Game Tips for Battlestations

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Jun 21st, 2015| Strategy

“EVA units and Gas Grenades”

I’ve been helping Jeff, as I can, with the 2nd Edition Rules for a while now. I’m not exactly sure when the various gas grenades which he has rules for came into being, but I quickly latched onto following combination of gear for my Marine to use during boarding actions.

1) He has a personal EVA unit which grants him (when used) 100 turns of Life Support.

2) He also now carries three Choke Grenades which, when detonated, fill the module they go off in with a gas which denies Life Support from those inside the module – forcing them to make Athletics checks for not being in a Life Support environment (unless they have a personal EVA unit…).

When I first used this combo against Jeff in a game, he told me that he hadn’t considered the synergy between those to pieces of gear and smiled.

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Nov 2nd, 2013| Tip

12 of 14 gamers found this helpful

“Conserve your power...”

At the end of each round of 6 phases, during the end of round bookkeeping, each of the ship’s three systems – Guns, Helm, and Shields – lose one point of power (which they then regain at the start of the next round during the Power Generation step).

However, to save 2 of those points of power from being lost, I recommend that you have your crew transfer all the power from two of the systems into the third one during phase 6. This will leave those two systems with 0 power, and thus they would lose NO power during bookkeeping, and the third system, the one with all the power in it, will still only lose 1 point; thus saving 2 points of power for the next round.

At the start of the next round, just transfer it all back out into your other systems as you see fit.

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Mar 24th, 2014| Tip

8 of 10 gamers found this helpful

“Wait to Teleport”

When considering sending your boarding party over to an enemy ship via your shiny Teleporter module don’t just hit the button.

Go on overwatch to use the Teleporter until after the enemy crew has used all it’s actions for the phase; then teleport over, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be immediately gunned down for your unexpected visit.

(huh, 10 years of playing, and Jeff is still teaching me new tricks…)

8

Player 1 Yellow {Avid Gamer}

Dec 8th, 2015| Tip

4 of 5 gamers found this helpful

“Blow it up! - Wait! No, not like that! Put that away!”

Blow your game up! (Inspired by playing in designer Admiral Siadek’s Giant BS games at GenCon & Origins).

I scanned the ship module tiles into my pc, then re-printed at a slight;y larger scale (each square right about 1″). We use 28mm miniatures for characters & aliens (D&D minis, Star Wars minis – all can be found pretty cheap, often only $0.35 each for Commons). The ships are still a reasonable footprint (usually taping a ship onto a piece of poster board or foam board). If your players are RPGers OR gamers, they will love moving their minis around as they race about their ship (or board the enemy)!

We still use the smaller Space Map to show ship movement, using some cool miniature sci-fi ship models (I’m running a Firefly variant right now. Their ship is an actual Serenity model from the Firefly boardgame).

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Oct 10th, 2013| Tip

8 of 11 gamers found this helpful

“Be Brutal, especially when you have a Particle Rifle...”

The Brutal Special ability allows you to re-roll some of your damage dice; if you take it twice, you can re-roll all of your damage dice.

When coupled with the Particle Rifle, which allows you to roll a number of damage dice equal to how many successes you roll, this means you do a great deal of damage, indeed.

“What is best in life, Conan?”

“To be doubly Brutal and have a Particle Rifle!”

3/28/14 Note: I’ve recently had the privilege to sit in with Jeff and play with the new 2nd edition rules, and Particle Rifles have been toned down a bit, but are still nasty.

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Oct 10th, 2013| Rule

7 of 11 gamers found this helpful

“Another use for the 'Tricky' Special Ability”

Tricky is one of the various Special Abilities which your character can acquire. You can use it to do several things, but I thought up another good use of it as well.
Here’s my house variant for Tricky:

Tricky can also be used to perform the following action:
Into the Ducts: The player may now move a number of modules equal to his Move stat. When exiting the ducts, the player rolls a random exit point as if he had exited a boarding missile.

7

Chris {Avid Gamer}

Oct 10th, 2013| Strategy

7 of 11 gamers found this helpful

“Send them a sky full of missiles!”

Battlestations is played in a series of turns, and each turn is made up of 6 rounds. Most modules can only be used once per TURN.

So, to make best use of multiple missile launchers (if your ship has more than one, and Zoallan ships do…), be sure to launch them towards the end of the TURN; even if this means launching them on different rounds in the turn in sequence.

Then when the modules all become available for use again, on the next TURN, fire them all off again in rapid succession. If you’re ship only has 2 missile bays, you’ve now got 4 missiles streaking towards your enemy; with 3 bays, 6 missiles, etc. Heck, even with only one missile bay you’ve got 2 missiles outbound.

Odds are that he can’t stop them all. And if there happens to be a boarding missile mixed in with the rest, so much the better.

8/1/15: Note – The upcoming 2nd edition of the rules now allow for Missile bays to be used more than once/Turn; although there is the risk of a missile exploding in the bay if you fail to launch it.

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