Star Trek Fleet Captains: Silk Purse From Sow's Ear?

[chas]

"Did you ever have one of those days, boys?
Did you ever have one of those days?
When nothing goes right, from morning to night!
Did you ever have one of those days?
--Elvis, G.I. Blues

I just got STAR TREK FLEET CAPTAINS (WizKids, $100). Last night I opened the box and inventoried the parts, which takes a while, to prep the game for play. So I don't have a review of the game play yet. It looks pretty graphically, and should be fun. I purchased the game because it got great reviews on boardgamegeek, and may be the Star Trek game we've all been waiting for for years! Its certainly selling like hot cakes. My mission is to seek out the new life in this game as it is, and 'fix it' as needed, to make it the satisfying design it was meant to be! To boldly go where no Star Fleet Captains player has gone before...and I hope you'll join me on the voyage! See my call for your suggestions at the bottom.

There is a trade off, of course, even with an expensive game, in product quality versus price. This one seems to have erred on the side of cheap components. Yes, you get a lot of cool stuff for your money. But how long will your game hold up after you give it just regular handling during play?

This being said, there are serious component problems with the game, ones that will challenge to the max my veteran gamer's ingenuity--as well as that of a good pal of mine who got a copy for himself at the same time--in actually playing it while not ruining it. These problems are much more extensive than were mentioned in reviews I saw, although the first poster on this site gave a timely warning, with the note however that the company was being good about customer service. Hence this thread, to discuss possible solutions to the problems presented. Later on down thread (like down river?), we'll talk about actually playing the game.

Note also that there are 13 pages of Official FAQ (as of 11/10/11) already on boardgamgeek. To be fair, some of the questions are clearly covered in the rules, and some are not. So I don't know yet whether its just good to have official clarifications by the company, or if the rules should have been edited further.

What are you getting into physically (kinky!) if you buy this game for 100 dollars? (I paid less, but still). First, the design graphics are great, actually beautiful. The problem is that your copy won't stay that way. Now this is not meant to be negative, or dissuade you from getting the game. But you need to know what you are getting into here. Let's look at the component problems, and some possible solutions:

1. The Box: There are initial damage problems in my copy, due to the box not having enough card tray containers, and the cards not all being shrink wrapped. My pal's copy had two ships damaged, but lets talk about mine. The cards are all over the box when you get it (in both of our copies), and some of the fragile ships on their bases are damaged--possibly for that reason. Rather than bother with going to the company, Wiz Kids, my craftsman pal is going to take my dremel tool (a mini drill) and super glue and get to work for me. Of the 24 ships, four have damage in that the ships have been snapped off from the base poles that mount them. For three the pegs are broken off and now trapped inside the ship hull. In addition, one of my Klingon ships is missing an engine nacelle! My buddy will have to make one for me, and I'll try to match the paint. Oh well, a little battle damage never hurt anyone, and the ships are very cool, being different versions of those seen in all the different Trek shows except Enterprise; Federation and Klingon. Future expansions hopefully will include other races, especially of course our ancient long lost brothers the Romulans.

Although you get a large insert divided into storage compartments custom fitted to each ship, the individual vessels need to be carefully removed from them. All the parts except the many counters are too fragile; my rules book was ripped already in the back.

The major box storage problem is that you will have to carefully take each spaceship out and put them in every time. Remember what its like to remove some Heroscape figures from their original packaging? You are going to have to risk this every time. Also, you'll have to figure out which ships go in which cutouts. Throwing out the insert might work, but the ships are too fragile without the custom container. If you want to keep them in the box, the now heavy (rubber banded) card decks may damage them without the protection of the ship insert!

2. The Ship Models: They are very nice, with clix bases, but again, with cheap plastic and no painting. The ships are not in scale to their sizes givien at all, and this makes it confusing to identify the ones off their bases. The strong impression of a "Chinese knock off" from the real thing prevails--except that this is The Real Thing. Wiz Kids is not a board game company as such, and their inexperience in this kind of game production (or insistance on high profit margin, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt) shows badly here.

I'm happy to say that my crafty pal fixed them with crazy glue, scissors, a cigarette lighter, and a dremel tool, but not everyone can do this. However, I've just discovered a problem that I can't fix: i have two identical ship bases for the Klingons. The two ships (with the same models) have totally different stats and capabilities, so I'll now have to ask the company to send me the one I don't have. So after all this, I still don't have a playable game!

(Edit: further checking). It turns out that each Ship Display card has a chart of its clix dial. This being the case, I've now discovered that one of my two "I.K.S. Somraw" is in fact the I.K.S. Qhondoq with the different dial values of the second ship hiding under the false top. So I'm going to relabel the ship and move on. Doesn this mean that I now need to check all the dials to see if they are assembled correctly under the right ship? Did you ever have one of those days?

(Edit) The Saga continues: I've checked all the clix dials against their ship cards, and they are all the correct ones. This brings up more problems however. Its been years, and I've forgotton how some dials come frozen and won't budge! Do I have to pry them off with a screwdriver, as I used to do when making customs out of spare clix figures, to get them to turn again? Or just ignore the dials and mark the ship cards with their current row status of each ship? Hmmm...

This brings up another minor problem. Although the ships are nicely individualized, no where are they identified by class, a rather odd oversight in a fleet game. One ship is small (not the actual model, which may be large, but on its Size Stat), and has a Scout power so it must be a Scout Ship. We know the Enterprise A and E, are the final forms of the Heavy Cruiser from the movies (you don't actually get the ships Kirk and Picard used during most of their famous series, but these upgrades, which is okay. But why should I have to guess the class of a ship? The types of missions it wants to perform etc., should make the game mechanics work fine, but its another confusion when you're trying to identify the ship, especially the Klingon one (just try to promounce its Klingon name, I dare ya) which may be a different type but has the same model as one or two others. (This would sound like mere nitpicking IF I didn't have to repair and rebase them, unjam their dials, cut and paste their silhouettes, etc.

(Edit) Since each ship card has a chart that reproduces all the dial values, it might be possible to just mark on the card which row of the dial is currently being used.

3. The Board Tiles: Like many space games, these are individual hexagons from which you can build your board differently each game. But they are so thin that its hard to imagine them staying in place. Putting plastic sheets over them like I do with the old paper game boards of yesteryear might work, but since the tiles are two sided and have to be explored individually (flipped over), that solution is marginal. You'd have to be taking up the plastic all the time, which would put your board in disarray, not to mention removing and replacing all the ships each time. Remember the thin coasters in a cheap bar that disintegrate before you can finish your glass of beer? That's what we're talking about here.

4. The Cards The cards are so thin that, although beautiful, they don't seem robust enough to stand shuffling and handling during game play. One came already damaged when I opened the box. This makes them hard to count out as well when you're trying to see if they are all present and accounted for during game prep. Deck Protectors? Sure, but you'll need about 300 of them. And then how will you shuffle them together? A game with so many important cards and deck building aspects should have decent cards for its decks (Command, Mission, Encounter, and Starship Display).

5. Ship Profile Sheet This is a piece of thin paper with the ship recognition silhouettes, which is a very good idea, but again, very badly executed. Half of the ship profiles are upside down, but the names next to them are right side up, so no simple cut and paste job will fix it, its going to take a while--cutting out not only ships' pictures but individual names, and keeping them together with the right ship. Good luck. The ship silhouettes are only given in one view, rather than the usual two used from WWII aircraft ID cards to space ship fleet games, which makes it harder to tell one ship from another of its own race.

(Edit) Thanks to someone smarter than I am on boardgamegeek, I now realize that this sheet is actually not meant to be a profile ship guide, but a guide to how to put the ships away in the box ship insert! Which is a very useful thing to have indeed.

Pysical Component Problems: In Summary
What we have hear is a strange combination of excellent ideas and graphics design with the very,very cheap production typical of a Heroclix game (I'm not being petty about this; I own many, many of their figures). The game is in fact labelled as a Heroclix game. Even the single pair of dice provided are those tiny ones that field mice could roll, if they needed to do that to survive.

I've never had so many component problems with a game in about forty years of gaming. So I wish you better luck with your own copy. But check your game over carefully when you get it.

Believe it or not, I'm really hoping to enjoy this game. The cards and tiles are written with great humor and attention to Star Trek Universe detail. The rules seem to be well written and illustrated, so I'm expecting the game play to go well. Even the box cover art is stirring!

But all my player pals will be warned to Handle with Care. I can't imagine allowing your kids or pets to touch it. And you'd better keep the drinks and snacks in a galaxy far, far away from the table! And wipe your hands.

Your Ideas Wanted!

If you have any hobby craft insights or conceptual ideas on how to fix some of these problems, please let me know. For example, would a shot of WD-40 unjam a clix dial, or just melt the paper with the dial values on it? Are you going to add ship type and size to your new custom Fleet Recognition Guide? Do you know all the ships well enough to figure out their official classes (my pal is working on this, as he has some kind of StarTrek Ship Recognition book).

We're Trekkies! We're Gamers! And we're bad!

[chas]

Captain's Log Star Date 12-8.11 The failure of my scheduled rendezvous with my Klingon opposite number has delayed the first encounter in this new game. Today I have finally finished prepping the game for comfortable play. So while I am holding my actual game review, I share my moves here for fellow ship captains to enjoy or use as they see fit:

1. I finished reading the rules, which are clear, well organized, nicely illustrated with examples and the relevant game components. and yes, even witty!

2. I made one of my famous custom player aids. This includes the two summaries of turn sequence and Possible Actions on the back cover, and the page 18 reference chart on the three levels of installations you can build. This is the main information that is not already on the well designed components. I will cut and paste them onto a single page.

3. Unscrambled the ship silhouette guide into rightside up silhouettes and ship names on a seperate page for each fleet. So far I've included the all important Fleet Size for each ship, and placed the ships in this size order, with room for more info as seems useful under each ship profile.

4. Made name lists of all the card decks for a basic parameter feel of how the game is designed. This includes the Mission Cards (by three types, with Victory Values), the Encounter Cards (with VP values), and the Locations (Board Tile) Deck organized--by me--into Empty Space, Nebula, Star, Planet, and Special Feature (weird "terrain" phenonoma).

5. Made a list of the two side Command Decks (100 cards each)-- by their 10 Subdecks (of 10 cards each), for ease of picking the four that will be in any one game per player. Underlined the last names of all crew cards.

6. Separated and bagged/rubber banded all card decks (and their subdivisions) and counter sets for ease of play.

7. Painted the 24 very cool ship models. I just used a few simple trim colors on each one. The Federation ships are all different individual models, so I just did silver bridges/shuttlecraft decks with red impulse engine and sensors, and light blue warp engine glows for all of them.

The 12 Klingons are in groups of the same model: four, three, two of two, and one (the largest and baddest of them all). Trimmed the wings and bridges, with rear engine glow (pumpkin colored). It helps that I'm watching ST:TNG episodes this week that show the ships as I go. I never realized that the engine glow varies depending on the speed of the ship in a nice attention to detail by the speical effects crew.

You may not be this anal, but I'm an old retired burteaucrat! Add these to the steps noted in the First Post above, and you'll be ready to go.

Now we're about to leave space dock...usually I'd solitaire the game, but I have several pals who should be over in a day or so to play the game with me on different days.

I leave this hailing frequency open for you comments and suggestions, and my future experiences with the game. Commendations noted to all hands who are manning ships in either fleet!

[Sylvano the Wasabus]

Yikes!
I'm interested to hear how the game plays and if it's worth all that...

[chas]

"Fascinating."
--Mr. Spock, on many occasions

Well, its turning out, after only two solitaire plays so far, that STFC is a very good, possibly a great game! Without going into specific rules, many of which are ingenious and fun, here are some of the high points that make this and any game design a good one:

Thematic Richness
The Star Trek franchise has been lovingly laid into the disign, and playing it feels like being in a season or story arc of the TV show or a movie. Star Trek is actually a High Geek Religion, which I'll be happy to discuss with you somewhere else, but remember I was there at the beginning of it, and I've heard The Great Bird of the Galaxy speak in person when I was a grad student back in the Seventies. Most of the personalities and events across the entire franchise are present, but in playable ways which keep the outcome of the game in doubt. And you can build and improve installations on those rare Class M planets (and others), beam cargo and crews between ships and down to different worlds, anwer distress calls, and encounter everything from Tribbles to Q. Very cool!

Acessibility To All Ages
If you're a kid, you can blunder around the galaxy having random encounters with a high level of variability and adventure. You can be a hero or a berserker. If you're into winning and strategy, you can scan a sector before you enter it, play for the VPs offered by your missions, recycle cards you don't like until you get better ones, use quick paths through the board as you discover them, . try to set up battles before you start them, and otherwise be sly with the rules. Terrific!

High Replayability
There is an unusually high replay factor due to the many major varients in the game. The modular tile board lays out differently evey time, and exploring and exploiting it is a game skill you'll develop. The individually different ships plus their size and the semi randomness of your fleet composition with them, mixed with what your opponent draws for his/her fleet, makes every game a seperate kind of challenge. The two races have different characteristics with their ships and card decks. The cards themselves draw differently in the Missions, Command Cards, and Encounter decks that come up in very variable sequences each time you play.

There are Science, Influence (Political) and Combat missions to carry out, each of which are better done by certain ships with their varying values of weapons, engines, sensors, and shields. You can get cards that bonus them, or in some situations provide an automatic win or cancellation of a situation. The heavy hitter characters all have cards with multiple uses. Mr. Spock can be a steady influence over the course of your game, or die gloriously saving the ship on one occasion. Some cards get discarded, and some get permanently "trashed" out of the game. Its up to you.

Basic Playability
There are a number of problems with cheap components which I've outlined in previous posts. However, it turns out that most of the information is easily available on the attractive cards and counters. You don't have to use the click bases at all, as the ship cards have the dial readouts, and you can put a small control marker on them to indicate your ship's current dial position. The rules are well written, although a few things only come out in your first plays. When questions come up, its easy to make a ruling and move along. But when you get into the rules, you discover very interesting subtleties that affect how you'll want to play. And the cards are at least robust enough to shuffle, although you may want to get protectors for them!

In my next post, I'll open my Game Log to you, and share the fortunes of the first few game plays. The fact that I'm getting ready to dive back in for my third solitaire play and hopefull my first game with a live opponent tells you that I'm having fun! May STFC live long and prosper--with expansions for other races!

[SuperflyTNT]

I've heard differing reports, some great, some good, some bad, and some terrible. I think this game chalks up more as a matter of taste than anything.

One of the biggest factors seems to be how indoctrinated into Federation Interstellar Law one is.

[Taeblewalker]

I'll be giving it a try later today, so I'll give my official report to Starfleet Command.

[chas]

"Engage!"
--Captain Jean Luc Picard

Game Log: Three Solitaires

I've solitaired the game three times now, and had lots of fun. Turns out I was playing several crucial rules wrong, but they were wrong for both sides, so that shouldn't have made too much difference. As I wait for Tablewalker to drive over for my first real game with a live opponent, here's a quick rundown on what happened:

Solitaire 1: Federation 10/Klingons 1

The Feds were incredibly lucky in the combination of board tiles explored and missions given initially, and quickly shot ahead by building a Star Base on a rare habitable planet--on one of the first spaces they reached from their Command Post (start zone). The Klingons had hard luck to the same degree, and couldn't get anything to work for them. As the Klingons Command Cards and Missions had so much to do with combat, I worried that the Federation decks were just too balanced for the Boneheads to defeat them. It became clear that the interesting rules made the forming of new strategy doctrine necessary. There's never been a game quite like this one, and lessons learned from other space fleet games do not really apply here.

This first game actually had no fighting, and the Feds out explored and out influenced the Klingons at every turn. Then the Feds luck began to turn, as they were forced to trash their entire hand of cards, and one of their ships was badly diabled by...Tribbles! But they still managed to eke out a few more points for the win. The Klingons now thirsted for revenge on the rich "have" faction that the Federation had become. Hey, that's what happens on the show!

Solitaire 2: Federation 10/Klingons 9

Whew; the Feds just pulled this one out. After a 'Battle of Midway' at a Federation Colony upgraded to a Starbase in the nick of time, the Feds repaired their largest ship in the game which had barely survived the Klingon attack, and the invaders had to pull back. With the Klingons attacking desperatly while their enemy was now at nine of ten VPs, they managed to score extra for a Combat Mission that allowed them several points for "Vengeance" (killing a ship that had destroyed one of their own), but the Feds threw down the Decisive Defeat card, getting the single point when they lost a ship (the gritty determination of the Good Guys even when they take it on the chin) in a surprise move that got them just over the top for a second win. But the Klingons can win playing STFC, that's for sure.

Solitaire 3: Klingons 10/Federation 1
This time the Klingons surged ahead, even though their large Battleship was destroyed on the first turn by a Nexus Ribbon (like the one created by Malcolm Mcdowell in the film Generations)! The Klingons called for reinforcements, and then were operating five ships to the Feds three. Carefully developing territory far from the Fed ships, they built up their VPs to 9, and the Feds had to concede, as there was no way they could reach the Klingon position in time to stop them from building a second Star Base and winning that way. Yikes!


Initial Reaction to Game Play
So far its been a blast, and I'm starting to put together strategy/tactical ideas for both sides. But no matter how sly you are, this is a rollercoaster that you have to ride out, and anything can happen from turn to turn. Its entertaining, and feels genuinly like Trek! I still haven't actually read through most of the many cards, and I'm being surprised by them all the time. Each ship handles differently, each fleet composition varies from game to game, and its a great combination of luck, skill, and crisis management. It works for me. The one or two hesitations I had made me reexamine the rules, and should be addressed when I actually play them correctly. But hey, that's why I solitaire a game out first...

[chas]

FIRST LIVE GAME SUCCEEDS!


TABLEWALKER came over and we enjoyed our first STFC live game. I suggested he take the Feds, as they might be a bit easier to play and I was more familiar with the rules, and he not only took them, he won 10-6. I played my usual conservative scan-board-tiles-before-entering and keep-the-fleet-together game, and he was all over the map making science systems tests every turn. A systems test is the basic mechanism of the game for rolling against your own ship systems for a successful action (plus a die roll plus a card played by either side plus any crew on your ship who can help out). Later on he got bolder and started exploring blind without scanning first. This worked for him, although when he started out doing this the first time, he immediatly found himself in a Black Hole, and I raised my eyebrow in a Spock like comment on thoise silly humans.

Back to being Klingon! I dropped one ship behind to build an installation on a habitable world. But he was pulling too far ahead on points, so I advanced and attacked him with my other two ships. I managed to damage two of his ships but he destroyed my big one (which I replaced with two other ships the next turn, but they were now far to the rear). He repaired most of his damage and continued to do science missions, and got his tenth point for the win. As the second player I had one more turn to try and catch up, but he was now too far ahead.

The game is lots of fun. I think as I learn the rules better, I'll be able to pick better combinations of Command Card decks and do more cloaking--all the Klingon ships can cloak but only one Fed ship can. Because there are so many board tiles and cards, I've barely scratched the surface of what can happen in the game, and it continues to surprise and entertain me. I'd say this learning game only took about two hours to play.

T. will probably make comments here on the thread, but his basic rating for the game was 9 out of 10 (but only a 4 for the beautiful but fragile components). So whether you buy this game depends on how much you love Trek and are willing to "improve" your physical game with card protectors, fixing damaged ships, etc. But once you start playing, you'll have fun.

Since I've made this thread the log of my continuing mission to experience this design, I'll be writing more as I continue to play it. There are lots of nuances to the Ops cards I have yet to understand Operations Cards or card functions (some single cards can do two or all three types of Ops, Combat, and Crew) cover everything except combat situations. And I have to figure out how to deal with an opponent who pulls ahead on points! In other words, can one compensate for a player who through luck or smarts manages to exploit his situation better than I do.

Besides completely new races, expansions to this came could include more board tiles and command, mission, and encounter cards. Some major characters from ST Deep Space 9 and ST:Enterprise have not appeared yet, and some other characters appear but do not yet have Crew Cards of their own. These are the most powerful type of character presence in the game, with multipurpose uses and continuous effect on the ship to which they are asigned.

And yes, you can transport them from ship to ship, as you can cargo, and beam Away Teams down to planets. In fact, the rules allow you to do most of the kinds of actions that are done on the show or its movies. Which is a good thing. Even Reg Barclay and Neelix have their place in the scheme of things.

I'd also like to try a larger game, as so far I've only played the standard 10 VP/Fleet Size framework. There are a few rules for larger games, and there is also a Four Player Team version, which I could also try at some point.

For now, another pal bought the game at the same time I did (we get bigger discounts that way), and I know he'll be ready to try it out at his first opportunity...

[chas]

GAME LOG: THE BIG SOLITAIRE GAME IS ADVENTUROUS FUN!

I recently spent a day setting up and solitairing a humongous, ginormous Big Game of Star Trek Fleet Captains. I'm really learning the rules and cool moves for the game system now. There are play options available that I didn't get earlier on, and they solve most of the hesitations I had about the game design. There is only one left, which I'll mention at the end of this post.

The Standard Suggested Game (about 1 1/2 hours long) is 10 VP/Fleet Size, 27 Board Tiles, and 3 Actions per player per turn.

This game was 16 VP/Fleet Size with 49 Board Tiles (all of them but one, in an even set up pattern similar to that suggested for the Four Player game). It probably would have taken about 3 hours with two players.

By the way, a simple analysis of all 20 subdecks for the command cards is easy to do by noting the total number of Ops/Combat/Crew card options possible for each 10 card set, counting multiple options on on card as seperate actions. Without reading through all the cards, this is a simple way to choose one deck over another before you really learn the game. I've been through most of the Mission Deck now too, but like to keep the mystery in the Encounter Deck, so I haven't read them all. Many of them make me laugh, although they stun the particular Fleet Admiral who picks and has to deal with them. (Hey, they could have called the game Star Trek Fleet Admirals--but that would sound like you spend the game behind a desk at a Star Base, and that doesn't sound like fun).

The Klingons took an early lead. Sixteen Points requires a lot of effort. Even though the Federation took over more territory faster, and built more Star Bases, they never did catch up. Here are some highlights:

*The USS Excelsior had its engines disabled by an Encounter when at an unfortunate clix setting for that system for this particular Encounter, and had to be towed back ignominiously to the nearest friendly star base by another ship--don't forget to read the FAQ on boardgamegeek, so you'll know that one ship can tow another with a tractor beam at half the towers own movement (rounded down). Phew! Good thing no Klingons were in the immediate vicinity. On a smaller normal sized board, this would have been a disaster!

*Tribbles got beamed back to the Klingon ship that brought them into the game. At first the Klingons beamed them onto a Fed ship just before a battle, but the Feds were able to repair the battle damage (actually on a different ship) at a nearby Star Base.

*Just when the Feds were about to carry out a high point Science Mission with their carefully collected hand of Command Cards from the Federation Sensor Subdeck, someone pulled the Encounter card "Mirror Universe," which forced the two players to switch command card hands! This totally screwed up the Feds game. Anything can happen in STFC!

*The Klingons started using Cloaking tactics (only one Fed ship has a cloak but all the Boneheads do). One cool cloaking maneuver: cloak and avoid having to make a Breakaway Roll from a lost battle!

*The game finally came down to the Klingons needing on one more VP, but all the board had been exploited, and even rashly taken random encounters did not pay off. So what did the Klingons do? Sent one large ship far across the board to pick off the poor little USS Yosemite, which was minding its own business, using its powerful scanners to check out the few tiles yet unexplored. Unlike contemporary deep water navies where smaller ships are usually faster, bigger star ships have better engines in this game. The Size 5 (second to largest)Klingon ship attacked the little survey ship and blew it out of the sky in one attack (3 points of damage at once, no easy feat normally). Sad, but so sneaky. Worf would say that it was a move without honor. But hey, it won the game!

Okay, at this point, you want some playing tips, don't you? If you're reading this and own the game, feel free to chime in and agree, disagree, or propose your own. Here are a few of mine for new Starship Captains, who are sharing my adventure of learning the game (since it just came out):

*Look Before You Leap: Encounters are random; they can be very good, or very bad. Some tiles hold their own hazards as well. So scan your adjacent unexplored tiles before you enter them.

*Explore Strategically: Unlike most space games, this board has the unusual feature of having tiles that are different sizes (not physically of course, but in their size number). You may find a tile that takes only 2 engine factors to cross, but the Black Hole takes 15! What you need to do is find ("Scan") and open ("Explore") a path that will create a fast 'space lane' that can get your ships across the board quickly.

*Establish a Neutral Zone: In the beginning, scan the hex shaped board tiles between you and the other player, but don't explore them. That way, if the enemy wants to jump you, he/she will have to explore those sectors first. Let them deal with the Encounters! Then when they are weakened by a tough encounter (a random game card drawn during exploration), you can jump on them as you like by entering the now explored tile! MwaHaHa!

*Put A Task Force Together: For difficult missions with high value tests required, and battles, remember that your ships can do "cooperative tests" where you add the numbers of the different ship systems together. That's how to get a high test score, or do multiple hits to your enemiy's ships.

*Stick Your Oar In Your Opponent's Eye: When your opponent has to make a test, you can throw a card to make it more difficult (not just in combat). Do it as often as you have a card to throw, and ruin his star date!

*Cycle your Missions and Command Cards: You can change one of your three current Missions each turn. Do it until you get one you can perform, and remember that if you pick a Conditional one for which you've already accomplished the condition, then its an immediate score to your Victory Pile! Likewise you can replace one Command Cards in your hand per turn. Although the rules are not clear on this point, you have only four Command Cards in your hand, but always have those four, as you can immediately replace any command card as you play it. So keep playing those cards, and assigning your crew cards to ships as soon as you get them so you can replace them too. This is how to effectively increase the size of your hand.

*Read Those Board Tiles Carefully: they are a bit confuslng at first. A "Habitable" Nebula (a star cluster) can be developed with installations the same as a single planet! I guess they're allowing you one habitable location in the cluster. So you can beam an away team down, etc.

*Read Those Command Cards Carefully: Many have multiple possible uses, and the combat ones are not necessarily the best ones in every situation. Note that a crew card assigned to a ship can still use that other one time use card to get his own ship out of a jam. So what if he/she is Trashed out of the game? They'll be back next game!

*Play for Victory Points: 'Winning' a battle doesn't necessarily mean the same thing in this game as it does in others. Sure, eliminating an enemy does give you 1 VP. But some cards give you Victory Points for losing a ship! Others give you more multiple VPs for specific combat actions, such as scoring more than one hit at once, scoring a hit with a smaller ship, killing the ship that killed one of yours, etc. The side that takes more casualties can come away with more VPs rather than less from a battle! And ships are easily replaced. So killing the largest enemy ship may not always be the way to go, which it often is in another space fleet game, where you're trying to establish "space superiority." If you get more points for it on your Combat Mission Card, kill the smaller ship--its easier to do (remember the poor little Yosemite in the game described above).

*Don't Panic--Replace! You can easily replace lost ships with others, and if you lose a big ship, you can take a new big one--that's part of the nice balence the designer put in the game. In fact, on your first loss your Fleet Size goes up by one, and you get to choose your replacement rather than have it come in randomly as your initial ships did--so you might even select a bigger ship! All you lose is your temporary board position, and the abilities of one particular ship. Remember the tip above about opening a fast space lane? Now use it to move your new replacement ship from the Command Post in the back up to where you need it!

***

I'll add to these tips as I learn myself. By the way, another thing I've now done is to make a Table of Contents for the rules book. It makes it much easier to find stuff when you need to during a game! And by the way, it turns out that the ships can be put back into their plastic holder box insert with no problem, if you use that Box Insert Guide (the profile thingy).

My One Reservation: I tend to like strategy games rather than encounter, D&D type adventure board games. So my one reservation with STFC so far, is that it seems often hard to influence what is going on with your opponent. Both sides are busy interacting with the game more often than each other, and you can't effect random encounters, or the luck that allows the other player to exploit his missions on the board faster than you are able to do, because his missions are more quickly accomplished on his sector of the board than your (randomly chosen) missions are on your (randomly terrained) side. So keep an eye on your enemy, and be ready to intervene so he can't pull too far ahead of you. I'm still not sure how much this is possible in this game design.

In the end, STFC is part strategy and also part adventure game. You will have adventurous fun along the way, but you may not be able to ultimately influence who wins. So take it philosophically. As we Trekkers say about cultural diversity you can say about the large replayability factor of STFC, where every game is truly different: IDIC (Infinite Diversity In Infinite Creation). Why waste time whining about a lost game, when you could be playing another? Game Long, and Ocasionally Prosper!

[chas]

Chas Trek In January:

So far the three of us who have actually played the game here love it!

Although I can't figure out why one Klingon has a negative attribute on his card. Why would anyone want to put a negative number on his weapons system? So far the FAQ says the cards are all correct, but this one is a stumper.

I still haven't gone through the Encounter Deck, so the game continues to surprise me. With variation in ships used, board set ups, and how the Command, Mission, and Encounter cards fall, each game is very different. Not to mention using different size games (board, fleet size/VPs, # actions per side per turn all variable).

[chas]

Have been playing more fun games as the Klingons. Yesterday I finally drew the big nasty ships and got to use the dreaded Battleship Deck. My tactic became building up some points in board development, and then attacking with combat missions that gave me extra points (so that I didn't have to win battles as such to get ahead). When things get bleak as the Kingons, you can cloak, escape, and repair--'The Dastardly Maneuver!'

There are too many cards to protect them all, but I've now got fancy black framed deck protectors on the 24 ship cards, which look very cool against black background cards. There are the cards that get used the most and are always out there, although drinks and snacks are banned from any table when this game is being played! My buddy is also looking into making blowups of the ship cards to facilitate game play.

Including solitaires, I've probably played a good nine games or so, and am still turning up Command Cards, Missions, and especially Encounters we've never seen before.

Now that Wiz Kids has come out with the Star Trek Battle Game (their third including the Expeditions game) there are more ships minis around. They include most of the ships in STFC; but I don't know yet if they have the same values as their counterparts in my game. It makes me hopeful for STFC expansions though. Meanwhile my buddy is buying up all the old Trek minis he can find, including the old Micro Machines. I'm content to wait for official game ship expansions.

[chas]

I'm happy to relay the info that Star Trek Fleet Captains: Romulan Empire, the first expansion, is due out Oct. 17, 2012. It will have 12 Romulan ships in five sculpts, new advanced rules, a three player varient with all three factions, new rules for Sabotage by placing your agent aboard an enemy vessel, etc.