SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Rules Regularly Played - Babylon 5 Wars

A past game of Full Thrust (2nd edition) took place around an unnamed planet, smack in the middle of two nebulas. My opponent and I chose 1000 point fleets, and set course to engage. My tactics were to overwhelm him with fighter squadrons; he concentrated on missiles and larger ships. Several turns later, I had missed with too many torpedoes, and he had destroyed the engines on an otherwise undamaged heavy cruiser with a well-timed pair of needle missiles. I finally conceded when his point defense batteries eliminated my last effective fighter squadron, and my lone carrier was about to appear around the planet in front of his 2 relatively unscathed cap. ships. Next time, I'll make sure to use torpedo fighters that can actually damage a ship through multiple layers of screens. Or maybe his missiles are the way to go... [27 Apr 99]

I made myself felt against the enemy, a mixed babylon 5 wars fleet against home brew shadows. However unexpected reineforcements allowed him to turn the tide of battle to his favor. [20 Apr 99]

Babylon 5 Wars. Fairly simple teaching scenario for a public demonstration. Narn raiding party vs. a small Centauri supply convoy. Nothing fancy, no special ships. The Centauri took heavy losses but managed to move to the edge of the map (defense perimeter). [20 Apr 99]

The last game I played was a six-way Full Thrust game pitting the forces of the NSL/OUDF against the might of the might of the ESU/FSE. The game was fun for all involved as we had small ships fighting to the bitter end, while much larger ships we "striking the colours" after only minor damage. Those smaller crew sure are brave! The highlight of the game was when our ESU Dreadnought came into range of the OUDF Heavy Cruiser. The cruiser fired a missile volley and then opened up with all the other weaponry it could. In the end, our brand-new Dreadnought had been reduced to a smoking hulk, with the threat of a reactor core breach and the crew running to the life-pods. A victory to the ESU in the end, but very, very close (only 2 ships left per side, out of a total of forty!). [15 Apr 99]

My last game was a Starblazers FBS game against a relative newbie friend of mine. I am new to SBFBS myself, so we were evenly matched. We ran the Battle of Pluto Scenario out of the rulebook, with myself as the "Gammy" commander and my friend Ron as the EDF. We used the intoductory rules, and the fleets consisted of: EDF: SBB Yamato Gamillon: 1 Courageous (S-type) SBB, 4 Exterminator class SDD's

We started on opposite ends of the table, with speed 3. The Yamato had 4 pts of special energy accumulated.

Turn 1: Ron (EDF) won initiative, so I split off my destroyers and sent them screaming in, increasing speed to 9(?). My plan was to hurt the Yamato with the destroyers, then finish her with the battleship. The battleship closed slowly. Yamato increased speed to 5, and charged more special energy.

Turn 2: Ron again win the initiative roll, and so I bank the battleship slightly to the left, and send the destroyers ahead and to the right (to split his fire). The destoyers are now at speed 12, and my battleship at 7 or 8 ( I forget). Range is closing. He moves straight ahead, and opens fire on my destroyers. Like a white hot knife through butter, he drops 2 of 'em.

Turn 3: I win initiative, and close with the destroyers and and the battleship. He banks to the right, turning almost broadside to the destroyers. I fire my forward missle batteris on the SBB, and the guns on the destroyers are now in range. His SD and torpedoes stop most of my missles, but I get some hits, and some more from the destroyers, damaging a torpedo launcher. He blasts both the remaining destroyers to smithereens with his main guns, and hits my battleship with a smattering of missles, knocking out one of my main gun turrets and a missle launcher. He now has enough energy accumulated to use the Wave Motion Gun in the bow. I'm in trouble.

Turn 4: I lose initiative. He turns leftish (more towards me) and closes. I move my remaining ship (the battleship) straight or slightly right, I don't remember. We are nearly catty-corner to each other now. He lets loose with most everything, and do the same. He has hot dice, and my ship virtually comes apart. I'm down like 80%. I score hits with some missiles, and 1 of my main guns. He still has about 60 hull boxes left (down about 50%).

Turn 5: I get initiative, and although he turns towards me (trying to line up the WDF), I have already turned hard right, trying to put some distance between myself and the Yamato. He's hot on my heals, but out of position. I fire most of my remaining missles, and score a few more hits. My accuracy is suffering, with only 20% hull boxes remaining. I miss with my single rear-firing laser battery. He lets fly with the shock cannons again, and gets a lucky critical hit on my engine. KABOOM!

Commentary: I made a mistake splitting my forces. I should have held the escorts back to defend the battleship, and concentrated my fire better. He had hot dice, and turn 4 cost me badly. I swear revenge for the next time! [14 Apr 99]

I only recently bought Battlefleet Gothic, so my most recent game was an "exploratory" to try out the rules. We used only the four Imperial and four Chaos cruisers included in the basic game, and played a fairly straightforward "head-on" engagement between the two squadrons. It was a fairly entertaining experiment, even given that we were VERY slow, as we were more or less learning the rules as we went. Both sides were considerably less than expert at their maneuvering (didn't have any familiarity with the nuances of maneuver in the system, as you'd expect), and we ended up pounding each other pretty severely: the Chaos ships' faster speed let them close faster, but this played into the Imperials' seemingly heavier weapons batteries (at least, for the ships we selected). The Imperials won, but just barely: there were two badly damaged Imperial cruisers against a single shot-up Chaos ship when we ended the game by mutual consent. I'm very interested to see what an engagement with escort squadrons (and the commanders' adaptations to the previous slugfest) will be like; we plan to use some Full Thrust ships to mimic the two fleet's escorts for our next match, as we won't have any of the proper GW escorts painted and ready to go for a little while yet. In all, an enjoyable game so far! [13 Apr 99]

At Winter Fantasy in Chicago recently, I refereed/demoed several games of Star Blazers Fleet Battle Syetem. One of the more interesting was between the mighty Gamelons against the dastardly Earth "Defence" Force. The Players started by picking out their ships. They got a little coaching so that there was some balance, but mostly they just picked models they liked. play started with two players in dagonally opposite corners.The grain of the hexes favored direct movement. The Gamelons knew right away that they had to close quickly and engage before the EDF heated up their Wave Motion Guns. The EDF also had the advantage in range, the the noble Gamelons, in Samuri spirit, took a step closer to their enemy. The exterminator class destyroyers bypassed the earth destroyers and began scoring hits. The Earth player got emotional and loosed a cloud of missiles against the Gamelons, which, along with the superior EDF beam weapons pretty much wiped out the small ships, but, EDF player rolled cold dice and an attack that should have eliminated the escorts allowed two gamelon destroyers to survive, unscathed. The Gamelon gloated, because he had emptied the missile racks of his enemy, and, they all bunched together for mutual defence. He then used his rather nasty "smite" system to dump a minefield in the middle of the EDF formation. This time, the EDF player rolled well, and the mines were less effective than they could have been, but the Gamelon player got a lesson in EDF destroyers. A cloud of EDF Missiles concentrated on the "flagship" took it out, but, by now the capitol ships were in range. The Gamelon had decided to just charge in and there was no formation of any sort left on either side just bunch of individual engagements. The Gamelons let loose with missiles and beam weapons, and the dice were kind to the Gamelons. All the EDF ships had 3-4 critical hits on them. The Gamelons had more ships, and while the fleet took as much damage, it was spread out more. Most Gamelons had only one critical. Now I gloated as I rolled for the criticals. An Earth Battleship blew up in spectacular fashion! The EDF player knew he had lost, but, by agreement and mutual exaughtion, the players allowed the EDF to use the one operational Wave Motion Gun that was "hot." The result was a dead Gamelon Battleship. The EDF escort screen was intact, but the capitol ships had all been mauled, one destroyed outright and others that had critical hit results that were more than nuisences. The Gamelons had lost most of their escorts, and had lost two capitol ships, but the core of the fleet was in very good shape. The one battleship was really a "gimme" and the EDF commander knew he would have to withdraw. Both playes had fun. I would have enjoyed it more if the mine attack had been successful, as the Gamelons would have been able to envelope the EDF. As it was, the cluster-f*** that resulted could have gone either way. [12 Apr 99]

Currently our group is playing Starmada, an excellent(and free) game you can get off the net. Overall it is fairly simple but it does give a lot of depth as far as ship creation goes. Anyone who enjoys Full Thrust would love this game. Give it a shot, its free. [2 Apr 99]

I played a game of Babylon 5 Wars where I assaulted a Centauri Kraken starbase and its fighters. My fleet consisted of a Bin'Tak Dreadnought, 2 G'Quan Heavy Cruisers, and a Dag'Kar Missile Frigate. The Dag'Kar got off two salvos before being crippled by the fighters, as I left nothing to defend it. Meanwhile the Bin'Tak and cruisers were in a slugging match with the starbase, and I eventually gained the upper hand (especially after a well-placed energy mine wiped out his fighters). However, I had to go home then, so I rammed the station with the two cruisers, leaving my beat-up Bin'Tak and Dag'Kar as victors. The battle lasted less than 10 turns, but took almost 8 hours, which is why I've switched over to Starmada, which plays much faster. [1 Apr 99]

Playtesting for a generic space combat ruleset a friend and I are working on. The Trinity Theocracy (me) vs silicon based beasties with a wierd idea of what ships should look like.

I ended up winning, destroying the last silicon ship by shooting it, ramming it, and finally boarding it and flushing the crew out into space. Great fun. [1 Apr 99]

My last game involved a playtest of B5W, flying EA dreadnoughts against a mixed force of Non-ALigned worlds ships, slaughtering equal sized forces of Hyach and Cascor ships in a close range slug fest...gruesome. [1 Apr 99]

Basically, I was playing Babylon 5 wars, I took a Hyperion, Omega, and an Olympus against a Primus, a Centurion, a Darkner and a Vorchan. First round was basically movement, second round my Olympus battered the Centurion with some help from my Omega, the Hyperion opened on the Primus with a Heavy Laser. Centurion battered my Omega some with a good Battle Laser hit, and banged up my Olympus with laser and matter cannon fire(Olympus is a tough little ship)along with a laser fire from the Darkner. The Primus fired some Battle Lasers at my Hyperion but missed. We quit at that point due to time constraints. [31 Mar 99]

Last game I played was an ecounter between earth and minbari in Babylon 5 Wars. 6 earth cruisers got slaughtered by 3 minbari sharlin cuisers. Was not a good day for me :( [31 Mar 99]

I currently have a pbem game of Babylon 5 Wars going. I'm flying a Centauri squadron (BC, 3xCA, 3xDD) against a Narn squadron. Firepower is still in my favor, but I'm worried about having fewer, smaller fighters than the Narns do. [30 Mar 99]

Our last game was a Starmada battle between the S'ssk Nesting and the Border Worlds Union. The Nesting forces were a well balanced fleet - the Border Union deciding on a fighter/carrier heavy contingent. The battle was bloody and exciting. Each side was valued at 700 victory points, and as we've come to expect from Stamada, the point system works so well that most battles balanced by points are usually very close. This one was no different. The only unfortunate aspect of the game was that it was the second game of the night (games play very quickly), and since we were playing at one of the local shops, closing time did not allow us to finish the game.

Stamada is one of those space combat games that plays quickly without sacrificing depth. It's a great game! [30 Mar 99]

Played Battlefield Gothic for the first time last night. Fleet of 4 Imperium Cruisers against fleet of 4 Chaos cruisers, I was the Imperium. I got lucky and zeroed in on his flagship with my Nova cannons at 135cm, plus got lucky with damage rolls. Chaos flagship was crippled. I then closed while bombers finished off the flagship, and eventually split the Chaos fleet such that my forward weapons were firing at one ship while my port weapons got a full broadside on another, crippling both. Chaos resigned, Imperium went home with no damage. [30 Mar 99]

While deployed to Bosnia from July 1998 to January 1999, I took my Full Thrust rules with me because it is fast, simple and exciting in comparison to other games that have become way to complex for even a mathmetician to understand. The last game we played was an all out action involving 6 ships in a starship duel. [29 Mar 99]

At at the local VallyCon convention, I ran a verson of my Sci-Fi Crossover Full Thrust game. Star Destroyers from Star Wars vs a Federation fleet from Star Trek and a couple Earthforce ships from B5. The Star Destroyers won again mainly due to the novice players on the ST and B5 side not using their ships abilities to the fullest but everyone had fun. Sci-Fi Crossover wil be back at GenCon and this time a couple Battlestars and some SCVNs from Space Above and beyone will show up. [29 Mar 99]

Forces: Dilgar - 2 Targath Strike Cruisers 1 Protra Scoutship 2 Ochlavitwa Destroyers 1 Tratharti Gunship 48 Thorun Dartfighters (me) Hyach - 1 Urutha Kal Dreadnought 1 Irokai Kam Battlecruiser 1 Tachila Kor Scout Carrier 1 Senchlat Kes Attack Scout 1 Okath Kat Fast Frigate 25 Dartha Medium Fighters 5 Dovoch Interdict Fighters (2 friends) Period: Late War - all refits in place. We played all known 2E rules, except we didn't use called shots (for the Point Pulsar), as I think they skew the game. In the absence of 2E critical charts, we gave a +4 to critcal rolls caused by Masers (formerly known as Gamma Lasers). The Hyach are in close formation, except for the Okath Kat, which is split off with 2 flights of fighter for cover I have 2 groups: the Ochlavitas, and the Targaths and Tratharti. Each is supported by 4 flights of Thoruns. The Protra trailed behind. For the first three turns, everyone turtles heavily, and closes with no fire exchanged. Turn 3 The 2 Ochlavitas take the front off of the Senchlat Kes, 4 flights of Thoruns maul the Okath Kat, stripping 3 ML, and causing an Engine and a Reactor crit. The thoruns pay a heavy price as they lose 14 of their number to Darthas and Masers. Although about half of my flights are tasked with anti-fighter work, no Hyach fighters are lost (I _hate_ the chart). The Hyach ships hold their fire, mostly. Turn 4 Much fire exchanged, fleets at close range now. The wounded Senchlat kes is killed by Targath 1. The Irokai Kam loses it's fwd. section to the Tratharti and Targath 1, while a flight of Thoruns remove it's stbd. weapons. The Urutha Kal loses it's Spinal Laser to an Ochlavita at point blank range, also suffering moderate structural damage. The Okath Kat's suffering continues, taking another engine crit. , and a C&C crit.from fighters.the Tachila Kor recieves light damage from some Thoruns.Fighter combat is more even this turn, with the hyach losing 7 fighters to 6 Thoruns killed. The Hyach returned fire, killing Targath 2 with short-range hits from a Spinal Laser, and a Mega Plasma Cannon, plus lighter weapons (actually, it took enough damage to kill the facing structure, the primary structure, and the far side structure, with damage left over!).Targath 1 took heavy stbd. structure damage from the Okath Kat. Ochlavita 1 recieves a Spinal Laser hit at 1 hex range, but only loses it'd Main thrust, and some structure (!). Turn 5 Fighters continue hitting the Okath Kat, which loses 7 more power, and it's computer. The Tachila Kor is hit by the Tratharti and Targath 1, but is still mostly okay. Ochlavita 2 takes the main thrust off of the Urutha Kal. In return, Ochlavita 1 loses it's rear hull, Targath 1 loses it's stbd. side, and the Tratharti's rear is hanging by a thread. 15 Darthas and Dovochs remain, and 20 Thoruns. We had to call it here as it was midnight, and snowing, and 2 of us had a 1 1/2 hour drive home. It was a good game, the Dilgar had an edge, but the outcome was by no means assured. Lessons The Hyach should have opened fire at long range - it's their biggest advantage. Dartha / Dovoch flights are *vicious*, plus the ability to interdict a whole flight makes it very hard to hit ships protected by Dovochs with fighters, much less the flights themselves. I used to prefer the Tratharti to the Ochlavita, but as I play, this is changing - The Ochlavita has an impressive ability to get behind an enemy and stay there. One of my opponents mistook the "K" in tachila Kor for an "H", leading to a truly humiliating local sobriquet for this fine ship... . -Kle. [26 Mar 99]

The last game we played was B5W (can't get people interested in any thing else). It was a small fleet battle no fighters, it was for the Dilgar playtest. It was six ships on six ships. Lots of death, destruction, and bad jokes. All in all a good time. [26 Mar 99]