Home-Brewed Spaceship Fight!

I put some ideas to paper this week for a spaceship combat game. Yeah, yeah... I know there are something like 50,000 already-published rulesets out there but either the movement rules are weird or it is a licensed property or the rules are unplayably complex or whatever. So, in true gamer geek fashion, I've put together the basics for a game tuned to my tastes. Thusfar, the rules are very simple - movement, shooting, damage. I haven't done anything regarding different weapon types, special equipment (shields, tractor beams, etc), small craft or any of the other stuff that makes space games special.

Fight 1 - Junior and I both put Frigates on a heavily populated table. My youngest son had dumped out the box of Heroclix earlier so we littered the battle area with "asteroids." Junior fire both forward cannons at me on turn 2 or 3. Both hit and my ship exploded big time. Tweak #1 - reduce damage by half.

Fight 2 - Junior takes a Destroyer and I take two Frigates. New damage rules work out much better. I can't remember who won this round.

Fight 3 - Junior takes a Light Cruiser and a Destroyer. I take one Destroyer and three Frigates. I took some pics and an actual "game" developed with both of us trying to get some sort of advantage over one another. Here are some pictures of the proceedings.

My Fruitonians

The evil Red Fleet

My Frigates go wide left and gang up on the Destroyer.

Junior pulled his Destroyer back to take advantage of his better range, but I feint and surround the Cruiser.

I blew up his Destroyer on the same turn that he finished off a Frigate and hulled out my Destroyer. My force failed its morale test and got out of dodge. Overall, I was very happy with the way the game played out and am looking forward to trying it with more "stuff."

The red and orange striped ships that Junior was using, I just finished this week. Here's a group shot. They are ACTA: Noble Armada miniatures - I haven't done the fighters yet.