|
||||||||
July 2018
|
||||||||
Star Fleet Universe News BIG NEWS: SHAPEWAYS at 871
Our store on Shapeways continues to expand with 54 new ships released on 5 July (total 871 items!) plus the 20 scale-285 fighters released on 20 June. WEBSITE:
Our website, www.StarFleetGames.com, continues to grow and improve. You are welcome to send us your requests, comments, and suggestions. Simone Dale, our graphics director, continues to update the website, do covers for the new products, shut down pirate websites, help out around the company, and learn more about the game business.
TWITTER: VIDEOS: Star Fleet Marines Part 1 DOING VIDEOS OF THE SFU
A customer asked about posting "tutorial videos" for our games. We like it when people do that (and even give commendation medals) but you need to have us check the videos to make sure you aren't violating something somehow (or that you didn't make a rules error). Doing such videos to make money is not cool. Please drop us an email before you post the videos.
STARBLOG: STAR FLEET'S LEGIONS EXPAND: This month we feature Battle Group Tacoma, WA. CO William Z. Cohen reports that this group is active, playing Star Fleet Battles, Federation Commander, Federation & Empire, and A Call to Arms: Star Fleet. They are an active group, playing frequently and painting minis. They also have three Rangers in the group and page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Battle-Group-Tacoma-Star-Fleet-Battles-197549980818347/
Do you have a battle group? Be sure to report your activities here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/battlegroup/report.shtml
Do you want to see if there's a battle group near you? Check out the map here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/battlegroup/gather.shtml#US
Facebook Fan Pages
So join us on Facebook and get a fix of your favorite game there, too!
JAGDPANTHER
Custom Decals for Starline ships Tenneshington Decals continues to provide custom decals for all currently produced Federation Starline 2500 miniatures. For more information or to download the order sheet, check them out at www.tenneshington.com. Or if you prefer, email Will McCammon at: will@tenneshington.com or Tony L. Thomas at: scoutdad@tenneshington.com.
Jupiter IV Decals is a source of decals for the 2400 line and will do custom decals as well as all official SFB names. In the near future Jupiter IV will move into the 2500 line and will work to get every listed name on the Starfleet registry completed in both scales.
Their website is: JupiterIvdecals.com
ONLINE TOURNAMENTS Our seventh Internet SFB International Championship Tournament finished. David Zimdars flying a Kzinti ship defeated Peter Bakija flying a Gorn ship. Congratulations to David! Fleet Captain Bill Schoeller (winner of the 2016 tournament) was the judge for this tournament and Steven P. Petrick was the Tournament Marshal. The Second Annual Battlegroup Toronto SFB Tournament is being held by Battlegroup Toronto. They hav secured a playing space for a three day tournament in Toronto at 986 Bloor St West, Toronto, ON M6H 1L8 Play goes from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm on July 20-22. This will be an SFB Tournament using the Tournament Rules (Module T, 2012)
Entry Fee:
• $25 per day • $45 for the three day weekend • Kids acccompanied by an adult (no charge) • Viisitors are welcome (no charge)
DEMOS AND CONS WITH SFU GAMES
StratCon 2018 is in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from now until July 15. Find them at the Holiday Inn Express. There will be at least two Federation & Empire games, with room for one more and some minor room for other gaming. Respond here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/discus/messages/37/37078.html?1520623855 for more information. Check out their page on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/151297821607520/ Are you going to Gen Con in August 2018? Make plans to play Star Fleet Battles with Randy Blair as the Ranger in charge. He'll be running six games there. August 2 at 10:00 am, August 2 at 4:00 pm, August 3 at 10:00 am, and August 3 at 4:00 pm is Survivor. August 4 at 9:00 am is Western Plight. August 4 at 4:00 pm is Eastern Plight. Each game is stand-alone. Gen Con is held in Indianapolis, Indiana. Star Fleet Battles games are held weekly in Tempe Arizona each Friday at Game Depot from 2:00 -7:00 pm. Eric Phillips is the person to contact.
Star Fleet Battles games are held regularly in Indianapolis, Indiana at Family Time Games. Anthony Harding is the contact person. For more information see: http://www.meetup.com/Star-Fleet-Battles-Indy/. Star Fleet Battles games are played regularly in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday afternoons at the Soldiery. Lee Hanna is the contact person. Games are held in Spokane, Washington on an irregular basis. Contact them to see if there's a game scheduled. They meet at The Gamer's Haven, 2114 N. Pines St., Suites 1 & 2, Spokane Valley, WA 99206, (509) 443-5992 http://www.thegamershaven.net/ Download Transmissions HAILING FREQUENCIES: This is our newsletter and will let you know all the news for all our games. You can subscribe here. Have you missed an earlier newsletter? Click here to get caught up! COMMUNIQUE: The latest Communique brings you more Ship Cards, scenarios, and more news from the Star Fleet Universe! It can be downloaded from the Commander's Circle. FC Forum Recent Posts
F&E Strategy of the Month Often your opponent will use a circle of picket ships around a hex to protect a valuable FRD park. Would it not be nice to use drone raids to get at those juicy cripples and FRDs inside that picket line? There is a fair chance that you can.
Usually, to conserve pin count, the picket line will have exactly the number of ships needed to block the drone raiders. If you can cripple or kill even one picket ship before drone raids on the Sequence of Play, then you can "open the door" to your drone raiders. You can open this door using an espionage and sabotage mission to attack one of the picket ships. The espionage and sabotage mission occurs before drone raids on the Sequence of Play; if it succeeds, then the enemy will not have "ships sufficient to pin the raiding force" under rule (320.312). For example, a ship and a crippled ship in a picket hex would be 1.5 ship-equivalents; not enough to pin a two-ship drone raid. After you have opened the door with the espionage and sabotage mission, send in the drone raiders to slaughter the juiciest target. Many of the juiciest targets automatically die to even a two-ship drone raid. An FRD will automatically die to a one-ship, four-point drone raid. This tactic is particularly useful against police pickets because the espionage and sabotage mission is likely to succeed against a size-class-4 target (a result of two through six on a throw of two six-sided dice). Because police ships have no "crippled side," you will kill two birds with one stone. You will deprive the enemy of one police ship and open the door to the subsequent drone raiders. There are a few downsides to this tactic. First, it is not guaranteed to succeed. Second, it puts a prime team at risk, but they signed up for just this sort of thing. Third, it costs two economic points just to perform the non-guaranteed espionage and sabotage mission. Fourth, if the FRD park contains an enemy fleet, the drone raiders might suffer during intercept. However, fortune favors the bold!
A Call To Arms: Star Fleet Tactic of the Month (End of A Call to Arms: Star Fleet Tactic of the Month)
|
||||||||
|
New Releases Communique #151 has been posted to the Commander's Circle Click here to see our previous issues of Hailing Frequencies. Recently Released To be released in 2018
A new Starmada book for both editions.
Federation Commander Reference Starship Book
Traveller Prime Directive Core Rulebook
New starships for the 2500 (1/3125) range including Klingon B10
New starships for the 2400 (1/3788) range including heavy war destroyers and the jumbo freighter.
SHAPEWAYS:
We’re now offering some of our miniatures and some new designs on Shapeways. You can check out the store here: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/amarillo-design-bureau-inc?sort=newest
PDF and EBOOK SALES: RECENTLY RELEASED ON Warehouse 23
Space is vast and the galaxy has been around for billions of years. A species that has studied the sky for a few centuries need not imagine that they have seen everything that can happen. Some stellar events, for example supernovae, happen often enough that one or two are observed every year. Events that happen only once a century are recorded in history books and quickly identified by new generations of astronomers. Even events that happen once in a millennia are the subject of legends and a modern astronomer realizes he was not the first to see it. But things that happen once in a million years, those things are truly new wonders, unpredicted by scientists who thought they knew how the universe actually worked.
In the case of the event that caused the so-called Battle of the Starblazer, it had (like everything else in space) been a long time coming. The event was set in motion 20,000,000 years earlier when one star (ejected from the star cluster where it had been born) spent a million years or so passing another. That passage perturbed the location of the smaller, older, white star, and sent it in a spiral dance with a younger, larger, but less stable red star. After 20,000,000 years of circling each other in tighter and tighter orbits, the two stars collided, but it was not a collision of a type seen before. The younger and larger red star had reached the point of its death and was rapidly expanding in the early phase of becoming a nebula. It was the size of Saturn's orbit, and one could have argued whether the "surface of the star" was actually the surface of the star or the wave front of an exploding hypernova that had yet to reach the point of critical luminosity. The smaller and hotter white star barely noticed passing inside the red star's outer shell and (a few tens of thousands of years later) it collided and merged with the shrunken core of the larger red star. That collision turned the combined white star and red core into a very hot and very dense star that quickly collapsed into something even smaller, denser, and hotter. That object, for it was arguable if it were still a star, quickly erupted a near-lightspeed jet of hot matter out of its north and south poles. This jet burst through the still growing shell of the expanding red star, exciting its surface and resulting in waves of light, radiation, and gravity in combinations no existing civilization had ever seen before. By accident of geography, four such civilizations saw the event at nearly the same time, for the event that became known to Federation scientists as Y170E47X, and to others as "The Starblazer," happened in the Neutral Zone between the Federation and the Tholians, and was seen by patrols of the Klingons and Romulans. (Continue reading here)
Ask Admiral Vanaxilth Jindarian Bombers, Part I
Wayne Douglas Power asks: I have been looking in Module F1 and it shows that the Jindarian medium bombers have two built-in electronic warfare pods, and their heavy bombers have three built-in electronic warfare pods. This is not what the "standard" rules for bombers say they should have. Kommodore Ketrick replies: The Jindarian bombers are "empire specific" and overrule the general rules. This was a decision made when they were published to reflect their background note that the Jindarians sometimes appear capable of more advanced technologies than they otherwise display, but do not display technologies that make them "stand out" from the general level of technology in use around them. This supports the theory that the Jindarians are "hiding" from . . . someone? something? Wayne Douglas Power asks: How many fighters or bombers can a Jindarian hybrid carrier variant (R16.R2), or a Jindarian bomber carrier (R16.FB) have, before it becomes a "true carrier," and needs to have escort ships? Kommodore Ketrick replies: The Jindarians are not the Hydrans. Adding fighters to a bay in place of shuttles, even if you add a full squadron of 12 on a dreadnought, does not also install the systems to lend electronic warfare to the fighters. A non-carrier Jindarian ship that embarks fighters, even though it installs ready racks, is not a true carrier but simply a "casual carrier" under (J4.62) no matter how many shuttles it replaces with fighters. It can take an electronic warfare fighter as the eighth fighter (as any squadron can). It could take a multi-role shuttle and assign that to provide electronic warfare support to the squadron, but it is not a "true carrier" and cannot lend electronic warfare to the fighters. Jindarian bombers carried internally under (R16.FB1) can be lent electronic warfare provided the ship in question was already a carrier, but if the ship in question was not a carrier, than it is a "hybrid" carrier and cannot lend electronic warfare. In the case of (R16.FB2), if the ship in question were already otherwise a carrier, it could lend the bombers electronic warfare, but if it were not, it could not. The rule is pretty specific that the "base" is only the bomber base; it provides no other systems than the ability to rearm the bomber. In the case of (R16.FB3) the shipyard ship is not a carrier, and the bombers are simply being transported and so it cannot lend them electronic warfare. (End of Admiral Vanaxilth) F&E Q&A
MOVEMENT Q: Can an operational base move during the operational portion of the turn and then be towed by a tug during the strategic movement portion of the turn?
A: Let's refer to the rulebook. (204.21) The moving units must begin and end their Strategic Movement on a friendly Strategic Movement Node. They must not have moved by any other means on the current Player Turn. This rule is fairly clear. An operational base cannot use operational movement and then move or be moved strategically during the same player turn. Q: May an FRD (using operational movement, either under its own power or towed) enter a hex containing a devastated neutral or enemy planet? The hex is otherwise empty and there are no defending units of any kind at the planet. A: Let's refer to the rulebook. (421.22) LIMITATIONS: FRDs cannot enter a hex containing enemy units. (508.162) This residual defense factor is not a "unit" in any sense. It has no attack factor and cannot cause damage. It does not block pursuit or retreat. By these rules, an FRD may enter a hex containing a devastated neutral or enemy planet that is otherwise empty of enemy or neutral units as a devastated planet is not a unit. (End of F&E Q&A)
ASK AUNT JEAN
Dear Aunt Jean, Can you give us some specifics on what you've enhanced for the ISC? You have done the Veltressai, Q'Naabians, Pronhoulites, and Rovillians. How about finishing out with the Korlivilar this month? A: The Korlivilar were another species I felt sorry for. They were fast cat people. Surely there was more to them than that. So I dug into those dusty Air Force tapes and found more. That "fast reaction time" meant they made excellent forward scouts and special forces loved them. The flip side was they needed a lot of sleep, preferably in soundproofed rooms where they wouldn't be startled to wakefulness. I also found they didn't approve of the Kzintis and Lyrans. Those two peoples bragged about exterminating an entire species of sentient beings! They are part of the driving force behind aggressively bringing peace to the galaxy.
Send questions to Jean at marketing@StarFleetGames.com and she will answer as soon as she can.
(End of Ask Aunt Jean ) Cool Stuff on the Website In this section we will provide links to various web pages and items that we think you will find "cool". We have also uploaded new Xander wallpapers to our Wallpapers section on the website: Wallpapers STAR FLEET ALERTS These are the press releases we send to the wholesalers, retailers, and media. You can get on the mailing list for them by asking Marketing@StarFleetGames.com to add you to the list. (Obviously, they are free.) They are uploaded to the Star Fleet Alert page FC Tactic of the MonthTIT FOR TAT If you are in a duel, and are in danger to losing your ship to capture because of Marine combat, pay attention to how many Marines your opponent has. If at any point your opponent transports the last of his Marines over to your ship to cement his victory, use your "me-too" opportunity to transport some of your remaining Marines over to his ship!
While this means you will probably lose your ship to capture, it also means you are virtually guaranteed to capture his ship! While this may or may not result in a victory, it is still much better than losing your ship to capture with no response. One more point to the above . . .
Depending on how many Marines the "losing" ship has on board, don't transport over all of them. You will want to send at least three (or capturing the enemy ship's control stations will take forever, leaving you very vulnerable). However, if you can leave even one behind, that will slow down the attackers, most likely by at least a turn, giving your unopposed Marines a better chance to succeed with the "surprise" capture of the enemy's ship.
Being a Seltorian is a tough life, but you can have the best mid-sized capture wagon. When you decide to get into the ship capturing business, take your HDW and make all of your options transporters. Buy 10 extra boarding parties and a couple of commandos, heavy-weapons squads, and engineers, too. This capitalizes on the fact that the Seltorian HDW normally carries eight to 10 more boarding parties than other HDWs before you purchase the extra ones. Now you are ready to send over the boarders! This Seltorian HDW has 10 transporters and a full alpha strike. Any HDW can do this but the Seltorian is particularly good at it due to the extra boarding parties it starts with.
Take that, Rocky! (End of SFB Tactic of the Month)
A Call To Arms: Star Fleet Tactic of the Month (End of A Call to Arms: Star Fleet Tactic of the Month)
Facebook Highlight of the Month Look what else is coming to our shop on Shapeways!
Mini of the Month Barton Pyle painted this 3788 Scale Hydran Monarch (Smooth Fine Detail Plastic)
|
||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
show our games and to teach potential players some basics. 
