Board Game - Federation Commander

Back in my board gaming days prior to getting involved in the role-playing hobby, a game my group was big into was Starfleet Battles. The game gradually added so many rules that eventually most of the group gave up on it.

A couple of years ago one of the old group reintroduced me to the off-spring of SFB in a cleaner, simpler, and to me more entertaining version called Federation Commander.

The rules simplifications and the updates to charts, tables, and the full color laminated ship system display cards really helped return this old favorite of mine to being playable once more.

Several days ago I decided to start working on a set of campaign rules for playing out a war between any number of the star faring empires available in the game. Instead of using a map with the empires pre-placed, thus creating situations where some are clearly outnumbered by enemies and others have it easy, I am working on a mapless strategic variant. Hopefully once I can put it together in a playable form I can post the rules here for review and comment by readers that might have interest in making use of them.

One thing about these strategic rules . . . it doesn't require all of the players to be at one place at the same time, just the ones in any particular conflict. And it uses a neutral referee to allow for the fog of war that makes grand strategic games much more interesting. As long as at least one person has the needed rules and game components and is willing to lend them out or travel with them to where the combatants plan to meet, this can be accomplished.