Space Station Assault
Space Station Assault Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
General Description
Space Station Assault is a game of strategy and tactics in which two intergalactic powers engage in battle. Each player has a deck representing a Space Station and a fleet of fifty ships. The winner is the first to destroy sixty or more Victory points worth of the enemy forces, which can consist of a large number of ships or the enemy Space Station.
Space Station Assault takes place on an imaginary grid of card-sized rectangles. Whenever you play or move a ship you must do so to an empty space on the grid. Don't worry about visualizing the grid; since cards can only be played adjacent to other cards in play the grid builds itself naturally.
Each ship, as well as the Space Station, has four stats:
- Speed: determines when the ship moves and fires. (Space Stations do not move.)
- Firepower: the amount of damage done when firing.
- Shields: the amount of damage needed to destroy a ship or Space Station. Damage remains on a card until it is destroyed or the game ends, so if a card with Shields of four takes two damage on one turn and another two or more damage on a later turn, it is destroyed.
- Victory: the amount destroying a ship or Space Station contributes towards winning the game. The first player to destroy sixty or more Victory points of enemy forces wins.
Game Components
Two decks, one with black borders and one with red borders, each with the following fifty one cards:
- Six Scouts
- Six Fighters
- Six Corvettes
- Six Gunships
- Five Frigates
- Five Destroyers
- Five Cruisers
- Four Battleships
- Four Dreadnaughts
- Three Behemoths
- One Space Station
Each deck also contains four blank cards (not for use in normal play) which can be used to replace any cards that get damaged or for you to design your own ships.
Players will need dice, coins or some other way to keep track of damage.
Getting Started
- Each player takes one deck, removes the Space Station and blank cards and shuffles the remaining ships.
- Determine randomly which player has initiative (explained below) for the first wave of ships.
- Place the Space Stations face up on the table with three card widths between them and with the name side away from the player with initiative. (See figure at end of rules.) Each player draws a hand of ten cards from his or her deck. Before the first wave, each player has the option of putting their starting hand on the bottom of the deck and drawing ten new cards. This can only be done once per player and only before the first wave.
Waves
Space Station Assault takes place in waves. During a wave, the ships will act in order of Speed, beginning with Speed 1, with players taking turns within a Speed until all ships of that Speed have acted. The player with initiative takes the first turn at each Speed (provided he or she has at least one ship of that Speed available). Turns then alternate until one player has no more available ships at that Speed, at which point the other player takes consecutive turns until all of his or her available ships of that Speed have acted. Then move to the next Speed until Speed 6 (the Space Stations) after which both players draw ten new cards and a new wave begins, with initiative changing hands each wave.
Card Orientation
When a ship or Space Station acts, it should be oriented so that the name of the card is closer to the player with initiative. This way it is easy to tell which ships in play have already acted for the wave and which are still able to move and/or fire. (See figure below.)
Figure captions as printed: "Black Station", "Red Fighter", "Red Station".
Figure text as printed: "Red has initiative and his first turn is to play a Fighter next to the Black Space Station which then deals two damage to the Station."
Turns
For each turn, a player with any ships of the appropriate Speed that have not acted this wave must do one of the following:
- Play a ship of the appropriate Speed from his or her hand onto any unoccupied space that is adjacent (horizontally or vertically, not diagonally) to another card in play. The ship must then fire at an adjacent enemy card, if any. (Ships only fire once per wave.)
- Move a ship of the appropriate Speed that is already in play and that has not yet acted this wave onto any unoccupied space that is adjacent to another card in play. The ship must then fire at an adjacent enemy card, if any.
- Have a ship or Space Station of the appropriate Speed that is already in play and that has not yet acted this wave remain in place and fire as normal. (Space Stations fire at Speed 6 but never move.)
Firing and Damage
Firing does damage equal to the attacker's Firepower to the target. If the target has received damage greater than or equal to its Shields, it is removed from play and its Victory points are added to the score of the attacking player. (Each player keeps the enemy cards he or she destroys in a pile to keep track of total Victory points.)
If the target has received less damage than its Shields, keep track of the damage with a die or coins – you may be able to finish it off later.
Multiplayer Rules
Space Station Assault can be played with any number of players, provided you use colored sleeves or some other method to distinguish between different Red and Black fleets. Here are our recommended variants:
Free for All: Any number of players. Start with Space Stations evenly spaced apart. Instead of taking ships that you destroy, you keep track of your own destroyed ships. Whenever a player loses sixty Victory points worth of cards he or she is eliminated.
Team: two teams of equal size. When a team has destroyed fifty Victory points of enemy cards for each player on a team, that team wins. (Thus, in a two on two match, a team wins when it destroys one hundred Victory points of enemy