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Stars & Lasers "Reformers"
Publisher: Mac
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/21/2019 06:14:47

This addition to the Star & Lasers rules brings a strange and potent new threat to your Stars & Lasesr games - a new alien race, the Reformers.

The Reformers are unlike any of the other races seen so far in Stars & Lasers, with their ability to 'reform' their biggest ships during battle, along with such weapons as the powerful Meta-Disruptor and the Micro Pulse Laser, the Reformers expansion brings a new playing experience (and a deadly new enemy) to the Stars & Lasers game. Along with the rules this expansion has the required coloured tokens (for tracking the effects of the Meta-Disruptor weapon) and three pages of new full colour ship data cards.

As with the main rules and other expansions, the rules are presented in a clear & concise fashion, with neat art in the form of pictures of miniatures that doesn't overwhelm the rules themselves.

If you want a new and very alien force for your Stars & Lasers games, this expansion is recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Stars & Lasers "Reformers"
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Stars & Lasers supplement two "Pirates in space"
Publisher: Mac
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/21/2019 06:04:52

This expansion brings a new force to your games of Stars & Lasers - Space Pirates!

Featuring new rules covering the pirates use of converted merchant ships, new weapons such as grapples and anti-ship torpedo packs, a new Pirate themed scenario and three pages of new full colour ship data cards, Pirates in Space is a great add-on to the Stars & Lasers rules & provides both new challenges and enjoyment.

Like the main rules (and the other expansions) it is clearly and concisely laid out, with a nice selection of suitable pictures that add to rather than detract from the rules themselves.

The Pirates in Space addition to the Star & Lasers rules is well worth it's price.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Stars & Lasers supplement two "Pirates in space"
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Stars & Lasers Supplement One
Publisher: Mac
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/21/2019 05:55:53

This addition to the Stars & Lasers game provides several additional ship types, including the much larger Escort Carrier, two types of escort and alien corvettes, some new rules for boarding actions and some troop carrying assault ships to use them with, new weapons & equipment with which to customise your fleet, and ten new scenarios for the game such as 'Fighters at 12 O'clock High' - an epic carrier vs carrier duel, & 'We are on our Own!!' - an assault upon an Andromeda space station.

As with the main rules the presentation is clear & concise, and the simple artwork adds to whole without overwhelming it.

There's a lot of useful content in this expansion.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Stars & Lasers Supplement One
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Power Projection Fleet
Publisher: BITS
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/18/2019 15:08:52

Ok, where to begin? Firstly, I'm a long time Traveller fan having played since the days of Classic and Mega Traveller. Starship combat in the Traveller setting has always beena a bit problematic due to the sheer size, massive weapons loadouts and toughness of the ships, especially the battlewagons, yet the settings use of gargantuan spinal mount weapons (that can kill the biggest ships in a single shot) also reduces space combat to a crapshoot - if I fire first and hit, game over. So I was hopeful that FP:F would resolve some of these issues.

It doesn't. Despite being based upon Full Thrust, the rules deviate significantly from that ruleset, losing most of the essential simplicity that those rules come with in the process. The ships are still massive, with vast arrays of guns (taking forever to resolve the use of), and more than a few are armed with 1 shot killer spinal mount weapons. Yep - it's Traveller alright.

My copy also shows evidence of issues of the cross-over between differing computer types - my copy has numerous tiny square boxes scattered randomly across almost all the ships SSd's which interfere with their appearence and add needless clutter. The counter sheets are not exhaustive (and you'll need lots of copies of some sheets to get the required numbers of missile and sand cloud counters), the variety of sample ships provided is limited. Convcersion rules to convert ships from GURPS:T, T20, CT & MT can be used to provide a greater variety of ships, but these only serve to high light just how different the various rulesets have been - players would be well advised to use ALL CT rules ship designs due to their vastly superior manoeuver drive capabilities!

If my copy hadn't been marred by the random box squiggles on the all important SSd's I'dve rated these rules as a 3 or 4 max.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Power Projection Fleet
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Land Ironclads
Publisher: Wessex Games
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/18/2019 14:52:45

Again with the VSF! Land Ironclads is the wealthier relative to Aeronef, with more involved and detailed rules, and much improved presentation and layout. The scale of the game is Grand Battles - vast armies of infantry, Land Iornclads and Contraptions all slowly crawling across the battlefields of the early 20th C - combat is quite simple (in tune with it's Aeronef relative) with only the huge Land Ironclads requiring detailed damage tracking (indeed - the damage tracking rules can be applied to Aeronef too, making that game slightly more detailed).

If I did have a complaint it's that the game takes huge amounts of material (miniatures) to play and the game itself can take a long time (low movement speeds across the recommended table size means it takes time to actually get to grips with the enemy) to play, yet with both army's havig a morale break point where they run away after a set number of unit losses the game can end rather suddenly despite your army being largely intact - losing Land Ironclads will quickly erode your armies morale causing them to flee (the morale of the story being use ONLY the largest Land Ironclads that can take a lot of hits!)

Nonetheless, Land Ironclads is a good game!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Land Ironclads
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Voyages Extraordinaires
Publisher: Wessex Games
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/18/2019 14:42:53

Again, I really like VSF and I was looking forwards to getting my hands on this. However, compared to other VSF offerings by Wessex this is very much the poor relation, despite the fact the rules are OK. Production values with my copy were very low - crude, black & white only, plain text no art/images - bland bland bland! An improved and better version was supposed to be in the pipeline but not yet it seems ... With a bit of fleshing out and some better (way way better) presentation this could be a really good little game, but as it stands it's only value lies in the fact it's not expensive.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Voyages Extraordinaires
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Aeronef Over The Aegean
Publisher: Wessex Games
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/18/2019 14:37:02

I love Aeronef and it's VSF setting, and this supplement is a small mini-campaign which adds more to this. Although only short the campaign plays well and is a great deal of fun. However, due to the nature of the core Aeronef ruleset players of other systems might find this a bit lacking in granularity. Production values were good in my copy and once printed and spiral bound it makes a neat little booklet - it's a worthwhile purchase if you're an Aeronef player.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Aeronef Over The Aegean
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Colonial Battlefleet: Core Rules
Publisher: Steel Dreadnought Games
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/18/2019 14:31:42

These rules are OK, but hardly in the same league as Full Thrust or Starmada AE - some criticisms being ...

  1. Full Thrust is simpler, requiring less fiddling - EG: You won't see an FT player having to reduce shield stremgths before armour and damage.
  2. Both Full Thrust & Starmada AE are easier to access - and way more flexible. In FT your beam batteries are whatever you want them to be (whether it's lasers, particle beams or fancy meson/quark guns), in Starmada you can actually design your own weapon systems, but in CBF you get what they think your settings ships should be armed with (which all sound rather Star Warsy to me). For a generic system your surprisingly restricted to what options the designers have given you. It feels like a ruleset written for a specific setting with only a bit of extra thought given to playing non-setting specific games.
  3. Both Full Thrust & Starmada are visually much more appealing - FT with its ship displays and Starmada with it's printed records - even Starmada's Drake notation is superior. CBF relies on densely formatted printed record cards with written text records for each shield facing, armour, hull points - in a way it's mor elike some of the old 1980's wet navy wargames I played many years ago.

However ... the game itself is quite good as a ruleset, and plays better than it looks - if some of the niggles with it were tidied away and the limitations reduced it'd be better. But for me I felt rather disappointed with it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Colonial Battlefleet: Core Rules
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Stars & Lasers
Publisher: Mac
by Victor D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/29/2017 15:06:09

Of the many space combat games I've owned and played Stars & Lasers is great addition to my collection. The rules are neat and tidy, with crisp and clear text/layout, in colour but not overwhelmed by said colour. A selection of full colour missile, fighter, strike fighter and turn templates are provided, along with a large array of full colour pre-prepared ship record sheets ready for printing and laminating, allowing for instant gameplay, which was nice.

  • Initiative is handled very neatly (all sides use different coloured dice/tokens, these are placed into a dice bag and then randomly drawn - the side whose coloured dice/token is drawn gets to activate 1 of its ships, once the activation is finished the dice/token is placed by the now activated ship to show its been activated) and another dice/token is drawn.
  • Ranged combat = roll 1d20, get equal to/greater than range in inches (rounded up) to hit. Shields stop laser hits 1 for 1 but then collapse until restored. Each hit that penetrates any shields then strikes any armour. Once armour is gone the ships hull takes damage 1 for 1. Each 1 hull damage gives a chance for a critical hit effect (some of which can cause moer hull damage and further critical rolls ...)
  • Missiles are on-table markers/counters. Missiles that contact ships detonate and cause damage, ignoring shields. However, missiles can be shot down by the ships points defenses before they impact a ship.
  • Fighters and Strike Fighters (bombers) are useful and able units without being vastly overpowered.

Theres a good selection of scenarios included, and the advanced rules allow for some modification of ship weaponry.

There are a few minor of issues:

  • You cannot design your own ships yet - the writer is preparing supplemental material to cover this.
  • There's a minor omission in the rules concerning Damage Control/Repairs - it's easy to work out what was intended though and behave accordingly.
  • The sample fleets provided and generic in that my BB will be the same as your BB - not really an issue for me but some might dislike it.

The writer provides his contact details at the back, allowing players to email queries directly. I did so and received a very quick and helpful reply, which was nice. Friendly too =) As I said, the writer is currently working on a supplement to cover minor gaps, provide new ship types and scenarios - I'm looking forwards to it.

Stars & Lasers is a good little ruleset that provides what it says on the tin - a quick, easy and enjoyably fun game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Stars & Lasers
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