Federation Commander

I believe that the original edition of Star Fleet Battles was marketed as a "pocket game" or "microgame" called Star Fleet Battles: Task Force Game #4 and came in a ziploc bag as a small booklet and a bunch of counters.

Obviously, this version would be a lot simpler than later editions since it was a lot shorter.

I recently bought a copy of this but haven't had a chance to play it yet, so I'd like some feedback on it. Is the pocket game version worthy of play, or does it just lack too many of the cool parts of the game? (I'm not so much into large rules sets....)

Impressions?

The old "Pocket Edition" is the one version of SFB I don't have. My understanding is that things didn't change much when it was expanded into the Designer's Edition. That was certainly a very-playable game (or SFB wouldn't have gotten as big as it did).

It wasn't without its problems though, and there is reams of errata in old Nexus and Captains Logs magazines to try and patch the leaks. Commander's Edition fixed a lot (and replaced the organization system), but brought it's own errata as it expanded even more past Designers. Captain's really tamped down on the changes and errata, but the game had grown to a monster by that point.

Take it out and play.

I bought this game when it was new after watching two guys play out a fight between a Romulan War Eagle and a Fed CA. I was drooling all the way to the cash register.

The rules set is relatively small as is the ship selection. There are some funky things like speed 8 drones and mulitiple impulse charts so that each turn uses a chart based on the fastest ship/weapon.

The best part of the first game is pre plotting. This was the standard movement scheme. You had to plan your entire turns movement including speed and all turns and hope that your weapons arced. Plasma torps launched only on an end turn phase so once that R got rolling you'd better hope to be in a position to run.

Lots of fun even without all the current chrome.

djdood wrote:errata in old Nexus and Captains Logs magazines to try and patch the leaks

Hmm. Guess I'll have to dust off my copies of Nexus to see how much errata there is, and how severe the "fix".

I could just play my other editions, but I was hoping that the pocket edition would have the simplicity I'm looking for without many glitches to work through.

but I was hoping that the pocket edition would have the simplicity I'm looking for without many glitches to work through.

If you don't know there's a glitch for something, then don't worry over it --

You want more simplicity, so go with whats there ---

Finarvyn wrote:

djdood wrote:errata in old Nexus and Captains Logs magazines to try and patch the leaks

Hmm. Guess I'll have to dust off my copies of Nexus to see how much errata there is, and how severe the "fix".

I could just play my other editions, but I was hoping that the pocket edition would have the simplicity I'm looking for without many glitches to work through.

The SFB Basic Set has plenty of simplicity.

Basic movement, HET's, overloads... and sticking to the early Direct Fire oriented races... makes for a very straightforward game.

The rules are extremely well organized and have lots of examples. All the loop-holes and crypticly worded instructions have been cleaned up. (If you played any popular game of the eighties you'd understand how much pain fixing this takes.)

Also... if you ever decide that you want to move up from "simple"... the rest of SFB is designed for you to be able to layer the extra stuff in at your own pace.

The two Steves gave their all so that you could have a Doomsday rulebook. Don't let their sacrifice go to waste...!

If you want a simpler game, dont' try to use the pocket game. Go download first missions.

And, just to make things *really* convenient, here is the link to First Missions.

Many thanks! (Scurries off to read First Missions....)

Greetings, all. Interesting thread. Just to play devil’s advocate: Isn’t the Pocket Edition the same number of pages as First Missions? (In fact, the Pocket Edition pages are half the size of the First Missions pages.) Yet the PE includes 5 races, 13 ship classes, a base station, two monsters, shuttles, drones, plasma torpedoes, and nuclear space mines; whereas FM only covers 2 ships and none of the other stuff? All I mean is that the two booklets are surely not equivalent in design or function. Regards.

SFB PE didn't have hardly any illustrations. FC FM has lots and those take up column inches.

Having played both the SFB PE and FC FM, I can say that FC:FM is the much better system.

And... FC:FM leads to a great game (as did SFB PE) - but of hte two, First Missions is definitely the better quality product.

First Missions is in larger type, as well, with lots of empty spots full of pictures, while Pocket Edition has no pictures and is tiny type. (I was younger then and could read things that small).

Pocket Edition is a game in its own right, to be sure, but it's the first pass at a game, before players found things that didn't work very well. First Missions is a far more "finished" product.