Campaign Rules

Long post ahead...

Departing momentarily from scratchbuilding, I'd like to share my campaign rules.  My rules are almost like a board game, complete with victory conditions.  I use a deck of cards per player to simulate a faction's resources, therefore modeling exploration, technological research, and development albiet at a very abstract level.  The cool thing about this system is that it allows players to hide their ships at the strategic level, only revealing specific hulls when the battle begins.  The rules are designed specifically around my homebrew War In Space game, but with a few simple modifications it could be used with almost any system.  Also, my campaign assumes a non-FTL technology level, therefore it is set in a single solar system.  Again the rules can be used with little modification to model an interstellar conflict.   The following rules explanation assumes two players.

Materials needed:

• Playing surface (I recommend 1.5m x 2.5m table)
• Two decks of playing cards (Jokers included)
• Two different types of tokens (I use poker chips and pennies)

Set up: Players should sit opposite each other on the long ends of the table.  Draw a number of ellipses as depicted in Figure 1 below.  The number of ellipses (representing the individual orbits of a solar system's outer planets) is agreed upon by the players.  The inner ellipse represents all the inner planets and has two playing areas on it in front of each player.  This is where the players start.  Each other ellipse has only one designated playing area.  Players agree upon a single suit and draw all three face cards of that suit from their decks, placing them face-up on the table on the inner ellipse.  Players shuffle their respective decks thoroughly.

Object of the game:  The first player to reach 100 resource points wins.  Players may make up alternate victory conditions.

Play: The game has four phases per turn

1. Development Phase
2. Resource Phase
3. Transit Phase
1. Transit/Arrival Subphase
2. Departure Subphase
4. Deployment Phase

Development Phase: Players with all three face cards of the same suit in a single system may draw one card from the top of their deck.  The drawing player may look at the card and then place it face-down on the table in the appropriate system.  Players alternate drawing resource cards for each eligible orbit.

Resource Phase: Players collect 1 resource point for every face card they own that is currently face-up on the board.  EXCEPTION: players may not collect resource points for any orbit where the opponent has fleet cards (Ace through 10 and Joker) played face-up.  I use three colors of poker chips to represent 1, 5 and 10 resource point denominations.

Transit Phase: Players alternate moving cards between orbits.  Accomplish all transits (and subsequent arrivals) first, then all departures.  Of course, on the first turn there will be no transiting cards, thus I will explain departures first.  Take one or more cards and place sideways and face-down on the destination orbit.  Place a number of transit counters on top of the cards (I use pennies).  The number of transit counters is equal to the distance between orbits (or the sum thereof if skipping an intermediate orbit).  The distance from the inner ellipse to the first outer orbit is 1.  The distance between this first outer orbit and the next is 2.  The next distance is 3 and so on.  Therefore to transit from the inner planets to the outermost orbit in Figure 1 would require (1+2+3)=6 transit tokens.  At the beginning of each transit phase, remove one transit token from every transiting group.  If the last token is removed, the cards are left face-down but turned 90 degrees back to a normal orientation indicating arrival.

Deployment Phase: Face-down cards are eligible to be deployed only if they are not in transit.  It costs 1 resource point to deploy any card, regardless of value.  There are two card types: face cards representing "soft power" (i.e exploration, arbitration, diplomacy), and non face cards representing "hard power" (space fleets).  The card types have different deployment restrictions.  Face cards must be of the same suit of any other face-card already in play in that orbit (representing scarcity of a limited resource).  Obviously if no face cards have yet been played at a particular orbit, a player may deploy a face card of any suit.  Also, players may not play face cards on any orbit where the opponent has fleet cards played face-up.  Playing a face card represents exploring a planet and its moons, finding valuable resources, and establishing treaties and contracts to exploit those resources.  Deploying any other card (Ace to 10, Joker) means a faction applies military power, either just sabre-rattling or full-out warfare.  When deploying a fleet card the player must declare either "attack" or "blockade".  Players alternate deploying cards, one at a time.  If a player deploys additional fleet cards to an orbit, all the cards played perform the last action declared.  For example: a player pays 1 resource token and deploys a 3 of Diamonds announcing "attack".  His opponent deploys a 10 of Clubs and declares "attack".  Hoping to de-escalate and prevent an actual engagement, Player 1 then deploys a second card, a 4 of Spades and declares "blockade".  Both of his cards, the 3 and the 4, now are blockading rather than attacking.  In addition to attack and blockade, players may declare "retreat" and flip fleet cards that were already played face-down.  Retreating does not cost any resource tokens.  Since all fleet at a particular planet take on the action of the last fleet card played there, any declaration of "retreat" results in all those fleet cards being flipped.  Players unable or unwilling to deploy further cards may announce "pass".  Once two passes have occurred, the Deployment Phase ends.  If players both have face-up fleet cards in the same orbit, they must determine if there will be any engagements and if so, resolve these battles before the next campaign turn.

Engagements: If either players' fleet cards at a planet has announced "attack" a battle will occur.  If both players announced "blockade" at the same orbit then no fighting occurs, but since enemy fleet cards are face-up, no one will get resource tokens from that orbit.  Obviously if all of a player's cards retreat at a certain planet there can be no fight.

Fighting the Battle: In War In Space, all ships have from 3 to 15 systems boxes, and ships fall into a Size Class from 1 (smallest) to 5.  Assuming these rules, the following describes how to determine your actual taskforces which show up to fight.  Add the numeric value of all the fleet cards in play at a planet (Jokers have a value of 0).  This is the total number of systems boxes of all the ships in the taskforce.  Count the number of different suits among the in-play fleet cards.  This is the maximum Size Class available; any or all of the ships in the force may be this Size Class or smaller.  Jokers are considered to each have their own discreet suit, which allows the fielding of Size Class 5 ships.  Example: Player One attacks with a force of five cards, a 2 and 3 of Clubs, a 7 of Hearts and a 9 and 10 of Diamonds.  The total value is 31 and there are three suits showing.  He then decides to field a destroyer (Size Class 3, 8 systems boxes), two frigates (Size Class 2, 5 systems boxes), a light frigate (Size Class 2, 4 systems boxes), and three war skiffs (Size Class 1, 3 systems boxes each).  The number of cards has no correlation with the number of miniatures that show up on the table.  Other games may use this system as well.  For example, if you are playing a rules-system that uses a Points Value system, you can simply make 1 point of card value equal to some increment of Points Value.  Let's say you are playing Star Fleet Battles.  It's been about 20 years but if I recall I think SFB has five ships sizes, so the Size Class concept requires no modification.  You could then simply state that each point of card value is worth 50 points.  Using the above example in this SFB context, Player One would have 1550 points available and could not choose any ships larger than Size 3 (I think that's a good amount of points... I don't remember).  I've never played Full Thrust but my understanding is it has a points system, so it would be an easy conversion.

Results of the Battle: The defeated player must flip his fleet face down and both players must discard (i.e. remove from play forever) cards whose value equals the amount of systems boxes (or points) destroyed.  Lets use the above example: Player One's heavy destroyer takes 5 points of damage, and both his frigates and one of his war skiffs are destroyed, causing him to flee the battlefield with his remaining ships.  Back on the campaign table he flips all of his fleet cards at that planet face-down, and then chooses 18 points (5 systems boxes on the heavy DD, 5 systems boxes each on the frigates and 3 for the skiff) worth of cards to discard.  He discards the 9 and 10 of Diamonds, the minimum cards he must to meet the requirement.  Also he inflicted 23 points of damage on his opponent so although he retreated, Player Two has a lot of cards to discard.  This may be the hardest part of my rules to convert to another starship combat system.  Players must discard cards due to damage however, in order to reflect the enormous cost of repairs and new construction.

Figure 1 Campaign Game

The above Figure shows the table set up and a game in play.  Concepts illustrated are

1. The inner ellipse, which is the starting point for both players.  Also shown are the three face cards played at the set up, ensuring each player can build new units.
2. The orange player has a face card in play at the first outer planet.  He is receiving an extra resource token each turn due to this.  He also has a few cards face down here to defend his mining settlement... but what are they?  Are they all high value cards of different suits, allowing him to repel all but the largest attack, or are they all face cards and Aces, pretending to be a large force?
3. The purple player has a number of cards in transit to the second outer planet.  It will be three turns before he can deploy any of these cards.

 I will explore further options to these rules, like spending resource tokens to cut transit times, and attacking opponents' colonies, requiring them to discard face cards.