"Starmada Nova Arrives!" Topic

My copy of Starmada Nova arrived today! It really is almost a completely different game from Admiralty Edition. ECM, escort ability, major changes to shooting, damage, fighters, almost everything. I think it will be great for modelling Babylon 5 warfare (or just about anything else!)

hope mine arrives soon….

hoping mine to the uk, wont be to much longer

My .PDF version arrived about 20 seconds after I purchased it (a week or so ago) ..

I got that too, moo, a couple weeks back (I did the preorder pckg)

for some reason the hard copy just means i really got it..

Yes, my hard copy arrived. If you did the preorder deal early they gave you the beta .pdf

Is it still hex-based as in Compendium? (That's the edition I have)

It has both Hex and free movement gameplay rules.

The pre-order is the one i got, but living in Australia probably means ill get it (much) later. Rules look good though.

And now we play the waiting game…

/taps foot impatiently

I just got sold on the "…has free movement…"
Now I can stop waiting for FullThrust3. (Remixed and CrossDimensions just didn't do it for me.)

Waiting game over…:D

Has anyone tried these rules yet?
I just bought the PDF and the combat section is confusing as hell to me. Maybe its just me but the rulebook reads like gibberish. There is very little in the way of detailed examples to explain the different rules.

Can't help, it's the only edition of Starmada I haven't tried. If you ask for help with the rules over on the MJ12 forums Dan Kast will probably be glad to help with any questions you might have.

We have just started playing. The column shift mechanic is kind of counterintuitive, but once you get the hang of it, it's very elegant. And, as usual, the points system is extremely balanced (a common feature of MJ12 games designs).

We have found the game runs a lot faster than Starmada Admiralty Edition, without losing the cool features that you can use to make each fleet unique.

I use SFB Starline 2400 Kzinti ships (because they look cool) as Terran Federation generic human spacefleet type designs (med range beams, missiles, spinal mount on the battleships, point defense batteries for missile/fighter defense). My fleet designs are here:
PDF link

My friend Drew has designed Babylon 5 Centauri and Narn ships, and GW Space Fleet Tyranids for use with the Nova edition of the rules, with each having a differnet design philosophy and weapon types. The Tyranids with the regenerating hulls were the toughest challenge for my valiant Terrans.

The best squadron size for an intro game is 4-5 ships per player for a 90 minute game, but this can go to 10-12 once you've nailed the rules. For your first couple games, I would suggest avoiding ship designs with too many different weapon types and/or different firing arcs.

I think the Starmada Fleet Ops game is designed for larger numbers of ships, but you get ships that have less damage boxes that die more quickly. (but that's usually what happens with faster playing games)

Ah, one I can help with:

Fleet Ops is definitely optimized for larger actions with 20+ ships per player being pretty simple, with a corresponding reduction in level of detail. It's a bit more tied to hexgrid play than Admiralty or Nova were, although it isn't impossible to play it gridless. The game is a stand-alone and includes design-your-own rules as well as guidelines to translate Admiralty edition designs into Fleet Ops stat blocks. There may be Nova-to-Fleet-Ops translations on the message board somewhere already – I thought I'd seen them, but they're eluding me today.