The War for New Texas, the Rules for Space Battles

Hello Readers,
As promised, I am posting all the relevant docs about how we fought the fighter and ship battles for the Battle of New Texas.

Here is the link to the rules we developed for the big weekend:
Space Rules

They are rough, but I am certainly willing to answer any questions.

The design of fighters and ships is entirely up to you. To get you going, here are some templates for the fighters and Capital Ships we used:

A few things right off the bat:
First,
Alternating activation: When using just a couple of fighters per side, rolling for initiative and alternating activations is the best way to go. However, once you get past 4-5 fighters, going to a card activation provided us with better games.

The deck should have a card equal to the number of flyers in the game for each player, BUT the cards should not be specific to a flyer, just the player/faction. That way, you avoid the game-breaking situations like where a wingman moves first and causes a collision with his leader. If the cards only indicate which player, then the player can choose the appropriate flyer and the game makes sense.

Second,
The capital ships do not get cards. Capital ships take their turn after all the fighter parts of the turn are complete.

Third
When resolving the Capital ship movement, the ships are rotated to match the facings indicated by the "Ace of Aces" book, BUT range is tracked off to the side. To clarify: capital ships do not move on the table closer/further to each other, they stay at the short ends and only facing is changed each movement phase. (This is how we played the first game).

Rules wise, capital ships cannot fire at extreme range nor when the ships are on top of one another. (as shown by the view in the "Ace of Aces" books).

When the view shows that the ships are on top of one another, a ramming attempt can be made. We didn't cover this in the written rules, we had an idea of how we wanted to play it, but in the context of the games, no one ever really wanted to risk it.

So this is how we would have handled it,
If both sides want to collide, then it happens. Orient the ships long side to long side with opposite directions of travel. Then include a ground fighting turn (starting with this turn) at then end of each game turn.

If only one player wants to ram, then roll off pilot skill. (re-roll ties until there is a winner). If the ramming pilot wins the roll off, then place the ships in the middle of the table touching each other with the prow of the ramming ship at a 90' angle to the rammed ship. (Like a T-Bone car wreck).

If neither player wants to ram, then simply continue the game.

Ships cannot break away from being rammed during the scope of the 6 turn game.

If at the end of the game, each player still holds control of their respective ship, the ships will break contact and live on to fight another day. If OTOH, one player controls both ships, then the enemy ship has been captured.


For our second game, we decided we wanted the capital ships to look a little more dynamic, and played on the floor. This allowed us to move the capital ships closer and further by range band each turn (as well as rotating to the correct facing).

Both approaches worked well, and I think, if you are playing a one on one engagement with fighters, using a 6'x4' table works just fine. When you start piling in additional ships, the floor is the only way to go.

Since that awesome weekend, I have thought about the games over and over again. The biggest thing to pop out is that the next time we do this, there will be even MORE ships. The "Ace of Aces" approach is awesome for a single ship duel, but is not going to be sustainable with 3 on 3 or larger.

I'm thinking....  a lot...
:)

I hope this inspires you to build a ship and enter the conversation about joining in, or at least building a ship with your gaming group and having a giant space battle among yourselves.

Thanks for reading!