I know of FreeSpace: Tactics (though I do not own it) and I imagine there might have been other similar projects for FreeSpace board games, but here's my take on the idea.
First off, this game is intended to remain simple enough for those who are not especially into Freespace or complex board games to be able to play it (and hopefully have some fun...).
It's also designed to be playable with just:
- the star map,
- a standard 52-card deck,
- a standard 54-card deck including two jokers,
- a 6-face dice,
- anything to serve as faction markers, to place on occupied systems.
Rules are copied below and are also provided as pdf (which I recommend). This is still in concept/testing stage, so your input is welcome! If some of the rules are unclear, let me know. The length of the text might be discouraging, but I assure you, it's really simple. These days, this can be a nice family-time kind of occupation...
For the starmap, I modified the design of star systems to take into account the number of stars considered to compose them. I also colored the stars according to their spectral type. It doesn't seem that Ikeya, Ribos and Laramis correspond to real systems, so I marked them out in cyan (Ikeya is instead the name of a comet, while Ribos seems to have been taken out of Doctor Who). Let me know if you think there are errors. Credit to MjnMixael for the faction emblems.
I'm also designing cards specific to the game. Images are from the Freespace wiki, with models according to the mediavps versions.
And here are some custom markers (Credit again to MjnMixael for the faction emblems):
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FreeSpace:
Fate of the Conquerors
A game by Qalam, based on Descent: FreeSpace by Volition and the FreeSpace universe
v.1.0 05/2020
The Shivans are coming…With space faring, the greed of prosperous civilizations seems to reach no limit, their insatiable thirst for conquest bringing death and destruction along their path… But what if there was an old, powerful force in the universe that would bring balance… through even greater terror?
MaterialAlthough FS:FotC comes with its own cards and markers (in progress), it has been designed to be playable with simply one six-faced dice and two standard 52-card decks of French playing cards, plus two Jokers, as well as any kind of colored markers/pawns. However, the main board/map forms the base of the game and is required to play.
One of the 52-card decks is the faction deck. The other 52-card deck must be completed with the two jokers, and will become the Shivan fleet deck.
RulesFactionsFour factions fight for the control of this quadrant of the galaxy: The Galactic Terran Alliance (GTA), the Parliamentary Vasudan Empire (PVE), the Hammer of Light (HoL) and the Neo-Terran Front (NTF). From two to four players can embody these factions to play the game. The HoL and NTF are respectively Vasudan and Terran separatists with their own agendas and strategies.
A powerful fifth galactic force, the Shivans, is also at play, and is driven only by the extermination of all four Terran and Vasudan factions. Shivans are not embodied by any player, but will colonize star systems and wage battles just the same, albeit in a more erratic and merciless way.
Goals and winning conditionsConsidering the immense danger of the Shivan invasion, both the GTA and PVE set to contain the threat as their primary objective, although they aim to attain it independently. To stop the Shivans, both have reached the same conclusion: The Capella Jump Node must be collapsed. To achieve this, a brave Ace pilot carrying a prototype dark matter bomb will be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice inside subspace.
> To win with either the GTA or the PVE, you need to take control of Capella, hold the system for another turn when Shivans attack you, and have at least one Ace in your fleet hand.
The HoL and NTF do not see the Shivan threat as the GTA and PVE do. Instead, they are obsessed by the fall of the old empires. They also have the ability to withdraw before Shivan forces (see below).
> To win with either the HoL of the NTF, you need to take the capital of either the GTA (Sol) or PVE (Vasuda) and hold it for one turn (this implies that at least one player must play GTA or PVE if a player wishes to play HoL or NTF).
The GTA and PVE lose the game if either the Shivans or one of the separatist factions take over their capitals, and they are unable to win them back in one turn. On the other hand, the HoL and NTF can lose their capital systems and yet survive as long as they own at least one other system.
Game start: Initial fleets and capital systemsSpace must be reserved for the following card sets:
The Shivan fleet deck, which contains all remaining Shivan ships;
The Shivan fleet discard pile, which contains all the Shivan ships already engaged in a previous battle;
The faction fleet deck, from which all players draw their new ships;
The faction discard pile, which contains all faction ships destroyed in battle.
After each player has chosen a faction, they must place an ownership marker on their capital. Faction capitals are predefined:
GTA > Sol
PVE > Vasuda
HoL > Altair
NTF > Polaris
Then, GTA and PVE players each get four cards from the faction deck, but HoL and NTF players only collect three cards. These represent the starting fleets for the different factions.
Note: From their strategic differences, but also the location of the various capitals, it is evident that each faction has its own advantages and disadvantages. The GTA, for instance, has easy access to a large fleet, but is also further away from Capella and the other factions’ capitals.
Movements, system capture and fleet buildingStar systems in the Orion galactic arm are connected via Jump Nodes and Subspace lanes. These are depicted in light blue on the star map.
Despite their differences, factions are driven by the same expansionist imperative: each turn, they must conquer (or try to conquer) a new system, either by moving to an accessible unoccupied star or by attacking an owned location. A newly acquired system must be indicated by an ownership marker.
Factions can only move to a star system adjacent to one of their own during a turn.
Certain systems, like Sol, only have a single active Jump Node. The first move for a GTA player is always to take Delta Serpentis. When an owned star system has several Jump Nodes, like Vasuda, the player can choose to which surrounding star they wish to send their force. For their first move, a PVE player can choose to conquer either Deneb, Antares, or Alpha Centauri.
Each newly acquired system grants one additional card drawn from the faction fleet deck, which the player adds to their fleet hand. Expanding a faction’s territory therefore also expands its fleet.
Faction capitals (whether the faction is actually played or not) are worth two cards.
Shivans: Shivans start at Gamma Draconis and are always the first to play. Their first move is always to secure Capella. On the second turn, a player must throw the dice to determine to which system they will move next: Epsilon Pegasi or Vega. The highest score decides the direction. This action has to be repeated each time the Shivans arrive on a system with several Jump Nodes. However, notwithstanding the occupation of Capella by a faction (see below):
- Shivans will always occupy empty systems first;
- The Shivan invasion follows inertia, which means that they will always invade systems according to their action during the previous turn. For instance, if the Shivans occupy Vega, Capella, Epsilon Pegasi and Polaris, but have just moved to Polaris during the previous turn, they will necessarily move to Regulus.
- When Shivans reach the end of a path (e.g. Procyon), they will resume their conquest from any of the available routes elsewhere on the map. The route taken has to be decided with the dice.
Contrarily to faction players, Shivans do not gain ships by conquering systems. They have at their disposal the entire Shivan fleet deck from the start of the game.
When a player chooses to move an occupied system, or when the Shivan armada moves to an occupied system, a battle is initiated.
The Shivans know that Capella is critical to their objective in the Orion arm. Whenever they lose the system to a faction, they will always retaliate and try to take it back during the next turn.
Note: The movement of a faction from system to system is only represented by the placement of the ownership markers; it is not a fleet movement. The fleet is only represented by the fleet hand and is available at all times, across systems.
Note: The HoL and NTF possess the ability to be able to withdraw from a system when attacked by Shivans, at no cost. They abandon that system to the Shivans without engaging in battle.
BattlesAt the beginning of the space battle, involved players each choose four cards from their fleet hand (regardless of where the battle occurs). These cards represent their attacking/defending force. The players then choose in which order these four cards are to be played, and place them face down on the table.
The players then reveal one card after the other from their mobilized forces in the intended order (for convenience, left to right or right to left). This decides which sets of two cards will be opposed and compared to determine the winner.
The balance of power between cards is as follows:
Ace – Beats 3 to 10 and Queen
The Ace (a) is the top-notch pilot who wins the day.
King / Destroyer – Beats Queen and Jack
Destroyer capital ships (d) essentially contain other destroyers and put down smaller capital ships.
Queen / Cruiser – Beats Jack, 7 and 8
Cruisers (c) can effectively repel heavy assault fighters and bring down corvettes or similar larger ships.
Jack / Gunner – Beats 3 to 6
Gunning ships (g) protect larger capital ships and keep the lighter fighters at bay.
10 and 9 / Bomber – Beats King and Queen
The reason-to-be of bombers (B) is to take down capital ships.
7 and 8 / Heavy assault fighters – Beats Jack, 5 and 6
Heavy assault fighters (h) take down capital ship escorts and suppress superiority fighters.
5 and 6 / Superiority fighters – Beats 3 and 4
Superiority fighters (S) are good at eliminating smaller fighters.
3 and 4 / Interceptors – Beats 10 and 9
The high velocity of Interceptors (I) is critical in eliminating bombers and their ordinance before they reach their target.
2 / Recon ships are meant to scout the battlefield without engaging. They do not beat any other ship, but they are also capable of evading any attacker.
When a card is beaten (for instance, a player draws a Queen/Cruiser while the opponent draws a 9 or 10/Bomber), it is lost for the player and sent to the faction discard pile. If the two cards have no effect on each other (identical cards, or e.g. a Joker/Gunner and an Ace), leave both of them standing. They will be collected back by their respective owners at the end of the battle.
The winner of the battle is the player with the most remaining ships when all eight cards have been compared. If the two players have the same number of cards at the end of the battle, a draw is decided. All cards remaining on the table (“unbeaten”) go back to the fleet hand.
The Shivans: When Shivans are involved in a battle, the first four cards are drawn by a non-involved player from their fleet deck and placed face down in the same order as they are drawn. The comparison of cards then follows the same process. However:
- The Shivans also have two Super-Destroyers in their armada (jokers). Whenever these cards are revealed during a battle, the opponent card it faces is discarded (even if it is an Ace) and the battle is immediately lost for the player. All remaining unrevealed player cards are put back into their fleet hand, along with any other card that had survived the encounter before the Super-Destroyer appeared;
- After any encounter, and whether the battle is lost or won for the Shivans, all cards in the Shivan force are discarded. Their fleet deck is therefore smaller and more predictable as battles occur. When there are three or less cards remaining in the Shivan fleet deck, the discard pile is re-shuffled and used as the new Shivan fleet deck.
Hence, facing the Shivans implies a much different strategy for the player, taking into account the randomness of the card order but also the predictability of the ships involved given the total Shivan force remaining.
Intel: Shivans do not have Aces per se (they do not nurture individualities), but they have incredibly tedious fighters to confront that can harass even the best of Vasudan or Terran Aces: The Dragons.
Aftermath of battlesThere are important movement rules following battles, which applies to both factions and Shivans:
- When the battle ends in a draw, the attacker is forbidden to attack the same system during the next turn. The defender, however, can strike the attacker from the position;
- When the attacker loses the battle, it is forbidden to attack the same system during the next turn, except when Shivans try to retake Capella or when a faction attempts to take back its capital. The defender, however, can strike the attacker from this position;
- When the attacker wins the battle, the defender is forbidden to try and recapture the system during the next turn.
FortifyingA player may find themselves in the situation where they cannot take any action during a turn: because they have just lost all battles in systems surrounding their territory, or because their fleet has been decimated and have less than four cards in their fleet deck. In this case, they will hold during this turn and fortify by drawing two cards from the faction deck.
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[attachment eaten by a Shivan]
