We’re sharing a transmission received from the Voidfighter author, Casey Garske, detailing an epic clash on the fringes of the Sagittarian Frontier...

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Hello all. I'm Casey, designer of such fine wargames as Space Weirdos and Sword Weirdos, here to show you my newest game, Voidfighter. Ironically, I've been working on Voidfighter far longer than the Weirdo games. I had put Voidfighter aside and used its guts to make Space Weirdos. It wasn't until I'd finished Sword Weirdos that I was able to go back and use what I'd learned to in turn finish Voidfighter. Funny how the design process works.

This is a middle-sized 125 point game. I'm using all three ship types for each side, snubfighters, gunships, and corvettes.

The Void Tigers want to take control of a space station that is guarded by four mines, and the Cnidarians want to destroy it. Either way, the mines must be eliminated before the station can either be docked with or destroyed.

The playing area is 3'x4', which fits nicely on a kitchen table. And even if you don't have a space game mat, you can just tape off the playing area on the table.

The Cnidarians are starting with only those ships on the board because the rest are carried within the Man O' War corvette and Devil Ray gunship.

The Void Tigers win the initiative roll and we enter the Movement Phase. All ships move before any shooting happens, so the loser of initiative moves ships first so the winner can react to their movements. However, ships activate in four groups, so the loser of initiative has a disadvantage, but will still be able to react to some of the winner's actions.

After all the ships have activated for movement, the board looks like this. Lots of shots lined up on the satellites, and the Void Tigers are trying to target a snipe a couple shots at the Cnidarians as well. I'm using these little 1cm cubes as activation tokens. I like their look. After the model shoots in the Gunnery Phase, you remove the token so you know they've activated.

This shot from the Void Tiger leader misses, even after their Ace re-roll!

And the fighter/bomber thought they had a torpedo shot, but it was out of range! No pre-measuring in Voidfighter. All distances are measured in "sticks" of 2.5", 5", or 10". Here the range for a torpedo is a Medium (5") stick plus a Long (10") stick with the width of a Medium stick. No need for separate templates.

The Cnidarians end up destroying three of the mines, and the Void Tigers only one. Each is worth a victory point, so the Void Tigers should be a little worried.

Rolls in Voidfighter are all opposed rolls. There are no static target numbers. Even this mine gets to roll to defend itself against the corvette's attack. Doubling or tripling your opponents defense rolls means you get to roll more on the Hit Location table, making it more likely your shot will destroy your target.

Round 2, the Cnidarians win initiative but the Void Tigers waste no time and immediately dock their transport with the station, using two command points to first use Full Throttle to move farther and then Danger Zone to take no chances on the Piloting roll to dock. Command Points are used to complete dangerous maneuvers and use special abilities. You get between 1 and 4 each round depending on the size of the game. They do not carry over between rounds, so use them up! But spend them wisely.

Things get messy quickly as the Cnidarian Man O' War spends all its command points to disgorge three Squid fighters directly at the station.

Disaster for the Void Tigers in the Gunnery Phase as the Cnidarian corvette blows up the station! That puts them behind 6 VPs to 1! But they get their revenge when the Auroch corvette targets the Man O' War and destroys it in one hit. It still had a squid fighter aboard, so that is 4 VPs for the Void Tigers in one shot.

At the end of round two the Void Tiger leader is damaged, the Phoenix was destroyed, and two more Squids were blasted. Now it will be a hard-fought dogfight for the remaining two rounds of the game to see who can come out on top. The blue token on the Void Tiger leader is showing that their weapon systems are damaged. Hits do not automatically destroy your ships. They might take hits to their structure, weapons, systems, engines, or the pilot. But a second hit to a damaged system will destroy the ship.

With how close everyone ended up in round 2, I thought there would be more possibilities for collisions, but by using roll maneuvers, most everyone got out of the way. Except this Barracuda brazenly flew past the Harpy. For a collision to occur, both ships have to fail a Piloting roll. If either one passes the roll, the collision doesn't occur. Beware the ships with the Reinforced Hull trait. They can automatically fail this roll in an attempt to ram the opposing ship.

At the end of round 4, this is what the board looks like.

The Void Tigers have taken 3 casualties and have two damaged ships. Their Leader managed to repair their damage. The Cnidarians have had many more ships destroyed, but they took out more mines AND the station. The final score is 10 for the Cnidarians and 9 for the Void Tigers. Since you generally need to win by 2 VPs, the game is a draw! The survivors retreat to hyperspace to lick their wounds.

If this was a campaign game, the players would roll to see if their pilots survived the destruction of their ships and to see if they increased in skill.

I'm really looking forward to the release of Voidfighter and hope everyone enjoys blowing up some spaceships on the tabletop. 

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