General observtions of my first game

[Spence]

Played my first actual game last night. Since we were basically just doing a learning scenario, we used ships from the Sqd boxes we had. Dan played Romulans and I played Klingons. He used three ships, War Eagle, Battle Hawk and Sky Hawk. I used the D6 and D7. I played SFB a lot back in the day and am familiar with FC. Dan has played SFB/FC but not that much.

Here are a few observations.

1 – You are not playing SFB/FC
2– The rules are very simple and actually mean what they say.
3– You are not playing SFB/FC
4– DO NOT interpret or read into the rules. They are simple. Play as written.
5– You are not playing SFB/FC
6– Leaky Shields + Criticals = very bad day.
7– You only get ONE special action per turn. Meaning many tactics developed playing SFB/FC simply don’t work, especially if they involve simultaneous anything. .
8– If you are playing against the Romulans, cloaks s*ck…..
9– You are not playing SFB/FC
10– If you get carried away and swoop in using you tried and true SFB tactic, you may remember too late that you are not playing SFB/FC and discover you placeed your ships in a really bad place
11– Multiple Plasma’s up the tail pipe are BAD…… :shock:
12– Did I mention you are NOT playing SFB/FC? :wink:

All in all we found the game to be very fun and fast. But I also realized that those of us who fall into the old grognard category and have fairly extensive familiarity with SFB or FC can actually be at a disadvantage. I found myself constantly over thinking details that didn’t even exist.

I had a blast, but on this day the Klingons got their a$$’s kicked….

The only advice I have is don’t read into anything. If it seems too simple, it is because it is that simple. If you have a question that starts with "This seems to imply....", you are probably already heading in the wrong direction. Use the rules as written + the 4 (5?, don't have my book) items in the rules part of the errata. The rules are too simple to "imply".

And did I mention it is not SFB or FC? :mrgreen:

 

[Da Boss]

You realise that it is not FC/SFB right?

seriously if you enjoyed the game - thats the main thing

 

[Kirksfolly]

So you didn't play SFB or FC then?

Played my first game last week and really looking forward to another. I'm new to the SFU (gaming wise) and was really impressed by how quickly the basics of the game were grasped so totally agree with you on not looking too deeply for something that isn't there. Ended up taking out 2 Fed vessels (one was down to genuine, old fashioned luck!) but took a lot of damage my self and learned a lot about how the ships work. The biggest ships we used were the lighter Cruisers and these caused enough damage so I can only imagine the pain if you make a mistake anywhere near something BIG...

 

[Reynard]

Also had a chance to play CTA:SF Wednsday. We just uses a Fed Heavy Cruiser and a Kllngon D7 for an average and familiar icons and ran the game step by step getting a feel for all the rules. My Fed cruiser exploded in the end but it was very close with damage. We were 4 inches apart and he lucked out rolling an '8' on the explosion table otherwise he may have joined me in death. He wants to go Romulan next and I want to experiment with Tholian.

It was fun and satisfying! The first time always has bumps while memorizing new rules then formulating tactics based on what you know. The simplicity let us concentrate on the play. The proof will be multi-ship engagements and I believe it will go well.

 

[Spence]

Definitely. It was a lot of fun. We played on one of the stores ‘slow’ nights just so we could have a chance to mess around without having to answer a lot of questions. But that didn’t happen. The Trek hulls on the table seemed to just mesmerize the people in the shop. Even the CCG peeps.

The FLGS is planning a Starter/Learn to Play League in March, basically a low point mini campaign that can be played with the contents of one Squadron Box. The exact dates haven’t been decided, they are dependent on Mongoose catching up on production and stock availability. The distributor my shop uses had dbl digit stock levels Monday and now show 0 pending restock. Also march was mentioned as when Mongoose might possibly have their organized play material available.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Your store is welcome to get in touch with us - we will give all the support possible.

 

[Spence]

Your store is welcome to get in touch with us - we will give all the support possible.

I will definitely pass this directly to them but I think I can promise you they will :mrgreen:

Right now the plan is to get a more familiar with the rules by play+demos and to give time for stock to build up. But as soon as the items that have been pre-ordered at my FLGS (fleet boxes) start to roll in we will know that that production will have mostly caught up with demand. Then the decision on an actual start date can be made and ramp up started.

When I finished the write-up for the starter league I was going to see if you might be interested in a copy.

 

[Rick]

Very good list. Either this list needs to be stickied, or it may need adding as a reply to almost every other ACTA:SF post in this forum, lol! Lots of people not reading the rules, but trying to read SFB/FC through the ACTA rules, lol! :roll:

 

[JRhoades]

Read Spence's post before my first game, and have one criticism. He was far too subtle on that whole "not SFB/Fedcom" thing!

SFB and FedCom are great, but unlearn them before playing SF ACTA.

 

[scoutdad]

Amen, Brother.

During initial playtesting, we kept thinking it was Fed Comm lite... with the expected results.
After we realized that tactics would need to be tweaked... and did so, we found that the game played quite like SFB. I.e., similar results by the end of the game, even though you had to take a different tack to get there.

 

[Spence]

The biggest difference to me is the Fleet aspect. Small engagements (1-3 ships on a side) in ACTA:SF are a little lackluster IMO. But once you get 4+ on a side the game just pops. I can't wait until I get more ships in and can do larger battles, say 9+ on a side. A battle that size becomes almost impossible to play in a reasonable amount of time in SFB. But I am almost positive that will be the sweet spot for ACTA:SF.

A question for scoutdad, I beelive you were one of the play testers in the US and will have this answer for me. I would ask the question with a new thread, but pretty much any question these days gets hijacked and packed with arguments of how ACTA is wrong and why they need to change everything to SFB rules :wink:

Here is the question, the book says
“Protected by dedicated Anti-Drone missiles, this ship is all but immune to drone fire. Roll a die for every attack die of drones attacking a ship with the Anti-Drone trait. Each roll of two or more will destroy one Attack Die of drones. If any die rolls a 1, an Attack Die of drones will be destroyed as normal, but the system will then run out of ammunition, reducing the Anti-Drone score by 1. Ships reduced to an Anti-Drone score of 0 will no longer benefit from this trait.” Page 14

Nowhere does anything say that you get one intercept per ADD rating number. It says that the ship is virtually immune and gets to roll against ‘every Attack Die of drones’ attacking the ship. To me this means that if I have Anti-Drone 1 and am fired upon by a ship with Drone 3, I get to use my Anti-Drone to attempt to intercept all 3 incoming drones one at a time. If I should roll a 1, then I still destroy that drone, but my Anti-Drone drops to Anti-Drone 0 and I can no longer use it. If I had a Anti-Drone 2, everything works the same, except I can roll one 1 and still have Anti-Drone. But a second intercept roll of 1 would end my Anti-Drone capability for that game.

I was pretty sure I am correct until I made the mistake of reading a thread overrun by the SFB or hellfire argument on a Anti-Drone thread. I stopped reading when the discussion devolved into an snappish argument about ‘swarms’ of drones. Which makes no sense at all considering that only one ship fires at a time and the ADD can fire on all incoming drones.

Anyway, is my understanding about Anti-Drone's correct?

 

[scoutdad]

You are almost correct.
If you are attacked by 3 AD of drones and you have the anti-drone trait, you roll 3 dice, but all at once. Not one at a time. Regardless of the result, you stop all incoming drones in that wave. And regardless of the number of ones rolled, you reduce the anti-drone trait by 1. When the trait hits 0 - you're s-o-l.

Now as a follow up example, you have anti-drone 2 and the big bad Kzinti DN launches 6 AD of drones at you.
You roll 6xD6 and get six ones. You still stop all 6 AD of drones and you're anti-drone trait drops - but only by 1. So when the Kzinti BC activates next and launches an additional 4 AD of drones at you, you still have anti-drone 1 and can still defend.

 

[Spence]

Thanks scoutdad

That clears things up for me.