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It seemingly started with Star Wars Armada being released this year (largely due to the port strike in the US at least) but previewed last year (see the Xwing/Armada subforum). News of Dropzone Commander's starship game came out last year but more concrete news is coming out from Salute going on right now.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/627350.page

Halo was also announced 2 months ago as getting a space combat game by Spartan as well.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/644945.page

Battlestar Galactica seems to be getting in on the trend also with the first pics coming out from Salute. Hopefully this isn't just a club effort but rather a full game (and judging from the names attached like GZG/Full thrust I think it is).

http://www.beastsofwar.com/liveblogentry/battlestar-galactica-blood-steel-pops-up/


Is it just me or is this a trend now? I felt like for the longest time there weren't many new entries in this genre. For the decade prior, you got Firestorm Armada (both versions) and Star Trek clix (both versions) and that's about it to my knowledge. Prior to that (and going back 10-20 years), you had Full Thrust and BFG as the big entries along with a new B5 game every 2-3 years. I don't think I've seen so many completely new games come out in the genre in such a short time with so many cool minis. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but the DZC minis look the coolest for me. If the "49 minis" in the starter for Halo is true (and not just counting multiple ships per stand like fighters and individuals), that seems like it would be the biggest bang for the buck. Star Wars Armada likely has the biggest following and is largely prepainted (except the fighters) so is probably the one most likely to get adopted by newcomers to the hobby. In any case, it's nice to see a bigger choice in the industry rather than kitbashing old titanium metal walmart ships for tabletop games (which I've done) with old (but good) rules like Full thrust or playing with the huge chunks of resin in Firestorm Armada after the support dries up a year post release as Spartan is (in)famous for.

I'm certainly going the Halo route. Best value in the box (49* ships vs 3 in Armada? How is that even a choice? ), one of my favourite settings, hard plastic minis and the whole presentation so far looks fantastic.

That said, with all these rulesets and minis coming out of the woodwork, perhaps we'll finally get to settle the Enterprise vs Star Destroyer vs Corvette vs Battlestar debate...

* from today's pics, the smallest ships will be multi-based in 2s (Covenant) or 3s (UNSC). They still come as individual components, but function together in game.

 Paradigm wrote:
I'm certainly going the Halo route. Best value in the box (49* ships vs 3 in Armada? How is that even a choice? ), one of my favourite settings, hard plastic minis and the whole presentation so far looks fantastic.

That said, with all these rulesets and minis coming out of the woodwork, perhaps we'll finally get to settle the Enterprise vs Star Destroyer vs Corvette vs Battlestar debate...

* from today's pics, the smallest ships will be multi-based in 2s (Covenant) or 3s (UNSC). They still come as individual components, but function together in game.

While I agree that the Halo box is the best value, there are some caveats to the example. The Armada game has prepainted minis ready to play with only 5 minutes of effort before you start learning the rules... you have to at minimum clip, assemble, and glue the Halo minis and possibly paint them depending on your level of interest in that part of the hobby. As you mentioned, the 49 ships in Halo include the small ships that are more than one per base as the fighters are in Armada but at least they're noticeably larger than the armada fighters (but still from a quick glance smaller than x-wing fighters by far). One of my criticisms of armada is that I don't think it is a particularly good value and that is one of several reasons I've decided to not get into it despite my very early and almost complete interest in X-wing.

I suspect the answer to the "which is best" question will vary from person to person as it should. I really don't know which if any I'll end up choosing as they all have their pluses and minuses. I will say however that those covenant ships in the BOW video look pretty big! I think that I like the actual design though of the DZC ships more though. I can't speak to either rules since I haven't seen a real preview of either.

To be honest, the pre-painted FFG stuff is one of the reasons I have never got into X-wing. I can see the appeal, but as someone who paints more than plays, I feel like I'd be paying for something that actually lessens the value I'd be getting. If I could buy unpainted, unassembled X-wing ships for about 2/3 of the price of the current ones I'd be a lot more interested.

One of the reasons I'm so keen on Halo is that I'm really looking forward to building/painting the fleets. Especially the Covenant, which would be great to try out all kinds of special effects on. The size of the models is also a factor, as I like the idea of having a proper fleet (Armada seems to use fairly few ships) while still having some pretty massive centrepiece vessels. I guess Firestorm offers that as well, but the cost, being resin, is a bit too high for my blood.

I also look forward to using HFB alongside the other Halo games. A battle in 15mm as the UNSC defend their base long enough to launch, an epic clash between the two fleets, finished off with a 28mm skirmish as a Spartan team launches a boarding attack.

Really liking the orbital combat nature of DFC along with its unique ranged combat rules. Pretty sure that one will get my cash!

 Paradigm wrote:
To be honest, the pre-painted FFG stuff is one of the reasons I have never got into X-wing. I can see the appeal, but as someone who paints more than plays, I feel like I'd be paying for something that actually lessens the value I'd be getting. If I could buy unpainted, unassembled X-wing ships for about 2/3 of the price of the current ones I'd be a lot more interested.

I would say you're an example of the different strokes for different folks I posted above. Most newcomers I'd say see the minis being painted as a benefit, especially given all the grey hordes on tabletops across the world that never see a lick of paint. I saw it as a plus since I like the paint jobs they did and I can buy stuff for x-wing without adding anything to my pile of hobby shame to be painted (I try to play only with painted models whenever possible personally). One of the reasons I didn't latch onto Armada is because the fighters weren't painted (in addition to the price point mentioned earlier).


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 Alex C wrote:
Really liking the orbital combat nature of DFZ aling with its unique ranged combat rules. Pretty sure that one will get my cash!

That is an interesting point they mentioned. I'm not into DZC (yet) but if I get into the space game then I probably will start getting into the ground game as well given I'm already interested but not enough to make the plunge.

Yeah, I have nothing against prepainted stuff as a rule, and if it gets people that otherwise wouldn't throwing some dice then great!

I try to never play unpainted stuff even against myself, but to me getting stuff painted to game with is a great motivation! The more stuff to paint, the better, in my eyes.

It appears that the Battlestar Galactica game was a fan creation/mod of the Full Thrust rules from some comments posted over in News and Rumors and not an official licensed game release.

BSG was a fan thing, nothing else. Space combat games have been popping in and out for years now, the only reason anyone is noticing anything this year is because they are bigger name licenses or from better known companies

Courtesy of folks at Salute, we now know the full contents of the Fall of Reach Halo starter:

UNSC:
1 Epoch Class Heavy Cruiser
5 Marathon Class Cruisers
24 Paris Class Frigates (8 stands)

Covenant:
1 ORS Heavy Cruiser
5 CCS Battlecruisers
12 SDV Heavy Corvettes (6 stands)

Not bad, if you ask me, for a starter set.

What's the price?

£80 RRP, so about £65 from discounters. I think the latter works out at about $100-ish?

another one to add to your list

White Dragon Miniatures: Shattered Void

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/646093.page

another space combat games that seems to have been in development for a year or two

Thanks, that one definitely flew under my radar. After rewatching the BOW DZC interview video, I'm even more intrigued by what they're describing. My first viewing was simultaneously while posting here and scouring for more salute info before heading out in the morning. The idea of "smaller" atmospheric craft like the 6ft+ one displayed at Salute making deathstar style attack runs on the planet to drop troops catches my eye especially.

 warboss wrote:
Is it just me or is this a trend now? I felt like for the longest time there weren't many new entries in this genre. For the decade prior, you got Firestorm Armada (both versions) and Star Trek clix (both versions) and that's about it to my knowledge.

iirc, Federation Commander, the off-spring game of the long-lived Starfleet Battles, came out last decade as well.

I'm not into DZC (yet) but if I get into the space game then I probably will start getting into the ground game as well given I'm already interested but not enough to make the plunge.

While DZC has jumped into space, Firestorm Armada has dropped down to the surface with Planetfall. Both DZC and Firestorm are expected to feature rules/guidelines for running space and ground game simultaneously, with the events in the space game influencing what happens on the surface.

I played a game of Full Thrust a few months ago (the ruleset that the BSG participation game was based on) and, it's actually quite similar to the rules for Star Wars: Armada.

Except, Star Wars: Armada is waaayyyyyyyy more refined, coherent, simplified a bit and all round user friendly.

For example, in Full Thrust you had to manually write down your speeds for every ship, updating them every turn. Armada, gives you a speed dial to keep track of them.

Full thrust, turning involved moving half your speed, rotating the ship round clock positions (which you also had to write down), then move a bit. That's without taking account yaw or drift.

The Armada manoeuvre tool takes account of all of that, without having to write anything down.

Damage taking and recording was a massive faff in Full Thrust (including scoring off damage on sheets of paper), and rolling for crits took 5-10 minutes for some of the larger ships as you had to check it for every single system. Armada meanwhile? Damage cards, simples.


However, they should all be able to coexist quite happily. Just like Infinity hasn't invalidated Deadzone which hasn't invalidated 40k.

The 3 main games all have different niches. Ultimately, Armada isn't a Fleet based game, it's a Strike Force game, where you're not going to have more than 6 capital ships at most.

Then you have Halo, which I believe is your typical Deep Space fleet game. Ironically, the biggest competition this is going to have is with Firestorm Armada.

Then you have Dropfleet Commander, which looks like it's going to be a huge curveball and completely different from all the others.

Dropfleet Commander sounds interesting as all hell.

The UCM fleet so far shown looks incredible and has a very distinct visual style.

Being about Stealth, detection ranges, and space-to-ground support as a heavilly objective based game AND being written by Rick Prestley means it's going to have a beast of a ruleset for a traditional style space combat game. Between this and Armada, my Space Combat niche is filled.

Thought it was Andy Chambers doing DFC?

Andy Chambers did the BOW interview on the game.

...Derp. I meant Andy Chambers. Former GW Writer confusion.

Theres also Clockwork Armada:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1108024882/clockwork-armada

I'd love to get into Firestorm Armada but, no one plays it around me and frankly, it is expensive.

Oh how I wish BFG was a thing.

If I do play FA, it will be using Helion ships.

My money is on the Halo ship game. I mean, it has my favorite ship, the Marathon class! (What's not to love?)

I say Forget Firestorm Armada. The same company's making Halo, and they've kinda remade the same game what, like 7 times now? And it's finally getting decent?

They have a horrible habit of dropping support for a game the instant they release the initial waves.

I'm putting my money in Star Wars Armada. FFG's had a great track record with X-Wing, and SWA has a ton of crazy innovations to make it playable and diverse.

We're in for a lot of fun this year in the world of space combat gaming. I just don't know about the wider prospects for most of these games.

Dropfleet:Commander sounds like its got some fantastic ideas that I look forwards to seeing translated into rules, and some fascinating models. Not sure about Hawk Wargames on the whole as I just never see anyone playing their games or stores stocking them, models have also tended towards the ridiculously pricey end from such a small scale so whilst I like the idea it would take a huge push to get me started on that one.

Star Wars:Armada I've already bought into and have already shelved. FFG usual shipping and distribution fails combined with the unholy high cost of the game itself are in danger of causing the game to be stillborn. Its a good game, FFG is full of wonderful ideas but right now the game needs more ships so it can be played "properly" I'm hoping to come back to it when Wave 2 is out but right now I don't know if that will be before Christmas this year. At least I still have X-Wing!

Halo:Fleet Battles is where my money is going next. Spartan Games and their flighty nature does worry me, I won't lie. I just have my hopes tied up in big money/big license means this is their gamble to become a serious competitor in the wargames world. This will be as far as I'm aware the companies first venture into hard plastic which is another point of concern, as most of the companies I've seen try for hard plastic run into major pitfalls along the way. But a big license fleet game in an easy to work with material could be a massive boost to a niche end of the hobby, and I'm really liking what I see of the productions values so far- any hints that other companies can take from FFG on how to make a product feel high quality are well appreciated by me.

While FFG does indeed have chronic supply issues, at least this time for the initial armada roll out they had the port strike to blame. Of course that doesn't excuse the dozens of other times their x-wing stuff has been out of stock for weeks/months over the past few years. I'm most hopeful about the DZC game as Hawk does seem to "get it right" and support their products well regardless of how it has been taken up in my area. I've never seen anyone playing DZC at my store (albeit I've only been there once this year and infrequently last year) but I still itch to try it out. The scope of the halo game (two starting factions, two more problematic factions possible before you start doing splinter forces) as well as the future support by the team at Spartan with the attention span of a terrier in a park infested with squirrels worry me.

I've noticed this trend too. Afraid I've got to add another one! These images below are from Clockwork Armada. I miss BFG too, this began as a spiritual successor to the game, though ended up as something like a mixture of BFG and warmahordes, with a bit of its own stuff thrown in.



I'm wondering if everyone else saw the same thing as me. I love naval wargames, and three years ago I saw a big void in the market. It took a long time as, at first, just a guy with a dream, but now that I'm finally launching, I'm looking at a sea of naval wargames. @.@ Ah well, best of luck to all of us! One can't be upset about such awesome IP rolling out, though for Halo specifically I'm much more interested to see the infantry based game.

Congrats on getting the project to kickstarter! Someone actually beat you to the punch in announcing it a few posts up. I agree that two years ago the market was pretty empty.

I missed that. Thanks for the love Chaos!

Edit: Wait I know that handle. We met at Templecon! Way to keep the faith

 David Clarke wrote:
We're in for a lot of fun this year in the world of space combat gaming. I just don't know about the wider prospects for most of these games.

Dropfleet:Commander sounds like its got some fantastic ideas that I look forwards to seeing translated into rules, and some fascinating models. Not sure about Hawk Wargames on the whole as I just never see anyone playing their games or stores stocking them, models have also tended towards the ridiculously pricey end from such a small scale so whilst I like the idea it would take a huge push to get me started on that one.

Star Wars:Armada I've already bought into and have already shelved. FFG usual shipping and distribution fails combined with the unholy high cost of the game itself are in danger of causing the game to be stillborn. Its a good game, FFG is full of wonderful ideas but right now the game needs more ships so it can be played "properly" I'm hoping to come back to it when Wave 2 is out but right now I don't know if that will be before Christmas this year. At least I still have X-Wing!

Halo:Fleet Battles is where my money is going next. Spartan Games and their flighty nature does worry me, I won't lie. I just have my hopes tied up in big money/big license means this is their gamble to become a serious competitor in the wargames world. This will be as far as I'm aware the companies first venture into hard plastic which is another point of concern, as most of the companies I've seen try for hard plastic run into major pitfalls along the way. But a big license fleet game in an easy to work with material could be a massive boost to a niche end of the hobby, and I'm really liking what I see of the productions values so far- any hints that other companies can take from FFG on how to make a product feel high quality are well appreciated by me.

I don't know how you could write off a game that's been out a month, has a fantastic core box, and a first wave that's just delayed while shipping... it's from an established, nay, extremely established company. X-Wing's supply issues are for the simple reason of popularity: It's FFG's highest sold game, and things get literally sold out fast. Also, the pre-paint nature of it means that additional print runs are a little slower. I played at a Con just last weekend, and copies were flying off the vendor shelves.

As for Dropfleet, the Hawk guys really do a great job. The minis for Dropzone are expensive because of their insane detail. It's a design choice. I've never seen minis with their level of detail outside of the humanoid Infinity models. Not to mention that game is full of subtle play and careful balance that I'm sure will make it's way into Dropfleet from what's been leaked so far.

As far as Halo, it... looks exactly like Firestorm 2.0, which was a rehash of rules refactored in Dystopian 1.1, which was a refactor of Dystopian 1.0 which was a fixed version of gakky Firestorm 1.0 which was in turn a worse version of Uncharted Seas, which is now utterly extinct. In like, 5 years.
That's what's really put me off about Spartan. Especially as I played every game on that list. Now, they're greatly ignoring Firestorm 2.0, which is actually a solid game, as well as messing up Dystopian 2.0, which is downright worse than Dystopian 1.2 (note the constant reworks). They've screwed up Dystopian Legions and I'm dead sure Firestorm Invasion is going to be dropped within 18 months.
Also, how extensive can a Halo license be, for space battle? Pretty much every concievable ship is in the game already out of this box. At least Star Wars has a boggling large EU to draw from...

Ya know, I don't know if I'd say DzC is balanced, but that's just because I don't find its core mechanics, the way the d6 rolls work, to be balanced. As far as model balance goes, it does seem incredibly balanced. I don't find the core mechanics super deep, but the aesthetic and feeling of moving all your troops in via dropships and jumping around is satisfying enough that I can have fun regardless and relax. That's a first for me in a wargame, honestly.

Oh, one caveat. I have a hatred of Resistance, but maybe UCM in general struggles with them. In particular, those damn biker dudes.