Surprised I haven't seen anything about this yet, but it looks like WizKids is jumping back into Star Trek games with effectively an Armada clone but seems more focused on missions and narrative.
Main game in April 2024, focused on the Dominion War (woot!)
Depending on price point? I could be tempted to pick up certain ships. I love me Star Trek ships, and if these are at least roughly scaled correctly? I can certainly see myself buying some now and again, even if I never get round to playing the game.
Depending on price point? I could be tempted to pick up certain ships. I love me Star Trek ships, and if these are at least roughly scaled correctly? I can certainly see myself buying some now and again, even if I never get round to playing the game.
I know, I didn't even want to reference or use them, but I couldn't find the information elsewhere.
The starter looks to be 150, which is decent for 2 players. Scale looks good, Enterprise D has Saucer Separation and can be played as two separate pieces, which is nuts.
I'm right there with you about grabbing stuff and potentially never playing but I think I could rope one or two locals to play.
Heh, wish my partner still worked for them, I'd be rolling in free gak and insider info right now lol.
With Armada basically being dead and canceled, this might have legs to stand on. Depending on the support they give it and the factions they release I might do a buy-in on this, ESPECIALLY if its to scale - which I doubt because a D'deridex scaled to the Enterprise-D/galaxy class there would be massive, but then again it wouldn't necessarily be substantially larger than the Jem'Hadar Battlecruiser there in bulk, as a lot of it is "open space".
chaos0xomega wrote: Heh, wish my partner still worked for them, I'd be rolling in free gak and insider info right now lol.
With Armada basically being dead and canceled, this might have legs to stand on. Depending on the support they give it and the factions they release I might do a buy-in on this, ESPECIALLY if its to scale - which I doubt because a D'deridex scaled to the Enterprise-D/galaxy class there would be massive, but then again it wouldn't necessarily be substantially larger than the Jem'Hadar Battlecruiser there in bulk, as a lot of it is "open space".
You’re just gonna have to send them some Lovely Flowers then, aren’t you!
Come on man! Ask not wot Dakka can do for you, but wot you can do for Dakka!
As for the scale? I’ll take Approx Scaling over Exact Scaling. So the Enterpise NX-…..F, i think we’re canonically up to? aren’t the exact same size, even if the exact size differences aren’t quite correct.
Enterprise G, actually (Star Trek: Picard), with the Enterprise J existing in a canonical alternate timeline as well (shown in Star Trek: Enterprise).
One thing I will say (which is no longer a secret but not necessarily well publicized) is that Alex Davy went to work for WizKids as Director of Miniatures Gaming after he was booted from Fantasy Flight/Atomic Mass. As one of the designers of Legion, X-Wing, and - yes - Armada, I am sure that this features his finger prints and design ethos all over it, and I have no doubt it will be a quality product.
All we know about SW Armada is that there *were* no new products in development when AMG took over, but they've done some print at home expansions - the last was only 6 months ago.
AMG re-confirmed last week on facebook that the statement they released 2 years ago still applies and that they still have no Armada products in development.
The game is dead. Face the facts. Even if they started development on something *today* (which they won't - if they were that close to doing so they would not have said anything, the fact that they did implies that they don't see any funding for Armada development within the next fiscal year at a minimum), we probably wouldn't see a new product until ~2026 unless they really rushed it with repaints of existing ships and some new half-assed cards for them.
The more realistic timeframe for a potential future release would be 2027-2028 at the soonest - if ever.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Depending on price point? I could be tempted to pick up certain ships. I love me Star Trek ships, and if these are at least roughly scaled correctly? I can certainly see myself buying some now and again, even if I never get round to playing the game.
You probably already own the models, WizKids is notorious for releasing game after game reusing all their old (and often poor quality) models from previous games.
Looks great. But I think I'm too deep into Attack Wing to justify another ST game, especially if it’s just the same with larger ships I'll wait for an away Team game and wonder why Gale force 9 decided to do the most ugly miniatures imaginable for their ST game when they have great minis for their alien game.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Depending on price point? I could be tempted to pick up certain ships. I love me Star Trek ships, and if these are at least roughly scaled correctly? I can certainly see myself buying some now and again, even if I never get round to playing the game.
You probably already own the models, WizKids is notorious for releasing game after game reusing all their old (and often poor quality) models from previous games.
Haven’t bought any for the Attack Wing game, because the scale just wasn’t there (a big selling point for X-Wing for me, at least originally).
But the spoiler pics show a definite sense of scale. Not necessarily 100% accurate like, but enough to be noticable and appreciable. For me at least.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Wasn’t sure if F or G in confirmed canon, with the J currently being but one possible fyootcha.
F was the Odyssey-class vessel that was under the command of Fleet Admiral Shelby while the G was Constitution III-class vessel under the command of Captain Seven of Nine.
If they put out a TOS Enterprise that isn't the size of my thumbnail, I'll be very happy. Attack Wing's scale was all over the place, and they tried at first to properly scale things, but ... it didn't work out. Unfortunately, they never went back and fixed the TOS Enterprise for that game (thankfully, micro machines had me covered).
I collected a good bit of the Star Trek Attack Wing game, which was licensed on the Wings of War/X-Wing engine. The game never quite felt right, but the ships were fun to collect. Ever since SW Armada had come out, I'd always wished they would convert ST Attack Wing to that system, as it fits the "big battleship" much better - Armada plays like big sailing ships broadsiding each other instead of Attack Wings airplane-ish mode.
I'm all in for collecting the models at the least, and I hope they do the rules well enough to make it fun playing it, and so it'll be out long enough to get as many Star Trek ships as possible for it.
Though I could always import my Eaglemoss Star Trek ships, I guess...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Depending on price point? I could be tempted to pick up certain ships. I love me Star Trek ships, and if these are at least roughly scaled correctly? I can certainly see myself buying some now and again, even if I never get round to playing the game.
You probably already own the models, WizKids is notorious for releasing game after game reusing all their old (and often poor quality) models from previous games.
They're definitely new models, or at least the enterprise d and jem Hadar battlecruiser are, can't comment on the smaller ones.
They're all new models. The Defiant and Jem'Hadar Attack Ships are definitely smaller than the Attack Wing ones and we've clearly seen the D and the Battleship are larger.
I see conversation about ships from different eras, and I wonder how that would even work out. The Enterprise-E would completely out-class the Enterprise-D, nevermind trying to compare it to the OG Enterprise.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But the spoiler pics show a definite sense of scale. Not necessarily 100% accurate like, but enough to be noticable and appreciable. For me at least.
from the looks of the pics, the various ships are in scale with each other. if those bases are similar in size to the SW armada ones, the Galaxy class almost looks like it would be
1:2500th.
definitely seems like they are aiming for a more consistent scale or at least a consistent sliding scale. also looks like the rules might be more complex than attack wing, given the bases and cards, which is good. some of those traits on the cards don't seem to be combat focused, so i'd guess there will be a fair bit of scenario focus, where your force has to deal with more than just blowing the other side apart.
curious to see what scale they went with (kinda hoping it is one that already has plastic models in it, which would be a boon to those wanting to do homebrew) and what the first expansion sets will have in terms of ships and factions. assuming an initial focus on the dominion war i could see Cardassians, breen, klingons, and romulans for sure. Maquis would be a neat addition, though perhaps tricky to implement given their focus on fairly small ships and use of small raiding forces. ferengi might be fun down the line.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: I see conversation about ships from different eras, and I wonder how that would even work out. The Enterprise-E would completely out-class the Enterprise-D, nevermind trying to compare it to the OG Enterprise.
It appears to be a fleet game rather than individual ships, so presumably things work out in the costing of the ships in the fleet.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: I see conversation about ships from different eras, and I wonder how that would even work out. The Enterprise-E would completely out-class the Enterprise-D, nevermind trying to compare it to the OG Enterprise.
It appears to be a fleet game rather than individual ships, so presumably things work out in the costing of the ships in the fleet.
Oh, I would expect that. I'm just saying there's a difference between point costing a Space Marine with a bolter versus a Space Marine with a lascannon, and point costing two different Enterprises with a 100-year difference in technology.
Oh, I would expect that. I'm just saying there's a difference between point costing a Space Marine with a bolter versus a Space Marine with a lascannon, and point costing two different Enterprises with a 100-year difference in technology.
I would think a more apt analogy would be points costing a cultist with a pointy stick vs points costing a dreadnought. A game can easily allow for a wide variance in technology and capability. And if they're making this true to the shows, there will presumably be some wiggle built in to allow for crew capability, not just the ship itself... and we've had plenty of examples through Trek's history of outdated ships emerging victorious (or at least managing not to be completely destroyed) by enemies with vastly superior capabilities thanks to someone's cunning plan.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: I see conversation about ships from different eras, and I wonder how that would even work out. The Enterprise-E would completely out-class the Enterprise-D, nevermind trying to compare it to the OG Enterprise.
Points?
I mean, at the end of the day its a game, not a simulation. In the same way that a single space marine on tabletop can't take on 500 points of *insert non-power armored enemy here* on its own as portrayed in the fluff, the fact that fluffwise the Enterprise E would dominate any of its predecessors in an extremely one-sided manner is similarly irrelevant.
lurch wrote: I wonder just how much this will be like armada rules wise as it's on one of my least favorite space rule sets
chaos0xomega wrote: ~150 usd seems likely to indicate the price points will be more expensive than Armada
The game never got a chance to live.
In a post inflationary environment, I think this is the new normal, unfortunately. Its crazy, because GW is increasingly looking affordable by comparison, but Shatterpoint was around the same price point and has apparently done well.
Hmm, I watched the video linked above for the game play. There are a ton of moving parts (stat/ability-wise), I think how complex this game is will be off-putting.
The good thing is it looks like it's more than just line both sides up and blow each out of the water - a lot of non-combat mission opportunities (in fact in the demo game showed that the first person to open fire *lost* victory points. And not an insignificant amount).
chaos0xomega wrote: I mean, at the end of the day its a game, not a simulation. In the same way that a single space marine on tabletop can't take on 500 points of *insert non-power armored enemy here* on its own as portrayed in the fluff, the fact that fluffwise the Enterprise E would dominate any of its predecessors in an extremely one-sided manner is similarly irrelevant.
I don't think that's really comparable. A single marine can only take on 500 points of non-marines in marine-focused fluff, in a setting where every faction is an unstoppable badass in their own fluff. In neutral stories ~500 points of marines is a fair fight for ~500 points of non-marines and in any other faction's fluff one of their soldiers is equal to 500 points of marines.
The same is not true in Star Trek, where technology is rapidly advancing and everyone's stuff from older eras is cannon fodder at best against modern ships. It's not a question of who is the protagonist of a given story, it's that the entire setting has moved on and cross-era fights are the equivalent of taking an 18th century ship of the line against an Iowa class battleship.
F was the Odyssey-class vessel that was under the command of Fleet Admiral Shelby while the G was Constitution III-class vessel under the command of Captain Seven of Nine.
IIRC, G is the renamed USS Titan.
In a post inflationary environment
I don't think "post" is a word that I would include there...
MajorWesJanson wrote: The same Star Trek that was using 80 year Miranda and Excelsior class ships alongside the Akira and Defiant during the dominion war?
Weren't they acknowledged in-universe to be cannon fodder thrown into the fight in an act of desperation because the Federation was running out of ships?
MajorWesJanson wrote: The same Star Trek that was using 80 year Miranda and Excelsior class ships alongside the Akira and Defiant during the dominion war?
Weren't they acknowledged in-universe to be cannon fodder thrown into the fight in an act of desperation because the Federation was running out of ships?
Maybe for fleet actions. They were still in general use though, even appearing in the fleet in the Voyager finale.
The fact the ships are in scale is a huge win and selling point here. I hope they keep at least a reasonable sense of that scale. Attack wing was meant to have three different sizes, but some ships were flat out wrong such as tiny original enterprise and huge birds of prey.
Interested to see how the combat feels, attack wing being based on x-wing (which in turn was a reskin of wings of war) was far to dog fighty which doesn't suit most of what we see in trek.
Those ships look great and I like the scale of the game.. but surely this is all moot because.. Wizkids?
As an early adopter of X-Wing 1.0, I had plenty of time to get used to FFG's distribution problems whereby popular ships would be out of stock for months at a time, with no sign of a reprint on FFG's schedule.. but that was nothing compared to Attack Wing! As someone who played HotAC and jumped ship in anticipation of Alliance, I was saddened by the lack of support and availability for that 'new' product and amazed to see how many Attack Wing ships are just not available anymore.. including ships you can use in the Alliance campaign. If you wanted to play Attack Wing proper? Forget about it unless you can buy a fleet off eBay.
So while the Wizkids D&D line is doing alright, I can't help but think it is taking up most of their manufacturing slots at the factory and their other ranges have had to fight for scraps. Adding another game into the mix - and a premium one at that? Yikes! I'm sure US distributors will get a 100 copies to share between them in the summer of 2024 and the UK / EU will get 50 copies in early 2025.. with a reprint scheduled some time for 2026
MajorWesJanson wrote: The same Star Trek that was using 80 year Miranda and Excelsior class ships alongside the Akira and Defiant during the dominion war?
Weren't they acknowledged in-universe to be cannon fodder thrown into the fight in an act of desperation because the Federation was running out of ships?
In more recent trek, without giving away too much, retrofitting with advanced drones to replace human crew and adding especially advanced AI piloting bridged the gap.
Offensive and defensive capabilities are the main sticking point though, Voyager finale is probably the best example of how much those change over time (although it's possible that future voyager tech was only the result of contact with species which were only met on the slow route back home, representing a much larger jump in tech levels).
I try not to think about problematic stuff introduced in Discovery and hope the whole thing gets alternate timeline retconned at some point.
I started watching the demo video yesterday but got tired and went to bed. I'm not one for watching videos, much prefer to read my content, etc.
I am... anxious? to see and learn more. The game looks like its potentially extremely fiddly and complex, moreso than Armada even. The flip side of that is that in many ways this is the game I've been searching/hoping for for a long time now (though I tend to prefer fleet scale to just a handful of ships, but I'm probably not going to get the level of detail shown here in a fleet scale game).
Well the Dominion War is a good setting (relative to any others you can find in Star Trek) since it features a lot of different factions who frequently switch sides. But man are products like this too expensive. $150 for the models in the picture is just a lot of money. Not $50 for 7 kobolds bad, but not so far off that it seems viable at market.
One of the reasons I think SW Armada failed to last a long time was that the price was just too much for most people, especially at FFG introduced Minimum Advertised Pricing shortly after it came out. I probably spent $300 on Armada wave one stuff, but part of that was two core sets for $100 total because Amazon sold everything FFG made at 50% off all the time. If this Star Trek starter was $80 on Amazon all the time, it would sell pretty well. But it won't be so it'll struggle from release.
Siygess wrote: Those ships look great and I like the scale of the game.. but surely this is all moot because.. Wizkids?
As an early adopter of X-Wing 1.0, I had plenty of time to get used to FFG's distribution problems whereby popular ships would be out of stock for months at a time, with no sign of a reprint on FFG's schedule.. but that was nothing compared to Attack Wing! As someone who played HotAC and jumped ship in anticipation of Alliance, I was saddened by the lack of support and availability for that 'new' product and amazed to see how many Attack Wing ships are just not available anymore.. including ships you can use in the Alliance campaign. If you wanted to play Attack Wing proper? Forget about it unless you can buy a fleet off eBay.
So while the Wizkids D&D line is doing alright, I can't help but think it is taking up most of their manufacturing slots at the factory and their other ranges have had to fight for scraps. Adding another game into the mix - and a premium one at that? Yikes! I'm sure US distributors will get a 100 copies to share between them in the summer of 2024 and the UK / EU will get 50 copies in early 2025.. with a reprint scheduled some time for 2026
Wizkid games have always been pump n' dump, unfortunately. From the experience I've had with their past products they put a lot of stuff onto the market very quickly, but the rules tend to suffer for lack of quality control/playtesting. When they finally fix it with a version 2.0 in a year or two, with the exception of Heroclix, the line always seems to die. I had not experienced any problem getting Star Trek attack wing product with the exception of the Reliant, which I just recently found out I never got a copy of it (it was in wave 1 or 2). I'm hoping that a lot more than their usual effort has gone into this system's design - though the playthrough video I found hard to watch because the ship sheet is sooo busy (3 dials of information + cards + a packed ship sheet to boot - just for a tiny ship like the Defiant?)
Don't get me wrong, I'm still buying this for the great looking ships - but the game portion looks hideously complex.
What I can say, based on what was going on @Wizkids when my partner left, is that the company reorganized a little bit in a manner that may make the mechanical issues (quality control/playtesting) less of an issue. They now have a dedicated miniatures gaming team (well, a miniatures game person at least, I believe he has a dedicated team under him but I'm not 100% on that) led by an industry vet.
Whether or not the overall business practices associated with their tendency to operate in a "pump and dump" manner changes, I cannot say, but I would hope having a dedicated miniature gaming director would be able to influence the business policy decisions to get timely restocks, though there may be some teething issues.
I hope it's not too fiddly. I really want a fleet sized game and armada isn't quite there. Granted that it's the same designer I'm probably SOL but I'd really love a good fleet sized game for either star wars, star trek, or bloody 40k.
rybackstun wrote: Wizkids manages two of the more popular collectable miniature ranges in the world: D&D and Heroclix.
I have second hand information that the design team has done a lot better for their most recent games than prior to the new team coming in.
Product availability has not really been an issue for a long time with WK AFAIK.
Does that mean they are infallible? No. But a lot of the previous concerns just aren't there any more.
Do with this info what you will
I'd say product availabity is very different between USA and rest of the world. Things appear about half a year later and when they do you better get them fast before they're gone.
Rules themselves are good though. Which is ironic, Attack Wing had a really strong start with Events and massive support everywhere but the cards in new packs where all over the place. Since 2nd Edition every pack is spot on but you can hardly get it and they're usually released much later than planned.
It's nice to see new ship models and not just the 18th existing model metallic clix/STAW repaint release in a row. I'll have to watch the video to see the mechanics so don't have any opinion on that.
Hulksmash wrote: I hope it's not too fiddly. I really want a fleet sized game and armada isn't quite there. Granted that it's the same designer I'm probably SOL but I'd really love a good fleet sized game for either star wars, star trek, or bloody 40k.
Could be the designer has taken the lessons of Armada, so arguably this will be the formula perfected?
So a fleet battle based game with individual character/bridge positions? I understand why they're doing that give the character based scifi drama that classic trek was but I'm not confident it's a good idea for that scale tabletop game.
Hulksmash wrote: I hope it's not too fiddly. I really want a fleet sized game and armada isn't quite there. Granted that it's the same designer I'm probably SOL but I'd really love a good fleet sized game for either star wars, star trek, or bloody 40k.
Could be the designer has taken the lessons of Armada, so arguably this will be the formula perfected?
It definitely does not appear to be a fleet sized game, unless it comes with some really clever squadroning rules. This really looks like another Armada-esque "naval skirmish" style game.
which with the galaxy class being 641 meters long, puts the scale for it around 1:4200
this is close enough to the Star Fleet Battles Starline 2400 scale of 1:3788, and the FASA STCS miniatures scale of 1:3900 that you could probably mix and match and not look too odd. especially if they are using a sliding scale to some degree.
I've seen nobody mention it, but the Enterprise D is a strange choice for a Dominion War game, considering it was destroyed before the war really started. It would make more sense for that galaxy class to be the Venture. If they wanted to add an Enterprise, the E would have been the better choice, as it was around at the time.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I've seen nobody mention it, but the Enterprise D is a strange choice for a Dominion War game, considering it was destroyed before the war really started. It would make more sense for that galaxy class to be the Venture. If they wanted to add an Enterprise, the E would have been the better choice, as it was around at the time.
I like the theory that movie TNG is actually a parallel universe where Picard is a reckless, emotional, psychopathic action hero, as referenced in the episode Parallels. This could explain some of the discrepancies in the timeline of the game.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I've seen nobody mention it, but the Enterprise D is a strange choice for a Dominion War game, considering it was destroyed before the war really started. It would make more sense for that galaxy class to be the Venture. If they wanted to add an Enterprise, the E would have been the better choice, as it was around at the time.
have we actually had confirmation it is the Ent D or is it possible who ever reporting it is just using that as short hand?
I would assume that the game will include "title cards" or whatever ala Armada. I.E. "this 5 point upgrade makes your galaxy class into the USS Enterprise, which has this extra special ability"
On the con example video I saw the Defiant did have its name written on the ship model in the standard style, with the registry numbers too. For the first second I thought that was kind of limiting, but really they just want to sell people expensive models of the ships, and people mostly will want to buy expensive models of the ships. People will want to buy an Enterprise D, so why mess that up. Only saw the Defiant in the video though for anyone wondering about confirmation.
frankelee wrote: On the con example video I saw the Defiant did have its name written on the ship model in the standard style, with the registry numbers too. For the first second I thought that was kind of limiting, but really they just want to sell people expensive models of the ships, and people mostly will want to buy expensive models of the ships. People will want to buy an Enterprise D, so why mess that up. Only saw the Defiant in the video though for anyone wondering about confirmation.
I believe ChaosXomega has the right of it since that's how Armada did it with both named and unnamed version cards in sets like the Chimera and Home One.
which with the galaxy class being 641 meters long, puts the scale for it around 1:4200
this is close enough to the Star Fleet Battles Starline 2400 scale of 1:3788, and the FASA STCS miniatures scale of 1:3900 that you could probably mix and match and not look too odd. especially if they are using a sliding scale to some degree.
That’s great! I’m always looking for opportunities to expand my Starfleet.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I've seen nobody mention it, but the Enterprise D is a strange choice for a Dominion War game, considering it was destroyed before the war really started. It would make more sense for that galaxy class to be the Venture. If they wanted to add an Enterprise, the E would have been the better choice, as it was around at the time.
I suspect they're going the nostalgia angle there to push sales, as the generation of trekkies who grew up with TNG are going to be the biggest potential customer pool here, and a lot of them for some inexplicable reason love the Enterprise D.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: I've seen nobody mention it, but the Enterprise D is a strange choice for a Dominion War game, considering it was destroyed before the war really started. It would make more sense for that galaxy class to be the Venture. If they wanted to add an Enterprise, the E would have been the better choice, as it was around at the time.
I suspect they're going the nostalgia angle there to push sales, as the generation of trekkies who grew up with TNG are going to be the biggest potential customer pool here, and a lot of them for some inexplicable reason love the Enterprise D.
I mean, I love the D too, but that's why I'm like: Nah, she never met the Jem'Hadar, what's this all about?
warboss wrote: Just squint and pretend it's the USS Odyssey instead. And don't roll all 1's like Captain Keogh.
Or any of the other Galaxy Class that participated in taking back the station.
i counted at least 4 in the fleet in Operation Return. possibly more were present but given the class was never one one built in large numbers, i doubt he had much more.
Wow, that looks terrible, ticks nearly every box of things I do not like in wargaming whilst also being massively (needlessly?) complicated. Amazed this was written by Max Brooke and Alex Davey, normally a huge fan of their work.
Oh my. Just looking at the Defiant ship display, I feel like a boomer trying to read a sugar obsessed tween's overly emoji'ed text message trying to communicate something urgent. I think I may have more luck deciphering actual Klingon UI's from the shows.
Star Wars Armada will draw obvious comparisons, but while that game's rules seem weird at a glance, they quickly seem pretty clear... This? This book feels impenetrable.
Yea that looks a little insane. I recently played Snapship Tactics and I suspect this has some similar logic with different parts of the ship giving access to different actions but the level of micromanagement is ridiculous and the layout is kinda illegible because they're trying to cram a whole small board game's worth of mechanics onto each card. I'm guessing this is an engine builder game in disguise where really specific combinations of characters and stations wombo combo into insane payouts but for anyone who hasn't studied their build for hours it's just going to be Analysis Paralysis Simulator 2400
There are markers on the table showing the boundaries of the system... But also markers on the ships showing whether they are in the system. Can you not tell that by just looking at whether or not the ship is in the system?
I tried reading the rest, and have up. Too many symbols instead of words, and waaay too much RPG detail for a ship battle.
I keep looking at this and the Acheron Falls game for Infonity and thinking both designers were attempting to achieve the same thing, but with varying levels of success.
I hate to keep bringing it up, but for my group, SW Armada really is the complexity ceiling. There are already so many places to customize and upgrade a ship that it can become overwhelming to new players, but eventually becomes a Goldilocks-esque "Just right".
Adding entire layers of further complexity just sounds like a tedious chore.
It feels like they were trying to create so many layers and subgames and content and then got bogged down with each being deep and full of meaningful mechanics that when you slam it all together its just a huge bundle of mechanics to work with.
The kind of game that honestly would likely work better as a computer game with the computer able to calculate and do the "mechanical" thinking of how to run the game for the players
Yeah, as someone who has spent probably about 20 years now attempting to design a really comprehensive and deep naval wargame... this strikes me as something that was probably in need of an editor. It looks like what would happen if one of my draft designs was published without first trimming out some of the unnecessary extras. I'm sure theres an engaging, deep, fun, easy to learn difficult to master game in there somewhere, I'm just not sure if its the game they are releasing.
Im also not sure what this game is trying to be. It seems very much like its trying to be narratively focused and make you play out a situation like what you might see in an episode of the show, instead of just being a spaceship battler, and I think thats probably where the game gets complex because its including a lot of rules involving what are basically used for the PVE/scenario aspects of the game that wouldnt need to be there otherwise if it just stayed focused on space combat.
I'd like to give the game a chance, maybe it will prove me wrong, but the starter doesn't appeal to me. I think my commitment is going to depend on what the follow-on expansions end up looking like. Give me a romulan starter with a D'deridex supprted by a couple warbirds of birds of prey and ill jump in and give it a whirl. Same if they release a Klingon starter with some birds of prey in it.
Another brand game with intentionnally bloated proprietary game material (so that you're forced to buy their products to play and can't simply use 3D printed miniatures from elsewhere), that thinks its complicated rules will appeal to the competitive crowd and which support will drop without warning way too soon.
Invest in it in full knowledge of that, but don't expect something that will be treated like a standard wargame on long term.
Miniatures would be great without these bases that will look awful on any space battlefield, IMHO.
To anyone wanting to play Trek I wholeheartedly recommend Fleet Captains, also by Wizkids, which is a brilliantly slick trek episode generator in a board game box.
Attack Wing is also still great and gets support every now and then. And if you're into the Dominion War Alliance is a really good STAW campaign, I only played it Solo and it's still a blast.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Attack Wing is also still great and gets support every now and then. And if you're into the Dominion War Alliance is a really good STAW campaign, I only played it Solo and it's still a blast.
Can one even still get into this game? I've always heard the majority of its product has been out of print for literally years now.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Attack Wing is also still great and gets support every now and then. And if you're into the Dominion War Alliance is a really good STAW campaign, I only played it Solo and it's still a blast.
Can one even still get into this game? I've always heard the majority of its product has been out of print for literally years now.
I want to say most things since 2nd edition are more or less easily available. Alliance is standalone and supported, parts 2 and 3 just arrived in europe and should be easy to get in the US.
Edit: overall wizkids has a quite terrible practice of doing print runs and when something is sold out it might get a reprint or it just doesn't.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Attack Wing is also still great and gets support every now and then. And if you're into the Dominion War Alliance is a really good STAW campaign, I only played it Solo and it's still a blast.
Can one even still get into this game? I've always heard the majority of its product has been out of print for literally years now.
I want to say most things since 2nd edition are more or less easily available. Alliance is standalone and supported, parts 2 and 3 just arrived in europe and should be easy to get in the US.
Edit: overall wizkids has a quite terrible practice of doing print runs and when something is sold out it might get a reprint or it just doesn't.
Yeah, attack wing 2.0 is available and covers almost all the original models, and even the older stuff isn't too bad pricewise. As stated above though, WK doesn't tend to hang on any one property (other than Heroclix) for too long, and with them not having released any *new* models, just reprinting the existing ones - I don't think it's going to be an evergreen product for them.
The Alliance game lock, stock & barrel uses the same AI system that an individual created for Star Wars X-Wing. It would be very easy to make/modify new AI for other vessels so you could create a vs. Klingon campaign or vs. Romulan, Borg or any other opponent you wanted really. The big advantage is the prebuilt missions and AI cards for Alliance - but again, with a little experience under you belt it wouldn't be difficult at all to start coming up with your own challenges and whatnot.
Back on Into The Unknown, I'm hoping we will shortly see some Picard era ships being added in. If it's just the classic TNG era, I might just pass on this and go push around my Eaglemoss ships in some homebrew I cook up that's less complicated than what they're trying to push.
I'm sure it probably makes a little bit more sense if you have the components in front of you rather than just reading a bunch of abstract concepts, but my God does this feel overly complicated. Even just the rules for turning a ship seem to go out of their way to be impenetrable. I like the idea of having more narrative elements involved in the scenarios but everything seems to be so mechanics-heavy it rapidly becomes a word salad that leaves me more confused with each new concept that's introduced. I think it really needs to decided what it wants to be, because trying to cram all of the major elements of an episode of ST into one game looks like it's a recipe for disaster.
You can tell it's far too complex just be looking at the ship cards. Ignoring the stupid number of different "dials" and stat blocks placed seemingly at random for a moment, there are some lines that lead from an officer's station to an ability not next to that station because there just isn't enough room to fit it in that location. I feel like two cards per ship would have been better - one with the various stats and another showing the actions next to the appropriate officer.
With all the things going on and being tracked on a single ship, I imagine it's a nightmare to run TWO ships at a time and the thought of running even more than that makes my brain melt.
Ahtman wrote:To find out you need to go to binder 2 and read 10.4.16b.
chaos0xomega wrote:It does kinda give off "what if I made SFB following modern game design principles" type vibes.
Voss wrote:I didn't know I could be this horrified. Thanks.
Lol, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. It's not that I'm opposed to either complicated rules or tokenapalooza (I played both FASA trek and Xwing) but this is the exact point in the PDF where they lost me. Eight different symbols/tokens (technically nine but I'm counting the mirror image of one as the same) in one small section of the small Federation ship's control panel (Defiant) governing only one part (admittedly important) of the ship's activation... and that's not including the actual English words that are also obviously rules.
and I'm sure that once you're familiar with how the game plays that symbol salad has meaning, but for a new player thats super intimidating and a bit of a learning curve. When you're asking a player to use symbols instead of natural language, well... you're asking them to learn a new language, and that has mental overhead and can be difficult. This is one thing that GW generally does well in terms of using simple terminology and numbers to communicate rules and stats. Symbols have their place and can be a powerful tool when used correctly, but I think this is a bit too much.
chaos0xomega wrote: This is one thing that GW generally does well in terms of using simple terminology and numbers to communicate rules and stats. Symbols have their place and can be a powerful tool when used correctly, but I think this is a bit too much.
Other than Kill Team, which has much the same problem IMO.
And yeah, I was really interested in this game until I read the rulebook, but I can't fathom I'd ever be able to bring a casual new person in.
I dont think Kill Team is that bad, honestly the biggest problem is that the symbols are unintuitive (they should have matched the # in inches to the number of sides on the polygons they used, though apparenlty the symbols were an afterthought intended for color blindness and the color is the primary factor that they used during playtesting, but whatever), but otherwise the game flows smoothly and doesn't require a semester of foreign language studies to wrap ones head around.
But yeah, I dont know that theres a way to fix the rulebook to make it more approachable. As you said I doubt I'd be able to get a casual to play this, I don't even think I'd be able to get myself to play this. The rulebook gives me anxiety, I get lost trying to read it, after a couple pages at a time I'm overwhelmed and just have to close it. I understand top level what the game wants you to do, I just don't know that I could ever actually navigate playing it, just seems like too many moving (in some cases literally) parts for me to hold together.
The symbols make it look like an awful awful awful system at first glance, but even knowing nothing about this ruleset the weapons chart almost makes complete sense after looking at it for a minute.
It's a crappy resolution image, but those black symbols after the weapons are obviously firing arcs, anybody used to space combat games should recognize those at a glance.
Skimming the rulebook, it does look dense, but not much moreso than a lot of the euro games my group is into. This feels like an Ark Nova take on Federation Commander. Has a nice glossary of icons at the back of the book, I can see my group likeing this game.
You're right, I think. It does become intuitive once you take some time to parse it. I think theres probably a better way to present the info though, that presentation of the weapon block is kind of dense, some formatting into a proper "weapon profile" in place of just presenting a mashup of symbols, numbers, and words in basically a list format is not helping.
chaos0xomega wrote: This is one thing that GW generally does well in terms of using simple terminology and numbers to communicate rules and stats. Symbols have their place and can be a powerful tool when used correctly, but I think this is a bit too much.
Other than Kill Team, which has much the same problem IMO.
And yeah, I was really interested in this game until I read the rulebook, but I can't fathom I'd ever be able to bring a casual new person in.
And Warcry and to a lesser extent Underworlds - the symbols thing puts me off - not how my brain works.
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