More Avarians from Gonsalvo

I'm always happy to link to photos of other peoples Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights miniatures, so without further ado, I present more of Gonsalvo's Avarian fleet.  Of particular interest to me is this Vulture-class galactic attack carrier, a model I don't own.  Go on over to Gonsalvo's blog and check out the rest of the photos.

Photo from Blunders on the Danube blog.

I should also mention that Gonsalvo is one of the players in my Chancellor campaign, and his stellar cruiser wing is about to take part in the Battle of Vertex, which we plan on gaming this week because we actually have enough players lined up.  I'm looking forward to moderating this battle, the largest yet under the SfW rules, and it should be a good time.

My minis--not as pretty as Gonsalvo's.

Meanwhile, as you can see, I need to get my remaining Avarians painted up.  I won't need them all for this battle, but I might need more of them in the future.  These ship models are all based, but it was raining after work on Monday and I wasn't able to primer these bad boys like I'd hoped.  I need to get a move on; I don't want the players getting wet paint on their fingers if they pick up one of my starship minis.

A small adventuring party

We finally returned to the Hill Cantons this weekend, our first tabletop campaign session since before Thanksgiving.  There were five player characters: a thief, magic-user, druid, amazon fighter and a "fighter" with some thiefly abilities.  We also had two secondary characters (fighter and cleric), an animal companion (wolf as played by the leopard mini) for the druid, our longtime henchman, a newly hired man-at-arms, a new porter, a new and very nervous torchbearer, and our usual twin brother teamster team, along with seven horses and two mules (we had to leave the wagon when the trail got too rough).  Seemed like we had a half-mile-long train when we had to go single file.

  We had so many people, we actually ended up using one of the corridor dungeon tiles as a movement tray as we explored the cave complex we were searching for.  We didn't know what to expect, so we brought lots of help.

Turns out we didn't need it.  When we finally located the demon-guarded treasure we sought, only three of our party went to take on the infernal creature.  We dispatched it relatively easily thanks to a Chime of Banishment, but the cold spirit that appeared when we tried to take the treasure literally froze one of our party members in his tracks.  We still managed to get away with the loot and all our characters, so it was a successful, if crowded, run.

Sunday Starships: The Battle of Vertex

The Chancellor campaign will soon see its first battle!  In a sequence of events that couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it, the eponymous Terran SGDN and part of the Avarian Homeworld Fleet both wandered into hex 0506, just as an Avarian supply convoy entered that same hex on its way to the safety of the nearby Vertex system in hex 0505.

Since I was unable to procure any captains to game out the battle on the tabletop this weekend, we'll try to play the scenario sometime this week.  Meanwhile, I will share the order of battle.  Kudos to Avarian admirals dathbain and Gonsalvo for some great spaceship names!  

AVARIANS
Homeworld Flight Leader (Gonsalvo)
Condor-class Galactic Dreadnought Phoenix 

Homeworld Cruiser Wing (Gonsalvo)
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Millennium Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Maltese Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Falcon Crest
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Atlanta Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser The Falcon
Falcon-class Stellar Cruiser Peregrine Falcon


Gatherer Flight Escort Wing (dathbain)
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Tigermoth
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Warhawk
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Stormcrow
Hawk-class Stellar Destroyer Silverwing

Gatherer Flight Transport Wing (dathbain)
Ostrich-class Galactic Transport Lightclaw
Ostrich-class Galactic Transport Fleeting Star
Emu-class Galactic Transport EMU9712 (new from factory; no official name)
Emu-class Galactic Transport Red Gizzard
Emu-class Galactic Transport Broken Wing
Emu-class Galactic Transport Arrow IV
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Proud Strut
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Silent Runner
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Foul Haul
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Wiggly Waddle
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Star Gazer II
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Quiet Matron
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Payday
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Queen's Stash
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Quill
Turkey-class Galactic Transport Down Transit 

TERRANS (Matcg)
Victory-class Super Galactic Dreadnought Chancellor

Traveller on your phone

I don't usually post about electronic games, but because of the local connection and the game involved, I thought this was worth sharing.  The Austin American-Statesman reports a pair of brothers has ported the Traveller role-playing game to the iPhone and iPad.  From the article:

From Austin American-Statesman

When they were children, brothers Tony and Kieran Howlett were big fans of Traveller, a pen-and-paper game similar to Dungeons & Dragons that was released in the 1970s.

Thirty-five years and two attempts later, they've released their own version of the space-themed game for decidedly modern devices — the iPad and iPhone.

"Traveller AR" is a massively multiplayer online game, in which players can battle one another in flight combat. And like its old-school predecessor, there's a heavy choose-your-own-adventure element, with players able to explore, battle or trade virtual goods.

In an interesting take on crowdsourcing, the article states, the developers will allow players to create their own missions as a reward for exploring distant parts of the setting.  I'm glad I don't have an iPhone--I'm already distracted enough with all my other toys--because I'm sure this game would become a huge time sink.

Old Starfleet Wars demographics & distributor info

Between the eras of Superior Models and Monday Knight Productions, a business called Game Masters was selling the Starfleet Wars and MAATAC lines of models and rules.  While that company's website is dead, the Internet Wayback Machine allows us to conjure up its ghost to tell us secrets of the past.

Here's the Game Masters web page aimed at retailers that this distributor had back in the day.  I find the info on gamer demographics interesting:

The typical Starfleet Wars customer is a white male between ages 35 and 45, works in a technical field, earns an above-average income, and owns a computer.  The customer will first acquire all ships within one of the five Starfleet Wars empires, then acquire a second or third empire's fleet.  The median first-time Starfleet Wars order has been $133.  Over 79% of these orders included one galactic dreadnought-2 (GD2) or super galactic dreadnought (SGD).  Follow-on orders are common.  The Terran ships sell best, followed by the Carnivorans and Entomalians.

It's also notable that Game Masters sold the models in what it called "kitted" and "finished" form.  Kitted means it's your typical wargaming mini that needs basing and painting.  "Finished miniatures are polished and mounted on heavy sculptured bases ..."  For those of you wondering, there are still some of these "finished" Starfleet Wars models for sale by another company (along with 100mm figures of the five SfW species).

Also of interest on the old Game Masters website:

• Starfleet Wars introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers
• MAATAC introduction: includes rulebook excerpt on the Five Powers' land war tactics

Both those release schedules mention release dates that never happened.  Still, I'm playing one of those games at present, and the other is still for sale, so I'm happy.

The Admiral's Avarians

Photo from Blunders on the Danube blog.

These fine-looking starships don't belong to me--they're the property of Gonsalvo, author of the Napoleonics blog Blunders on the Danube, who's now one of the admirals in my Chancellor campaign.  Turns out Gonsalvo already has the Starfleet Wars rules and, as shown in his post on Avarian starships, a working knowledge of the game and its setting.  Check out his photos, he paints his Avarian starships in a colorful manner, and I really like the grid pattern he uses on some of the ships.

I encourage y'all to check out his blog--he promises to post more pictures of starship minis, and there's plenty of coverage of historicals/ancients gaming as well.  I can't wait to see the remaining capital ships in his fleet, and I'm looking forward to more SfW posts from someone besides myself.

Heeeeeeere's Johnny!

A Paladin in Citadel was getting rid of some of his prepainted Pathfinder figures, and I was able to procure the dozen goblin minis he didn't want.  I have no idea what I'm gonna use them for--maybe Song of Blades and Heroes--but I thought they looked really cool, so I snagged them.

I'm not the only one who likes the Pathfinder goblins; my wife thinks they're cute, too.  She said they look like the tooth fairy creatures from the second Hellboy movie.  Does anyone else have any of the new Pathfinder prepainted miniatures?  If so, what do you think?

Chancellor Campaign: Admirals appointed

The players who signed up for the strategic portion of the Chancellor Campaign have chosen their commands.  Here's who's playing what:

TERRANS

Matgc: Chancellor (super galactic dreadnought)
Prufrock: Noble Knight Prince (galactic dreadnought)

AVARIANS

Gonsalvo: Homeworld Flight (2 galactic dreadnoughts, 4 galactic battlecruisers, 6 stellar cruisers, 21 starbombers, 18 star armored pursuit ships)
Samulus: Interdiction Flight (4 galactic attack carriers, destroyer leader, 4 stellar destroyers)
Dathbain: Gatherer Flight(12 stellar destroyers, 45 galactic transports)

At the local level, we have representatives from the Hill Cantons, Skull Crushing for Great Justice, and Starbase Spartan (as well as some non-blogging games), whom I hope to see take charge of starships on the game board.

I hope to get the first few strategic turns played out by Friday, and I plan on gaming any battles this Saturday. And don't worry, you'll be seeing the battle reports on this blog.

Rounding out my new HotT armies

My latest miniature figures purchase netted me a whole bunch of minis, but they were four groups of homogenous models, and the lack of variation left me wondering how to round them out while assembling my new Hordes of the Things armies.  The folks in this thread on The Miniatures Page had some great suggestions regarding toy dinosaurs for the lizardmen, so I hied myself to the dollar store for some prehistoric goodness.

 A TMP member suggested the small dinosaurs would be good as hordes elements when based with a skink beastmaster, so I could use them as hordes or beasts elements. 

The two big dinos will make great mobile combat platforms for the skinks, behemoths per the rulebook army list.  Here you can see them posing on a couple of 60mm square bases.

 As you can see in this comparison shot, the skinks will fit in just fine on top of these critters.  I'll use some bamboo skewers I have in the kitchen to make the fighting platform.

Interestingly, the smaller dinosaurs look like they might work as mounts for the Bretonnians if I were so inclined.  Remember the saurus from the Quest for Glory computer games?

Speaking of knights, the TMPers suggested I use some of those Bretonnians to make a hero and/or paladin element for that army.  I realized that I already had a figure that would fill that role:

 This is a banaret from the wargame Ex Illis by Studio Figurines Bastion, out of Quebec.

I think he'll make a fine paladin to lead my Bretonnian army.  Now, to get all these assembled and painted ...

Sunday Starships: Chancellor Campaign rules

BACKGROUND
This campaign takes place at the outbreak of hostilities between the Terran Transsolar Federation and the Avarian United Worlds.  The Terrans occupy the red star systems in hexes 0901 (Northworld) and 0907 (Roadstead).  The Avarians control the yellow star systems at 0008 (Endpoint), 0202 (Median), 0505 (Vertex), and 0703 (Angle). 

The Terrans are massing forces to invade Angle, an important population and industrial center, but their conflict with the Carnivorans on the Eridani Front has prevented the Terrans from making the push.  The Avarians and their allies are shipping troops and war machines to fortify the system and make it too costly for the Terrans to attack.  In order to halt this military buildup, the Terrans launch two of their newest and most powerful ships on a mission to destroy Avarian shipping.  The Avarian Homeworld Fleet and Interdiction Fleet must hunt down these warships before they can devastate Avarian shipping.

HOW IT WORKS
Strategic players will email me their forces’ moves.  Once the campaign begins, you are free to separate your ships into smaller groups or even deploy them individually—the commands listed above are just for starting out.  Just tell me what ships you’re moving, and which hex those ships are entering.  If other ships enter that hex, I will let each side know, and we will play out the battle on the tabletop locally.  After the combat is over, I’ll email the commanders the results.

NOTE
I’m new to this, and I haven’t really playtested the strategic portion of this game.  If it gets really boring or one-sided, I’m willing to tweak the rules to make the campaign more fun and start everything over.

STRATEGIC PLAYERS
The players for the strategic portion of the game may choose which command they want to have.  Players will pick in the order in which they signed up:

1. Matgc 
2. Prufrock
3. Gonsalvo
4. Samulus--I NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
5. Dathbain

TACTICAL PLAYERS
Combat commanders will be local players, I will play one side if needed.  We will try to have the same people (other than me) controlling the same forces in every game.

We interrupt this starship campaign ...

... to bring you another miniatures bargain from Half-Price Books:

Last fall at the used bookstore, I started eying this Warhammer introductory boxed set as a source for Hordes of the Things miniatures, but I didn't snap it up at the time.  It was still on the shelf around Thanksgiving, and I thought about snagging it during Half-Price's post-Turkey Day sale (an extra 40% off), but I didn't feel like leaving the house on Black Friday.  There was another sale after Christmas, but the game was gone.  So I was pleasantly surprised to stop by HPB on the way home from work yesterday and fine this box back among the merchandise.  I didn't want to let opportunity slip away again, so I took it to the cash register.

But before I bought it, I went through the box with the cashier to make sure nothing was missing.  As you can see, the package holds a lot of stuff, including dice, cardboard buildings, measuring sticks--and 88 miniature figures, the real reason I wanted this game.  After sorting through everything with the helpful store employee, it turned out that while all the miniatures and dice were there, the game was missing a couple of booklets: the Warhammer Rulebook and the Warhammer Battle Book.  Since the game was incomplete, the clerk was nice enough to knock the price down from $75 to $30.  That's 34 cents per figure!

So now I've got enough figures for two complete HotT armies:

• 12 Bretonnian Knights
• 24 Bretonnian Bowmen
• 20 Lizardmen Saurus
• 32 Lizardment Skinks

More stuff to paint, but I'm not complaining.  By the way, which elements should I base these as?  The Bretonnians are easy: base the knights as Knights and mount the bowmen as Shooters.  I'm thinking the Skinks would make good Hordes elements, but what about the Saurus?  Blades, or Warband?  Or something else?  I also need to hit the dollar store for some toy dinosaurs to use as mounts.  Add another project to the to-do list.

The Chancellor Campaign: Overview

It looks like we have enough players, both long-distance and face-to-face, to run the Chancellor Campaign.  Here's a printer-friendly version of the strategic map we'll refer to during this game.  Red circles indicate star systems friendly to the forces of the Terran Federation; yellow stands for systems of the Avarian United Worlds and their allies.  The dotted lines represent shipping lanes.  I'll explain the significance of all this in a subsequent post.

I envision this campaign as running for about 10 or 12 turns.  I'll post detailed rules this weekend, but in a nutshell, online admirals will direct their forces from hex to hex on this map via emailed orders to the referee (me).  Admirals don't need to be familiar with the details of the combat rules, just have an idea of the general capabilities of their ships, which they will get from me.  When opposing fleets end up in the same hex, local players will game the results on the tabletop using Starfleet Wars rules, and I'll inform the online players of what happened (as well as posting about it on this blog).

Each side will have political objectives it must meet in order to win the game, and each player will have his own goals as well.  In addition, I reserve the right to reset the game and tweak things if my rules are broken and the players aren't having fun.  My thanks to all those who will be participating in the Chancellor Campaign.  I'm looking forward to see how all this plays out.

Alcatraz!

I'm fortunate enough to live in the same town as a wargames publisher, Ed Teixeira of Two Hour Wargames, and we get together to play various THW rulesets on a semi-regular basis.  This week, Ed broke out his Alcatraz island, which last saw action at MillenniumCon back in November.

Although Ed ran a zombie game using this game board at MillCon, this time he suggested we play After the Horsemen,  a post-apocalyptic game from THW.

Ed took one character, and I took one main character and one sidekick.  The premise was that once things started to go downhill, but before they totally went to hell, the California government became independent and decided to store gold as some sort of backing for its currency.  The gold (or some of it anyway) ended up on Alcatraz Island, and our characters arrived in search of it.

As we searched building after building, we sometimes encountered natives who weren't too happy to see us.  We used the In Sight process to determine which figures acted first (the better you did, the higher your score--shown by the dice--and the quicker you acted).  THW combat is quick and deadly:  In one gunfight, even though we had the drop on three bad guys, the flunkie failed his test and ran away, leaving the two of us against three enemy.

 Even though we acted first, we still lost Ed's character (replaced by the flunky, who shamefacedly returned once the smoke cleared).  Ed's second character died in a subsequent battle, as we went from building to building searching for the gold, which my character eventually found after shooting at another pair of bad guys, killing one and chasing off the other.

With the gold found, all he needs to do is figure out how to haul it all back to the mainland--with lots of hostiles between him and his boat...

It was a fun game and fantastic scenery.  My thanks to Ed for all the gaming.

Latest Song of Void and Stars playtest

From Mémoires d'un joueur

French gamer Arsenus has conducted another playtest of Song of Void and Stars, this time three versus three.  You can read the French playtest report on his website, or go to Google's English translation of the playtest.  From the translation of his summary:

Combat is very tactical and you have to manage as the inertia of vessels which, on my little table, is really strenuous exercise!

I'm looking forward to seeing the SoVaS rules.  Thanks, Arsenus!

The Chancellor Campaign: Players wanted

I've been kicking campaign ideas around in my head for some time now, and I've finally decided to run something.

Although I've covered similar ground in a previous scenario, The Chancellor Campaign is also inspired by Delta's look at the boardgame Sink the Bismark.  Like the historical scenario it's based on, the idea is to have two powerful ships hunting supply convoys and in turn being hunted by a larger number of less powerful ships.

There will be two facets to this campaign:  In the strategic component, participants will order ships from hex to hex on the map above.  During the tactical portion, players will game out any ship-to-ship combat that results from enemy ships entering the same hex.

Since I'm not inclined to run massive play-by-email battles (like those I discovered here and here), I will conduct the starship combat on the tabletop, using my miniatures and the Starfleet Wars rules.  I want to referee these games, and I welcome any San Antonio- and Austin-area players who want to participate.  If I can't find enough players, I'll play one side myself.

For the strategic moves, however, I'd like to give my blog readers a chance to take part.  Therefore, I'm looking for some online players to take the role of the starbase admirals and the various fleets via email.  I need three players for the Alliance forces: one player will be in charge of Material Command and direct the various supply convoys, the next player will command the numerous yet relatively weaker ships of the Homeworld Fleet, and the last player will control the smaller number of powerful vessels of the Patrol Fleet.  On the other side, I need one or two players to direct the massive Chancellor and its almost-as-powerful escort, the Noble Knight Prince.

So to sum it up: I need lots of local players who want to game starship combat, and I need four or five email players who will direct these fleets at the strategic level.  Please leave a comment if you're interested in taking part, either in person or via email.

My new castle

Over the weekend, I saw a kids castle playset on sale for half-price at the neighborhood drugstore.  Ten bucks for some buildings/terrain for my 28mm skirmish gaming?  I'm in!

Ok, it's pretty crude work--very soft plastic pieces with visible mold lines--but it does go well with heroic 28s like this Heroscape figure.

Not only that, but the castle came with a spring-loaded catapult that actually shoots plastic "rocks" (not pictured).

With a new paint job, some drybrushing, and a wash, these walls will look a lot better.

FYI, the set also includes two more walls (one with a working drawbridge) and corresponding towers, which I didn't feel like setting up for this photo shoot.  It also has decals for the structure's windows, but I doubt I'll use them.

Sunday Starships: Vanguard Cruise

After running the Deneb Clash play-by-email game, Dean Gunderson of Starship Combat News ran another Full Thrust conversion of Starfleet Wars.  Not a direct sequel, the Vanguard Cruise scenario entailed a Terran super galactic dreadnought and its escorts getting ambushed by an Entomalian fleet that included a galactic attack carrier and three galactic dreadnoughts. (Again, links and images recovered via the Internet Wayback Machine, and a thank-you to Dean for giving me the OK to repost these.)

setup (turn 0)

From the introduction to this scenario:

The Entomalians have heard the rumors of the new SGDs and they need to know more. A large strike fleet has taken a round-about course but has penetrated the Terran front made it deep into Terran space to the backwater system where the 'Vanguard' has been conducting mock battles with her escorts. The Entomalians have brought along 3 Galactic Dreadnoughts to test this Terran super-ship and see if the rumors are true.....

Read on for a turn-by-turn of how the battle turned out (spoiler alert: it didn't go well for the Terrans):

My own private forest

Do you think I have enough trees?  :-)

I collected all my miniature trees in order to cover up the white flocking most of these Christmas decorations came with.  (At lower left you can see the container for one of the potted shrubberies is broken from me knocking it onto the floor--don't worry; I glued it back together.) 

However, almost half of the trees were very unbalanced, with a vary narrow wooden base making them easier to tip over.  To fix that, I glued metal washers to the bottom of the stands, giving them a lower center of gravity and a wider base.

I then sprayed the trees with a light coating of a multicolor/textured brown paint, followed by an evergreen sort of color.  They came out looking much less wintery, but I think I need to drybrush some additional shades to make them look more natural and less uniform.

I also need to paint and flock the bases.  I'm not going to bother with any texturing--the bases will usually be unseen by players looking down onto the table, and why expend effort on something no one will see?  Besides, I'd obsess too much and take too long getting it just right, so I'm heading that off by telling myself, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."  I want to get these trees ready for the tabletop.  What's everyone else working on this weekend?

Old SfW-FT minis comparison

From the Game Masters Starfleet Wars-Full Thrust comparison on its now-defunct website.

Top row: Full Thrust Eurasian Solar Union (ESU) fleet containing two destroyers, light cruiser, medium cruiser, heavy cruiser, battle cruiser, battleship, battle dreadnought, super dreadnought, two groups of six fighters, and a fleet carrier.

Bottom row: Starfleet Wars Terran Federation fleet containing three star bombers, three stellar destroyers, two stellar cruisers, Mace space station, galactic battlecruiser, galactic dreadnought, galactic dreadnought-2, super galactic dreadnought, 9 star fighters (of 10 in a box), and a galactic attack carrier.

Does anyone mix and match their Full Thrust and Starfleet Wars models?  Some of those ESU ships would fit in with the Carnivorans or Entomalians.

Speaking of OGRE ...

... and that Martian Metals catalog I showed you yesterday, I found something interesting (and sort of related) on another page: miniatures for the game Rivets.

Rivets was another microgame, a humorous take on OGRE's premise of cybernetic tanks--except instead of big and scary, the automated armor units (called Boppers) were small and cute--cartoonish vehicles with names like Big Bopper, Tiny Bopper, and Dive Bopper.  Like OGRE, it was a hex-and-counter wargame.  Likewise, MM produced miniatures for this game, as you can see from the closeup of the ad below:

Since Rivets and OGRE both addressed the concept of robotic warfare, it was probably inevitable that someone would draw up rules for combining units from the two games.  Mike Crane did just that in "Encounters of an Unlikely Kind" in issue 19 of Space Gamer (reprinted in the first OGRE Book).

I think I remember owning this game back in the day, but I never heard of the miniatures till 20 years later.  Did anyone actually own any of these minis?  If so, did you ever use them in play?  I'd like to hear about it.

Old OGRE mini

Photo from Martian Metals Ogre Mk Vb blog

One of this blog's readers, THE HESSIAN (all caps are his) asked in this comment about a miniature of an OGRE Mark Vb, and provided links to photos of the mini in question.  He later created his own blog showing photos of the Mark Vb.

A quick history of OGRE minis: Martian Metals was the original producer of castings for this game, making figures based on Winchell Chung's game artwork (for the force now known as the Paneuropeans).  Ral Partha later took over the line, adding North American Combine vehicles.  Finally, for awhile, Steve Jackson Games produced its own miniatures for OGRE/GEV.

For those of you unfamiliar with the OGRE/GEV setting, the sci-fi tank game comes with giant cybertanks, increasing in size from the Mark I all the way to the Mark VI.  The rules also have a Mark III-B, but nowhere could I find a mention of a Mark V-B.  As you can see from the photos on THE HESSIAN's blog, the package for this model clearly lists the OGRE as a "Vb"--so there's some mystery about this miniature. 

I did find this old Martian Metals catalog posted online.  I've reproduced a page here for historical purposes:

Here's a closer look:

As you can see in the closeup, they clearly offered the Mark V, but there's no mention of a Vb.  A commenter in this thread on the SJGames forums notes the mini carries all the weapons of a Mark V.  I'm guessing the "Vb" is just a typo.  Still, I appreciate THE HESSIAN bringing this to our attention.

Old Starfleet Wars flyer

I found this image, from Superior Models' original advertising campaign, in a link on this defunct Stellar Games web page.  It depicts the original models in the Starfleet Wars line, complete with creative paint jobs.

I dig the color schemes on these ships.  Know what those paint jobs remind me of? 

Anyone else see the stylistic influence, or is it just me?  After all, it was the '70s...

My take on the newly announced edition of D&D

Haters gonna hate.

Nerds gonna rage.

Players gonna play.

Fans gonna boy.

...

And that's all I have to say about that.

Sunday Starships: Galactic Knights game

The week before Christmas, Spartan 117, the commander of Starbase Spartan as well as Firebase 6mike-mike, was kind enough to come over for an introductory game of Galactic Knights. 

I took my Terrans--three destroyers and a battlecruiser--and Spartan commanded the (equivalent in points value) Avarian force of a cruiser, destroyer leader, and two destroyers. 

I decided on a simple meeting engagement around an unnamed, lifeless moon.

We played using the basic rules for fighters and missiles, which treat them as essentially smaller ships, and the game went quickly. 



Spartan seemed to like the game, and he did a good job commanding his squadron once he got GK's vector movement down.



I ended up winning, but not before getting cocky and letting my battlecruiser take some severe damage from missiles that bypassed the shields.



Next we get to play a space combat game of his choosing.  I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks, Spartan, for trying out Galactic Knights.