by West End Games

Star Warriors was the board game of starfighter combat in the Star Wars universe and has some interesting ideas which make it a good, if somewhat slow to the beginner, game.

New units:

• Colonial Craft
• General and Cylon Craft

Special rules:

Cylon skills

Because of their inbuilt programming, Cylons tend not to display the same wide range of skill levels as their Colonial counterparts. As a result, a Silver Centurion should be considered an Average (5D) Pilot and Gunner. A Gold Centurion should be considered Veteran or Above, and an IL Series is more like a human than they would like to admit, and thus should roll normally on the skill table, being Average or better.

Turbo's

Turbo's are what give Colonial craft their fancy blue streaks and their incredible acceleration boost. A turbo is effectively an acceleration, over acceleration and overspeed action, and thus none of them may be used in conjunction. Also turbo's may not be doubled, and are considered a Class E Action.

When used though, they give the craft an immediate +6 to their speed, and this allows the craft to travel at their turbo speed, although it may take more than one round to get to this speed. When using turbo's, use the special turbo turn numbers. In combat, the only action allowed is the snap fire action, and for this, all difficulty numbers are tripled (so 12 for most Vipers).

When the craft is damaged and the engines hit, use the following table to determine what rating the turbo's drop to.

Inverse motion

Or braking flaps or reverse thrusters. I think they are called all at some point in the series, and for some reason, the Cylons never seem to wise up to this tactic either. Basically, hitting the IM button on the joystick allows the Viper to shed massive amounts of speed and (ideally) end up behind the craft that is currently tailing it.

Like turbo's, IM is a combination of manoeuvres that cannot be employed at the same time, and these include the deceleration and over deceleration actions. IM allows the craft to shed 6 points of speed (this is not negotiable), although is this speed drop would bring the craft to a stand still, the pilot is allowed to decide whether they wish to be at a speed of 0 or 1.

Viper Boa Bombs

Powerful, slow and not very effective against fast moving targets. These should be treated as normal Concussion Bombs, although they may target moving ships of speed 7 or less in the same hex as the firer and may not be set on automatic release (although with only 2, a Viper-B probably would not want to employ this tactic anyway!).

Viper Cobra Missiles

Fast and not as powerful as Boa Bombs, they have more potential to hit smaller faster targets. They should be treated as Concussion Missiles.

R2 Units

R2 Units do not actually exist in the Galactica Universe, and yet I have included them for a couple of starfighters. Why? Well, the ships that have them are generally scout ships with additional sensors and computer equipment (much like CORA as used in the recon Viper in "The Long Patrol"), and as there is no current rules in Star Warriors to account for any of this special stuff, I thought I'd give the ships an R2 Unit to allow them to do some special things, like plan actions and additional damage control.

Sample scenarios:

Dogfight in Space

Set-up

As per the normal dogfight, with both sides setting up on opposite sides of the map.

Ship mixes

Mix One:
Colonials: 3 Vipers (1 veteran, 2 average). The Colonials begin with 1 VP.
Cylons: 4 Raiders (all 5D average).

Mix Two:
Colonials: 4 Vipers (1 veteran, 1 poor, 2 trainee's).
Cylons: 2 Heavy Raiders (with average pilots and gunners).

Mix Three:
Colonials: 1 Viper (hotshot). The Colonials begin with 1 VP.
Cylons: 3 Raiders (average).

Mix Four:
Colonials: 2 Viper X (average). The Colonials begin with 1 VP.
Cylons: 3 Raiders (average).

Game end

The game ends when all ships from one side are either destroyed or have escaped.

My little Shuttle

Set-up

One player (defender) controls a weakly armed ship that must manage to escape the map, while the other (attacker) is trying to stop this from happening. The map is static.

Ship mixes

Mix One:
Colonials (defender) 1 unarmed shuttle (veteran), 2 Vipers (veteran).
Cylons (attacker): 4 Raiders (all 5D average).

Mix Two:
Colonials (attacker): 2 Viper II's (1 veteran, 1 average).
Cylons: 3 Raiders (1 veteran, 2 average) The Cylons must protect the veteran Raider.

Mix Three:
Colonials (defender): 1 armed HTS (average pilot and gunner), 1 Viper-S (veteran pilot and gunner). The Colonials begin with 1 VP.
Cylons (attacker): 1 Scout Raider (average pilot and gunner), 2 Raiders (average).

Game end

The game ends when the defender either escapes with his ship or it gets destroyed.

Role-playing integration:

There are only two skills in Star Warriors, and several more in GURPS. Simply substitute the relevant role-playing skill for the combat game and convert to the following skill level:

Use Section (36.0) 'Using Star Warriors with Star Wars: The Role-playing game', with the following changes.

(36.5) Damage Control: A character uses the Mechanic skill to conduct damage control. Make a normal success roll with a penalty of (2x level of damage).
(36.7) Wounding: A character who suffers a Sk-1 damage result in the game takes an immediate 1d6 of damage which armour does not absorb.