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After a flopped Kickstarter earlier in the year, the game that shares no rules with, no background from, and isn’t even really made by FASA, is back, baby!!! Now you too can get your copy of Interceptor In Name Only by backing this Kickstarter!! The Renegade Legion games by the real FASA were generally pretty good games, but were overshadowed by Battletech. This sad use of the name is pretty weak for a game that shares absolutely nothing else with its predecessor. But hey, they greatly lowered the initial funding requirement, so they can say they funded day 1 Maybe it’s even a decent space combat game, although it looks super bland and boring. Whatever it is, it ain’t Interceptor.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fasagames/interceptor-ii

Yeah, no spiculum, no tormenta, no fluttering petal, no sale.

It really bothers me that the cover art looks like there were 2-3 different artists drawing the people on it. None in the same style.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Yeah, no spiculum, no tormenta, no fluttering petal, no sale.

QFT. This is Interceptor in name only. Doesn't share the original setting, doesn't look like it has the same core mechanics, none of the original ship designs. It feels like they chose "Interceptor" just to tap into the nostalgia in hopes for sales. Pass.

Wow the main dude looks soooo Sad :(

I prefered Centurion as there is cover.

Looks like some nice models

Holy damn that cover art.
It looks like a bad Photoshop but it's a drawing

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It really bothers me that the cover art looks like there were 2-3 different artists drawing the people on it. None in the same style.

It's ... It's beautiful ? In an awful way ? Like a perfect storm of bad. But I can't stop looking at it...

Pretty sure the main dude and the dude to the right are hand drawn, and then the other 4 are photographs run through a filter.

That's what I was thinking. Also pretty sure they're just taken from the card art. Think they'd then grab things that looked similar, but they probably went for composition instead.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It really bothers me that the cover art looks like there were 2-3 different artists drawing the people on it. None in the same style.

Spoiler:

Oh my... that's bad. It's looks like cut and paste fanart from tumblr or deviantart. I remember the old game but I was personally more into the old FASAtrek STSCS game instead.

I like the lady on the t-shirt

WTF? This looks like something from one of those games that uses cardboard chits as units instead of models.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/798859.page#11142623

Discussion on the previously attempted Kickstarter from July of this year.

 Breotan wrote:
WTF? This looks like something from one of those games that uses cardboard chits as units instead of models.

Isn't that every FASA game?

That cover art is wild.

That's a bit too dense, even for FASA at its worst. And at least they had the excuse of 80s game design being all over the place as people tried to figure out what worked (and what didn't).

That just looks nightmarish.

Having lived through the 80s and 90s as a gamer, taste in games was very different then. What would be considered extremely ‘dense’ games today, were the norm in many cases then. Stuff like Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars, Battletech, Advanced Squad Leader…all with tons of rules, and very ‘crunchy’. That was just the style then. Much less so today, but some of these games linger on. Just nowhere near the mainstream of gaming as they once were.

I know first year undergrad art students who would do a considerably better job than whoever put that cover together.

I'm a small press owner myself. I get that it's tempting to save money wherever you can. But you kind of have two options with cover art: either you bribe a talented friend for it with whisky* or shares in the company**, or you just bite the bullet and pay for it.

*I have only done this once and it was for a piece he'd already released online as part of his sketch blog

**Have done this twice and it's great

 Breotan wrote:
WTF? This looks like something from one of those games that uses cardboard chits as units instead of models.

That's a crazy move template, but it's actually pretty simple too.

Note that going straight forward is #F, where # is the number of hexes. As you go to the left, it's #P# (P=Port), and as you go right it's #S# (S=Starboard). So for 3P1, its a move that's 3 port, 1 forward.

Wait, that's a movement chart?

I thought they were damage codes (similar to 1st edition Shadowrun with target number/severity/staging (number of successes required to modify the severity), based on the distance of the firing ship, modified by the numbers in the lower left based on the target's orientation. Granted I totally ignored the S and P difference, but... it got rather buried by all the info.

Though I don't know what the A-F numbers would be(around the hexes) in either case.

I'm also not sure your explanation makes sense for lateral moves. Going 1 space left is either 1P2 OR 1P1 depending on if you go forward or back, and 2 spaces is 2P1 despite not going forward at all. And the space below that is 2P0, while the space forward right of that is 1P1, which is less of a move 'vertically.' All the way out to 8P0 is on the same line as 3P3, but apparently involves no movement 'forward' at all, despite clearly being the same distance forward.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It really bothers me that the cover art looks like there were 2-3 different artists drawing the people on it. None in the same style.

Is that Riker on the cover?!

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It really bothers me that the cover art looks like there were 2-3 different artists drawing the people on it. None in the same style.

Holy crap, that’s bizarre.

It would be hilarious if different art styles represented different factions, like of the Diego Riverans declared war on the Claude Monetians.

I will pass on this one.

Pax Terra or nothing.

Weird, this is clearly an 80s product but it's on Kickstarter?

Voss wrote:
Wait, that's a movement chart?

I thought they were damage codes (similar to 1st edition Shadowrun with target number/severity/staging (number of successes required to modify the severity), based on the distance of the firing ship, modified by the numbers in the lower left based on the target's orientation. Granted I totally ignored the S and P difference, but... it got rather buried by all the info.

Though I don't know what the A-F numbers would be(around the hexes) in either case.

I'm also not sure your explanation makes sense for lateral moves. Going 1 space left is either 1P2 OR 1P1 depending on if you go forward or back, and 2 spaces is 2P1 despite not going forward at all. And the space below that is 2P0, while the space forward right of that is 1P1, which is less of a move 'vertically.' All the way out to 8P0 is on the same line as 3P3, but apparently involves no movement 'forward' at all, despite clearly being the same distance forward.

The Kickstarter page has a video tutorial explaining how it works:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fasagames/interceptor-ii

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I know first year undergrad art students who would do a considerably better job than whoever put that cover together.

I'm a small press owner myself. I get that it's tempting to save money wherever you can. But you kind of have two options with cover art: either you bribe a talented friend for it with whisky* or shares in the company**, or you just bite the bullet and pay for it.

*I have only done this once and it was for a piece he'd already released online as part of his sketch blog

**Have done this twice and it's great

Yup. good art is expensive. On the other hand, good art is what people buy; there's all manner of janky shovelware being sold through kickstarter where the producers made the right choice and prioritized the art and models rather than the game-play.

OK, let's play 'name the actor that could have posed for the drawing' game.

The girl on the top right: Lindsey Lohan

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I know first year undergrad art students who would do a considerably better job than whoever put that cover together.

I'm a small press owner myself. I get that it's tempting to save money wherever you can. But you kind of have two options with cover art: either you bribe a talented friend for it with whisky* or shares in the company**, or you just bite the bullet and pay for it.

*I have only done this once and it was for a piece he'd already released online as part of his sketch blog

**Have done this twice and it's great

Yup. good art is expensive. On the other hand, good art is what people buy; there's all manner of janky shovelware being sold through kickstarter where the producers made the right choice and prioritized the art and models rather than the game-play.

To be fair I think all the portraits on the cover are well done but the hand drawn figures look very out of place with the photos+filter portraits and potentially a second different hand drawn style in flower girl. It's just a really bad composition. But as some said, it's very 80s and maybe it's all on purpose? Including the Aether Stream (which is the subtitle) being in the bottom corner.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I know first year undergrad art students who would do a considerably better job than whoever put that cover together.

I'm a small press owner myself. I get that it's tempting to save money wherever you can. But you kind of have two options with cover art: either you bribe a talented friend for it with whisky* or shares in the company**, or you just bite the bullet and pay for it.

*I have only done this once and it was for a piece he'd already released online as part of his sketch blog

**Have done this twice and it's great

Yup. good art is expensive. On the other hand, good art is what people buy; there's all manner of janky shovelware being sold through kickstarter where the producers made the right choice and prioritized the art and models rather than the game-play.

To be fair I think all the portraits on the cover are very well done but the hand drawn figures look very out of place with the photos+filter portraits and potentially a second different hand drawn style in flower girl. It's just a really bad composition. But as some said, it's very 80s and maybe it's all on purpose? Including the Aether Stream (which is the subtitle) being in the bottom corner.

To me it looks like someone is trying to re-use existing art files to create a new composition. I confess I've done similar.

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
I know first year undergrad art students who would do a considerably better job than whoever put that cover together.

I'm a small press owner myself. I get that it's tempting to save money wherever you can. But you kind of have two options with cover art: either you bribe a talented friend for it with whisky* or shares in the company**, or you just bite the bullet and pay for it.

*I have only done this once and it was for a piece he'd already released online as part of his sketch blog

**Have done this twice and it's great

Yup. good art is expensive. On the other hand, good art is what people buy; there's all manner of janky shovelware being sold through kickstarter where the producers made the right choice and prioritized the art and models rather than the game-play.

To be fair I think all the portraits on the cover are very well done but the hand drawn figures look very out of place with the photos+filter portraits and potentially a second different hand drawn style in flower girl. It's just a really bad composition. But as some said, it's very 80s and maybe it's all on purpose? Including the Aether Stream (which is the subtitle) being in the bottom corner.

To me it looks like someone is trying to re-use existing art files to create a new composition. I confess I've done similar.

Ya. As I mentioned the other day it just looks like they took art from the pilot cards the game uses and placed some on the cover.

 Ghaz wrote:

Voss wrote:
Wait, that's a movement chart?

I thought they were damage codes (similar to 1st edition Shadowrun with target number/severity/staging (number of successes required to modify the severity), based on the distance of the firing ship, modified by the numbers in the lower left based on the target's orientation. Granted I totally ignored the S and P difference, but... it got rather buried by all the info.

Though I don't know what the A-F numbers would be(around the hexes) in either case.

I'm also not sure your explanation makes sense for lateral moves. Going 1 space left is either 1P2 OR 1P1 depending on if you go forward or back, and 2 spaces is 2P1 despite not going forward at all. And the space below that is 2P0, while the space forward right of that is 1P1, which is less of a move 'vertically.' All the way out to 8P0 is on the same line as 3P3, but apparently involves no movement 'forward' at all, despite clearly being the same distance forward.

The Kickstarter page has a video tutorial explaining how it works:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fasagames/interceptor-ii

OMG, yuck. I watched the video full screen and listened to how to do the move about three times and my eyes glazed over. It wouldn't have been so bad if they put the manuevering fighter in line with the template and hightlighted the path so you could see how the move was made, then ZOOMED in on the destination hex on the template so you could understand the BS they were spouting (...and not knock the miniatures about when doing the move!). Very arcane, very unprofessional. Any interest I did have went out the window with trying to decipher that template via their explanation.