Soooo......about 50 years ago when I was a teenager I played a Starfleet game of some sort that needed a lounge floor or garden as a playing area. The ships were flat black silhouettes and were printed on a cardboard circle, they were about the size of a saucer I think. A string that must have been about 8 feet long extended from the centre and around the edge of each circle 360 degrees were marked - a bit like a 360 degree protractor. To fire at and hit an enemy ship you had to guess its bearing on the protractor, extend the string along that bearing and see if it crossed the silhoutte - so you might say "Fire two banks of phasers 60 degrees to port..." etc. Can't remember much else about it - but thanks for invoking the fond memory recall.....
Wow, that sounds fantastic! And has spurred my own memories about the WW1 air combat games we used to play, with the models attached to 4' poles! Nice one, thank you!
@@DragonsTeeth2I have the FASA version of Star Trek Fleet Battles box set. I think it was released in 2003… How different is this from the box set you are demoing?
@@DragonsTeeth2Perhaps this map is helpful in your search: www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=17RLD5hI9JG1ROZOSkI7X2xJ54lg&ll=1.2108755725543068%2C0&z=2&fbclid=IwY2xjawErMCRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQO7Xfst8G1SmCcjsVSUn8TT7x1IAKCakol0iLvWa77zYsr3gajDlvPDKg_aem_lZ0jUSFGzBSzM2roAIBlUg
26:33 In 1992, my SFB group all went to see _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ . Now, notice how weak Klingon rear shields are on the starship diagram in this video, and how much damage just the photon torpedoes from the Fed CA did. Being that close, an alpha strike with phasers and photons would have easily doubled the damage and simply gutted the Klingon. So of course, at the part in the movie when the Klingon cruiser parks its rear right in front of the Enterprise, eight guys in the audience are yelling, " Fire. Fire! ***FIRE!!!*** " I loved SFB back in the day. Started playing in 1986. Never got to play a Starbase assault and played only few fleet actions. Large SFB scenarios don't lend themselves well to ongoing significant other maintenance, etc. The video game version, Star Fleet Command, was pretty good, but very limited. It was always disappointing to me that back then they didn't go digital with SFB itself to eliminate some of the bookkeeping involved in having large scenarios with nearly fifty counters on the map, automatically compute damage and energy allocation, etc. I understand there is some sort of online resource like that now, but I've not investigated any of it. The only tabletop game I played more of is Car Wars. I was much better at this one as I'm not as good during play as I am designing things, which is a big part of this game. With so many design options available from Uncle Al's Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop, I was a one-man Department of Dirty Tricks. 😁 29:34 Back during the Commander Edition era, there were many many published errata and rule changes in Captain's Log magazine, and ADB would often get asked if they were going to publish a set complete with all the revisions. They would often say, "when Doomsday arrives." Well, they ended up actually getting around to it, so the Captain's Edition is also called "The Doomsday Edition."
It is an excellent game. Lol at the guys in the cinema, that's great! I think we did one starbase assault, at least everything is fixed on one map. The largest actions we played were probably around 6 ships per side. Yes, add in drones, fighters etc and it gets crowded. Good point on the digital, you'd think there would be an app by now. I shall investigate. Funny enough, we played a lot of Car Wars too, with the old paper maps. always good fun. that would be another one to dig out, I'm now sure where it stands edition wise now. Some guys at the club play Gaslands, I'll have a look at that too. Cheers!
Controversial opinion. Federation Commander > SFB. 😆. FC was my first proper designer game and I discovered it in 2009. As a child of the 90s i grew up with the PC game Starfleet Command, which i later learned was the digital version of SFB. I haven't looked back since!
Now I think about it a lot of video games were based on board games and have influenced my gaming life. Starfleet Command was SFB Close Combat was based on a digital version of Advanced squad Leader. Shogun Total War was a version of the 80s game Shogun, now Ikusa. Europa Universalis, was a board game then a video game and now another board game, which is amazing btw. And now they make board games of everything from Rainbow Six, to Rome Total War, Hogs of War and Worms. Anyway, enough of this tangent. Kzinti and Gorn all the way!
@@picton101 that's very true. I still have a copy of SC but never actually got round to playing it! To be honest I'm on the PC so much during the day, if I game it tends to be on the Xbox whilst sat on the sofa these days. Yes, some games even had hexes AFAIR. I did play the Dune PC game a lot back in the 90s, that was a good one. Cats and lizards - an interesting alliance!
Federation Commander is more or less an outgrowth of the "cadet version" of SFB, essentially SFB lite (though there are significant differences). At this point as an old SFB player it's probably expected I would make some comment about younger generation, attention deficit disorder, etc., but frankly I just can't. I LOVED SFB, and so did my friends in the late 80s and early 90s. However, I remember the regression of my last SFB group (circa 1992) into pretty much always playing the same few scenarios, mostly a "killer" version (you draw a target at random, and if you fire on anyone who isn't your target or doesn't have you as a target you are eliminated immediately after damage allocation), and people taking the same ships all the time, mostly Neo-Tholian as the only race that could deny terrain and realistically stop other ships, tractor auctions being tedious, expensive, and requiring being in knife-fight range. Then Magic The Gathering was released and everyone wanted to play that instead, and SFB was gone.
That would be great. I had a copy back in the day. We took a few looks at it but never quite got round to playing. If the SFB takes off, I'll look at getting it again in the future.
Great game and a true test of intellect to play well! It is still published and a large number of people still play it regularly in the U.S. It is hardly unplayable and has relatively simple mechanics. Like Chess, it is easy to learn and difficult to master.
Soooo......about 50 years ago when I was a teenager I played a Starfleet game of some sort that needed a lounge floor or garden as a playing area. The ships were flat black silhouettes and were printed on a cardboard circle, they were about the size of a saucer I think. A string that must have been about 8 feet long extended from the centre and around the edge of each circle 360 degrees were marked - a bit like a 360 degree protractor. To fire at and hit an enemy ship you had to guess its bearing on the protractor, extend the string along that bearing and see if it crossed the silhoutte - so you might say "Fire two banks of phasers 60 degrees to port..." etc. Can't remember much else about it - but thanks for invoking the fond memory recall.....
Wow, that sounds fantastic! And has spurred my own memories about the WW1 air combat games we used to play, with the models attached to 4' poles! Nice one, thank you!
@@DragonsTeeth2I have the FASA version of Star Trek Fleet Battles box set. I think it was released in 2003… How different is this from the box set you are demoing?
It's the same set as far as I can tell - looks like the same box art at least.
You explain SFB so well that your video deserves far more views than the 183 it currently has.
Well done. 🙂
Thank you, that's very kind. Just need to find some players now!
@@DragonsTeeth2Perhaps this map is helpful in your search: www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=17RLD5hI9JG1ROZOSkI7X2xJ54lg&ll=1.2108755725543068%2C0&z=2&fbclid=IwY2xjawErMCRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQO7Xfst8G1SmCcjsVSUn8TT7x1IAKCakol0iLvWa77zYsr3gajDlvPDKg_aem_lZ0jUSFGzBSzM2roAIBlUg
Brilliant, thank you!
@@DragonsTeeth2 You're welcome. :-)
26:33 In 1992, my SFB group all went to see _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ . Now, notice how weak Klingon rear shields are on the starship diagram in this video, and how much damage just the photon torpedoes from the Fed CA did. Being that close, an alpha strike with phasers and photons would have easily doubled the damage and simply gutted the Klingon. So of course, at the part in the movie when the Klingon cruiser parks its rear right in front of the Enterprise, eight guys in the audience are yelling, " Fire. Fire! ***FIRE!!!*** "
I loved SFB back in the day. Started playing in 1986. Never got to play a Starbase assault and played only few fleet actions. Large SFB scenarios don't lend themselves well to ongoing significant other maintenance, etc. The video game version, Star Fleet Command, was pretty good, but very limited. It was always disappointing to me that back then they didn't go digital with SFB itself to eliminate some of the bookkeeping involved in having large scenarios with nearly fifty counters on the map, automatically compute damage and energy allocation, etc. I understand there is some sort of online resource like that now, but I've not investigated any of it.
The only tabletop game I played more of is Car Wars. I was much better at this one as I'm not as good during play as I am designing things, which is a big part of this game. With so many design options available from Uncle Al's Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop, I was a one-man Department of Dirty Tricks. 😁
29:34 Back during the Commander Edition era, there were many many published errata and rule changes in Captain's Log magazine, and ADB would often get asked if they were going to publish a set complete with all the revisions. They would often say, "when Doomsday arrives." Well, they ended up actually getting around to it, so the Captain's Edition is also called "The Doomsday Edition."
It is an excellent game. Lol at the guys in the cinema, that's great! I think we did one starbase assault, at least everything is fixed on one map. The largest actions we played were probably around 6 ships per side. Yes, add in drones, fighters etc and it gets crowded.
Good point on the digital, you'd think there would be an app by now. I shall investigate.
Funny enough, we played a lot of Car Wars too, with the old paper maps. always good fun. that would be another one to dig out, I'm now sure where it stands edition wise now. Some guys at the club play Gaslands, I'll have a look at that too. Cheers!
@@DragonsTeeth2 Oops, had to edit my original post. Got my Roman numerals backward in the title of the Star Trek movie. 🙃
I hadn't noticed lol
Controversial opinion. Federation Commander > SFB. 😆. FC was my first proper designer game and I discovered it in 2009. As a child of the 90s i grew up with the PC game Starfleet Command, which i later learned was the digital version of SFB. I haven't looked back since!
Now I think about it a lot of video games were based on board games and have influenced my gaming life.
Starfleet Command was SFB
Close Combat was based on a digital version of Advanced squad Leader.
Shogun Total War was a version of the 80s game Shogun, now Ikusa.
Europa Universalis, was a board game then a video game and now another board game, which is amazing btw.
And now they make board games of everything from Rainbow Six, to Rome Total War, Hogs of War and Worms.
Anyway, enough of this tangent. Kzinti and Gorn all the way!
@@picton101 that's very true. I still have a copy of SC but never actually got round to playing it! To be honest I'm on the PC so much during the day, if I game it tends to be on the Xbox whilst sat on the sofa these days.
Yes, some games even had hexes AFAIR. I did play the Dune PC game a lot back in the 90s, that was a good one.
Cats and lizards - an interesting alliance!
Same here! I've only ever played Federation Commander and never got into SFB. It's a solid system
@@WilliamBrothers I shall no doubt have a look at it some time!
Federation Commander is more or less an outgrowth of the "cadet version" of SFB, essentially SFB lite (though there are significant differences). At this point as an old SFB player it's probably expected I would make some comment about younger generation, attention deficit disorder, etc., but frankly I just can't. I LOVED SFB, and so did my friends in the late 80s and early 90s. However, I remember the regression of my last SFB group (circa 1992) into pretty much always playing the same few scenarios, mostly a "killer" version (you draw a target at random, and if you fire on anyone who isn't your target or doesn't have you as a target you are eliminated immediately after damage allocation), and people taking the same ships all the time, mostly Neo-Tholian as the only race that could deny terrain and realistically stop other ships, tractor auctions being tedious, expensive, and requiring being in knife-fight range.
Then Magic The Gathering was released and everyone wanted to play that instead, and SFB was gone.
SFB,.. next up for review -> Federation and Empire!
That would be great. I had a copy back in the day. We took a few looks at it but never quite got round to playing. If the SFB takes off, I'll look at getting it again in the future.
@@DragonsTeeth2we play an online version @STNewWorlds. We even have some tutorials on how to play.
Nice one, I'll check those out!
It currently has about 500 pages of rules. The original is playable. The current state is just a mindless money grab.
Thanks
Great game and a true test of intellect to play well! It is still published and a large number of people still play it regularly in the U.S. It is hardly unplayable and has relatively simple mechanics. Like Chess, it is easy to learn and difficult to master.
Good to see that is still has a following. Ah, chess! That's a great analogy, very true. Thanks!