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ASF: The Customizable Card Game

©2004 Gigabytes Computer Store

Rules of Play  

Introduction: ASF CCG is based upon the Aries Star Fleet Game and uses many of the characters, artwork and story line associated with that game.

Objective: To be the first player to score 100 points.

Card Types: Objective, Planet, Station, Upgrade, Enhancement, Intervention, Crew and Ship cards all make up the ASF CCG Game.

Card Anatomy

Title: The name of a card.

Type: What the card is.  Planet cards do not have this printed.  Some card types even include the affiliation of the card.

Affiliation:  What group the card belongs to.  There are 4 affiliations in ASF CCG: Aries Star Fleet, United Earth, Rebel, and Alien.

Lore: More information about the card.

Distance:  Only found on planets.  This number is used in calculating the distance between 2 planets.

Point Box: Only found on Objectives.  This is the number of points you receive when you complete the Objective.

Card Information Box: The number and rarity of the card is always found on the lower-right corner.

Staffing Ability:  The capability of a crew to staff a ship.  Only one crew can fulfill one staffing requirement of a ship.

Staffing Requirements: Found on Upgrades and Ships.  In order to move the ship or complete objectives, you must be able to staff the ship or ships involved.  Upgrades often add to the staffing requirement of a ship.

Attributes: The capabilities of a card.  Attributes include Power, Reserve, and Weapon capabilities.

Skills: The capabilities of ships and crew.  Crew skills include: Engineer, Command, Security, Diplomacy, Programming, Science, and Navigation.  Ship Skills include: Cloaking Device, Torpedo Tubes, and Landing Thrusters.   Special skills are detailed on the card itself.

Instructions:  Instructions detail how the card is played.

Requirements: Requirements detail what you need to play or use the card.

How to Play

Building a deck

4 Planets, 4 seed cards (optional), 24 interventions (minimum), 20 draw deck (minimum).

Game Setup

Play begins by determining which player will go first by any mutually agreeable method. Players then each place their Intervention Pile to their left and their Draw Decks to their right. There is a time limit of 40 minutes per game.

The first player (player 1) then lays down his lowest distance planet in the middle of the table. Player 2 does the same. The planets must go in order from the lowest to the highest, so planets are laid down where appropriate inserting into the spaceline as needed. If any player lays down Sol, each player plays their cards to the left of Sol.

Players then seed any cards that may be seeded. You may seed up to 4 cards, including stations, on the table at this time. Player 1 announces each of his seeded cards one at a time to the other players, player 2 follows, and so on. At this time, only the cards are being placed, no text can be executed. Once complete, players may then begin the play phase of the game.

Stations play in one of 2 ways. If the station says that it can seed on planet or in space, you can place it on top of the planet, leaving just enough room for the planet span to show, or you may play it just below the planet to signify the station to be in space. If the station says that it plays on a certain planet, it must be played as a planet station.

Play Phase

This phase begins by each player drawing 4 cards from the top of their draw deck. The draw deck consists of crew, ship, objective, upgrade, and enhancement cards. Each player may play one card per turn unless another card allows additional play. At the start of each turn, you must “ante up” your hand by drawing cards until your hand has no more than 4 cards in it, or, if you have excess, you must discard until you have 4 cards. Cards “stored” with another card like computer core do not count as your hand. Announce to your opponents the end of your turn.

Player 1 begins by announcing the card he will play. If it is a crew, upgrade or ship player 1 will play them at his station. If it is an enhancement, you must play them as stated on the card. If playing any face-down card, you do not need to announce anything about it. It is up to your opponent to to see that you have played it. This is considered a “covert action”.

Playing cards

Objectives play face down in a pile in front of the owner from the draw deck as a card play and do not have to be revealed to your opponent until “activated” – turned face up. You may only activate one objective at a time and it does not count as a card play.

Upgrades report at the station with ship and crew and travel on the ship. While on the ship, the upgrade enhances the ship’s attributes. Some upgrades may play directly onto any ship and others require a prerequisite before they can be effective. If a ship is destroyed, generally all of the upgrades are destroyed with it unless played on a card like fleet upgrade. Smaller upgrades can be saved with an escape pod if the escape pod has the proper staffing. Upgrades may have staffing icons, which indicate what ship they may be used with. This icon also increases the staffing requirements of a ship.

Crew staff ships and provide the skills to complete objectives. This includes Mission Specialist crews. Each crew may only meet one staffing requirement at a time, unless that crew has multiple staffing icons. Higher-ranking crew may meet a lower staffing requirement, but a lower rank may not meet a higher-ranking requirement.

Crew Staffing Icons
Small Crew fulfill minor staffing duties on large ships and fully staff the smallest ships.
Medium Crew staff mid-size ships. This is the rebel affiliation's largest crew.
Large Crew are as big as they come and can staff even the largest ships.
VIP can fill any one roll - large, medium, or small.

Ships play at the station. If it is a planet station, the ship must have landing thrusters to leave the station. You may take off and land as many times as you want each turn, using all of your range each time you do so.
   Ship Attributes: Each ship has a set of attributes: Power, Reserve, and Weapons. Power determines your resilience, how well you stand up in battle. Your Reserves are your range, or how far you can travel in one turn. Your Weapons are how much firepower your ship has in battle.
   Ship Skills: Your staffed ship also may have special skills: Landing Thrusters, Torpedo Tubes, Cloaking Device, or other skill.
        Landing Thrusters allow a ship to take off or land from a planet. Ships without landing thrusters must rely on those with landing thrusters to get people to and from a planet’s surface.
        Torpedo Tubes do nothing without torpedo upgrades.
        A Cloaking Device makes a ship invisible. You may cloak or de-cloak only once per turn by flipping your ship over. A cloaked ship may only move, it may not do anything else.
        Your ship may also have other Upgrades built into them such as a Fusion Core. This means you may play other upgrade cards on that ship that require that upgrade without having to play it in your deck.

Enhancements instruct you how to play them and enhance your game play. “Plays on table” signifies that the card plays directly in front of the owner. “Plays on Opponent” signifies that a card plays in front of your opponent.

Using Ships as Stations
Some ships allow you to use them as a station. You may report crews and upgrades just as though you could with a normal station. Ships used as stations mat not be played as a planetary station and unless it specifically says that you can seed the ship, you cannot use the ship as a replacement for your regular station.

Moving Crews and Upgrades
In this game there are no transporters. Crews on a planet cannot simply “beam up” to a ship in orbit. You must land a ship on a planet to pick your crews up and leave the planet to get to a ship in orbit. You can transfer crew from ship to ship as long as they are at the same location either in space or on a planet.

Moving your ships

Unlike most card games, the space line is linear, and not 3-Dimentional.  Because the game board is made up of bodies in a planetary system – the solar system – means that moving from one planet to the other requires taking into account crossing the orbits of other planets to get there.  Therefore, moving your ship to a location requires a bit of math.

Required Range = (Starting Planet + Destination) X ABS (Starting Planet – Destination)

Example:  Let’s say you are at Earth (span 4) and want to travel to Jupiter (span 7) you would use this formula like this:

Required Range = (4 + 7) X ABS (4 – 7)

1.     Do the addition and subtraction.

Required Range = (11) x ABS (-3)

2.     We don’t care about the negative sign on the three so we apply the Absolute Value to disregard
Required Range = 11 x 3

3.     And then do the Multiplication.
Required Range = 33

In practice, this is a very simple method, though not many ships have the range required to make such a jump.  You can get to the same place in three turns only using a smaller amount of range each turn by “planet hopping”.  Like this:

Total Range Used = 33

You have accomplished the same distance, except using smaller jumps over the course of 3 turns.  The trick is that you must have all three of those planets in play to do this.  Moons can be helpful to reduce the range required for your ships to accomplish objectives.  Because they are in the same orbit as their planetary counterparts, they have the same span as their planetary cousins.  So, the range required to get from the Earth to the moon, ends up being 8 X 0 which is, of course 0.  No range is required to get from a planet to its moon.

Transferring Power

Even the Banaba with a reserve power of 8 will have a difficult time getting from even the closest of planets. That is why all ships have ability to Transfer Power. You may transfer power from one or two attributes to any other attribute once per turn per ship. This will allow the Banaba to traverse a maximum distance of 24, or fire a maximum of 24 weapons, or reinforce its power to 24. Once power has been transferred it does not return to normal until the end of your turn.

Battles

Battles may be initiated at any time and may include ship or crew battles. 

Ship Battles

To initiate a ship battle, simply announce the attack and which ships are involved (you may not execute any other commands until the battle is over including transferring power).  You may use as many ships as you wish if you are initiating the battle, but you may only fire at one ship.  Add up your weapons from all ships involved, taking into account bonuses from power transfers and upgrades.  Your opponent does the same with his power attribute.  If your weapons are greater than your opponents, subtract the difference between your weapons and your opponent’s power to get the amount of damage you may inflict on your opponent’s ship.  Subtract the damage from your opponent’s ship attribute total.  This is best marked using beads, however dice or a score pad will work as well. All ships and crew involved in the battle are now stopped. Your opponent may return fire by initiating a battle on his turn.

Crew Battles

Unlike other games, your crew does not have attributes.  Each crew may contain up to 3 personnel as pictured on the card.  When a crew battle is initiated, both players shuffle together each of their crews involved and places them facedown in a pile in front of them.   Each player turns over the top card of their pile and calculates strength by comparing 1.) the number of personnel in each of the crews then, if there is a tie 2.) Staffing ability on each.   The crew that has the higher strength wins and is not stopped.   If the difference in strength is 2 or more, the losing crew is discarded, otherwise they are stopped.  In the case of a tie, both crews are stopped.  

After the battle, your unstopped crews may continue. Each players' discarded crews may be saved by the appropriate cards, then the rest placed in your discard pile.  All others are stopped.

Executing Commands

You may execute game text on any card only during your own turn.  Executing commands also includes transferring power, using special abilities on ships or crew, initiating battle, moving a ship, moving crews, reporting crew to station, etc.  You many execute only one command at a time.  (ex. you cannot initiate battle and move ships at the same time.

Completing Objectives

To begin an objective, you must have first played the objective on the table face down.  You may select an objective from those played on the table and activate it by turning the objective over and playing it where it instructs you.  You may only attempt one objective at a time.  Once you have selected a ship and crew to attempt the objective, your opponent may draw interventions equal to the number of personnel attempting the objective.  Your opponent selects the interventions they wish to use in this attempt and places them in a pile facedown in front of you.  Flip the top card over, and do as it instructs.  Some interventions will tell you what to do with them after it is done (ex. “Returns to its owners pile.”  The intervention get placed beneath the intervention pile face-up.)  Others are overcome – placed beneath the objective.  Those that are overcome are subtracted from what your opponent can draw and play next attempt.  Once you have met the requirements of the objective, score points and move the objective to your points area.  All interventions return to the bottom of your opponent’s intervention pile, face up.   When you have reached the end of your interventions, you may take the intervention pile and shuffle them back into the pile.  If you stop or discard all of your opponent’s crews and you still have interventions, those interventions are placed face-up beneath your intervention pile.

Completing Combat-Oriented Objectives.
Certain objectives require you to Initiate battles to score points. You may attempt the objective only when you are capable of initiating the type of battle specified in the Objective. You then encounter Interventions equal to the number of all of the crews on all of your ships involved in the attempt that will battle when the Objective is complete. If a random selection or a discard is to be made, your opponent chooses the ship that the selection will be made from. Once the interventions have been encountered and the objective requirements have been met, only then may you attack the target specified. If you are unable to complete the objective, your ships and crews involved are stopped until the end of your turn. Ships that are not a part of the attempt are not stopped and may execute commands.

Table Layout