[Review]Starmada: The Universal Game of Starship Combat

Starmada: The Universal Game of Starship Combat
Reviewed by Kirt "Loki" Dankmyer (xiombarg@io.com)

Will you like this game? Well, there is a quick way to find out. Go to http://mj12.chrispy.net/ and download the preview version (it's in pdf, naturally). It's pretty complete – more than enough to play the game and to appreciate its elegant simplicity. I'll wait. Or, more accurately, this review isn't going to disintegrate any time soon – personally, I'm probably out somewhere looking for someone to play this game with.

I have two warnings about this review. The first is serious, the second is less so.

WARNING ONE: I haven't played this game. Through some freak of nature, I have plenty of people to roleplay with in Salisbury, MD but no one to wargame with. (Yes, I can hear the violins now.) So that may affect how large a grain of salt you take this review with. But I've played enough wargames to know what I like, and to have a good idea how well this system would work. No pun intended, but this isn't rocket science. Take that how you like.

WARNING TWO: I prefer science fiction, fast-playing wargames. I am not a grognard. I hate Advanced Squad Leader. The most complicated I get is Starfire, and I'm not overly fond of the campaign rules there. I still consider Ogre to be one of the best wargames ever made, and I really, really like FASA's Crimson Skies. So it is only natural that I would be well-disposed to this game. So, another grain of salt, if you like.

Okay, that said, Starmada is everything I could want in a game of starship combat. Before I really get started, though, perhaps I should add a third warning, for the sort of people who care about production values.

WARNING THREE (kinda): If you like lots of art in a game, you'll be disappointed with Starmada. The game started life as a ruleset on the Internet nearly a decade ago and has been playtested and honed to perfection since that time. It is, by definition, a small press release. There is some mediocre cover art and tiny, black-and-white strips of art at the bottom of every page, where the margin would be anyway. The book is wall-to-wall text, though the font is readable and liberal use of chapter headings has been made to enhance that readability. On the other hand, it's a half-size book with a durable cover, so it's perfect to stuff in a box with your miniatures. Also, as small press releases go, it's amazingly well edited and clear, better than many "mainstream" wargames I've had the displeasure of dealing with; very little errata at all, and what there is, isn't deadly. But the game's rules are very much a rulebook and not a coffee table book, though the subdued color scheme of the cover is quite nice.

The first part of the book – less than a third of it – is the core rules. They're very simple, covering the basics: how to move and fire, with an aside relating to fighters. Movement and damage are simultaneous and it's obvious that every aspect of the rules has been playtested and fine-tuned for ease of play, speed, and fairness. I was impressed. The game does require a hexmap (one is included with the normal version of the game, though my preview copy didn't have one – no big deal, I own Starfire, after all) and miniatures (though you can use the (very simple) counters printed in the back of the rules), but the only dice needed are six-siders, though the author recommends having a lot of them. In fact, rounding up components to play is easier than a lot easier than it is for a lot of stuff from Cheapass Games, which specializes in cannibalized game components.

This illustrates what makes this game so wonderful: The basic rules are very simple. Appendices add options, but even "more complicated" rules are, fundamentally, kept simple, so the increase in complexity created by adding a rule is very, very small. Adding all the options makes a medium-complexity wargame that is still very easy to play. I was impressed at how hard the designers worked at this. New rules add tactical options without overwhelming the game, while the basic game still has a wealth of potential tactics, in ship selection and gameplay. I especially like the way explosions work: they block line-of-sight until they go away. Very simple, but with a lot of tactical implications.

The bulk of the book is taken up with Appendixes. Appendix A contains the starship construction rules, which are a bit math-intensive, but all the math is done before play, and there is a starship creation tool available from the Majestic Twelve website; plus the payoff is the resulting ships are very balanced, and a simple (yet not simplistic – a lot of effort went into the design of that sheet), easy-to-use stat sheet is the result of all that hard work. If exponents and percentages don't scare you, you should be okay, plus there's always the program I mentioned. Appendix B gives rules for vector-based movement, which literally blew me away; in only four pages, the author manages to capture the "feel" of frictionless movement without bogging down the game. I grasped the rules almost instantly, with little or no page-flipping, which is a feat, considering other such systems I have seen. Appendix C lists a wide variety of weapons for all sorts of tastes (including exotics like weapons that kill the crew and leave the ship intact), and Appendix D lists all sorts of "special equipment", including a cloaking device and more esoteric stuff like "Tachyon Detection and Ranging". My favorite was the "Spinal Mount", which is basically a gigantic gun mounted along the spine of the ship& Wave Motion Gun, anyone? Appendix E contains more ways to make movement complicated (evasive action, hyperspace, etc.), while Appendix F lets you do more things with fighters; again, without getting overly complicated yet at the same time providing a lot of tactical options. Appendix G is "combat options", which means it contains all sorts of weird optional rules, from critical hits to "angling" one's shields (for that "all power to the rear shields" effect). Appendix H give some options for making scenarios more interesting than just "kill the other guy", including potential "fog of war" effects.

Basically, while reading all this, I got ideas of how the game could be used to simulate Star Trek combats, Babylon 5 style fights, and a variety of anime-style battles, and that was without trying real hard. (I have this strong desire to simulate a battle with the Sathar from Star Frontiers, but maybe that's my age showing.) This game begs to be tinkered with, to be used with whatever options your gaming group finds comfortable. It would also be great for doing mass space combat in RPGs; it's more than flexible enough to cover most sci-fi "physics". Is absolutely everything covered? No. that would make the rules too complicated and long, though a lot can be abstracted into what's there. On the other hand, more than enough is covered to do what most people would want, and the system is simple enough that it's not too tough to use what's there as an example for creating your own rules.

After all the Appendixes there is a long (14-page) and, frankly, dull historical document, which outlines a very generic universe background to fight in. (If I read about yet another flavor-low, galaxy-spanning authoritarian government in my lifetime, I think my head will explode.) It was pretty clearly written, but it in no way grabbed me. Luckily, I was more than enthused about the prospect of using the system to simulate backgrounds of my own invention that this was forgivable, especially since the factions in the long and dull background were used as inspiration for the sample ships that follow the history, which are useful, if only to get some idea as to how to put a ship together.

Also, it is important to note that these are a set of rules for fleet actions. They're entirely tactical in orientation. Fans of Imperial Starfire will find no campaign rules here. In many ways, it's tough to write campaign rules without making certain assumptions about what optional rules are going to be used, especially when it comes to hyperspace, so that's forgivable; plus, it would take away from the tight focus of the ruleset. But if you want to use these rules to fight battles in a campaign, be prepared to write your own or adapt some rules from somewhere else.

Overall, I would give this game an A. Easy to read and digest, simple but tactically rich, and it made me want to play it right away, which is always a good sign. If you're interested in fleet-to-fleet space combat at all, you owe it to yourself to check out this game (i.e. download the pdf from the website), if only for ideas how to tighten up your own favorite system for speed of play.