From: stanford@leland.Stanford.EDU (Scott Stanford)
Subject: Re: Star Fleet Battles
Organization: none whatsoever
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 01:13:28 GMT

In article <...> robert_walton@next.com (Robert Walton) writes:

>Some SFB Questions:
>
>1) How does one get started in SFB?  It seems everyone posting to the net  
>is an expert who started playing a decade ago.  I read one post the other  
>day so full of acronyms and jargon as to be meaningless to a potential  
>entrant!  Is this a game with high barriers to entry?

It can seem that way.  I started playing 'bout 10 years ago and it's
grown on me.  The way to learn is to find people in your area who play
and start playing.  It can be as complex as you want it to be.  For
example, when we teach new people, we leave out ECM (Electronic
Counter Measures), Transporters, WWs (Wild Weasels - a way to get
drones (missiles) off your butt), crew unit calculations, etc.  The
more you play, the more you take on new rules.  TFG (Task Force Games,
the folks who put it together) has also put out the SFB "Training
Manual" for beginning players, but I don't know much about it.

>2) Why hasn't the game improved its graphics?  Seems like such a popular  
>game would have no trouble keeping up to date on graphics quality, but  
>this doesn't seem to be the case.  The current materials in the store look  
>to me like they're published out of a garage by amateur artists.  Is there  
>some war with Paramount over publishing rights?  To add insult to injury,  
>the games seem to rely on ships and equipment illustrations from the TV  
>version (hokey) rather than the movies (much improved).  Look at new  
>entrants like Battletech.  I have no real interest to play this game (the  
>whole premise seems pretty silly), but the graphics of some of the recent  
>stuff make the SFB stuff look pretty feeble.

SFB is based on the premises in the original series, pretty much, with
it's own history afterwords.  Paramount would sue the living shit out
of TFG if anything comes close to looking like anything in the movies.
Hence you see the original generation ships with their older look.

>3) Why hasn't there been an aggressive inclusion of the ST:TNG period?   
>Seems like this would be a hot item...

Hot.  Real hot.  Damn hot.  Lawyer hot.  As above, Paramount would
shit.  But then again, a lot of the stuff in the movies and TNG stuff
is really warped and inconceivable (even compared to the original
premises).  The storyline and logic of SFB is IMHO a lot better than
Star Trek.  Plus lots o' wars (hard to have wars when the Klingons
turn into pussycats and the Roms only have one kind of ship - and
green ones at that).

>4) Weren't there some miniatures out for this awhile back?  What happened?   
>This seems like a natural for miniatures. God knows if people buy  
>miniatures of big robots for Battletech I'd think the Star Trek stuff  
>would go like gang busters.

I think the profit must not have been good.  I have some miniatures -
they're pretty nice.  Actually, they might re-release some (anyone
else there got info?).

You should learn to play.  IMHO SFB is a truly great tactical level
game, with rules that are (finally) well laid out, almost
all-inclusive, but that leave lots of room for the captain to exercise
tactical judgement.  Find some people in your area and drop in on a
game or two to see if you like it, THEN decide if you want to make the
monetary investment (or maybe the gaming group splits costs).  Good luck!

Scott
-- 
Scott Stanford                 |)  It's log, it's log.
stanford@leland.stanford.edu  /|   It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
                             ((|,) It's log, it's log.
"MORE Doctah Peppah!!"        ~|~  It's better than bad; it's GOOD!
Newsgroups: rec.games.board