"Considering gaming Star Trek ship battles...old school" Topic

I stumbled upon the entire original Star Trek TV series, that I saw in re-runs in the 70s…on TVs without a remote [unless you call dad telling you to change the channel a remote] as a DVD box set. It's on its way. I am keen to share it with my kid who is 10yo b/c it is rated "G" and it is a more intelligent sort of entertainment. It renews a project I was considering in 2014, which also involved acquiring all four of the James Blish "Star Trek Reader" volumes.

Inveitably…this leads to gaming possibilities. I have a copy of the original Task Force Games "Star Fleet Battles" designer edition from Amarillo Games. It seems a bit rules-heavy and the mechanics are a bit dated. I also have a copy of a much more appealing game "Star Fleet Battle Manual", which looks much easier to deal with.

I did visit ADB today, and I found the website overwhelming. They do recommend you get the latest SFB basic set.

Overall, I would like to try to wargame star trek ship battles, and as painlessly as possible. This may mean trying the Manual.

I want to stress that I'm only interested in the original canon, I don't care how corny it was sometimes and how poor the special effects were. This may mean that my media interest drops off after "Star Trek: Enterprise" or so. The new movies – the so-called "Kelvin Timeline – are sexed-up trash and entirely unappealing to me, at any rate.

So… how to best enter the complex Star Fleet world?

Please, feel free to comment! And thanks for your anticipated helpfulness!

There are (or at least were) lots of great starship miniatures out there, including plastic ones from MicroMachines back in the 1990s (and possibly still being made).

As far as rules though, I'll defer to those who have actually played Star Trek miniatures games!

eBay, for the Micromachines ones, but selection is limited, e.g. Enterprise, the D7, and the Romulan Warbird. The latter is "box" scale, so far too big relative to the other too in reality, but it looks nice.

They come preassembled/prepainted, and are pretty much indestructible, compared to the plastic and metal ones, so worth seeking out.

There's the Space Station too, from The Trouble with Tribbles episode as well, if you want one of those.

Star Fleet Battles, through it's several iterations, is based on Star Trek TOS and the animated series only as that is what they licensed from Paramount. It does not contain anything from the later movies or series, but does contain additional expansions developed by ADB. I used to play the game back in the 80's but dropped out when I moved. It seems that the rules are measured by the pound, and are quite complex. ADB also had a rules set called Federation Commander which is a scaled down version of SFB, with several pounds less rules, but still not what I would call an easy system. Several other space combat systems, such as Full Thrust and A Sky Full of Ships have user developed extensions for Star Trek, but most contain a scattering of ships from various shows and movies.

Federation Commander is an order of magnitude easier than SFB.

You can get the Cadet rules for free online to try the enterprise vs a Klingon.

Secret tip- if you like the game you can buy the complete rulebook for about $20 USD and get ship cards for free out of the Communique newsletters. Of course you have to print it all.

I agree with Ghostrunner, the Cadet rules are easiest. These are pretty much an update of the original rules from when SFB came in a small ziplock bag like Ogre, whenever that was, sometime in the 70's.

Or… you could take a much simpler rule set, change the names of weapons to phasers/photon torpedoes and go from there. The game is what you're after and you're using the ST models to help the youngsters relate so almost anything will work. Worry about 'cannon' later.

Serendipity, this Thread, Nez Pas, Dave SWA …?

The 2nd Easiest and 2nd Funnest Trek game is A Call to Arms: Star Trek.
It's like a Toaster Pastry of rules; quick, easy, Tasty, leaves you wanting more…
(These are good thing in context: I wax Poetic b/c I'm pre-diabetic so I can't have pastry…
sadness!)
link

Slightly more Complex, but delivering a solid Gameplay experience,
and with all the Unique Trek Bells & Whistles one should have to totally do Trek Justice
(to Sam Jeffries visionary work, Franz Joseph's technical precision, & Nichelle Nichols Boots):
that would be ADB+Majestic12's Trek specific Armada series
( Klingon Armada, Romulan Armada, ….). All the Fun of Star Fleet Battles with 1/4 the time and 1/10th the brain burn of Bookkeeping.
link

After That…?
The 1st easiest (and honestly: likely easiest to find opponents for) would be
Star Trek: Attack Wing. A decent game (for what it is…)
, easy to find (dirt cheap, used!) w/ Prepainted Miniature, so that saves time.
Best Choice for the non-grognard, or Casual Trekker.
link

After that, the field opens up into the hundreds…
but of course Full Thrust is a Classic for a reason.

Honorable Mention goes to Lou Zocchi's Star Fleet Battle Manual
It has the single Coolest mechanics, simplest play, and (Hands Down!!)
the single BEST Trek cover art of any Game ever printed (prove me wrong!).
The only reason it isn't #1 is that most people don't like to play on basketball courts..

link

Might give 5150 a look:

link

GOBS! (Generic Outlandishly Big Spacefleets!) thegobspage.com

Designed by yours truly. Works with any scale, is easy to play, and stuff blows up a lot. It's designed for massive fleets, not ship-to-ship actions, and the factions are based on Star Trek tropes (among others). Ship details are a single line of text, so it's easy to get 25 or more ship records on a single page. And it's all free.

Other Recommendations:
Star Trek: PANIC!
A board game, not a miniatures game, it's a co-op game where the players are the iconic crew members of the iconic original Enterprise, working together to fend off the attacks of Klingons, Romulans, Orion Pirate, and Tholians, while completing 5 Random missions to win the game. The missions are based on episodes of the original series, and require the players to choose whether to expend resources on completing the mission or shooting those will-they-never-stop-coming alien threats out of space before they destroy the Enterprise. It's a great game, if slightly frantic (in a good way). Rebuild those shields! The starboard nacelle is about to blow— we need damage control! Sulu, hard to port! Lock phasers on target! There's another Klingon on long range sensors! And will somebody get these blasted tribbles off my ship!!!

Oh, and it can be played solo. You'll get crushed by Klingons, but you can do it…

The old FASA Star Trek Battle Simulator was rather good. A nice "in between" Star Fleet Battle Manual (Which is the Bomb) and SFB. You ended up having battles that felt like Star Trek. Again that's a "Good luck finding it" game.

And as for needed a ball court to play SFBM, no you don't you just need some imagination. Anything under low furniture are dust clouds (so under the sofa is a safe Zone) can't fire in or out, hallways are clear zones in impenetrable asteroid fields, mine fields, whatever, and the cat (who loves fishing line and would grab the fishing line and run through the room and one time out the door with your ship) is a space warp. Had a fried that spent most of a game having to warp back to the house after having his ship dragged into the yard. Fun times. Plus the rules are compatible with Zocchi's Alien Space line (Beware the Magma cannon!).

WOW! Star Fleet Battle Manual 3rd edition (There was more than one?!?!) is available at Drive Thru RPG for $11 USD

link

And Squadron Strike: Axanar for the TOS feel with ships a bit older than those in TOS. Cool system, might be too much record-keeping for some, but much lighter than SFB and mechanics make the record-keeping much quicker.

Thanks for input!

Got the Federation Commander Cadet free download here:
PDF link

Federation Commander resources are here:
starfleetgames.com/fc

Plan to try out this and the Manual, above, soon.

I am going to add Full Thrust.

It is out there for free in many places.
Here are just a few links to adaptations.
link
link
link

Oh, Star Fleet Battle Manual, a real blast from the past. I used to love playing that on my parents living room floor. Loved playing the Romulan warbird trying to estimate distances to teleport my nukes to take that pesky federation ship on it's unshielded side. Generally it went the way of the TOS episode though. Also many a time the ships' crews were bemused by the giant space cat who found great delight in playing with the ships' strings.
Star Fleet Battles on the other hand just became an overweight behemoth with far too many rules. Sorry, not much help with the question, but good to reminisce, and brought back happy memories, in these dark times

That's what I'm hear for, to spread a little light into the dark times!

the Manual looks to be pretty well written. I am hoping that it can be tweaked a bit to play on a table of reasonable size…like my new Red Alert cloth.

Federation Commander looks good, also.

I may significantly increase my nerd quotient in the near future.

I've been ST gaming for decades, started with Star Fleet Battles, then the FASA game which we played a lot at school. Full Thrust was next (I ran a campaign that lasted a few years). More recently I've been using "Engage" by Red Wyvern Games (available on Wargame Vault, I got a hard copy when they first came out. As the title suggests they have a very strong ST feel to them and are good fun to play

Oh and I have a large collection of FASA and Amarillo models, but tend to use micro machines models for club games as they are more resilient

Don't forget A Call to Arms: Star Fleet miniatures game, much easier going than SFB and even FC (no energy allocation!)

@ jdagee
I love energy allocation! It's a Command Decision

@ David Manley
Love your stuff, man.
Respect your opinion, but with several rule sets in the lineup, why should I buy Engage? Thanks!