Starfire (board wargame)
| Designer(s) | Stephen V. Cole |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Metagaming Concepts |
| Publication date | 1979 |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction, board game |
| Age range | 10+ |
Starfire is a board wargame (a "4X," eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) simulating space warfare and empire building in the 23rd century, created by Stephen V. Cole in 1979.
The Starfire game is currently published by the Starfire Design Studio (SDS), but was formerly published by Task Force Games. There are six editions of the Starfire Game.
The first edition consisted of three products: Starfire (1979), Starfire II (1980), and Starfire III: Empires (1981); the first by Stephen V. Cole; the second by Barry A Jacobs, and the last one by the notable military science fiction writer David Weber. Later versions combined the first two into Tactical Starfire, and the third was largely rewritten as Strategic Starfire.
"Starfire, 2nd Edition" (or sometimes known as boxed starfire...) (1984) is a game of sublight space combat on the small-fleet scale. Speed of play is often touted as an advantage of the system; it does have a major advantage in fleet handling over Star Fleet Battles (Steve Cole's other starship wargame at the time), but there are many other games around of similar handling time to Starfire. Starfire is one of the few games in which the player has nearly complete design control of his spaceships.
Starfire, 2nd Edition is based on the original version of Starfire, and on its sequel Starfire II. The rules booklet is divided into "modules" (Module A is an introduction to the game series; Module B is titled Starfire and replaces Starfire + module C is titled "Strikefighter" and replaces Starfire II"). The 2nd edition product line continued with Starfire New Empires (1985), the first strategic-level game in the series, and The Gorm-Khanate War (1986) which was a campaign game utilising Starfire New Empires for the strategic part of the campaign, and Starfire, 2nd Edition for the tactical battles.
Starfire New Empires is a game of building a space empire, inspired by the original Starfire III: Empires. Players must decide what to invest their income in (colonization, R&D, trade, military, exploration, etc.) to determine both the nature of their empires and their ability to survive and conquer.
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