This article originally appeared in Pyramid #17

FULL THRUST

Published by Ground Zero Games
Distributed by GeoHex in the U.S.A.
Designed by Jon M. Tuffley
Price: $17.00

I've always loved games of spaceship battles. The first one I ever played is still one of the best: GDW's Triplanetary. Since then I've tried a score of space ship combat games: some are good, some are poor, some are mediocre. The best ones are those that represent vector movement in a simple, playable manner — the main reason Triplanetary is still a great game.

Full Thrust, a set of miniatures rules for space ship combat, is one of the few games that surpasses Triplanetary. Nominated for the Origins award on the 1995 ballot, it lost out to Blood Bowl as best miniatures rules. But in my book, it wins hand down. This is by far the simplest and most-playable vector movement rules I've ever seen. Other games may have more intricate rules that return more realistic results, but Full Thrust combines extreme playability with very satisfactory vector movement. In my book, if a system is only 10% as complicated as another system but returns 90% of the realism, the simpler rules system is by far the better one.

The game runs very smoothly and intuitively. Each ship has a thrust rating, usually from 2 to 8. Each player plots his ship orders and they are revealed simultaneously. A written order is easy to write — a sample might look like:

	Ship	Vel	Order	Vel
	A	4	+2, S1	6
	B	6	P2	6
	C	12	-	12

Ship: the ship identifier, usually on the model base. Vel: current velocity at . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.

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Article publication date: January 1, 1996

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