Rock-Con Game Report: Clash of Starfleets

Once again, I made the drive out to Rockford to run a game at Rock-Con earlier this month. It's a nice little gaming convention that I've been going to for a few years now. The past few times I've gone, I've decided to run a WWII naval combat game, but this time I opted to break out part of my massive spaceship collection.

The gaming system I chose to use was Colonial Battlefleet by Steel Dreadnought Games. It's a great system that has just enough flexibility to come up with some great ship designs, but not so much that it can easily be broken. I'll get to that in another post.

For now though, here's the recap of the game I ran. The scenario was one I came up with myself. A team of archaeologists in a backwater system found a really old and powerful device. They brought it back to a research station to study and of course, word leaked out. This brings all of our players and their small flotillas onto the gaming board to fight for the artifact.

Because I have so many different fleets, I picked my fleet action scale ships from the Babylon 5, Star Trek, Star Wars, and StarGate SG-1 universes.

The whole collection was painted and ready to go, so I spent a great deal of time designing the fleets and attempting to balance them somewhat. After all, some fleets used fighters while others didn't, some had shields, some had massive armor, some had missiles, etc. And that's probably a whole other blog post, so I won't get into it here.

With all the fleets assembled, let's get to the game! I had three players signed up and despite an amazing looking setup, no one else jumped in. But I had three really excited players, so it worked out just fine. It took about 15 minutes to go over the basic rules and then the game started.

The first couple turned didn't involve much excitement. No one was really in range of each other or the small research station in the middle of the board. It took everyone a little while to get used to the movement system and I think the Klingon player never really got it, but everything still ran quite smoothly.

On turn three, the action really started. The Empire launched a salvo of cluster missiles from the star destroyer, the Klingons tried to shoot the space station and missed, and Starfleet knocked down the shields so they could beam aboard the seven toughest squads of redshirts ever collected in one place. Those marines knocked out almost all of the station security forces and looked ready to grab the artifact.

Turn four saw the Empire launch TIE fighters and bombers which charged off to swarm the Klingon Birds of Prey. Starfleet destroyed one of two Birds of Prey and annihilated the stormtroopers who made it onto the station.

By turn five, the Imperial missiles began hitting targets and took out the last Bird of Prey and a Starfleet light cruiser. The Klingons damaged two Imperial cruisers, boarded the station, and were slaughtered by those utterly fearless Starfleet marines. The marines managed to take out a total of five Klingon squads, three more station security squads, and two more stormtrooper squads.

Turn six proved to be the decisive turn of the game. The swarms of Imperial fighters kept doing damage to the Federation and Klingon ships. But the Klingons blew up one Imperial ship in retaliation and managed to kill the fresh squads of stormtroopers who had just wiped out the toughest redshirts in the galaxy.

With the artifact in their hands, the victorious Klingons beamed back onto a D-7 warbird.

Turn seven was the final turn and the most tense of the game. Everyone knew which ship had the artifact and they were gunning for it. Starfleet moved to cut off the likely escape routes, while the Empire tried to ram the warbird, but missed.

The D-7 then proceeded to speed off in the opposite direction everyone expected while the other Klingon ships provided a screen. Imperial fighters swarmed around the Klingons but couldn't destroy any of them. In their rage, the Imperial star destroyer fired a full salvo of turbolasers at the research station and destroyed it as the Klingons warped away for home.

All the players seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal. They quickly got the hang of the system and I found myself providing assistance less and less as the game went on. The Klingon player did feel he had too many ships to watch out for and he did have the largest fleet with six ships. Fighters proved to be a nuisance to the two Star Trek fleets, both of which fielded none, but they weren't an overwhelming advantage. The big star destroyer seemed almost invulnerable but it didn't have enough weapons to capitalize on this.

I have a few changes to make for the next time I run it, but not many. All the work I put into the designs before the game paid off on the table.

-- Mike, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club  member

How to Base Fleet-scale Starfighters

I have been collecting miniature spaceships for over eight years now and finally began painting them up recently. I had never really bothered with all my miniature starfighters, but I finally decided to do something with them and I needed a way to base them up.

Because almost all of them came from England, I wanted to stretch them as far as I could. There are a number of methods for basing up fighters, and I combined a few of them to do it easily and cheaply.

One method I had been considering involves Litko bases. They are very durable and easy to use, but expensive. First you need a Litko flying base and then you add a chevron-shaped attachment to the top. They also make a three-pronged triangle that you can stick fighters on. Both work well and I have seen them used to great effect — but they weren't really what I was looking for, and I'd need a lot of them, so I kept looking.

The fighters are based using Litko products. These are not my miniatures!

Another great option was to base them up like the creator of Star-Ranger did. He took a one-inch wood disk and glued three pins to them. Then he drilled a small hole into each fighter and mounted the fighters on the pins. I had a hard time drilling the holes, though, so I had to think outside the box. What I ended up doing was flipping around the pin and using the flattened top to attach the fighters.

But how to get the pin on the base? To solve that problem, I found some 3.2mm brass beads from the same craft store. If I glued them to my wooden base, I could stick the pin into the bead, giving me a strong connection. It worked amazingly well.

For the bottom, I first used a 7/8" steel washer from Lowe's and then discovered that Litko sold plywood disks the exact same size. I ordered a few hundred of them at 0.8mm thick and started gluing. After gluing together the washers and plywood, I had a reasonably heavy base that was magnetic.

The next step was the glue down two beads, making sure to leave plenty of space between them. Some of my fighters were quite large and I didn't want any collisions!

After letting the glue set up a bit under the bead, I added more glue and stuck the pin into the bead. It wasn't an exact fit but using a very thick gel glue, it worked.

Attaching the fighters took some more work. Some of them were small enough that they went on very easily. Some took a bit more convincing. And for a handful, I needed to glue a bead to the bottom of the fighter, cut off the flat head of the pin, and use what was left of the pin to connect the two beads.

I put two fighters on each base, which leaves room for a small dice to track how many ships are left in the squadron, and for any identifying labels I might want to use.

For shuttles and larger craft I only put on per base, mainly because Ground Zero Games stopped making their small shuttles and similar craft, so I was stuck with whatever I had on hand.

After I based up over 100 squadrons I decided to see how much it cost me per base. Using Litko's three-peg base, it would cost 63 cents per base. Using their chevron base, it would cost 73 cents per base. My method took more time but only cost 17 cents per base.

One more method works well: Studio Bergstrom sells a Versi-Base, which is a piece of foam you can stick pins into for mounting fighters. I have heard very good things about them, but each one costs 20 cents, which still makes my similar method slightly cheaper.

— Mike, Chicago Skirmish Wargames member

Full Thrust: Diplomatic mission ends in fighting

I played my first game of Full Thrust using the Cross Dimensions rules. I greatly enjoyed the game and finally experienced an Epic Space Battle. Our attempts to do this as kids, using Starfleet Battles rules, resulted in 2-day long games with a metric ton of paperwork. Using Full Thrust, we were able to finish a multi-ship game in 3 hours, with minimal bookkeeping.

Our host had a cool starfield mat for our game, and Patrick and Ryan had impressive ship collections, so I was able to borrow a New Anglican Confederation fleet. Together Ryan and I would have a total of 6 capital ships and 6 gunships; Pat would have 2 battleships, a number of missile destroyers and smaller capital ships, and at least 6 gunships.

However, his force would be split; some waiting in-system, the rest forced to wait at least 5 turns before coming on to the board. After a quick description of the scenario and some initial setup, we went over the rules. Pat is good at explaining rules and we were ready to go after an overview and some quick questions. I'm going to continue in narrative form, because the game really fired my imagination.

Constant border tensions had been taking their toll; our many attempts at peaceful resolution had been rebuffed by our unpleasant Gothic neighbors, the Neu Swabian Legue. One more attempt at a peaceful diplomatic mission would be attempted, but this time we would have some insurance in place--no more "deep space accidents" as our Germanic friends called them. In conjunction with our allies from the Eurasian Solar Union and a task force from L'Astromarine des FSE, we prepared a mix of capital ships, escorts, and gunships. With great care and stealth, we infiltrated a gunship squadron of three ships and and one small escort into a gas cloud near the flagship of the Neu Swabian League. Running on minimal life support, they waited patiently for the arrival of our diplomatic mission.


We approached in 2 groups and made good speed towards the planet of New Alsace-Lorraine. The stance of the NSL fleet changed in a manner that seemed rude and hostile. We sent out communications assuring them that we were on a diplomatic mission while putting our crews on battle-alert. After a short while it became obvious that the NSL fleet was moving to attack, and we decided to activate our insurance. The gunships exploded out of the gas cloud and massed around the sides and stern of the NSL battleship. Attempts at communicating with the battleship were pointless, as it immediately opened fire on our ambassadors of peace. The gunship Kukri was crippled almost immediately, and was soon lost with all hands. However the ESU ship scored many hits on the battleship, and my gunships Dagger and Raj fired all they had. It was obvious that the NSL wanted a fight.


Our capital ships were still too far to assist, so the gunships were all on their own for a while. They continued to inflict heavy damage on the battleship, but before long gunship Raj was obliterated. The Dagger finally pulled away and made towards the planet. About that time the capital ships came into contact, and the darkness of space was filled with missiles, torpedoes, and beams. To be honest, my gunners did only slight damage to the NSL fleet, but my allies scored hit after hit; many of them well-placed shots to power cores, life support, and fire control systems. Our right flank advanced steadily, while I held the middle, and sent the CL Victory to meet gunship Dagger at the planet. Victory had a full complement of elite and heavily armed diplomats that planned to land at the planet’s capital city.


The NSL’s reinforcements had arrived and entered the fray by now, scoring many hits on the Dagger but failing to destroy her. She would shortly take up orbit around New Alsace-Lorraine and begin to disrupt planetary communications. My allies continued to disable or destroy NSL ships; the first of the NSL battleships drifted, without bridge control and a failing life support system, directly into the path of BC Vengeance. Vengeance’s boarding parties, wearing vacc suits, were soon swarming over the crippled hulk.


The CL Victory took heavy damage on its way to the planet but took out a gunship in return and was well on its way to landing troops, I mean diplomats, on the planet, when the NSL fleet retreated and engaged their FTL drives. Our colonists could rest a little easier, knowing the border had been pushed back...at least for a little while.

— Bryan, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member