A Clear and Present Danger
Publisher: Agema
Wargame rules for space battles with model spaceships!
Designed for tabletop battles, these rules feature a scenario generator to stop games just becoming mindless slogging matches, and an action-based games system allowing a wide variety of actions to be attempted during play without getting bogged down in complexity!
The system has a simple means of representing spatial distance, so while the games are on a flat tabletop you can take into account the relative distance between spaceships depth-wise as well, using a straightforward method.
Energy is produced by a spaceship's power plant and then expended on actions, with the order in which actions are done being governed by use of playing cards.
Spaceships can be formed into divisions and squadrons, or operate independently, which impacts command and control aspects during play.
Other themes covered include crew drill levels, radiation and debris, using various types of scanners (heat signature, physical signature, visual scan, indirect), ion or geometric storms, planets, asteroids, close orbit, teleportation, detection buoys and early warning stations, minefields and defence satellites, drones, equipment degradation, bridge detaching, mother ships and planet killers, and sample spaceship designs.
Actions allowed include going on battle stations, making ready point defense, applying thrust, engaging drives, hyper jumps, energizing weapons, firing missile banks, cyber attacks, engaging shields, supercharging reactors, auto-repair, grappling, deploying chaff, and evasive rolls.
What is more, energy weapons such as lasers can fire in a concentrated manner, or using standard or wide dispersal, while critical hits can result in nasties such as reactor breaches or comms-link failures!
All in all, plenty to get your teeth into, but wrapped into a straightforward system which isn't overburdening on our brain cells!
(Please note that the cover has been changed; we had originally used an image which we own a commercial license for via Fotolia, but a doubt has been raised by a concerned party as to whether the entity who sold us the image license actually has a right to the image themselves. Rather than risk falling foul of copyright infringement the front cover image has been changed, but please note that in all other respects these rules are identical to the first issue.)
Price: $6.23 USD