Star Trek “Into The Unknown” raised it’s head yesterday.
I was searching for X-Wing ships, the Trident Huge ship specifically, when a video featuring a massive Enterprise-D appeared. Intrigued, but assuming I was looking at someone’s “true scaling” rework of Attack Wing, it took me a moment to realise I was looking at something very new.
Trek and I go way back.
Below I will look briefly at my Trek forays and rate them from 1-5 for battle game depth vs story game immersion.
I have Federation Commander (5/2) and the many spin-offs from that like Starrmada or ACTA. These give me various levels of crunch and lots of it. If I feel like running one ship with all it’s micro management, this was the game so far (unless you want to go full Star Fleet Battles bonkers, which it modernised). Although big on crunch, it is clearly a wargame with scenario power.
Attack Wing (4/2) the X-Wing spin-off that many feel is better except for the lousy ships. It feels like Trek, if a little light weight, but is more story driven than X-Wing and even Armada (which I would rate as 0-1-ish). Unlike X-Wing, STAW started out with scenarios to play, but it is still a combat game for a tournament circuit. Oddly, I shed a lot of this and still feel I have skin in the game, because unlike X-Wing, a little really does go a long way.
GF9’s Away Missions (2/4) which is the main game that gives me the “Trek as problem solving like an actual episode” dynamic. This is the game that looks like a skirmish game, but is not, which disappoints some, thrills others. The big issue of course is no ships.
Star Trek Frontiers (1/4) based on the Mage Knight system. This one, like Away Missions does not concentrate on combat for it’s own sake, only as one of several options and is mostly an exploration game. I have not played it much, but it is capable of capturing that Trek episodic problem solving and exploration feel and heroes all those Trek elements. What has put me off is a combination of game weight without the promise of fully realised immersion.
There are so, so many others, like Panic or Catan which I have played, but only cosmetically stray from their parent game’s roots. Others like Star Fleet Captains or Ascendency have less appeal for a variety of reasons (cost, minimum player count, game weight to play options or reviews).
So, I have crunchy, light, immersive story telling to skirmish wargame, but is there a game that successfully combines all of these other than an RPG?
Into the Unknown (maybe a 4/4, or even better) on the other hand does a few things that exceed those above and maybe even my own expectations.
The ship models are huge, beautiful and to scale. I got around my annoyance at STAW scaling by splitting the games into their series, with TNG as a battle game, DS9 and Delta Quadrant as a skirmish scale and most others align reasonably, but some combinations are hard to swallow.
It has a TNG theme, so no “Forever War” pseudo licence weirdness. Characters we know, but deeper than STAW with ships unlike AM.
It is a capable combat game, but it is also a properly themed scenario game (even campaign) driven, episodic, story game. You may never fight, you may go boots in, but it has options. This is Trek for Trekkies.
The negatives are obvious really.
Those ships are biiiig! The Defiant and Attack ships look like better versions of the Attack Wing versions (maybe a little bigger), so the to-scale big ships are genuinely massive. Nobody has managed this before, not X-Wing (Huge ships were about ½ scale size), Armada with its vari-scale and fighters that were “representative” and of course Attack Wing, the worst offender.
It is deep, involved and complicated, has a two page spread of just the icons needed to play and may trade immersion for enjoyment to some extent. My main concern is, I might get deeply into it, but can I expect another to do the same?
Sometimes four Action icons on a X-Wing ship card is too much for casual players.
This is something I have seen before with board games that creep into the realm of roleplaying games. The total freedom of a TTRPG allows for much to taken as we narrate it. A board game on the other hand has to simulate every aspect of that life or it is simply out of the scope of the game.
On the other hand, can a dedicated Trekkie and war gamer afford to miss it?
Will it be “the one” or another expensive wadste of book shelf space?
Only time will tell.