Federation Commander

My gaming group regularly has 4 players and we've found that 2 on 2 (or 3 on 3 perhaps if the ships aren't too large) works about right as far as the amount of time we have to play. If prepared ahead of time, perhaps 3 on 3 with bigger ships.

My quandary is this: In the scenario booklets I have almost every scenario looks like a massive 6-7 ship vs 6-7 ship battle...and we simply don't have that kind of time.

Can anyone point me to their personal favorite smaller sized scenarios that would fit 4 players and the above force size criteria well?

Refiner's Fire is a decent 4 player scenario. It is in Communique #7 and Briefing #1.

And it gets lots of races in:

Feds
Gorns
Klingons
Romulans (2 ships)

It's got some special rules, so read those first.

OGOPTIMUS wrote:Refiner's Fire is a decent 4 player scenario. It is in Communique #7 and Briefing #1.

And it gets lots of races in:

Feds
Gorns
Klingons
Romulans (2 ships)

It's got some special rules, so read those first.

I gave it a brief look; this is exactly the sort of scenario I'm looking for! Thank you!

Two or three sided affairs that could be split for 4 people would also work but 4 completely different sides is very interesting indeed.

I've noted that there are few three-player scenarios that involve only a few ships. Because of that, I'm working on one at the moment, and would like to informally ask if any other scenario designers could perhaps apply some of the prodigious brainpower in this forum to that task? I'm sure many would appreciate that Thanks!

Here are some more 3 or 4 player scenarios for your consideration:

(8CM20) Pirates ... Interrupted - Communique #31
2, 3, or 4 players

(8CM10) The Pirates Find An Ally - Communique #19
4 or 6 players

(8CM12) The Pirates Have Gone Too Far! - Communique #21
2 or 4 players (or possibly even more)

(8C7) Race Against Time - Captain's Log #36
2, 3, or 5 players

(8B112) Out of the Frying Pan - Briefing #1
3 players

(8B102) Refiner's Fire - Briefing #1
2 or 4 players

(8B105) Who is the Mutineer? - Briefing #1
3 players

(8B111) Pandora's Box - Briefing #1
2 or 3 players

(8B123) Combat Rally - Briefing #1
4 or more players (up to 10)

(8B124) Demo Derby - Briefing #1
any number of players

Mike wrote:Here are some more 3 or 4 player scenarios for your consideration:

Awesome list! thank you for this, I will check them all out.

In regard to Refiner's Fire, I would caution that in the scenario as written the Gorn player can guarantee a win by running at baseline speed 24 every turn and accelerating during every impulse. If you play it, you may want to consider limiting the Gorn ship to a maximum speed of 24 and weakening the Romulan force a bit to compensate for the change.

If thats all a player is gonna do -- then why bother playing at all --

This generation of "I showed up" where's my trophy is sickening ----

Without an agreed upon modification, such as the one I have suggested, the Gorn player is placed into the predictment of not being able to play his or her best without blowing up the scenario unless he or she voluntarily chooses to do something like staying in range of Romulan fire or not moving in excess of 3 hexes per impulse. I have found it usually works best to deal with such issues with a house rule before the start of play so that the players can simply focus on playing their best possible game within the bounds of the rules rather than having to worry about constraining their play on the fly in order to prevent the scenario from blowing up.

Bolo_MK_XL wrote:If thats all a player is gonna do -- then why bother playing at all --

This generation of "I showed up" where's my trophy is sickening ----

The Gorn's mission is "Survive" and they are not allowed to leave the map until all Romulans and Klingons are dead. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Gorn player running. It's his objective. It is never wrong to play toward completing your objective.

He can't run forever though (fixed float map) and the Fed is going to have his hands full with the Klingon ship trying to blow him up. The Rom's should be able to corner him eventually and force a fight.

The map floats on the Gorn ship making it possible for the Gorn ship to avoid being cornered.

If the Gorn want to do that fine --- If the Fed doesn't fall into lockstep --
He just gets gangbanged (Klingon at least gets a win) ---

JimDauphinais wrote:The map floats on the Gorn ship making it possible for the Gorn ship to avoid being cornered.

No, the scenario says the map floats around the place the Gorn ship started. It's a fixed floating map.

Location map: "some location (usually a planet) cannot float off of the map. Once this location has been moved to the map edge, any further movement away from the location is treated as leaving the edge of a fixed map."

DirkSJ wrote:

JimDauphinais wrote:The map floats on the Gorn ship making it possible for the Gorn ship to avoid being cornered.

No, the scenario says the map floats around the place the Gorn ship started. It's a fixed floating map.

8B102b - [2nd & 3rd sentence] The map is a "location map"; it can float within 50 hexes of the Gorn ship (or the hex it is destroyed in). Any ship leaving the map has left the scenario and is counted as having disengaged.