Star Trek: Ascendancy

Looks cool. That's a nifty playmat.

I played a four player game of this at Gencon as well. It is a really well done game and my favorite Trek game. There is so much they got right about it.

Ultimately I decided to pass on getting it though. There was too much downtime in turns. At one point I had 30-40 minutes between turns (granted it was because of how turn order is decided and some slow play). I had enough time to go get lunch, return and eat.

Additionally I think it will be trouble getting people to play it due to the length and player count for it. Also the guy teaching out game (who was absolutely terrible at it) did say they had a fast play method for 8 players (2 simultaneously) but that doesn't fix the downtime.

Final thoughts are that it is a really, really good game and if I still lived in Atlanta with my old play group I would have bought it that weekend.

Wow, so really a 3 player game, 4 at most. Works for my gaming lifestyle but I know tons of y'all always have like 5-6.

Yeah, it is interesting that they didn't go for threaded turns...the rest of the design is very modern. So downtime could be another possible issue...and that could make higher player counts undesirable. There are numerous optional rules to accelerate it, I think we will see some of them become standard among veterans.

Gary Sax wrote: Looks cool. That's a nifty playmat.

Yeah, note that's not the one they were selling for $40 (which is just a plain 3ft x 3ft vinyl star field). It still was huge, and I'm wondering if the games would have been better with a smaller map.

cdennett wrote: Ugh, my first attempt at writing this got eaten by the site, so here's an abbreviated version...

Got to play most of a 4 player game at Gen Con (with the "Beta" Cardassians faction), and the game is pretty damn good. I think an hour per player might be possible once rules are down, but you still need to have players that are on the ball, as there is *no* turn overlap at all. Basically one faction does their whole turn before the next goes. The map we played on was huge, and so I, The Federation, was able to explore my little corner and avoid most contact. It helped that the others were doing the same when they really should have been looking for combat. I was 3 turns away from victory when we quit, provided my front-lines would hold (at the time they literally couldn't touch me do to my upgraded shields).

Will try and upload photos in another post, this one keeps failing...

The Lazarus plugin for Firefox will retain your deleted form input.

Just read the rules carefully. I can see where adding new factions is the main place you add the strategic complexity, so having many factions available at start is potentially significant. The Federation player powers, for example, profoundly alter the game objectives and state. I do wonder if the races basically dicate your strategy a bit (war, research, exploration in the base box).

Have no idea how they're going to put NPC sides in but could be intriguing.

Xia's NPC system is my fave. Maybe like that?

THE ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS TO ME: Why should I dump Fleet Captains over this?

SuperflyTNT wrote: Xia's NPC system is my fave. Maybe like that?

THE ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS TO ME: Why should I dump Fleet Captains over this?

Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't played either game) but they sound really different. I understood Fleet Captains as being more of an adventure type game, where this is straight up 4x.

When it's on Amazon for $18 next year you can buy two copies and sharpie in black goatee beards on the Federation for a cheap four player game.

Is Fleet Captains still supported/have more content coming ? Last time I looked at it , it looked like WizKids had sort of stopped.

san il defanso wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: Xia's NPC system is my fave. Maybe like that?

THE ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS TO ME: Why should I dump Fleet Captains over this?

Correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't played either game) but they sound really different. I understood Fleet Captains as being more of an adventure type game, where this is straight up 4x.

Fleet captains is more of a 4x. There's extermination (with actual death, not Scythe death LOL), There's exploitation of systems but not resources, there's expansion in that you build bases, and there's exploration because there's adventures/missions on tiles that are unknown.

As for "support" they have Romulan, Dominion I think?

Romulan, Dominion (Jem'Hadar, Cardassian, Breen). The Dominion expansion received mixed reviews, and there are a lot of indications that WizKids cut corners more than usual with it, as if it were (as it might have been) half-finished. There's been no announcement of any other expansion material. There's a lot of fan-based expansion material available via the Fleet Captains Facebook group, but what WK is or isn't going to do with this property is anyone's question. It probably less needs a new faction (even though people have wanted to see a Borg player or NPC faction since forever) than new tiles and cards. After all this material, for example, there's still no Sisko card. Could be an oversight, but it could also suggest a hole that WK intended at one point to fill.

See, I don't think Fleet Captains is a 4X, though I can see the comparison. Yeah, it has the 4Xs covered, the exploration in particular is great, but at its heart it's an adventure game. The game wasn't working for me at all, but one day I asked our missing friend, FlimFlam how he felt about it. He said he loved it and called it "Star Trek Talisman." He nailed it, you go into space, hope for the best, and try to stay afloat amongst the completely random shit the game throws at you. That really put things into perspective for me and I've enjoyed the game immensely since. What Fleet Captains doesn't really feel like it grand scale, and that's what Ascendancy looks like it's doing.

There's a lot of different approaches to any IP/concept, many different genres you can use to explore it and evoke different elements of it. I don't go for this "Well, I have game X about IP Y, so why would I ever need game Z?"stuff many gamers prescribe to. It's window dressing and that doesn't matter if you're into that window dressing. Mechanics matter, player counts matter, and exploring different elements of that IP/concept that excites you in new ways is what matters.

On top of that FC is basically two-player, while Ascendancy is three+. Admittedly, I myself don't know whether I'd really want two "big" ST games sitting around on my shelves, even if they do occupy largely different mechanical and player-count spaces.