It is quick to learn and play.

You have ship cards in front of you. each card has symbols saying it has a disruptor, a drone rack, whatever.

You have weapon cards in your hand. Each turn, one ship can attack, but you need weapon cards that match the ship's weapons. You take all the weapons the selected ship can fire and look at the enemy ships for something to kill. If you can't kill anything, you can wound something so other players go shooting at the cripple instead of you.

Special cards can be used to increase or deflect attacks.

Weapon cards can be used in defense. The targeted ship might play a phaser-3 card to stop drones.

Damage (if you don't get a kill) is little red markers that are placed on the card. If a marker covers a weapon, that ship can't use that weapon. Ships repair one damage point per turn so pick off the cripples when you can.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 06:00 am: Edit

Hey guys,

Finally got SFBF for Christmas and have been able to squeeze a few games in thus far, and it's quite splendid.

HOwever, I have a few questions:

*As regards the Wild Weasel and Erratic Manouvre cards, it seems that at present the only means of using either is to have them in reserve and run out of cards in one's hand when defending from an attack, as the cards must be discarded in hte turn they are drawn by the opposing player (except in the first turn of play, where a player could have either card drawn from the initial selection of cards and not go first that turn). Is this intenitonal, or am I missing something?

*Is it correct that one can only draw from the reserve cards in one's hand in defence when no cards whatever remain in the defending player's hand, or no useful defensive cards? (So if a player has only two plasma cards in their hand and one of their ships gets an enveloping plasma-r in the face, could they get to pull out that Wild Weasel card from the reserve pile, or is it tough luck?)

*ANy word yet on release dates for the various expansions, and will there be cards to flesh out the Tholians with, for example, Neo-Tholian ships (to allow a player to use them properly in single-race play)? It was mentioned that web casters will be released as a rule, and Neos would have more use for them than Archaeos...

Gary

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 07:41 am: Edit

Gary.

1. The cards in question are discarded after USE, not after being drawn. They can remain in your hand for multiple turns - the text about discarding is only there to provide a short term penalty (and benefit) for their use.

2. No cards whatsoever. In your example: tough luck.

3. No dates yet. Playtest webcaster rules have not been released yet - you can find playtest rules for the Hydrans, Lyrans, and ISC in Captains Logs. I would assume that the Tholians will get more ships in some of the expansions, though I suspect that they will remain a "half-size" race (i.e., big enough evetually for single race play yet with less variety than the main races).

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 02:36 pm: Edit

But hang on, do you not discard a card you use anyway? Why would it be different for the WW and EM cards?

Unless you mean that the EM and WW cards last for only that turn (Which is what I assumed would be the case at any rate)...

Relating to the ISC, the idea of representing the PPD as a plasma torp allows for means of defence against a PPD shot which, as a direct-fire weapon, it should not suffer (you aren't supposed to be able to phaser your way out of a pulse the way you can against a plasma torp...unless you can damage a PPD box on the attacking ship during one of its impulses of firing) or is the ability to treat the incoming PPD shot as a seeking weapon meant to represent the impact of various pulses and the concurrent attempts to manouvre out of harm's way?

And since the PPD, as a direct-fire weapon, has an overload rather than an enveloper, should this not be incorporated into its ruleset? (To stop people from trying to envelop with an already double-damage plasma-S hit from the main line, which they could do with the rules as presently given? I like the idea of having a powerful PPD, but I'm not that greedy!)

Gary

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 04:04 pm: Edit

The point with EM and WW is that they stay on the ship for an entire turn, whereas things like Reinforce Shields and ECM only work against one attack. They are then discarded at the end of the using player's next turn.
As for the PPD, just because it requires a plasma card to fire doesn't in ANY sense make it a seeking weapon. Also, the Enveloper card just means double damage. It's functionally the same thing as overloading. Err... Except that on overloaded PPD only does 150% damage, not bdouble... But you get the idea. It's a game mechanic, nothing more.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Yes, but the Enveloper lets you fire that double-damage shot from the main body as well as from the screen, whereas the overload needs to be fired from a screening ship at another screening ship - an overloading PPD has range 8 as any other overloaded weapon would have in SFB, so letting it use enveloping shots from a main body ship against another shouldn't be allowed.

Also, the rules stated that the PPD uses plasma cards but the point of what I was saying is that it should be specified that it is a direct-fire weapon (and thus the only important part on the card is the attack number) and is affected by the likes of wild weasels, cloaks etc accordingly, if indeed that is the intention of the PPD's use.

Gary

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 11:00 pm: Edit

The "rules" you're quoting are also in beta-test. Nothing official has been released for any of the new races or weapons.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, January 03, 2005 - 02:35 pm: Edit

I never tried to say that they were anything but, the whole point of my asking these questions was to clarify the intended use of the plasma cards in regard to the PPD for the reasons (seeking vs direct-fire, enveloper vs overload) mentioned above.

If they were official, doubtless this would have been clarified, and I would not have had to post this quesiton in the first place...

Gary

By Tony L Thomas (Scoutdad) on Saturday, January 29, 2005 - 06:07 pm: Edit

New situation arose today. After finishing te Fed vs. Andromedan free-for-all, we still had time left... so we broke out the SFBF. With 5 players, every time someone played their final card, they were able to draw two additional cards. This rule is to be used when 5 or 6 players are in the game. What about startin with 5, but then having one eliminated? I felt that as there were no longer 5 players, this rule ceased to apply - but the remaining 4 felt that since we started that way, it shold continue to be the rule. I wanted to play more than I wanted to argue, so I said what the heck, lets get it on and I'll ask the board later.

So what is it? Once the 5th player has been eliminated, do the remaining 4 players continue to draw 2 cards once all thier cards have been used, or does that stop?

By Scott L. Smith (Scootergsp) on Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 05:17 pm: Edit

Hello Everyone. New guy on the block.

I have a rules question for which I am seeking clarification. I have checked the previous postings and haven't found it addressed, but in case I missed something, I apologize in advance...

Page 7 of the rule book. Section 4 under the "Optional Rule" paragraph:

"The Active Player may then launch a second 'follow up' attack by a different ship, using more cards from his hand."

By following the wording as I interpret it, this states that to be eligible to preform a follow-up attack, the initial attack must be made with a weapon card and the follow-up must also be with a weapon card. This is the way we have been playing it in my gaming group.

However, in talking to some fellow players at a convention recently, they said that they allowed fighters to be included in attacks, and that the rules support this; although I haven't been able to find that stated, as such.

The question(s) then breaks down as follows:

1. Can fighters be used as a follow-up attack?
2. Can fighters be used as the initial attack?
3. Can you follow up a fighter attack with another fighter attack, assuming you have a second carrier or planet based fighters?

If this is the case, then it would appear that it would greatly increase the power of fighters even more than the already are. So much so, that I could foresee that it could become standard practice in all games that everyone would immediately adopt a "kill all the carriers first" mentality. This would be somewhat disheartening since I really don't enjoy games where the flow of events always unfolds down the same path time and time again...

Finally, on a slightly different track but along the same course:

4. If a target is destroyed by an initial attack, can a follow-up attack be launched against a different target in the same enemy's force?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.
Scott "Scooter" Smith (JKN)

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 10:30 pm: Edit

We've always played it that the follow-up attack is played exactly the same as the first attack. We figured the reference to playing more cards was simply saying that your first attack's cards (if any) were gone and couldn't be reused. Thus, we also allow another formation step to take the place of the follow-up. This allows the classic Romulan chuck-and-duck: free formation, un-cloak. Attack. Follow-up taken as a formation step to re-cloak.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 10:56 pm: Edit

Scott. This isn't official, but I was one of the playtesters (FWIW).

The intent of the rule was to prevent 2 player games from taking forever by allowing each player 2 attacks. While perhaps overly specific in its wording, the intent was that you could make a second attack, just not with the same ship as attacked previously. The restriction was meant to prevent an obvious abuse (2 R-torps in one round from a KE, for example) and not meant as a restriction against using Planetary Based Fighters and other attacks.

By Larry Lawhon (Larrylawhon) on Thursday, March 03, 2005 - 08:00 pm: Edit

Hello to all,
Am new to this board. Been reading though and find it very interesting.

I would like to ask a question concerning the cloak and wild weasel rules. If a ship is cloaked, does it also recieve the 50% reduction in damage from a wild weasel? In SFB, a cloaked ship does not get the ECM benefit if it launches a weasel. Does it get the benefit in Battle Force?

Also, if a player uses a formation change instead of an attack, is making a cloak/web change allowed? The turn sequence play aid says "formation change or cloak/web change" during the Formation Step. The rulebook states that a formation change can be made during the second attack step (2 player game). This seems to me to be a ship changing squadrons rather than repeating the Formation Step of the turn sequence. Any ideas?

By Christopher Marti (Chris) on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 12:35 am: Edit

Actually, you CANNOT play a wild weasel or erratic manuver card in response to an attack if you are cloaked or webbed, sorry.