More Space Battles

The still untitled space ship fightin' game I've been working on got another strong playtest Saturday afternoon with the help of Mike and Steve - both "lifers" in the gaming community. Their two-cents- worth is worth more like fifty cents.

Game 1 was a basic "introduction to the mechanics." We each took roughly equal forces and put things through their paces. To spice things up a tad, a large gravity well dominated the center of the board.

Two interceptors and my cruiser head over towards Steve's guys while my other two interceptors go left to Mike's force.

It didn't take Steve long to figure out how to shoot. My cruiser gets whacked.

While things go woefully woeful on the other side.

Ah, the fun of not pre-measuring. The gravity well reaches out and grabs a total of five ships!

Only the one poor ship with engine damage ended up "seeing the future."

It was a fun little intro to the game. Onto the next battle. I wanted to test out some special equipment this game, so I put together a scenario with Teleporters, Tractor Beams and Asteroid Breakers.

Mike used the Tan N Teal this game, defending with three cruisers and four interceptors. All three of his cruisers had teleporters which the attacking forces were keen to steal.

Steve drove the Orange fleet while I controlled the two ex-Romulans in the middle of the pack. The mid-sized orange ships had the asteroid breakers and were clearing a safe path for the other ships through the field.

We split into two columns while the filthy TNT sets up a greeting party for us.

Our lead elements make it through the asteroids on to have the summnabitch TNTs teleport one of our asteroid breakers back behind the asteroid field, leaving the rest of its group to take a few hits from the space rocks. We're also minus one destroyer for the near future.

The other destroyer is vaporized quickly. The rest of the fleet moves out and engages. The destroyer that was flung past the asteroids throws caution to the wind and floors it through the asteroid field.

Things continue to go poorly for the attackers. I take out an interceptor but my destroyer is hulled out in return.

One of Mike's cruisers which had taken a solid thumping teleported back away from the danger. I sent the orange frigate squadron after it.

My frigates caused the cruiser to break and run! My big cruiser had slapped a tractor beam on another cruiser and dragged it through the asteroids, but couldn't cause any damage. You can see that damn near everything in my force is pointing at the same empty spot - their target teleported back behind my ships!

That cruiser finished off the Rom cruiser and the orange destroyer. The cruiser I was holding in the tractor beam finally managed to activate his own teleporter and threw my heavy cruiser back to the other side of the asteroids.

The crews of my frigates and scout weren't happy about it, but I conceded there. I was happy to still have a heavy cruiser still in mint condition!

What a good game! I completely winged the scenario the night before and was a bit concerned about it being balanced. As it turned out, it was a hoot. Steve had to leave half-way through, but Mike and I enjoyed it to the bitter end. I'm happy with the tractor beam and teleporter rules, though I need to make the teleporter success roll a bit more difficult.

Mike and Steve pointed out a handful of things that'll make into the rulebook - their experience was quite valuable. Thanks again guys!