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Periodically I wonder about spaceship miniature games, which ones are currently being supported, which ones have existed or currently exist, things like that. Even though I haven't gotten into a lot of them I am curious about them and it was BFG that actually got me into the hobby and then into 40k and not the other way around. I'm just curious what other peoples thoughts are about the list I have so far, and if there's any that I have missed that would be worth looking into. So here it goes.

Babylon 5: a call to arms.
Battlefleet Gothic
Starfleet Battles & Federation Commander
A call to arms: star fleet
Star Wars: X-Wing
Dropfleet commander
Firestorm Armada
Battletech Aerospace

So I'm wondering, which of these are still possible to get into? That is, find rules, find (original) or make (3d print) miniatures, which have decent communities for finding games with? I know some are dead, and some are still being supported. Are there other games I'm missing that would be active?

My own assessment so far is as such:

Babylon 5, seems hard to get into, miniatures are rare and expensive, rules are rare and expensive, not much of a community for this dead game that was a niche of a niche.

BattleFleet Gothic, dead game, but a strong passionate player base, I've seen an online starter set thing going around as well.

SFB & FC, still alive, rules seem available as book or pdf for sale, its an old game though, and seems like there's a dedicated fan base but its smaller than BFG? Might be hard to find some people to play with, can play with tokens instead of miniatures but there are some out there, currently new production of minis is kinda borked though.

A call to arms starfleet, same boat as SFB& FC but I feel like it was trying to capture people like me but doesn't appeal much to the SFB/FC base? But maybe other people who like BFG hadn't tried this because its star trek?

Star Wars X-Wing, dead?, I know this blasted off big back when it came out, then people moved on to Armada? A bigger/more ships version of the game? I heard the game died recently so I wonder if the community is still around? But maybe its easy to find a lot of second hand minis now and rules?

Dropfleet Commander, brand new edition is out, new minis, seems like its easy to get into, I wonder about the popularity and community though?

Firestorm Armada, dead and neglected, I haven't looked that much into the minis and rules availablity, but I know there's a pdf of rules out there. Community is unknown to me but I did see the pinned post in this forum.

BattleTech Aerospace, I think its possible to still get some minis for this, and the rules are still alive in old and new books, they're just kinda folded/presented along the rest of BattleTech rules and not nessisarily existing as its own game. I wonder about the community, I feel like people who are inclined to play this game might play other games instead because of them being better or more streamlined?

I haven't seen any exclusively space ship stuff being put on table since X-Wing. However, the shops I regularly go to are small, so...

I also say exclusively space ship, as I've used Aerospace fighters in Battletech a fair number of times over the last year or two, mostly in campaign.

BanjoJohn wrote:
BattleTech Aerospace, I think its possible to still get some minis for this, and the rules are still alive in old and new books, they're just kinda folded/presented along the rest of BattleTech rules and not nessisarily existing as its own game. I wonder about the community, I feel like people who are inclined to play this game might play other games instead because of them being better or more streamlined?

The minis are available. Ironwind Metals still make them. Aries Minis and Fortress Minis sells the Fighters, Dropships, and Warships.

Playing them from a void-combat perspective, I don't see a lot of it. The Fighter-level stuff is in Total Warfare, so readily accessible, but the Warship-level stuff is in its own book. We mostly use that book to abstract the Fighters with ground-level play. I think I'm one of 3 outside of local Catalyst Demo Agents that actually has Aerospace units in our group, and maybe only a few more across the metro-area. It's so few that we don't even allow them for our weekly one-off scenarios.

The release of a pair of plastic models has helped get recognition that it exists, but the majority being metal and not directly sold by the main company puts a damper on that. I have seen some good 3D prints of Clan fighters, but nothing for the Inner Sphere but that fancy Mechbuster.

I'm hesitant to look in to doing Aerospace because I found Aerotech and BattleSpace in the 90s to be intimidating in tracking Vectors on the map for void combat, and only "recently" got any fighters at all to even try doing combined arms.

Firestorm Armada - models are tricky to comeby you're basically down to hounding the community groups for most options now. Potential to come back as Warcradle are doing well with Dystopian sea and the new land game and seem to be generally growing in capaity and impact. But still not a game I'd expect to hear anything on for a year or two at the very best.

Battlefleet Gothic - there's a LOT of activity in the 3D print world for this. There's even a periodical put together that goes out semi freaquently.
It's basically on community level life-support right now.

Full Thrust - Might be much more UK based as most of the two firms I'm aware of that really support it use metal models and mostly seem to trade at conventions/fanbase. Niche games but the rules systems are pretty open.

Grand Fleet Admirals - very much 3D print based, but a generally open rules system and I've seen it generally growing in influence. Small still but right now, outside of BFG and Starwars mega-games its possibly the one doing the most active growth right now.

Spaceship miniature games seem to be a fairly niche thing. Dropfleet Commander appears to be well supported for what it is. But I kinda look at it as being an in-atmosphere game focused on planetary objectives, the way it looks on the tabletop gives off a different vibe than BFG.

I still think I like BFG the most out of those listed games, I like the blast markers and focus on ship to ship combat. Some folks might prefer the more objective focus of DFC though.

Some of the resin 3d prints for BFG even rival the original models in regards to detail too.

I find it somewhat odd that BFG hasn't been brought back by GW though. It's been rumored for years and nothing ever comes of it. Maybe they've waited too long, should've brought it back on the heels of those two video game adaptations.

If they did bring it back set in the Horus Heresy I think I might just stick with the community driven remastered ruleset. I'm not interested in a BFG that doesn't have the gothic class cruiser, lunar and so on. It simply wouldn't be the same game to me.

Void Admiral and One Page: Space Fleets are also getting some buzz online.

If you like BFG, you might be interested in them.

 Overread wrote:
Full Thrust - Might be much more UK based as most of the two firms I'm aware of that really support it use metal models and mostly seem to trade at conventions/fanbase. Niche games but the rules systems are pretty open.

And a german community who used it for a Battlestar Galactica mod (using the scale models from Revell and others) also translated the rules, released a starter box set with a "light" version and an online ship builder

While it being a niche game it is a stable for ~30 years now and with the included rules to build own ships it was always the got to system if another one died
like locally after B5 ACTA was gone, people used FT for their models, same with BFG also because it is doing things better than the original rules for those games did

Before the pandemic, X-Wing and Star Wars Armada were the dominant spaceship games in my FLGSes. Since my group are into BFG and DFC, I see a lot of them, though not so much in the wild. Online, 3D printed BFG seems huge, followed by Dropfleet Commander. Star Trek Attack Wing (or whatever it’s called now) seems to be on life support.

I haven’t seen or heard about the other games in years if at all.

We had a few games of OPR Warfleets at the club this year (the gameplay is probably the best of any OPR game and there's a lot of faction variety, but I found it frustratingly difficult to match statlines to BFG models, despite it leaning on GW IP) and we're going to be trying Void Admiral soon (basically a BFG clone with SAGA dashboards)

No idea if they are still alive somewhere, but 2 more to add to you list:

Silent Death: good fighter game with some nice dice mechanics. Scales well with multiple ships and still plays smoothy. Only a handful of larger ships, so if you want fleet battles, look elsewhere. Played a lot of this one, has a mini range (or did)

Starfire. Only played a little of this one, but actually scales up to large fleets well.

We used to use the smaller Babylon 5 fleet Action scale miniatures with the larger B5 Wars game system, but I haven't seen anyone here even mention the game in almost 15 years.

And the Battletech starship game (at least in my experience) as the guy with the most ships on the map wins. 'Cause even little ships can fire capital ship killing nukes.

If you want a game a lot of people play stick with the Xwing games.

I've found all your thoughts and suggestions interesting so far. I wanted to add that I just found out about Battlefront Valkyrie, apparantly a new-ish game with tokens and ships that are intended to be 3d printed as part of a package for the game? Seems like another option to think about, maybe it will catch on but its always hard to tell what gets popular and what doesn't.

The guys who make Fistful of Lead, Wiley Games also have a game called Starfighters I think. A generic space combat game.

If you are not looking into Full Thrust by Ground Zero Games, I think you are doing yourself a disservice. My local gaming group just wrapped up playing a couple months worth of Full Thrust sessions as part of our biweekly miniatures nights…





While the rules have been out of print for years, they are available for free online from Ground Zero games:

http://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html

There is also a pretty comprehensive set of fan generated rules, ships, and Play aids at the Star Rangers website:

http://fullthrust.star-ranger.com/

The rules are miniatures agnostic, although Ground Zero games does make and sell a line of in-universe ships. And there is various player generated content for a number of different science-fiction franchises. You do have to spend a bit of work deciding what optional rules to use or not use (definitely go with Fleet Book 1!) but there is flexibility to go from relatively hard science fiction with vector-based movement to pure science fantasy, and most places in between. About the only thing it doesn’t really support is three-dimensional movement. But that last one is hard and I’ve only seen a couple of tabletop games really even try to pull that off.

We played a lot of Full Thrust back in my college days in the 90s, but it was every bit as much fun as I remember it being back in the day when my current gaming group played it in the mid 2020s.

If anyone is interested, we came up with a system that makes the threshold checks for damage a lot less fiddly and quicker to work through. If you’ve played with large ships, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about…

Valete,

JohnS

I didn't think full thrust still had a fan base, I ll need to look that up.

 Easy E wrote:
Void Admiral and One Page: Space Fleets are also getting some buzz online.

If you like BFG, you might be interested in them.

I have both, and I like Void Admiral better of the two. It really does feel like a sleeker and modernized update of Battlefleet Gothic. You can get a physical rulebook on Amazon for less than ten bucks, and on the Facebook group and on Wargamevault the author has put out several additional fleets. I have been trying to get some family to play it.

Ash from Guerilla Miniatures Games has several playthroughs in campaign on Youtube.

I just saw Halo starships... why wasn't I told about this?

They always has the greatest most ridiculously awesome names ships: The Pillars of Autumn
If that doesn't put the fear into your enemies, nothing will.

Babylon 5, seems hard to get into, miniatures are rare and expensive, rules are rare and expensive, not much of a community for this dead game that was a niche of a niche.

A call to arms is the mongoose version of the game for large fleet battles, the original B5 wars by 'agents of gaming' is far better supported as a Newtonian physics style space skirmish battle system.

While the original mini's are harder to find. STLs and 3d printed versions abound. additionally the game in it's entirety is still supported by the fans, including conversions into star trek, star wars, battlestar galactica, wing commander and others.

http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/



It is crunchy like classic battle tech but not nearly as crunchy as star fleet battles. i play it from time to time with my original B5 mini's or star trek attack wing and star wars armada minis. the fan conversions also added loads of the expanded universe ships for both trek and wars.








As for aerotech....it is basically battle tech in space without movement mods (it uses facings instead for modifiers). the aerotech 2 quick reference sheet has about 95% of what you need to play the game aside from advanced rules for things like teleoperated missiles, point defense and screen launchers. it also has the same low model count as battle tech as well.

The only thing I do not really care for with Full Thrust is dated box checking for each ship. Some people love it though.

Just to check, y'all know Agents of Gaming is still selling B5 Wars / ACTA models, right? I've ordered stuff from them within the last couple years. The site looks a bit sketchy, but they've got most of the models in stock. If you want to check with them, drop an email, the dude got back to me within a day when I had a question about loose parts I couple buy.

Dropfleet is easily the healthiest of the spaceship games currently in production, but it feels like the publisher is actively working against any group that tries to get the game going.

BFG is the most played I've seen at cons in the last few years. Lots of other space games show up, but it's the most consistently 'there' and well attended.

OPR Warfleets was supremely disappointing to me. Not the worst spaceship rules I've played, but it feels like a game designed by people that don't really enjoy the naval genre?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Finally found my notes on Wiley Games' Starfighters (aka Fistful of Lead in Spaaace). I played it at a con in 2022. I was struck by how badly random activation interacted with forced movement. It probably wouldn't have mattered as much if it were a small dogfights 1-3 on 1-3, but with a dozen models on the table every turn was pure chaos, no strategy possible at all. It came off extremely random.

Also, the guy running it was one of Agents of Gaming's former sculptors for the B5 Wars line of minis.

 Nevelon wrote:
No idea if they are still alive somewhere, but 2 more to add to you list:

Silent Death: good fighter game with some nice dice mechanics. Scales well with multiple ships and still plays smoothy. Only a handful of larger ships, so if you want fleet battles, look elsewhere. Played a lot of this one, has a mini range (or did)

Starfire. Only played a little of this one, but actually scales up to large fleets well.

Oh yes, I remember vaguely silent death had some neat mechanics, but for the life of me can't remember them!

 slyphic wrote:

OPR Warfleets was supremely disappointing to me. Not the worst spaceship rules I've played, but it feels like a game designed by people that don't really enjoy the naval genre?

I think they just don't really get spaceship/sea games and its not been a big focus for them since the core OPR took off in a big way. Which is why even on the STL front they've not invested into new ships for the existing fleets nor even new designs in ages. It's a back-burner project that might well come to the fore in a more serious way one day

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
No idea if they are still alive somewhere, but 2 more to add to you list:

Silent Death: good fighter game with some nice dice mechanics. Scales well with multiple ships and still plays smoothy. Only a handful of larger ships, so if you want fleet battles, look elsewhere. Played a lot of this one, has a mini range (or did)

Starfire. Only played a little of this one, but actually scales up to large fleets well.

Oh yes, I remember vaguely silent death had some neat mechanics, but for the life of me can't remember them!

To hit and damage was all one roll. Which was nice and sped up gameplay. Used different sized dice. Most guns were base 2d something, and you added the gunner’s die. Multiple gun mounts would have an adder like +2 for a twinlinked gun. In addition to the dice most had a damage type, of low/medium/high. Your total rolled needed to overcome the to-hit number of your target. Once you hit, you would take the appropriate dice, add the + bonus if there is one, and check off damage boxes. Doubles worked like crits if they lined up right, where you would add up all the dice that fit.

Fun system, played quick and smooth, fun times.

Hm, I was pleasantly surprised by OPR Warfleets, I think it's their best game. Certainly has the most meaningfully distinct factions - probably because it's the only game not slaved to GW's model line, so they could be developed from the gameplay side first.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm, I was pleasantly surprised by OPR Warfleets, I think it's their best game.

Right, but how does Warfleets compare to the gamut of other space fleet games?

 slyphic wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Hm, I was pleasantly surprised by OPR Warfleets, I think it's their best game.

Right, but how does Warfleets compare to the gamut of other space fleet games?

Haven't tried that many, I suppose. I love BFG but it barely works with the original 4 factions. I guess OPR comes in second. Haven't played ACTA or DFC, found FT! and the rest of its generation simulationist tedium, on the other end of the spectrum Firestorm Armada is just mindless pelting each other with dice. I hope Hewitt gets to make a new edition someday, but I guess that's 3+ years out at this point. OPR is OPR, zero fat, but I think it has enough movement and fire arc restrictions to count as naval and an enviable balance between granularity and speed in damage tracking.

 Easy E wrote:
The guys who make Fistful of Lead, Wiley Games also have a game called Starfighters I think. A generic space combat game.

Spoiler:

I love the cover art and was unaware of this one so will have to check it out. The former massive aviation buff child in me wants me to "acktually..." point out that those look much more like F-89 Scorpions than F-104 Starfighters though...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BanjoJohn wrote:
Periodically I wonder about spaceship miniature games, which ones are currently being supported, which ones have existed or currently exist, things like that. Even though I haven't gotten into a lot of them I am curious about them and it was BFG that actually got me into the hobby and then into 40k and not the other way around. I'm just curious what other peoples thoughts are about the list I have so far, and if there's any that I have missed that would be worth looking into. So here it goes.

Babylon 5: a call to arms.
Battlefleet Gothic
Starfleet Battles & Federation Commander
A call to arms: star fleet
Star Wars: X-Wing
Dropfleet commander
Firestorm Armada
Battletech Aerospace

So I'm wondering, which of these are still possible to get into? That is, find rules, find (original) or make (3d print) miniatures, which have decent communities for finding games with? I know some are dead, and some are still being supported. Are there other games I'm missing that would be active?

From that list, I'd personally only consider DFC to be actively supported in terms of new rules and models and not just legacy support like some of the other games in the list. YMMV but I personally think that's an important distinction to attracting new players when starting out. And I say that as someone whose most recent space combat tabletop experience was the FASA Star Trek game that's been out of print for about 35 years, lol.

Has anyone tried Horizon Wars Infinite Dark? I’m wondering if that would be a good play-it-with-the-nephews game.

Sorry should have added Battlestar Galactica.

Like a simulation version of x wing? in that you have some effort towards physics. Fun game, but really only for a handful of models before it bogs down.

Also totally OOP.

If we includes boards, there is Red alert, or Commands and Colours in spaaacceee. ANd plays just how you would expect.

A surprisingly good light 2 player boardgame is Battleship Galaxies. Designed to have a lot of expansions it flopped. But remains a fun light experience to do with a child perhaps. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/767576/a-fun-but-incomplete-game

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Has anyone tried Horizon Wars Infinite Dark? I’m wondering if that would be a good play-it-with-the-nephews game.

I have not, but that is a good add to the list!

HW:ID's biggest distinguishing feature to me was pilot stats for crewed ships. It's really trying to impart 'named' character to the units, which isn't something I want at all in a spaceship game, but I would expect to appeal to a kid. The whole HW line tends to go pretty abstract with stats and features, and this was very much of its ilk.