Just wanted to drop a line to let everyone know that next we will be launching a new Kickstarter. It will be a EU friendly project as well.
Event Horizon: Fleet Battles is a miniatures space combat wargame set in the year 5318. It has been over 3000 years since Terra and the Sol system completely vanished without a trace, leaving humanity stranded in the Mobius system without a home. Before it disappeared, Terra wasn't much to look at due to years of pollution, caused by the decimation the Psionic Emergence left behind. Most of the privileged had already started to colonize Mars or expand to the Mobius system, but it didn't change the fact that Terra would always be 'home'.
No longer bound by one planet, humanity spread out amongst the stars to create multiple empires. Without having a home planet, the history of Terra slowly faded away, and it wasn't until long before the one common bond everyone shared started to vanish. Despite having access to the vast expanse of space and knowing the devastation of war, humanity had not learned its lesson. It just meant more planets to conquer or destroy. it would only be a matter of time before empires would start to clash with one another.
Humanity had been easy to define because everyone was still 'human'. Even the psionics who emerged were human. But as some replaced their organs with cybernetics, or gene-spliced themselves with traits of another life-form, the definition of what it meant to be human began to blur. Under the name of survival, expansion, and even evolution, humanity went through changes depending on which empire they belonged too. Soon there were thousands of new colonies, all with their own ideals and beliefs. Some of the empires could no longer even be recognized as human, at least by visual appearances.
Game Setup youtu.be/KrErpSdIpAU
Game Phases youtu.be/wpnVxZK_Lwc
Ship Orders
You create ship movement orders utilizing a movement deck for each ship. Each movement deck contains 24 cards that outline the various orders that can be issued to a ship. Your ships movement orders can contain one of each card up to the amount equal to the ships main engine rating. The other player will not know how you plan to move your ship or what movement orders you will assign to it until it comes time to actually move the ships.
Example: Player A controls a ship with 6 thrust. Player A can issue orders by selecting 6 cards or less. You would do this for each of the ships under your command, depending on the amount of thrust of each. Using the diagram below as an example, Player A decides to only issue 3 orders: Main Thrust, Turn Port 30° (turn left), Main Thrust.
When it is time to execute the ship movement during the Movement Phase, each ship before revealing their movement orders will first move the current momentum it has already built up. Currently, it is at a momentum of 2. So it will move 2" in the direction of their momentum heading. Then you would use use the movement cards, which you already queued up during the Planning Phase, to continue moving the ship.
Example: Player A will now flip the movement cards over revealing the movement orders. Starting with Main Thrust which tells us to move that ship another 1" forward. Then we reveal Turn Port 30° which tells us to pivot that ship to the left by 30°. The last card is Main Thrust 1 which moved us another 1" forward. You will notice we move forward towards the direction that the ship is facing.
We have started to reach out more to other websites and miniatures gamers as we get closer to Kickstarter launch. We have already been receiving feedback and started to get questions on the game. Some questions and concerns do bring up valid points and we always appreciate the constructive input.
Most of the information is covered on our Kickstarter page which is currently pending. I didn't want to list everything from the page so I can understand some people getting confused on mechanics.
Do I have to use a protractor to move ships?
Although that makes me want to design a game that actually does use one… No you do not need to use a protractor.
I can understand looking at the cards at first, without seeing the explanation of movement, could be confusing. When we demonstrated the game and had public play testing, movement cards were the first thing everyone said was straight forward and easy to understand.
The flight base is hex shaped. Although the movement cards cover 30°-180° left and right, they are in 30° increments of measure. One complete hex side is 60°, half way point is 30° so it is fairly simple. The cards are written with port, starboard, bootleg turn and degrees as mainly flavor text. When commanding ships in space you wouldn't be giving orders to simply turn left, turn right. The controls would be similar to a submarines or aircraft with a pitch and yaw. Although we do understand that space is more than just left and right, the game isn't completely 3D. We did attempt it though but found it to be too time consuming and complex.
Movement seems similar to Wings of War, why didn't we just use that method?
Since I was unfamiliar with Wings of War I had to look up their movement cards. Oddly we originally started with a template system that was similar to Wings of War, although more closer to X-Wing. We loved the simplicity of the dial for movement and template system.
We tried a code wheel (for those that remember the software code wheels from the 80-90's) so we could issue multiple orders. We moved to a sliding device but unfortunately none of them gave the ease of creating orders that allowed for diversity and even bluffing.
The other issue with a template movement system like X-Wing and Wings of War was that ships move like war planes in gravity. We wanted ships to be like spaceships, not planes. Ships without gravity can strafe, they can be using momentum to carry a ship one direction while facing another direction to fire. We also didn't want them to be like naval ships where fleets circled each other like sharks.
Do all the ships look the same?
There are 6 fleets in total, each fleet belonging to a certain ruling faction. The factions are United Republic, Europa Confederation, Shingen Empire, Federated Commonwealth, Anazi Dynasty, Outer Rim Republic.
Each fleet have their own design, although some of them do share some common traits. There are also some neutral ships. Some other examples are below and there are more on our facebook page that we update.
Do I have to buy a whole new fleet if I was changing armies or factions?
Gaming is expensive. Miniatures gaming is no exception to that. We understand that and we wanted to build a system that could resemble actual warfare. As long as your commanding fleet consists 50% of points of your main faction then you would able to use other fleet designs. This will let a player at a later date who wants to play a different faction, utilize some of their models to be able to play without having to buy a completely new army. This also plays into campaign rules for planetary control and ship boarding actions when playing a long term game of capturing enemy resources.
Some factions do have "faction specific" weapons and we get around that with retro-fitting. Each ship miniature comes with 4 different designs and layouts for that particular miniature that range in different weapons and points. There are upgrades that are available for more points that also enhance them and alter the play style. Player A could have the same ships as Player B but they could function slightly different. In terms of "faction specific" weapons there are retrofitted neutral weapon layouts for those ships that possess them.
We didn't want to penalize someone who started to play after buying some ships to later discover they liked the style of another faction instead. This provided an easy way to gradually make the move as well be utilized in campaigns for wars of attrition.
You also could technically purchase just movement decks and ship stat cards to use your own current miniatures.
Does this game have anything to do with black holes or ships going to hell and becoming possessed?
There is no relation to a certain horror movie.
Originally when we came up with a project name we started with Event Horizon because of its definition:
"An event horizon is, in general relativity, a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman's terms, it is defined as 'the point of no return', i.e., the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. The most common case of an event horizon is that surrounding a black hole." – Wikipedia
It was specifically because of "the point of no return". The game is a war game and ultimately although there are moments of peace… there are also times when tension gets so high, once a line is crossed war just breaks out. At that point there is no returning. The main engines also use a gravity type engine, essentially utilizing a small point similar to a black hole. So everything seemed to fit.
As we continued working on the history and lore. We defined key moments as "Events", which are catalysts points in time that changed society. The story and lore continue along the lines that Events are catalysts that cause a change in history. Similar to how we measure things like the Civil War, 9/11, World War I/II, etc. Events are given names much like a hurricanes are and everything started with Event A (Adam) when he was discovered on Mars, to Event B (Beta-Phase Virus) and so on until we are at Event H (Horizon). Some of that will start to be updated on the website as well as revealed during the course of the Kickstarter when we go over the history and lore.
