Rules of play

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© 2015 GMT Games, LLC

•  They are not harmed by explosion damage.

•  They cannot be targeted unless specified by scenario rule.

•  They may Block Fire (17.2.2)

•  Missiles already fired may continue to track to a ship blocked by

a planet, but are still destroyed if they move into the planet’s hex. 

They will move into the planet’s hex if there is no other closer 

hex to the target.

(17.2.2) Blocking Fire and Power Transmission: To see if a planet 

is blocking fire, use a straight edge (use the side of the Player Aid

Card) placing it from the center of the firing hex to the center of

the target hex. If the straight edge passes through the Planet hex, 

fire is blocked. Fire is not blocked if it only goes along the Planet

hex’s spine. 

Missiles may not be launched and Power may not be transmitted to 

FTRs (12.2.2) if the target ship is blocked by a planet. 

EXAMPLE: The Talon BB and the Talon CA are in the Terran BB’s 

left and forward fire arcs, respectively. However, when a straight 

edge is placed from the center of the Terran ship to the center of the 

Talon BB, the planet blocks the line of fire. The Talon CA, however, 

can be targeted as the line of fire is traced along a hex spine. In 

this case the Talon CA would take damage on its rear Shield Arc.

17.3 Asteroids

Asteroids represent clusters of large rocks 

in space. Small vessels, like Fighters, do 

not have trouble navigating them, however, 

bigger ships do. They also affect weapon 

targeting systems.

Effects: Whenever a ship moves into a hex with an Asteroid counter 

it will take 1 damage on that Shield Arc (if the appropriate Shield Arc 

is down, damage is placed on the hull). If a ship does not move during 

their Impulse and remains in an Asteroid hex NO damage is taken.

EXCEPTION: Fighters and Missiles never take damage from 

Asteroids.

Asteroid Speed: A term coined by early space explorers. Asteroid 

fields could be safely navigated by large ships so long as their 

Speed was equal to or less than their Power. In this way, they could 

constantly reinforce their forward shield when they moved through 

the Asteroid field and not take any permanent damage.

17.4 Nebula

In reality, Nebulae are collections of count-

less stars, spanning multiple parsecs. How-

ever, as humanity explored space, they found 

pockets of radioactive gas that interfered 

with Shields and weapon targeting systems. 

These early explorers called these clouds 

“Nebulae”, since it was a much more elegant name than “Gas 

Pocket,” the name stuck. 

(17.4.1) Effects: Whenever a ship shares a hex with a Nebula 

counter, all of its shields are considered to be down. Do not mark off 

the shields on the ship counter. All Shield Reinforcement markers 

are destroyed. 

•  A ship’s shields come back online immediately upon exiting the

Nebula hex. 

•  Any damage a ship suffers while in a Nebula is placed directly

on the hull. 

•  Nebulae have no effect on Missiles.

•  When a ship leaves a Nebula counter, its shields immediately

come back on to whatever level is recorded on their counter. 

EXAMPLE: If a ship exits a Nebula hex and collides with a Missile, 

the damage could be placed on shields, if available. 

Note that damage from the Wave Motion Gun is not applied until 

after the displace effect is resolved. If a ship gets knocked into a 

Nebula by the Wave Motion Gun, its shields would be down due to 

the Nebula effect BEFORE the Wave Motion Gun damage is applied.

PLAY NOTE: Fighters love to hide in nebulae since they have no 

shields to lose.

17.5 Asteroids and Nebulae Affect 

Weapon Targeting Systems

•  If a ship is firing in or through an Asteroid or Nebula subtract one

(–1) from the die roll for every Asteroid or Nebula counter the 

attack would pass through including any in the target ship’s hex 

and/or firing ship’s hex. If a die result becomes less than 1, the

shot misses.

EXAMPLE: The Terran BB and Talon CA (Justice) are in Asteroid 

hexes. If the Terran BB fired on the Talon BB (Eviscerator), fire 

would pass through two Asteroid hexes, including the hex of the 

firing ship. If the Terran BB fired Torpedoes and rolled a 3, it would 

be reduced to a roll of 1; a miss. If the Terran BB fired on the Talon 

CA, fire would be traced through 3 Asteroid hexes, including the 

hex of the target ship. A roll of 3 would be reduced down to 0 which 

automatically misses. 

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© 2015 GMT Games, LLC

•  The Fusion Cannon roll result may be modified differently for

each ship it would hit.

•  If there is difficulty determining how many Asteroids/Nebulae fire

passes through, place a straight edge from the center of the firing 

hex to the center of the target hex. The terrain hexes the straight 

edge passes through affect fire. If passing along the hex spine of 

two hexes containing Asteroids or Nebulae, that only counts as 

passing through 1 hex.

•  Asteroids and Nebulae block Power Transmission from a CV or

Base to FTR Squadrons the same way a Planet blocks fire.

18. BLACK HOLES

While rarely encountered, black holes 

provide a substantial piloting challenge to 

most ships.

18.1 Effects

•  Any ship that collides with a Black Hole is immediately destroyed.

Explosion damage is still dealt to adjacent ships. The Black Hole 

takes no damage. 

•  Black Holes block fire just like a Planet.

•  When firing, if the target ship is closer to the black hole than the

firing ship, subtract one (–1) from the die roll due to interference 

from the Black Hole.

•  Ships may not deploy within 2 hexes of a Black Hole.

18.2 Gravity Pull

Once per Round immediately after the Power Phase all ships (in-

cluding Bases!) must shift one hex closer to the Black Hole. Use a 

straight edge placed from the center of one hex to the center of the 

Black Hole hex to determine where each ship will shift. If the straight 

edge is along a hex spine, the ship’s owner chooses the destination 

hex. The Initiative Player shifts all of his ships first.

•  Any  collision  damage  and  resulting  explosion  damage  is

immediately resolved.

•  Ships do not change facing, all Turn Radius markers are shifted

accordingly and they are not shifted closer to the turning ship due 

to the Gravity Pull.

19. WORM HOLES

Some scenarios call for Worm Holes which allow ships to instantly 

retreat from a battle, usually to fulfill a scenario objective. Retreat

occurs immediately when the ship collides with the Worm Hole. 

These are represented by Black Hole counters with an objective 

marker placed on them. They do not act like Black Holes. They do 

not cause ships to shift closer or subtract from firing rolls.

DESIGNER NOTES

The idea for this game came about in 2006 when I was laid up sick 

(really sick). I couldn’t really get out of bed and so, during my wak-

ing time, I spent it thinking about this game. It has changed dramat-

ically since then, but that sickness was actually a pretty good start. 

My original goal was to develop a playable space combat game that 

could easily handle fleets of 3-6 ships (or more) on a side. Individual

ship actions are nice, but I wanted fleet combat. I also wanted fleet

combat involving capital ships and not fighter craft. I wanted big,

complicated ships, that had to maneuver and charge systems and 

not just do an Immelman. For me, it also has to be intuitive and easy 

to play—hopefully with lots of good decisions. As I say with most 

of my games, I want my cake and I want to eat it too. I want all the 

good stuff, but I want it simply.

Vector Movement? 

With a tactical space combat game, the first question that needs to

be asked is how to handle movement. The vacuum of space means 

that objects will tend to stay at their same Speed even when thrust 

is removed (using conventional means). I assume that this is what 

you mean when you say vector movement. Plus, with vacuum, 

there is no air to turn against. To go in the opposite direction, all of 

that thrust needs to be applied in the opposite direction in order to 

begin to move it the other way. You can’t just turn. You might begin 

to apply thrust to the side, but you retain all of your Speed in the 

original direction as well. Even games that go with vector movement 

usually get this wrong. 

For example, if you apply thrust for 5 turns in one direction, your 

Speed will increase in that direction each one of those 5 turns. That 

ship will then have to apply thrust in the opposite direction for 5 

turns just to stop its movement in that direction (slowing each turn) 

to say nothing of any thrust applied to the side to change direction. 

If you are in a plane going 500 mph you can turn that plane, keep 

most of your momentum, and go 500 mph in the other direction. 

You can’t do that in a space ship because there are no aerodynamic/

frictional forces at play—there is nothing to turn it against. 

Space also means that a ship could easily change its facing. It might 

still be hurtling forward at the same Speed, but the ship can spin 

about on its axis and fire in any direction. No frictional or aerody-

namic forces would interfere with it doing that (like it would with 

an atmospheric craft). Even game systems that model space flight at

least somewhat accurately tend to ignore this very important point, 

a point which I find pretty boring in a game.

Of course we are dealing with science fiction here and not science.

For this game to take place we have to have Faster Than Light drives, 

so why not Near Faster Than Light drives? This allowed me to set 

up the premise for the science fiction universe as I desired. I find

this very realistic. First of all, the way I model movement is realis-

tic to my premise. :-) Secondly, and more importantly, the game is

realistic to the genre. The ships in this game move and turn as the 

capital ships do in the major science fiction franchises. When I play

science fiction, that is what I am shooting for.

Here is the irony—a space combat game that chooses vector move-

ment in an effort to be realistic has chosen a scientific premise. Yet,

if the game allows a ship to turn and keep its momentum or does 

not allow ships to spin on its axis at will, it is missing the two most 

important points of its scientific premise. In an effort to be realistic,

it has made itself far more unrealistic than a game like Talon. At 

least Talon is accurate to its premise. 

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© 2015 GMT Games, LLC

So, there was no way I was going to go with vector movement. The 

only reason I would have done it would have been realism, but if I 

made it truly realistic I would have made a boring game. Every ship 

would always be able to turn the shield and weapon of its choice 

against the enemy while the ships zipped around the board in mostly 

straight lines firing as they passed each other.

Three Dimensional Movement?

The second thing that has to be addressed is three dimensional 

movement. Do I want to include this in the game? If you have read 

the rules, you know the answer is, no. My thought on it was that 

it didn’t add really anything to the game. In atmospheric combat, 

it is critical. Planes climb at a much different rate than they dive, 

but in space the third dimension doesn’t impact the combat any 

differently than the other two dimensions. It simply wasn’t worth 

the rule investment and complication for something that didn’t add 

anything to the game—except perhaps allowing me to brag about 

how the game had 3D space combat :-).

Power System

The power system is something that I love. First, the power for the 

basic systems is baked into the Power Curve. Second, the adjustment 

of the Power Curve is so easy that it makes playing with a fleet

so much easier. Lastly, it forces/allows you to spend power as it

becomes available. This is simulating a combat that is taking place 

fairly quickly and it breaks the suspension of disbelief for me if I 

have to sit down and plan out something in advance, whether it be 

moves, or energy allocation, or whatever. I want as many decisions 

as possible to be made on the fly, as befitting the subject matter.

Those of you who are familiar with my game Band of Brothers will 

notice that same similarity as that game also mimics something that 

is happening very quickly (WW2 squad combat). You only have a 

few units to do something with so you just use them. Here you only 

have one power to spend (or one hex to move) so you just spend 

it. Sometimes you want to spend it on several things, but you can 

only choose one.

I suppose the most innovative part of the game is the large, laminated 

counters. I didn’t want to do miniatures (either figurines or cards)

because of the inherent problems with movement. There are a lot of 

extra rules needed for miniature movement (I mean without a hex 

grid) and it is very time consuming. Of course, there is also a reason 

why miniature games are sometimes umpired. Just a little change in 

facing or movement distance can have a big impact on the outcome 

of the game. I also didn’t want a traditional small counter, hex 

map game. This would require some sort of ship display for every 

single ship on the board. That quickly becomes complicated, time 

consuming and a bit of a brain burn when you increase the number 

of ships. Remember that I wanted the game to easily handle small 

fleets, and the large, laminated counters became the perfect solution.

With everything on the counter, it is so easy.

Development Phase

Of any of the games that I have designed, this one experienced 

the most change during its development, while it was on P500. As 

I look back now, I can see that I had focused so much on making 

a clean design, that I missed some opportunities. Fortunately, my 

development team kept bringing that up to me. :-) My emphasis

can be seen in the changes made. The system that I delivered to 

the development team is essentially unchanged from the original (I 

tweaked the changing of initiative to make it simpler—that’s it). In 

one sense it is gratifying to me how robust the system turned out 

to be. However, the balance and the chrome is completely different 

than what we started with. 

The team is responsible at least in part for afterburners, drastic 

weapon changes, multiple excel spreadsheets used to calculate and 

balance point values in the game, the special effects of Fusion and 

Wave Motion Guns, black holes, nebulae, docking, simplified/easier

retreat, drastic changes to CVs, docking, several scenarios, a lot of 

back story, and many other things. They were great to work with. 

So, in another sense, I was surprised how much goodness I had left 

on the table going into development.

Conclusion

The rest of the game design was time consuming, but a lot of fun. 

With a normally complicated subject made playable, the sky was 

the limit. The system is pretty modular and the differences in races 

are easy to design. There are so many variables in the game that are 

simply adjusted, it is easy to give the races a distinct personality 

and there are many more that I am already fiddling with. I hope you

enjoy the game!

GMT Games, LLC

 P.O. Box 1308, Hanford, CA 93232-1308

www.GMTGames.com