Just played my first game of Fleet Captains!
GREAT game.
Absolutely gets the feel of Star Trek across, imo. So many elemnts add to that but I think these are the main ones;
1) Exploration. The way you have to actually go to a location to flip the card over and see what's there (or scan it if you have a free action). Also, the way that you don't move far across the board in one turn so things remain unexplored for a while (There were probably 10 or so tokens left after my 4 hour, three person game). The (usually less than 50%) chance of triggering an Encounter with a random event (like Temporal Loop or Conditional Friendship with an alien race) is really great and true to the essence of Star Trek. I also like that the Encounters come in a wide variety of severity levels, and some even help you, even besides getting VP for completing them.
2) Missions and VP, rather than just fighing each other. You don't have to rely on your missions, either-there are multiple ways to get VP: building Starbases, defeating enemy ships, completing Encounters successfully, and probably at least one that I've forgotten. Some missions were almost absurdly hard (Have 6 cloak tokens in play at once, including sensor echoes-and I was the Federation!) but they are easily cyclable for a new mission, some are really cool (Rescue an away team from a planet that your opponent's discovered, and probably under the opponent's control).
3) The ability to adjust the power levels to different ship systems (but only once per turn), often requiring hard choices. Do I give myself high Weapons to make sure I deal damage on my attack, or high Shields to make sure I survive the enemy's?
The ship minis are also very, very detailed and great-looking. Like Sithborg, I will be slowly getting painted Tactics minis to replace these unpainted ones and using the cards for stats (which might be easier anyway with a die, it's a little annoying to have to keep checking the bases by picking up the minis and then replacing them), but the minis look good even without paint. (The two painted I already have-Voyager and the Equinox. Guess which series I like the most?
). My first game was actually a three player game with the Romulans; I went the whole way and bought the Romulan Expansion with the game.
All my ships were in perfect shape and the cards seemed reasonably thick, so I think that Wizkids has definitely refined their production for the game. One or two dials were tough to turn but they loosened up fast.
The game felt a little bit like DS9 at one point- a stable wormhole was discvoered linking a point roughly in the middle of the map, but closer to the Feds (played by me) and Klingons and well within their territory. Voyager went through, to beam a Romulan Saboteur to a Romulan scout ship on the other end. However, on the Romulan turn their player sent his two newly arrived warbirds (Hazara sp and the Tarix sp) to destoy Voyager. High shields prevented them from dealing a death blow but Voyager was put on Red Alert, only one damage from being spread all over the system!
On my turn Voyager came running back through the wrmhole, with the Defiant arrivng at the wormhole to help Voyager in case of a Romulan attack through the wormhole. I managed to convince the Klingon player to stop our conflict (the
Bortas and the
Kronos One had the Excelsior trappped in a Class 1 nebula and were pounding it). As I put it "You can kil the Excelsior, at the cost of damage to the Kronos One, and then the
Defiant and
Voyager will head into the nebula [the wormhole entrance was adjacent] and mess up your ships. Every ship we have, save the damaged
Ch'Tang and the
Equinox [both back near our respective command posts building Starbases], will be annihilated. The Romulan ships will come through the wormhole, and they will have free reign for at leaast two turns before our reinforcements get here. The Equinox and the Ch'Tang will be no match for them. Instead, we need to stop fighting and get rready to repel the Romulan invasion." We did just that, and my ships (save the
Defiant) limped back to my new Starbase while the
Bortas and
Kronos One went to meet the Romulans, who were at this point sneaking along one edge of the map towards us, head on. The
Kronos One was lost (and the Bortas nearly so before its retreat) but the Romulans had been slowed-they needed to build an outpost in the system to repair one ship, which was at red alert, and as a Class-D planet that took a while. Substitute Dominion for Romulans and change a few details and that's DS9's storyline right there.
No encounters with Tribbles yet, sadly.
I REALLY want more expansions. My biggest hopes are the Borg and the Ferengi (an odd priority, but I think they would be loads of fun in a game like this). Cardassians, Maquis, Dominion and maybe even the Hirogen (some could be in the Alpha Quadrant, it's conceivable. The whole Delta Quadrant is littered with ways to go faster.
).
I'd also like a supplementary expansion for the existing factions- Tactics set 2 introduced a few new goodies for the Feds (Original NCC-1701 Enterprise and the Ent-D, the Fearless) and I also think the Vulcan ships (from ENT) could be put into the Federation force as well. I'd also really want the Scimitar and the NX-01 Enterprise (Seriously, it's one of the main ships!).
Re-Rulebook I actually found the rulebook was organised pretty well and very clear. One read through and I only had to check it something like 4 times during the 4-hour game. (Fleet Cappies dosen't usually play that long but the other players were slow learners.
).
@koba, I'm sorry to report that the Scimitar is not a part of the Romulan expansion.
I was hoping for that as well. The
Valdore ("You'll owe me a Romulan ale") is, though, so at least you can get your Nemesis action on somewhat. (I actually liked that movie, aside from the unexplained and anachronistic dune buggy chase and Picard's action hero-dom. Two phaser rifles? Really? The dude's at least 70!).
@Sithborg That's funny that the Klingons in your game were hurt by finding a black hole, same thing happened to the Klingon's player in my game. First mve of the game, she leaves her command post and walks straight into a lack hole. Stuck there for 2 turns, finally gets out only to end up in a particle fountain (might be off on the name, deals 1 damage if you end there and you have to complete a level 10 sensors test to escape. Like a weaker black hole) and got destroyed!
