Tabletop_Gaming__April_2019

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example, the one thread that ows through

the whole game is that the engineer creates

energy. ey have essentially a domino

puzzle, and they have to put the dominoes

together in such a way that it can send the

energy to the stations that are important at

that time. Maybe you want to move fast, so you

send it to navigation, or you’re in a ght and

you send it to weapons, and so on.

“e other tricky part was that we wanted

the mini-games to be relatively simple, but

also we wanted them to be somewhat skill-

based. We wanted it to be something that you

could get better at as you went on. It’s easy to

design mini-games based on luck, but that

doesn’t give you that feeling of growth and

that you’re working better together as a team.

It doesn’t give you that sense of: ‘Oh boy,

Susan’s fantastic on shields.’ ere was one

game where we played with a ten-year-old

girl who was just a killer at icking that disc

down the torpedo track, so she was always

on weapons. She was just a dead-eye with

that. at’s exciting, and it kind of fed into the

whole starship fantasy.”

If designing the game’s various tasks was tough,

playtesting also presented some challenges.

“One thing we underestimated, and

something I would approach dierently if I

were to do the game again is that there’s a

lot to learn,” Geo says. “Each mini-game

is pretty simple, but it means there’s a lot

to teach. You have to teach a dierent set of

rules to each individual person, and everyone

else is sitting staring at the wall. And plus, the

game works better with more players, so it’s

always more of a challenge when you need to

recruit more people,

“But then, one of the advantages of designing

with my kids was that we always had at least

three, and I could usually dragoon my wife into

joining us as well. And fortunately you could

test the mini-games in isolation to some extent;

you could sit someone down, give them 30

seconds on a task and see how well they did.

“Designing with my kids was both good and

bad. In one sense it was incredibly gratifying

to work with them. It was great having the

designers live in the same house. We’d be

driving in the car and I’d come up with an idea,

or they’d come up with an idea, or we’d be at

a restaurant or wherever, and you could just

throw stu out there and start scribbling

Designing with my kids was both

good and bad. We’d be at a

restaurant or wherever, and you

could just throw stuff out there

and start scribbling.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

3 2 5

Z-75 HUNTER-KILLER

No superlocks allowed.

Cannot be target of tractor beams.

Lock on Z-75 lost at end of each turn.

5 -2

3 4

-1

STEALTH OSPREY
o sensor points required for lock,
or Superlock.

2 2 5

FRIGATE

4 +2

5

2 2 3

CRUISER

4

2 0 5

VENGEANCE

dd damage Vengeance has suffered

o damage caused on players.

4 +?+?

3 2 2

STILETTO

Each torpedo fired at Stiletto does -1

damage. (minimum of zero)

2

2 1 2

SCOUT DRONE

If locked onto players at end of its

activation, enemy nearest Scout Drone

gains lock (if unlocked) and fires on

players if in range.

4

Z-75 HUNTER-KILLERZ-75 HUNTER-KILLERZ-75 HUNTER-KILLER

(^40)
PROXIMITY MINE
Remove if it explodes.
0
2