Enter Era Four

There's a newly-formed gaming/education group at work and they recently hosted a game jam on itch.io. Although the organizers of the jam were mostly interested in video games, board games were also accepted. So I made a science fiction strategy boardgame thingy for 6-16 players and a referee.  Assuming it works as intended, it ought to make a decent convention game for cons with 4 or 5 hour slots.

You can download the board, components, and rules here.

New edition of Starmada! Huzzah!

So Daniel Kast's Starmada has a new, 30th anniversary edition out. You can get the pdf from WargameVault (the wargame store of the DriveThru people) or print, print-with-map-and-counters, or pdf from publisher Majestic Twelve Games. 

This is my favorite spaceship combat wargame. If you like hexed-based space combat with just enough complexity that running multiple ships is challenging but not overwhelming, then give it a shot.

Maybe the best part of the game is the ship construction system, which is a tad more complex than BattleTech* or Car Wars, but still easy enough that when I bought the Starmada Compendium (the 2nd print edition of the game) I immediately converted the ships in every other spaceship game I owned.

If you own a fleet or two of minis and the rules they're made for are too wonky for your tastes, consider Starmada. Or if you want to fight wars between factions in your own sci-fi universe.

*Does anyone even make their own mechs in BattleTech anymore? When I was a kid it was a common activity, with whole ass zines devoted to homemade mechs.