Star Fleet Battles - Mines and Drones

 In February, I made some mine and drone markers for used with Star Fleet Battles miniatures.  

The Mines are just beads with a straight pin through the center, mounted on my typical fighter stands.  A single bead represents a small mine, with two stacked beads representing a large mine.  I'll probably make some more in different colors to represent captor mines equipped with weapons.

I searched for packs of small missiles, torpedoes, etc, but given that I will ultimately need hundreds of drone markers, I opted to keep the cost down and just make them out of bits of small diameter plastic rod with points sanded on one end.  Kzinti are red, Klingon are their distinctive blue-grey, others will carry the color of their ship hulls.

A tray with 24 small space mines.  

Kzinti drones can be seen in the background.

This tray has 12 large space mines and 12 kzinti mines.

A Romulan Sparrowhawk light cruiser, chased by 

drones and running into a mine field.

Not any great accomplishment as scratch-building goes, but fast and inexpensive.  War is near.

Romulan Fleet for Star Fleet Battles

The Romulans were my favorite race in Star Trek and in Star Fleet Battle for many years.  I've separated the fleet into three groups. The early Romulan "bird of prey" or War Eagle era in SFB, including the various early sub-light designs converted over to warp, once the technology became available.  The Klingon era of ships sold or transferred to Romulan service.  And the new generation of Romulan vessels lead by the Sparrowhawk light cruiser and Skyhawk destroyer.  

My earliest models are the first version of the War Eagle, the Romulan ship depicted in the original Star Trek series. These models mostly date to 1981-82.  And the Condor dreadnaught, which dates to 1983, I think.  More recently I've added various "Hawk" light cruisers, which are actually slightly larger than the War Eagle which became the "standard" cruiser of the Romulan fleet.

Here are some pic of the older Romulan vessels for SFB

War Eagles, the slightly larger Battlehawks (CL) behind 

them, a Condor (DN) rear left and Mauler right rear.

These are all Task Force Games/Star Fleet Battles Miniatures

Though nobody ever sees them, they all have their 

birds of prey on the undersides.

The Klingon ships in Romulan service:

Kf-5R frigates in the lead and and KD-6R cruisers.  

These are old 1982 vintage Task Force Games D-6/7s 

and current (larger) F-5s 

They also got stylized birds of prey on the undersides.

And the newer Romulan Hawks:

Seahawks (FF) and Skyhawks (DD), followed by 

Sparrowhawks (NCL)and a Firehawk.

The current Amarillo Design Bureau miniature for the War Eagle is much larger than the original, which conformed to the animated and original series size.  The Romulan Snipe miniature (frigate class) is roughly the size of the old War Eagle, so I'm going to sculpt a smaller Snipe and cast it to add to my fleet before the Romulans become active in my SFB general war.
 

Star Trek Again

Back in Late 2017, we started a Star Trek campaign for use with Star Fleet Battles rules.  The campaign allowed us to play the General War presented in SFB, Federation and Empire, and Federation Space.  We used a home set of campaign rules for the strategic game, and resolved tactical battles using the Commanders edition/Original boxed SFB and the three soft pack expansions.

We updated a set of home rules that we originally used circa 1985 for the campaign, incorporating new information and the map from Federation & Empire. The campaign was interrupted by Covid, and unrelated family illness, and we finally decided that we'd start over if we wanted to continue with a SFB campaign.

Recently, I've been working on some changes to the campaign rules that we used for that campaign in 2017, including an economic system that forces convoys and supply to bases, and a fighter pilot replacement system that makes fighter loses more important and impactful. 

This will hopefully force greater dispersal of forces, smaller battle fleets, more diverse battles, and a greater burden for losing fighters.  I suspect that it will also slow the campaign down as supply issues catch up to the fleets.  It does add some record keeping, but I'm hoping that it will just add a single convoy/supply sheet for each race.

I'm going to try a solo campaign run to see what needs debugged and how the record keeping works.  I'm going to try to set up a campaign map this weekend with the idea of starting the Lyran-Kzinti war in the next few weeks. The battles will be played with either miniatures or counters, if I can't field the forces in miniature.