I have been asked by a few people now to explain just what Sovereign Wars is. Since I have been hard at work on the 3d models and the rules this overview kind of got pushed to the side. Now that the url is live and the alpha rules are coming soon I figured now is a as good a time as any to write up the overview.
So what is Sovereign Wars? Sovereign Wars is a table top space combat game set in a distant part of the milky way galaxy. The first book with contain four races that are currently struggling to control their corner of space. The game is played with ships organized into fleets ranging from units of fighters up to large carriers and cruisers. A standard game will have at least one large carrier or cruiser class ship and a variety of support craft you are looking at about 10 to 15 ships for a average game but the game will scale up for even larger battles. Fleets will be constructed using a simple point system that allows for quick list building and overall balance. One of the main design philosophies of Sovereign Wars is to keep the rules as light as possible but offer complexity in how they are used in actual game play. Game play it self involves an abstract movement system that allows for little to no record keeping and keeps the game moving at a quick pace. You won't have to have any special templates or gauges to move ships in Sovereign Wars a simple tape measure will be enough. Along with the simplified movement system the games combat rolls are just as easy we use a simple two d6 system where one roll determines if you hit and how much damage you have caused. Those are pretty much the basics within those rules there is also a resource management system where fleet commanders must allocate and manage orders effectively allowing the ships to attack and react to their opponent. In addition there are also rules for boarding actions, ramming as well as special characters and ships the provide benefits to the fleet.
Now that we know the general basics of what Sovereign Wars is let go over what Sovereign Wars is not. It is not about record keeping, each ship or unit will have a stat card that will allow you to track damage and any other effects right on the card getting rid of the need to ship control sheets for every ship. It is not a simulation. We abstract movement and scale to make the game play fast and to keep the game fun. Sovereign Wars is not about ship building or customization. Everything has its stat card and there are special effects and features that make them different from other ships but you won't have to worry about what special gear your opponent has that is not visible on their ship. All this ships that will be part of the initial release will have there stats easily accessible in the main book.
The overall goal of this whole Sovereign Wars project is to buck the trends of typical space games and to make a game accessible and fun to play anything that takes away from the action on the table with the models is thrown out. You won't see any charts or tables in the game, you also won't roll firsts full of dice that you have to count out and then roll again. Once you have learned the rules they are easy to remember and are also very clear to implement.
Enough about the game for now I have also have people asking me about the models. The goal of the model line is to represent the ships of the game in a scale that is comparable to the other popular game out there. One this we are doing with Sovereign Wars is our fighters are mounted in a 1 to 1 fashion so there are going to be bigger that they normally would so that they are visible and easier to use. With that said initially the models will be available through online print on demand channels along with printed copies of the book which will be release in full color as well as a basic PDF for free.
I think I have rambled on enough with this first post about the game itself. In the upcoming weeks we will be releasing backgrounds on the various races of Sovereign Wars along with more in depth discussions of the various systems that make up the game.
