AllenGould wrote: ↑Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:27 pm
Yeah, I'm still trying to internalize that rules-set.
When you boil it down, it's not that much. The big changes are these:
* Limited card pool (obvs.)
* One player is always
and the other is always
; no mirror matches
* Turns are "blended", so your play phase is followed my my play phase is followed by your orders phase is followed by my orders phase.
* Each player brings a 15-card side deck called the Operations Deck.
* Each turn, both players play the top card of the Ops Deck. They can nullify opponent's Ops card each turn, but at a cost.
* Various effects allow you to place development tokens on missions.
* If you get more dev tokens on a mission than your opponent (by a certain amount, which varies), you dominate it.
* You can only solve missions, use special downloads, and use last-listed skills at missions you dominate.
* You have battle restrictions and mission stealing restrictions at missions opponent dominates, and those restrictions depend on the Alert Code Status (which is basically just a tracker that tells you "how many battles are happening").
* Some personnel ("natives") are seeded uncontrolled on their home planets.
* In ship battle, the defender can always pair off into separate engagements (a battle enhancement designed to parallel the invention of combat pairings in First Contact).
* All players have a built-in The Final Frontier (two personnel report for free) and a built-in Five Year Mission (extra card draw).
* Game ends after 10 turns.
The rest of the rules are just filling things in around those "core" rules.
If you've played
Twilight Struggle,
Wolves is basically just
Star Trek: Twilight Struggle. The Alert Code Track is just the DEFCON track, Alert Code 1 is just DEFCON Suicide, development = influence, domination = control, Operations = a weird combination of Ops + Headline Phase, blended turns = action rounds, etc. etc. Didn't invent a new coup mechanic because Trek already has quite robust battle.
I think probably the part of
Wolves that most likely needs work is how the Ops Phase interacts with the Alert Code Track. That part of the rules is both too complicated and I think probably isn't even doing what I want it to do (give an early-game advantage to Klingons and a late-game advantage to Feds, to parallel
TS's early-game advantage for the Soviets).
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