SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Voters, By Scale - 1:4600

Star Blazers at Gen Con '99. Teaching the system to anyone who stoped at the table. =20 [3 Nov 1999]

At now I am playing with Starblazer/Battlefleet Gothic miniatures using Starmada rules. Nice miniatures, great and simple rules! [02 Aug 1999]

I played Starmada about a month ago. I had a 500pt size fleet of Arcturan Federation ships, including one Seraphin Class Battlecarrier. A 3-sides battle ensued between friends.

The Arcturan fighters were able to create aerospace superiority, but could not stop the shields 5 transports of the Sssk (a lizard race with boarding parties). The two Ssk transports launched pods which penetrated the fighter defense screens and boarded the ship. I lost one of the escort frigates in a duel with an Imperial Invincible. However the Seraphin was able to diable the two lead imperial vessels with its ion cannons. Easy pickings for the anti-matter beams :)

I would have won the battle except for the valiant, but futile efforts of the crew to fend off the boarding parties. The seraphin was a ship designed from a more peaceful time with greater range weapons. Too bad they could not learn the lessons from Rome and Carthage. The Carthaginians might have won the Cold War. [28 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]

We had a battle of two battlecruisers on 8 destroyers in a playtest for "Exordium Tactical". The chief designer managed to pilot one of his battlecruisers into a planet, and the destroyers were able to quickly put an end to the rampaging ruptors of the surviving BC. [19 Apr 99]

My last space game was a simple slug fest with a couple of friends. [12 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]

Last space game was starblazers. 2 ship on the Cometine side with a ton of fighters, versus Yamato, another Battleship, and three destroyers. EDF got vaporized, but not after causing a lot of damage to the incoming fighters. There were just too many, and the defenses got overwhelmed. The two Cometine capital ships took *very* little damage, and the mission was deemed a complete success. [13 Apr 99]

My latest battle envolved a Gamilon carrier task force against an Earth Battle Group composed of several different battleship classes. The Gamilons were taken by surprise and launched a coordinated attack with battlecraft and destroyers to delay the Earth force, while the carriers made a run for it. Things were looking bleak for the Gamilons, until a critical hit took out one of the EDF Borodino class BBs. This event caused the EDF player to think twice about such a hasty pursuit, especially if it meant risking his heavy fleet units. The delay gave the Gamilons just enough edge to escape with their Carriers, but at the cost of sacrificing their destroyer escorts and a battleship. Emperor Desslok was not pleased and a punitive Gamilon task force was rushed to the area to seek revenge. [12 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]

Been Playing Star Blazers Fleet Battle System. A great game that's a lot of fun. [11 Apr 99]

we use full thrust to fight our tactical battles but use an out of print game called LAN 4000 to to plot strategic movement of fleets. In our latest installment of our campaign game we fought for the vega system. The number of ships in the tray (see lan 4000 rules) was kept to a maximum of ten per fleet, and whenever opposing fleets met, you had 1500 pts to divide up any way you wanted among your fleet of up to ten ships. No Nova cannons were allowed and the advanced fighter rules in More thrust were not used except for endurance. The no weaopons facing the rear arc rule was upheld as well. fleet vega 1 was defending with 8 ships of light cruiser and below. fleet antares 4 was attacking with 7 ships ( we did away with lan 4000's combat resolution as full thrust took it's place) including one light carrier. battle resulted in vega 1 withdrawing to anearby star in the same sector to await reinforcements with the loss of two cruisers and a destroyer. antares4 lost t!

he a light criuiser and had moderate damage to the battle cruiser and light carrier. One flight of fighters was mauled in an adaf crossfire ( one survivor). that's all for now. [5 Apr 99]

My last SF starship combat game was a B5 scenario I ran at our local club, set during the Narn-Centauri war and using the TBP variant of the Full Thrust rules. An EarthForce squadron was recovering a covert science team from a system in a backwater near the Narn-Centauri border (unspecified research was going on). A nasty three-way action ensued which saw the Earthers getting away largely undamagedbut with the CO of one of the cruisers facing a court martial for opening fire contrary to orders. [2 Apr 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]

The FSE (Federal Stats Europa) under the command of Admiral Fulton entered a so called friendly system to find an ESU (Eurasian Solar Union) fleet orbiting the gas giant. In a moment of sheer lunacy the FSE frigates and corvettes raced in an break neck speed only to disappear in clouds of expanding gas before doing much beyond minimal damage to the dasardly ESU. Then the main FSE group (carrier, heavy cruiser etc.) swung around to the port and proceeded to pepper the ESU escorts with SMs (missiles) while some torpoedo fighters went in for the kill... unfortunately the ESU have damn fine PDS and Interceptors (fighters made to dogfight) so not too many SMs made it in and only two (out of 42) fighters made it to their target. Then the ultimate insult... Admiral Fultons penchant for rolling ones surfaced and zip damage was inflicted. At this point the ESU were slowly plodding forward (and had to get home for dinner) and the FSE was fast running out of munitions and table...erm solar system so the FSE made the decision to gracefully withdraw (and buy some dice that know what a 6 looks like!) [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]

Full Thrust, using rules from the Fleet Book. A much faster game than we had expected, and very entertaining. [29 Mar 99]

Currently running a FT PBeM set in the Star Wars universe. An ambush scenario in which a rebel fleet is brought out of hyperspace by an Interdictor & ISD taskforce. Situation after 3 turns: Turn 1:

Interdictor SD 'Impassable' is attacked by 12 squadrons of rebel fighters, taking major damage & losing the bridge for 5 turns. Carrack DDE 'Pandora' seems to have crack gunners, taking down 12 fighters with only 5 PDS.

Turn 2: 'Impassable' is attacked again, taking heavy damage & losing shields & all firecons, but more TIE/In squadrons arrive to assist, taking down a lot of rebel fighters. ISD 'Nemesis' takes a double threshold check as the entire rebel fleet concentrates it's forward firepower. It loses life support & both shields as well as most of it's secondary weaponry.

'Nemesis' TIE squadrons are freed up & attack Mon Cal cruiser 'Libertys Sword', dealing light damage. Disaster of the turn goes to the TIE/bomber squadron, which hits with 3 torpedos... and then only scores 3 points of damage (out of a possible 36)

Turn 3: 'Impassable' is finally finished off by rebel fighters, but not without a fight, as the rebels have now been reduced to 13 fighters (from 78), leaving the imperial forces with fighter superiority. They use this to advantage, heavily damaging the bulk carrier 'Hornet'. ISD 'Nemesis' loses the rest of its turbolaser batteries & hyperdrive in a point blank gunnery duel. It's now reduced to a single broadside turbolaser (class-3).

The Nebulan-B frigates 'Endor' & 'Morning Star' are destroyed. 'Endor' simply ceases to exist as it becomes possible to walk across the turbolaser fire targetted upon it (from 20 hits to -22 hits in one turn). [29 Mar 99]

I was playing Battlefleet Gothic

2 Lunar class cruisers against the retreating Chaos Battlecruiser Abomination. The battlecruiser had some minor damage (basically a hit missing) and the Lunars had to destroy the ship or risk a battle against the wounded dreadnought and a Starbase. The Imperials launched torpedoes and fired their Nova cannons but were successful in achieving only the loss of some lances on the enemy before the battlecruiser turned and launched a retributive strike. One Imperial ship was crippled on an (extremely) lucky die roll whilst the other ship emerged unscratched. The Battle ended with the Chaos ship reaching safety. We played a game immediately after with 1500 pts worth of Imperial ships attacking a mined and defended 'harbor' near a planet that Abomination had retreated to.

The Imperials dished it out and got an expecially lucky stroke when the Chaos Battlecruiser's warp drive imploded and took the station with it. Afterwords there was just mop up in terms of the Imperials survivng the next Chaos turn. Victory was achieved Praise the Emperor! [29 Mar 99]

Hosted a demo. game of FULL THRUST at a friend's Book/gaming store,had five peole show up,did the cruiser demolation derby.lasted 5 turns won by my 11y/o son because he started out all along on one end of the table,everybody else started out in weapons range and began to pound on each other so weaking themselves.And then one of then decided to try to engage his ftl drive making himselve a wounderful fireball.That's when my son moved in killing the cripples and winning the game. [28 Mar 99]