The Basics of Rocketmen
Part 1: Ships and Resources

by Kevin Goddard

This August, WizKids releases its latest constructible strategy game (CSG): Rocketmen! Similar to the Pirates CSG, a Rocketmen Game Pack contains everything one player needs to get started. Over the next few Thursdays, we are going to take a look at the basic game play of Rocketmen. One important naming-convention to note: Rocketmen sets are called seasons.

Let’s start with the most important aspect of Rocketmen: the ships! To play, you will need at least one ship, and you will probably want to field more. Each Rocketmen Game Pack contains two ships, one of which may be a squadron of Fighters. A ship is composed of three cards, two made from styrene plastic and one made from cardboard (similar to a CCG card). The two styrene cards are used to build the ship. One card contains the ship pieces, and the other the base pieces (the base card is printed with instructions on how to build the ship). The cardboard card is the ship data card, which is printed with all of the game play information for the ship or squadron.

• Name: This ship is called the Phoenix.
• Collector’s Number: There are 72 ships in the Axis of Evil season, and the Phoenix is #010.
• Set Symbol: This symbol indicates which season the game component comes from.
• Faction Affiliation: This is the faction that this ship is a part of. If you want to assign crew to a ship, the crew and ship must share the same faction affiliation.
• Atomic Engine Power Points (AP) Value: The AP value of a ship is the most important aspect of the game, as these points are used to power almost everything the ship does, including moving, attacking, and mining resources.
• Movement Increment: This is how far the ship can move when it spends 1 AP. There are three increments in Rocketmen: short (S), medium (M), and long (L).
• Weapon Rating: When attacking, a ship’s player must roll two six-sided dice (d6). If the result is greater than or equal to the attacking ship’s weapon rating, the attack succeeds! The weapon rating, like other values, can be modified by Shield pods, special abilities, etc. The lower the weapon rating, the better!
• Weapon Increment: This is the distance from which the ship can attack a target, measured just like movement.
• Cargo Space: Indicates how many resources a ship can carry.
• Inherent Special Ability: There are four types of ships introduced in Axis of Evil: Fighters, Rocketships, Cruisers, and Space Stations. Each of these has an “inherent” special ability that each ship of that type has. Cruisers like the Phoenix have Armored Hull, which means that they increase an attacking ship’s weapon rating by 1.
• Special Ability: Most ships have special abilities that allow them to have special effects on the game. The Phoenix has the ability to repair a pod when it destroys another ship.
• Point Cost: In a standard Rocketmen game, players each bring 30 points’ worth of ships and crew. The Phoenix, with its good attack rating, M increment lasers, and L movement, comes in at 9 points, which is a bargain!
• Resource Requirements: There are three resource types: Titanium, Newtonium, and Carbon-7. If the appropriate number of resources are gathered, this ship can be brought into play from the player’s reserve fleet.

Resources are one of the elements that make Rocketmen so fun. Each Rocketmen Pack comes with a resource card containing both resources and pods. During setup, each player contributes three of each type of resource. These resources are scattered over the play area: Some float out in space as microids and some are placed on the rogue asteroid in the center of the play area. One asteroid is provided in each Game Pack, but real items, such as similarly sized rocks, also make great asteroids!

Players gather resources and return them to their home bases. If a player collects the required amount of resources, he or she can then build ships from his or her reserve fleet, bringing them fresh to the battle!

Pods also play an integral part of Rocketmen. Axis of Evil introduces two types of pods: Arc Lasers and Shields. Arc Lasers are obviously weapons, and without them, a ship cannot attack. Each Shield pod a ship has increases the weapon rating of an attacker by 1, making the ship harder to hit.

So how many Shield and Arc Laser pods does the Phoenix have? That information is not included on its data card, because you get to decide! Notice those little “posts” on the fins of the ship card above? Each one of those is equipped with one pod of your choosing. Cruisers like the Phoenix have four. So you can choose to equip 4 Arc Lasers or 4 Shields. You could also choose to equip it with 2 Lasers and 2 Shields, or 3 of one and 1 of the other! The customization of the ship occurs before the game starts, but you get to decide.

Now you know all the basics about Rocketmen ships! Come back next Thursday, when we will go over the other important game piece: crew!

sounds interesting, I cant wait to play.

I like the Pod Customization part.

I can see that new kinds of Pods will be released in the future, breathing new life into old ships! I wonder if characters will work similarly with objects?

Can't wait for this thing to launch, looks quite a bit better than Pirates

I don't think there's going to be new types of pod, really. But the LE ship info cards will let you get more out of existing ships.

---Dave

Why do you say that, back it up, i am interested in how it is different than Pirates at all.

This game looks really cool! I can't wait! I wonder if they will introduce new races of aliens with the expansions.