"Best Spaceship gaming rules?" Topic

I finally picked up some spaceships, got a good deal. Nearly 40 plastic ships for a very good price. Looking for rules to play. Will break into two armadas (approx 20 ships per side) still need to get stands. Anybody know where you can pickup plastic stands? Anyways the rules are most important. Any comments, battle reports, color schemes welcome as well.
Thanks J.

Full thrust is my favorite rule set for space combat

I like Full Thrust. You can use the GZG universe, but Full Thrust can be -- and is intended to be -- adapted to many backgrounds, including your own personal science fiction universe. The rules are fun and easy to play, and both sides are involved in everything all the time.

Under your stands, you might consider fender washers, which are heavy and wide enough not to tip over when someone bumps the table.

You can do anything you want with color schemes. Regardless of rules, it's usually best to think of the game table as a computer display, rather than a physical model like for ground combat. If the game table were actually a scale physical representation, your spaceships would probably be the size of cookie crumbs, or you'd have to rent a basketball court to play.

So if you paint your ships in bright, distinctive, colors, they'll look great. Of course, you can always go with flat black, with blue-white for the thruster openings.

Starmada. I used to play Full Thrust for years. I had fun. I just think Starmada is a better fit for doing medium to large battles than FT. I find its design system is pretty balanced and there are a lot of different backgrounds that are rated up.

The rules work fine for small games. It's just not what we ever play.

Thanks

John

G.O.B.S. (Generic Outlandishly Big Spacefleets!) can handle 20 ships per side easily. It's a free download. (I'm also the designer, so if you have questions, just let me know here on TMP!)
As the designer, I will also tell you that the Thrust values in the original game are too low, and have been revised in my personal games. The simple solution is to simply add 2 to every Thrust value for all ships.

Www.thegobspage.com

em4 miniatures supply stands….. get a drill and bore a suitable hole to fix. (Were the ships in the Red Alert stuff sale?)

@Jonnathon it all depends on what sort of space game you want… there are lots to choose from out there and some good ones have been mentioned already.

But Stars & Lasers may be worth a look ( I wrote it ) there are plenty of battle reports on my blog and lots of pictures of painted ships that may give you some ideas on colour schemes.

littlewargamingworlds.com

There is also loads of free stuff 😊

Welcome to the crazy world of Spaceship gaming.
Mac

The thing with spaceships is that there is no history to compare it to, so rules can emulate whatever they want. You should probably read everything people recommend, since a lot of them are free online, but you won't know what rules are for you until you can describe what you want them to *feel* like. Midway? Jutland? ASW? Star Wars? Star Trek?

The Battlefleet Gothic rules are free online somewhere.

Parrskool

The ships were from Red Alert. Great deal for what you get. Nice looking ships, good size.
I will check out EM4 miniatures for stands
Jonnathon
Thanks for the rules recommends everybody, will have a look. Hard to get those Gothic ships.

link has bases for sale also in both clear and black

The ships were from Red Alert.

Note that the pre-existing holes in Red Alert ships are a lot bigger than the lug on typical plastic hex stands. The hole is the same gauge of as cocktail stick for reference.

williamb

checked Brigade Models but they are out of stock. Thanks anyways, they looked good both clear and black.

Jonnathon

5150 Star Navy can handle that many ships easily. Here are some of the Bat Reps on the THW Blog

link

link