Klingons on the starboard bow....

First game of 2014 earlier this week was kindly laid on by Anthony and saw him umpire a Star Trek game using the Use Me Starship rules from 15mm.co.uk. and his very nice collection of Micro Machines spaceships.

For the uninitiated [which was me up until Monday] these are part of a range of rule booklets covering just about every genre from WW2 and ACW to Eldritch Horror and Cyberpunk, all at a very reasonable price.  Use Me, if you didn't know, stands for Ultra Simple Engine for Miniature Engagements...

Anthony kindly agreed to umpire as he was the only one with any knowledge of the rules...sensibly he didn't incorporate some of the more complicated rules [so no nuclear warheads or homing missiles] to let us try and get flavour of the rules.

 

The scenario pitted a Federation fleet [Chris] against those gallant defenders of the universe, the Klingons [me].  The fleets were well balanced but the Feds had weapons that were more effective at longer ranges while the Klingons had more powerful but shorter range Disruptors.

The forces were drawn up either side of an asteroid field which I was able to use to screen some of the early long range pot shots from Chris.  Luckily this, combined with Chris' uncanny ability to roll any effective dice for the first half of the game meant the Klingons were able to draw first blood, damaging or knocking out some of the Federation cruisers.

I slipped some of my cruisers straight through the asteroid field in an attempt to close with Chris while my slower moving Battleships moved into effective range... Chris' ships still failed to roll any useful dice and his most spectacular result was when the wrecked hulk of a Federation cruiser crashed into one of mine destroying it!

 

 

 

Half way through the game the combined teams of Federation Scotty's managed to 'gie the engines mair power!' and the phasers started to actually hit the enemy.  The tide was slowly beginning to swing back towards Chris but it was too little too late.  My Battleships had stayed together in a compact wedge and were able to concentrate fire in turn on the Federation battleships, crippling them one by one.

By the end of the game neither of us had much left in the way of cruisers but I had the upper hand with 3 undamaged Battleships and claimed the victory.

An interesting set of rules.... it would be good to try these with more of the additional rules to see how complex they become.  I think one of the attractions of rules like these is the simplicity and fast play element and it would be interesting to see if it can be added to without losing this.

I've also just noticed that they also have some Post Apocalypse rules in this range which could be handy for my Fallout project....