"What's "the best" way to game Star Wars battles in Space?" Topic

I think this is what you are referring to – Armada

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First join the space program.

The WoC game is kind of fun, and does allow a ton of ships to be on the board, but there's precious little tactical skill required.

I guess 'the best' way to game Star Wars is to first ask yourself – what does Star Wars mean to you, in terms of space combat? What are its central characteristics? To me, there are two – Starfighters and the Force (tm).

X-Wing scratches one of those itches pretty well, but not so the other.

As for naval combat… well, maybe we'll see if Armada delivers…

I agree with MacrossMartin, the first step is to figure out what you're looking for in terms of the Star Wars feel. Is it snubfighters, Star Destroyers, Lightsaber duels, or what.

Then you have the additional wrinkle that even though there's lot of material published over the years it's not 100% clear how space combat in Star Wars is 'supposed' to work.

I never played the old WOTC game so I can't comment on that.

The FFG X-wing game does a pretty job of feeling of capturing the snubfighter end of the scale for me. The game mechanics work pretty well and give a fast and interesting game.

-Will

I definately play FT as I can use it for any range of ships I like.

I have done a few games with the WotC ships, even using the fighters as if they were destroyers or similar.

Some clone wars era ship designs are here.

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I could probably dig up other ones if there was interest.

I am loking forward to seeing what additional ships come out with FFG armada.

If you want to use FT and play like a Star Wars movie, you may want to modify it, or take a look at my version.

Bablyon 5 Wars fits pretty well (Though it is oop) Advent of Galactic War is a free version of the rules b5warsvault.wikidot.com

I like it because it has capitol ships, but still keeps fighters somewhat unique, and you can even have the heroic fighter pilots that can make an impact on the larger fight.

Still, if you play more than 3 or 4 capitol ships, it gets pretty slow unless you are very familiar with the game. Also, there is some paperwork, because the ships have damage charts, and most of the capitol ship guns can only fire every 2 to 3 rounds, so you have to keep track of that.

G.O.B.S.* was designed to satisfy my urge to play both Star Trek and Star Wars type battles with big fleets. Cinematic movement ("we don't need no stinkin' physics"), shields going down, ships blowing up, more ships blowing up, planet-destroying super ships with that one Fatal Flaw, even more ships blowing up, guided torpedoes, fighters darting in and out (and blowing up), and silly space terrain straight from a Hollywood scene designer (remember what I said about physics?). Oh, and did I mention ships blowing up?
So I'm biased in favor of it for fleet games.
For fighter games, though, I'm a huge fan of FFG's X-Wing, which is fantastic.

Find G.O.B.S. at thegobspage.com

*Generic Outlandishly Big Spacefleets!, created by yours truly.

For fleet scale, I'm using Colonial Battlefleet with a few house rules; for fighter scale, Silent Death, with a few house rules (some based on the previously published rules for SW SD). GOBS or A Skyful of Ships would be a second/third choice for fleet scale, but CBF is also getting used for BSG, and I like keeping things consistent.

Parzial covers the challenges of SW gaming nicely, it's "heroic fleet scale" gaming.

To me, and again others have stated, first start with what gaming Star Wars means to you, but I feel that Star Wars, even the massive fleet combat scenes, revolves around fighters. I think the fighters are what make the space combat unique. So I'm looking for a Fleet scale combat game that has cap ships, but also treats fighters, not necessarily as individuals, but unique..i.e. a y-wing doesn't behave like an a-wing, an a-wing doesn't behave like an x-wing..etc…that's just my opinion though.

What ever you do, have fun with it, yell "I'm hiiiiittttt!" frequently.

A while ago, we took the WotC ships and converted A Call to Arms to play Star Wars. Some very lovely dynamics with the Imperial ships being able to pound the Rebel vessels, but this being countered by the rebel starfighters dealing knock out blows with the likes of proton torpedoes – if they could get through the massive screen of TIE fighters.

Had the Clone Wars stuff statted up as well, but everyone wanted to play Imperial vs. Alliance :)

Was going to get it all laid out and printed up as a full colour hardback on POD, but is just one of those uncompleted pet projects right now.

Then, of course, was the Battlefield Evolution (think Starship Troopers rules) rulebook that used WotC's 28mm line…

So perhaps Y-Wing +1 attacking ships, -1 dogfight. X-wing, +1 dogfight, -1 attacking ships, etc.

That sounds familiar (A Sky Full of Ships) along with a slight variation in speed.

We definitely wanted to show differences in the many fighters and ships like the Falcon for example….

So I started with the basic Tie fighter as the standard straight up D6, no shields or heavy weapons. Everything else is sort of adjusted up or down from there.

Great looking play aids Dervel.

Thanks, the peg boards were a big hit at the convention games…