Battlestar Galactica: Starship Combat game.

Started by Silent Disapproval Robot, December 09, 2018, 11:00:37 PM

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Silent Disapproval Robot

This game is from Ares Games, the makers of Wings of Glory and Sails of Glory.  As I enjoy both of those games quite a bit, I decided to pick this one up as well and pre-ordered  when it first became available.  The game is scheduled for release on Dec 10 but my copy arrived a day early.

The starter set comes with rules, a scenario book, four miniatures (2 Vipers, 2 Raiders), 4 control consoles, 4 stands, 2 range rulers, 4 manoeuvre decks, 1 skills deck, 4 ship data cards, 3 unique pilots cards (I also got a Starbuck pilot card for pre-ordering), chits and tokens, altitude pegs, and a bunch of asteroid terrain markers.




































Each turn, adjust their thrust, kinetic energy, and rotation settings on their console and plan their ship's movement by selecting one or two manoeuvre cards from a deck of 22 cards.  Manoeuvres are limited by max G forces and kinetic energy.  In this example, the Viper has a kinetic energy of 5 and plans an overthrust (1G, energy of 3) followed by a right hand turn (2G, energy of 2).  He lays the cards down in front of the yellow marker on the miniature's base.  The ship follows the movement path and is then placed so that the yellow O marker on the rear of the base lines up with the end of the selected movement path.









Ships can fire at the end of each manoeuvre segment as long as a enemy is within their firing arc (the pie shaped angle cut into the miniature's base) and within range.   The game comes with two range rulers which have red, orange, and yellow segments denoting close, medium, and long range.  Each ship has an attack rating (Vipers and Raiders both have a rating of 6).  This is your base hit number.  If you roll equal to or greater than the hit number of 2d6 (modified by range, relative speed, pilot skill), you score a hit.  The target ship draws a damage chit from a bag and keeps the results secret.  If the chit has a + symbol on it, then they must draw a 2nd chit as well.  Each chit has a damage number on it and may also have a critical on it as well. 





In this instance, the Cylon draws a critical hit that injures the pilot and does 2 points of damage to the hull.  As the chit has a + symbol on it, they must draw a 2nd chit which results in another 4 points of hull damage.  If damage equals or exceeds the ship's structure rating, it is destroyed.




Kinetic energy also allows the ships to rotate their facing while continuing to drift along their original flight path based on their previous kinetic energy state.  The Clyon Raider player makes an adjustment to their rotation dial on their console.





And rotates their miniature using the click tabs on the base to match their console setting.  The ship continues to drift in their original
direction as indicated by the drift template placed on the base on the mini.  This will result in a nice strafing attack on the Viper as it passes by.




the game also represents 3D movement.  Each console has a slider to represent movement along the Z axis.  Pegs are added or taken away from the bases to indicate vertical position and tokens are placed on objects on the map to indicate their relative vertical position.  For instance, in the pic above, you can see asteroids at "heights" of 1, 2 , and 3.  The ranger rulers have an alternate gauge on the back side that you use to determine range when ships are at different altitudes.