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Post by putraack on Jun 5, 2010 12:19:19 GMT -5
My story is the about the same. Played the hell out of it back in the day but gave up as it got ever more complicated and, I'll say it, stupid. Introduce weapon A. Introduce Counter Measure B. Introduce Counter/Counter Measure C etc. Ad Nauseum. Now the Cadet Manual is good. Ships are half the regular size. Most of the rules are not needed. If I were to play again I'd scale everything back to the Cadet Manual level and go from there. ADB has pretty much stopped adding new weapons/devices to the game, although they are allowing people to make up their own stuff in "Stellar Shadows," or pushing newer things off to the Omega or Magellanic Sector. The Cadet Manual ships are rather similar to the "Fleet Scale" ships in Federation Commander-- half-size to their normal model. I'll be playing SFB tomorrow, with my monthly group, and I'll be diving into a scenario at Origins later this month.
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Post by finarvyn on Jun 6, 2010 12:01:05 GMT -5
I'm glad to see that folks are still playing SFB.
I have very happy memories from the early 1980's when the first boxed set came out and a couple of up wore it out in a hurry. As further rulebooks and revisions came out the game just got too heavy for me and I had to "roll back" to an early edition.
It's amazing how many times I've bought and sold this game in one edition or another, because I really wanted to love it. Seems like the farther they got from TOS, the less I found its appeal.
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Post by putraack on Jun 6, 2010 21:54:16 GMT -5
I'm glad to see that folks are still playing SFB. ... Seems like the farther they got from TOS, the less I found its appeal. I can understand that. My preference would be to stick to the earlier or middle parts of the SFU's timeline. The guys I play with want to play in the General War era, or tournament ships outside of the timeline. The guy who prefers Kzinti adamantly refuses to play with slow drones! We all make compromises to get along, I guess. If I could suggest, look at the Y1 Early Years module, it covers the ships dated before the TOS era. It also discards/negates a huge chunk of the rules, and the ships still look like/fight like their more "modern" counterparts. If you're looking for a stripped-down game, I'd say go for that. Y2 integrates some other ships & empires into that timeline, so there is a little bit of weapons additions.
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Post by finarvyn on Jun 7, 2010 17:15:33 GMT -5
If I could suggest, look at the Y1 Early Years module, it covers the ships dated before the TOS era. It also discards/negates a huge chunk of the rules, and the ships still look like/fight like their more "modern" counterparts. If you're looking for a stripped-down game, I'd say go for that. Thanks for the tip! Next time I'm at my local game store (Mt Prospect is about 40-minutes away ) I'll give it a look-see. They have a good selection of SFB stuff, so I'm guessing they'll have one on hand.
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Post by putraack on Apr 19, 2013 15:28:44 GMT -5
Three years might call for a new thread, but I just wanted to throw in that I've taught my 14-year-old son and his pals SFB. I left out a lot of stuff, and tried just using the Early Years ships I mentioned above. Fewer systems & weapons, no overloads or special warheads, and so on. After 3 fights, my son is showing a preference for the Gorn, which is interesting.
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Post by aramis on Apr 19, 2013 20:14:56 GMT -5
3 years has also seen Pocket and Designer's editions rerelesed in PDF.
So, if you want to go that route, they're availabe at e23.sjgames.com. Print-n-play, but the counter sheets are in the PDFs, too.
I've done a post around here somewhere detailing the differences between designer's and pocket.
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