Sequence of Play: Star Fleet Battles vs Car Wars

–

If the old 10 phase movement chart seems like a lot, try SFB….

32 phases called ‘impulses.’ (I suppose that was just to confuse people who might think it had something to do with impulse power??)

Each phase has an ‘impulse procedure’ that is nearly as long as the entire Car Wars 5th edition rules…!

To really play the game right, you have to have the “Speed Changes During a Turn” rule from Advanced Missions… very tricky to get the hang of and plenty of sticklers here for new players to get confused on.

And though you can’t design starships in SFB (not the same way that you do in Car Wars anyway…) you get the same kind of complexity every single turn by having to fill out your Energy Allocation Form.

The net result of this complexity is that you get the most sophisticated range of tactical options that are available in just about any war game. It also takes a lot of time to learn and to play it. And there are no 6 person scenarios that can be played to completion in a single sitting.

SFB and Car Wars Compendium 2nd edition both have this in common: “Secret and Simultaneous Fire”. This rule is very realistic, but a pain to implement. The makers of SFB published Battle Cards to help people pull this off. I spent some time myself to make up my own with index cards. Each player would supposedly play one every phase revealing their orders.

In reality, this idea never got traction. Battle Cards haven’t been reprinted and our Car Wars games drifted away into the usual off-the-cuff fire announcements anyway. It was just too much work to try to consistently implement the rule– especially if it was just an optional suggestion. This of course led to the “me, too” fire response during the same phase that anyone announced fire. This is one more instance of Car Wars players anticipating the 5th edition rules!

“Secret and Simultaneous Fire” is a good idea, but computers can handle it much better than us table-top gamers. It’s critical that the rule be enforced in SFB because it’s much more common for people to pick up random weapon hits on an attack. That made players think hard on whether or not they should fire first. (If they didn’t take out a photon or two, they’d be in big trouble….)

Anyway… the 5th edition rules codify the way we tended to play Car Wars. The new rules fit the feel of the game and it’s easy on the referees. Players that like the old rules can still implement them in the new game if a particularly hairy situation merits it. The standard game, on the other hand, should be as simple and quick-playing as possible. (SFB rightly makes distinctions between its “Basic Game” and the “Commander’s Rules.” Car Wars should follow that pattern if it’s going to have additional complexity layered in….)

Because of this rule change and others like it, we can play twice as many games in an evening– and we look forward to the game twice as much!