star_trek.jpgIf you haven’t seen the new reboot of the Star Trek franchise, you’re really missing out on a chance to see fresh air breathed into a beloved franchise. This is particularly noteworthy since it focuses on the original series – a show that shows its age (dating to a period when many of us weren’t even a twinkle in our parents’ eyes). Feeling pretty jazzed about the movie in general, I thought folks might be interested in how they can bring that excitement home to the tabletop (we’re sticking with available games based on the Kirk-era here folks):

  • Starfleet Battles is the grand daddy of all hard core space war games and is the only one, to my knowledge, that has active support to this day; the game itself is an intensely tactical game based on ship to ship combat with loads of special rules and options – one word of caution, this game (and all of the games by Amaraillo Design Bureau) take place in the Star Trek universe as it existed in the 1970’s, including races like the Kzinti from the cartoon series [Amaraillo Design Bureau]
  • Federation Commander is a retooling of the Starfleet Battles system with streamlined rules and options for playing squadron based battles and has become more popular that its predecessor over the past few years [Amarillo Design Bureau]
  • Federation & Empire is an epic operational scale wargame set in the same universe as Starfleet Battles featuring support for up to eight players and a full-length campaign that can take multiple days (its a common practice to attempt to play the full campaign over the course of the Origins Game Fair) [Amaraillo Design Bureau]
  • Scene It? Star Trek is decent expansion to the ever growing Scene It? series of trivia games; this one isn’t strictly limited to the old series, but its a fine game and features some great scenes from the old series [Screenlife Games]
  • Starship Tactical Combat Simulator from the now defunct Fasa Games is a great light-weight wargame that has a lot in common with the Starfleet Battles universe, but features a lighter, more accessible system than Starfleet Battles; the game itself has been out of print for quite a while but a perusal of the game’s forum at Board Game Geek will lead you to well preserved copies of the original rules and Sporadic Enterprises has lovingly updated the rules and ships availalble for the game

Let us know if we missed any that need to be added to the list (in the meantime, I’ll be getting ready for some online play of Federation Commander on Starfleet Battles Online)!