Blue cat group

Speaking of Carnivorans, take a look at this cat fleet by Don M of the Brazos Evil Empire:

Some time ago, Don had mentioned he had a Carnivore fleet, but at the time he didn't have any photos up.  He was kind enough to bring his ships down to the South Texas Mini-Con last summer.  He didn't get them on the gaming table, instead he demoed When the Navy Walked. 

Now, he has pics up, and the space forces of the Terran Transsolar Navy stand ready to repel the invaders!  Although the Carnies were originally Starfleet Wars minis, Don says he uses them when he plays Full Thrust. I, on the other hand, usually play Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights.  If we want our fleets to meet in battle, we're gonna have to chose a ruleset.

Either way, they're some nice looking ships.  Be sure to check out the rest of the pics of Don's Carnivoran fleet.

More Superior Models copyrights

In addition to copyrights for Superior Models printed materials, the company also registered several of its miniatures, including some of the 100mm Starfleet Wars figures:

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043007 / 1979-11-05
Title:	Keech : [no.] FA-37.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright bird in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-05-29
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043005 / 1979-11-05
Application Title:	Lion warrior.
Title:	Scarr : [no.] FA-29.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright lion in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-01-16
Date in Notice:	notice: 1978
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Other Title:	Lion warrior
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	VA0000043006 / 1979-11-05
Application Title:	Warrior lizard.
Title:	Torc : [no.] FA-34.
Description:	Figurine.
Notes:	Upright lizard in armor.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-01-31
Authorship on Application:	Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Other Title:	Warrior lizard
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1933-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Sunday Starships (cont'd): second Starfleet Wars game

After our first Starfleet Wars game of the day on Saturday, I was familiar with the fighter and starbomber rules, but I wanted to try them out with more ships on each side.  Since Chris was here now, I relinquished my player's hat and oversaw the game as a referee.  As you can see, I decided to use wisps from cotton balls to mark ships that had been hit.

The scenario I pulled out of my ass carefully put together involved the Carnivorans defending a moon against an incursion by the Avarians.  The birdies' goal was to get their ships into orbit around the satellite; the kitties' job was to stop them.

The Carnies got pretty much my entire cat fleet: a Den-class galactic attack carrier, Lion-class galactic battlecruiser, two Panther-class stellar cruisers, a Cheetah-class stellar destroyer, three Kitten-class star armored pursuit ships, and three Snarl-class starbombers.

The Avarians were fewer in number, but the ships were more powerful and included a Nest-class GAC, an Eagle-class GB, a Screech Owl-class stellar destroyer leader, and three Hawk-class SDs.

I quickly realized the birds were outnumbered, so I had some transports (repurposed pirate frigates from Star Frontiers) enter on the following turn.  If they could get to the moon, that would be good for the Avarians.

It took a couple of turns with no firing before the two fleets got into range.  Long story short: the Carnivores concentrated all their fire onto the Avarian DL and vaporized it in a single turn (68 points of damage to a ship that starts with just 36 power units).  The cats also launched fighters for two turns, so they had twice as many on the board as the birds, who just launched once.  Avarian lasers quickly took out most of the Carnie SBs and SAPS.

All but one Avarian fighter was shot down, while the Carns had several survive to launch their high velocity implosion weapons at the Av ships.  More deadly, however, were the high velocity implosion weapons on the larger ships--Carnivorans have a terrific rate of fire for their missiles, and their barrage overwhelmed the Avarian battlecruiser, even though it was twice as powerful as its cat counterpart.  The birds did take out the enemy destroyer in return.  

The Avarian carrier had kept out of the fight and escorted the transports into orbit around their objective.  With two-thirds of its fighters remaining (and the Carnivorans missing more than half of their starfighters), the birds still posed a threat.  It was about time to call it quits.  I declared the game a tie. 

This play experience taught me a couple of lessons about the rules.  First, take care of all fighter/anti-fighter combat and get casualties off the board before allowing fighters to launch their missiles (but still apply fighter missile damage simultaneously at the end of the turn along with damage from ships' missiles and lasers).  Second, even though the sides were about evenly matched in terms of total power units, numbers matter when it comes to defending against fighters.  Since each ship gets 10 CIDS rolls (even if the percentage to hit is low), the more vessels you have to shoot down enemy planes, the better. 

I'm grateful to Chris and Joe for coming over to play, and I apologize for not having a more balanced scenario--Joe had a lot less to work with than he needed.  Thanks, guys, for being such good sports.

Sunday Starships: Starfleet Wars game

Some holiday weekend gaming--I was fortunate enough to gather a couple of fellow starship captains for some Starfleet Wars action when Hill Cantons blogger Chris and Johnny Reb organizer Joe made it over on Saturday. 

Chris got stuck in traffic, so the first match was between me and Joe.  My previous games only involved large ships, so I wanted to try out the rules for starfighters, as well as the rules for starbombers and star armored pursuit ships this time around.

I took a Terran Invincible-class dreadnought (which carries four starfighters) with three Mars-class starbombers and a pair of Dauntless-class SAPS as escorts.  I gave Joe two task forces: an Aquarian Stingray-class carrier accompanied by a couple of Piranha-class destroyers and an Entomalian Hive-class carrier escorted by a Wasp-class destroyer and two Louse-class star armored pursuit ships: 

The idea in this scenario was for me to get the DN off the other side of the board with enough power to reach hyperspace.  I started out behind a moon; Joe deployed his forces apart from each other hoping to get me to run the gauntlet between them.

I immediately headed to my right, around the outside of the water-breathers, for three turns.  On my fourth turn, however, I juked back toward the opposite table edge, faking out Joe, who had anticipated me continuing in the same direction.  (This is why I like simultaneous movement--it forces you to anticipate where your opponent is headed.)

While this was happening, the fish fighters quickly took out my three SBs, and the bug attack craft shot down my SAPS a couple of turns later.  I managed to eliminate one of the fish destroyers and scratch the paint on the Aquarian carrier.  The aliens in turn damaged my remaining ship by more than 10 percent--enough to reduce the amount of antiaircraft fire and give me some dilemmas in power allocation, but that's about it.

The final turn had me headed for the border with both forces in hot pursuit.  The alien team-up failed to stop the lonely dreadnought from reaching the system's edge and escaping to lightspeed.  By the time we finished, Chris had shown up.  Now that we had the fighter rules down, I decided to run a larger game with carriers on both sides.  I will share how that turned out in a later post.  For now, enjoy your Sunday.

Starfleet Wars copyright info

The author of the Zenopus Archives, whose devotion to the old blue box Dungeons & Dragons rules rivals my obsession with Starfleet Wars, recently scoured the United States Copyright Office website for publication information regarding the Holmes basic D&D set. 

Since ZA's research proved so fruitful, I decided to follow in his footsteps and search the online catalog for similar details regarding the SfW games.  I found three entries for Starfleet Wars (links are embedded in the Copyright Office entries and go to copyright searches for that name):

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000621288 / 1980-06-16
Application Title:	Starships.
Title:	Starfleet wars.
Description:	Folder.
Notes:	Catalog sheet.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire of Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1937-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Visual Material
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000621289 / 1980-06-16
Application Title:	Starfleet wars game board.
Title:	Starfleet wars.
Imprint:	Claymont, Del. : Superior Models, c1978.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire of Ron Spicer.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Names:	Spicer, Ron, 1937-
	Superior Models, Inc.

Type of Work:	Text
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000509051 / 1980-04-29
Title:	Starfleet wars / [written by Wayne Smith ; designed & illustrated by Ron Spicer].
Imprint:	Claymont, DE : Superior Models, c1978.
Description:	16 p.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1978
Date of Publication:	1978-07-24
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Names:	Smith, Wayne
	Spicer, Ron
	Superior Models, Inc.

I also found an entry for MAATAC (which is spelled with spaces in between the letters for some reason):

Type of Work:	Text
Registration Number / Date:	TX0000509050 / 1980-04-29
Title:	The Intergalactic wargame of great armored fighting machines : M A A T A C / [written by Wayne Smith ; designed & illustrated by Ron Spicer].
Imprint:	Claymont, DE : Superior Models, c1979.
Description:	16 p.
Copyright Claimant:	Superior Models, Inc.
Date of Creation:	1979
Date of Publication:	1979-07-10
Authorship on Application:	Superior Models, Inc., employer for hire.
Copyright Note:	C.O. correspondence.
Other Title:	M A A T AC
Names:	Smith, Wayne
	Spicer, Ron
	Superior Models, Inc.

My thanks to Zenopus Archives for pointing me to this great resource!

Another vintage Starfleet Wars review

I recently came across another old article on the Starfleet Wars line of miniature starships, which I had overlooked when I composed my original post on vintage SfW reviews.  So here's one more take on this old range of spaceships from back in the day.

Dragon #51 (July 1981)

In the regular miniatures review column, "Figuratively Speaking," author Bill Fawcett notes the clean castings and amount of detail on the Starfleet Wars minis.

... The Terran ships are obviously drawn from Star Wars ship types, and these figures beg to be used with any rules which recreate the battles from those movies. 

The other fleets (Entomalian, Avarian, Aquarian, and Carnivorian) have a great diversity in styling, making the members of each fleet stand out from one another.

The reviewer notes just one weakness--something I've touched upon as well--that the ships' undersides hold just as much detail as their topsides.

Bonus review: The same column examines the Stardate: 3000 line of miniatures, noting they're "generally original in design, with only a passing resemblance to the Star Trek and Star Wars-style ships. ... The detail is well-done, castings are generally clean, and the parts fit together properly."

Thanksgaming

For those readers outside the United States, today is the day we in this country celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.  It's a time for Americans to overeat to the point of discomfort, squabble with relatives, drink heavily while watching televised sports events, and get up extremely early the next morning to engage in full-tilt consumerism while sliding deeper into debt.

But it's also a time for us to reflect on the things for which we're grateful.  In addition to the usual--food, shelter, family, no one shooting at me or any of my loved ones--I'm thankful for the many gaming opportunities I've had in recent years.

My teen years were the golden age of my gaming; time grew scarce as I got older, and my playing time slowly dwindled as I went to college and then out into the real world.  Although I kept all my game materials (and occasionally found new items in secondhand bookstores and game shops), I stopped playing in the 1990s, dabbling in computer versions of AD&D to feed my habit.  It wasn't till a decade later, thanks to the internet, that I returned to the gaming world.  Since then, I've had a chance to play RPGs and minis games, attend cons, and made new friends through my gaming.

While living in San Antonio, I started wargaming on a regular basis with the Lone Star Historical Miniatures gang.  I also started playing in the Hill Cantons campaign--and I even got my wife to come along with me.  I've run games at conventions and even helped organize a small con myself.  Not only that, but I've had a chance to give back a little to the community with this blog.  So this Thanksgiving, I wanted to share my gratitude for all the gaming opportunities I currently have.  It may be a frivolous pastime, but I enjoy it.

On a related note, when I was younger we'd all go to my aunt's or my cousins' house for dinner, and one of the post-meal traditions we had was playing the boardgame Risk.  Nothing like grinding your relatives' armies into the ground while conquering the world!  Does anyone else have a similar holiday gaming tradition?

Happy Turkey Day everyone!