Hey all,

After many years of being away from the game due to life circumstances, I've recently gotten back into the Star Trek Tactics game; I still have my Tactics II and III ships and materials that I used back then. The only catch is, I haven't played since the 2012 Core Rulebook and PAC were current. I live in an area where venues are non-existent (and from what I understand, the Star Trek clix aren't even Golden Age legal, so my only option would be finding dedicated Star Trek players, which seem very rare), so I only played with a few friends/family back in the day. Hence we were basically playing what was in the 2012 Core Rulebook, maybe stripped down a bit since I found some of that book's writing to be less than clear (and didn't know of this site). From what I've been reading, there have been a lot of changes since then. I would ideally like to move up to the current rules or as up-to-date as I can, but have a few questions!

First, the last Star Trek Tactics series (Tactics IV) came out in 2017, with the previous series (which I own) being released from 2010-2013. Well before the current rule changes, and the 2021 overhaul. Things such as the map size change to 2x2 present an issue in that none of the specific maps have been released since that change (the last was in 2017). Some of the power changes since 2012 (which is what was in my starter kit back in the day) and removal of things like effects of hindering terrain and pushing damage further confuse me when it comes to the way that these ships were able to be used previously.

Take this ship, Tactics III #009, Nistrim Raider. [/i]
Under the old rules, from my understanding, on clicks 3 and 5 you would have an Energy Explosion defined as "Give this character a ranged combat action to make an attack that deals no damage. For each target character successfully, hit, all adjacent characters are attacked as well. Each character hit is dealt damage equal to the number of times it was hit by this attack (characters adjacent to multiple targets might be hit more than once). Critical hits deal 1 additional damage to all characters hit," and then your damage power of Ranged Combat Expert, defined as "Give this character a power action. It makes a ranged combat attack against a single target character; modify its damage value by +2 for the attack." So you could do a ranged combat attack as your action via Energy Explosion, and then add 2 to the damage each character received.

Under the current 2023 PAC, that changes to Energy Explosion defined as "RANGE: Make a range attack and all other characters adjacent to an original target also become targets. Hit characters are dealt 2 damage instead of normal damage," and Ranged Combat Expert defined as "This character modifies attack and damage +1 while making a range attack or when given a RANGE Destroy action." My understanding is that this now makes the Energy Explosion damage of 2 a replacement value, and thus the Ranged Combat Expert damage increase of +1 has no effect because it applies to the normal damage value only. Yet this is the power combination on the Nistrim's dial twice, but one negates the effectiveness of the other. Now it's very possible I never had the correct understanding of how this combination worked to begin with years ago, of course, but to me this is one of those apparent changes that makes me question things.

------------------------


I've read through a ton of threads here about different changes that have been made over the years and such. I went to the Wizkids site and found a current version of the Comprehensive Rulebook and a Spider-Man Beyond Amazing Miniatures Game flyer labeled as the 2023 Core Rulebook, but that core rulebook seems to be rather specific to that Spider-Man game. I found a 2017 Quick Start guide that is closer in format to what the 2012 Core gameplay was like in terms of content (and much better written), but it doesn't look like there is a newer version of that document either. Then I read threads complaining about how the Core Rules are known to be inaccurate (this mainly appeared to be a complaint during 2018 and 2019). So I'm not quite sure what I'm doing now lol.

I now have a few guys at my college who are interested in playing, so I need to get a firm grasp on what rules set to be using, and the clearer/more straightforward, the better, since I don't think any of them are coming from any similar type of game background.

My main question, I guess, is what is the best option for a current-ish rules document other than the Comprehensive Rules (i.e. one that lays out the actual gameplay as well as specific rules) that would be appropriate for use with the Star Trek Tactics series, given that that series hasn't been updated since 2017? Ideally a current version of something like the 2017 Quick Start would be nice since that allowed for powers/abilities and such, while not bogging new players down with the full Comprehensive Rulebook yet (while being much better than the ancient "quick start" games that dumbed it down to a dice game).

Thanks all! Any advice is much appreciated!

If you're only playing with friends & family, no real need to update to new rules esp. not newer rules than the Tactics 4 set were designed under IMO.

I haven't tried them with Indom. all the way around. Could be interesting. Perplex not affecting damage could really hinder those guys or not. It's really hard to say. I figure do whatever you feel comfortable with.

Me & my brother played them a ton under old rules & it worked out fine as it should.

Tactics IV mix okay with the rest but they are generally clearly better esp. for their points which is just how this game goes. If you want true balance, it's almost better to just not get that set. Then you really can just play under the rules they were designed under. As soon as you get Tactics IV, you are mixing ships designed under different rules.

So of the same thing happened with Horrorclix. That last set was just a bit different but in that case it was more an REV to CUR rarity collector aspect than a time gap and power creep between sets. Don't think the rules changed either.

Thanks for the response! What would be the most "complete" rule set for 2017 then? Looking at the documents available at the Wizkids Rules page, I'm seeing a 2017 Quick Start Guide, 2014 Core Rulebook, and I see a mention of changes to a 2017 PAC, but no such PAC card seems to be available for download.

All mine get played with new rules at 50% of fielding cost vs modern figures.

EE isn't a replacement, it's Instead of Normal Damage. You would get the +1 to your attack value from RCE if you opt to use EE, but not the damage bonus, since you're not using normal damage.

In the past, there would have been no combo anyway, as EE would have been a Range Combat Action and RCE a Power Action. Now at least RCE is bumping your attack with EE.