The Minstrel Boy: In Space... no one can hear you gretz.

"The Horror! The Horror!"

A real treat at the Hamilton Road Games Group last Saturday. Kevin moderated a session of the spaceship battle game, "Sunder the Stars." It's a relatively simple game, quite playable and easy to learn... a great combination in my opinion. Bear and I squared off for the first game. Bear played a Klingon flotilla of four ships. They all had names but I sound like I'm clearing my throat to pronounce them.

The small tan cubes indicate order in initiative and the red ones hits on that ship.

I brought "The Black Fleet" our of suspended animation to use. It was a way to field a fleet on the absolute cheap. All of the hulls are Styrofoam balls from the dollar store, painted and mounted on toothpicks and a slab of foamcore. It makes for a great look.

Destroyers, cruisers, a scout ship, and a Dreadnought

The mighty Planet-class Dreadnought "Remulack"

The fleets on approach.

Two destroyers, DD-220 & DD-221
fast, nasty, and not long lasting - The Tin Cans

The Tribal-class cruiser "Nervii"
It carried some serious weaponry - missile racks and beam-weapon batteries.
Her sister ship "Ashanti" was in the battle line as well.

I fielded a Dreadnought, two cruisers, four destroyers, and a scout ship (which was originally commissioned as a dry wall plug.) I discovered I had mistakenly taken more ships than I pointed for, two extra destroyers. Ever the gentleman, Bear forgave me the oversight after a series of humorous accusations. I ended up beating the Klingon flotilla but not without some losses.
There are four basic weapons systems in the game - batteries, missile racks, drones, and fusion weapons. Distance (we used a hex based table), defense values, point defense, and number of weapons on the attacking ship make the difference. Missiles can be shot down by point defense and point defense for a few ships close together can be combined. Fusion weapons can be countered by point defense, but if they hit, they do continued damage for as many more turns as you have levels of fusion weapons. Drones are precision launchers that can be countered by point defense, but only of the ship attacked. No ramming allowed; I requested it and was told "Uh-uh."
In the end, I won the battle. We should've made up some backstory permitting me to take a system and all it's resources, but we were too busy fightin' for that stuff.

The second round saw Derek and I duking it out with the Black Fleet of the Styrofoamians facing the United Federation of Planets - 6 ships against 7 of mine. This time I was more careful with the point values so we were even.

Derek's Federation - "Star Fleet's Finest"

Very nice commercially available models of many sizes, some with "click bases"
The Enterprise "D" was a dreadnought.

Some smaller Star Fleet ships

The deployment

The Black Fleet responds with the Scout Ship "Cujo" in the lead.

It was not a game that was at all one-sided. Derek can be a tough contender. He used his fusion weapons to great effect, burning out a destroyer over three turns. My fusion weapons did nothing, always being stopped by the Star Fleet point defense. Combining point defense values is a great reason to cluster your ships. I didn't do that and I made it out by the skin of my teeth. I lost 3 of 4 destroyers and the scout ship (which I expected to lose.) Both cruisers were damaged, but the dreadnought finished off the last Star Fleet ships once it got up to the where the battle was. Yes, I won the second game as well - an all-time record for me.

A frontal view of the dreadnought "Remulack"
It is NOT from France.
The hull looks a bit rough up close, but at arm's length the ships look fine.

Although the rule system might not be as detailed as some might like, If you enjoy sci-fi ship gaming, I'd recommend you look into Sunder the Stars.
Why did I choose to use Styrofoam balls for my ships? Cost and availability were certainly factors as were the lightness of the finished product. But there was another consideration.

Here...