Mark didn't have exact models for each ship, and we're not Trek purists, we did a little proxying with a Clix mini.
The rules are pretty straightforward, although the movement system takes awhile to get down. The combat was very reminiscent of
Warhammer, with rolling to hit, then rolling to penetrate shields, then rolling damage. The two fleets quickly closed and started pounding each other. My two D-7s unloaded on the poor frigate on the first turn, and since asteroids blocked line-of-sight to one of my ships, the other took the brunt of the Federation shots.
With preplotted movement, the two sides ended up at close range on the second turn, where we each managed to take out one of the other's capital ships. All shooting in the game is considered simultaneous, and damage takes effect at the end of the turn, so each ship was able to get off its shots before exploding.
My remaining ship was mostly undamaged from the first two turns, so on the third, it unleashed enough firepower to vaporize the unfortunate frigate (the ship on which the characters in Holdfast's roleplaying game serve). The Klingon easily withstood the fire from the remaining Fed starship, and we called the game at that point.
Starmada is a fairly simple set of rules that played pretty quickly, but we were using the basic game and (other than using shield facets) avoiding all the special rules that can bog down a spaceship game. Still, I liked it and will play
Starmada again, probably in the
SFB universe.
7 comments:
Thanks for the report! we rust Holdfast's characters made it to the escape pods...
I like the sound of hose even more than
5050, as you know I've got a huge SFB
collection to dust off...thanks for the report!
I've got an old edition of Starmada lying around somewhere. Now I have the urge to track it down and re-read it, since I can't remember much about how these rules operate :-) !
I like Starmada Admiralty Edition.
In addition to Klingon Armada, I've also used Starmada for Civil War Ironclads, which works surprisingly well. It's a great game - both flexible and easy to play.
Qapla maqoch! 'ejDo'qu tlhIngan wo'
Gonsalvo, we agreed that the fate of the Stauffenberg took place in an alternate universe :)
Don and Colgar, you can find the Admiralty Edition for free online. (But I still say that 5150: Star Navy works better for large battles with lots of ships!)
Dan, that's interesting using it for Civil War naval clashes. I know there's a published version for WWI dreadnoughts.
Major, thanks for supporting the Klingon Empire!
Wow! Great to hear of the support for Starmada. The 'Nova' edition is very latest version available now. The Admiralty edition is just fine for me, having never played any version before.
Here is a brief narrative to link the RPG campaign with the unfortunate battle with the Klingons.
"Most of the Stauffenberg's command staff (PC's) were on an unauthorized 'away mission' on the colony planet 'B-4354' near the Klingon border.
Commander Williamson, CO of the Stauffenberg (and a NPC), was ordered to rendezvous with the two light cruisers Hood and Wasp and intercept the Klingons while the 'away mission' was in progress. He chose to abandon the crew on the planet rather than disobey orders.
It is unclear at this point, if Williamson made it to an escape pod before his ship was destroyed.
The away team will be rescued eventually, but they will have some explaining to do."
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