Velocity: Vanguard is live
Velocity: Vanguard is a 1-4 player sci-fi physics-based game which can be played cooperatively, competitively, or solo. As commander of a spaceship, your goal is to complete your mission as you navigate through the solar system. It is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 29 days. You may pledge for the core game, or also get the expansions, and, at the Deluxe tier, a large playmat.
To play the game, you first consult the mission guide which includes co-op, solo and competitive scenarios, and pick the one that suits you. The mission will give you specific setup instructions. You select your faction, the matching board, ship and tokens, and choose a module and crew for your ship. You also set up the faction of the automaton opponent.
Each round consists of four phases: Ship Activation, Sector Board Activation, End of Round, and Round Refresh. In the Ship Activation phase, you activate one of your ships by placing crew tokens in the associated slots. To navigate, you have to spend energy from a capacitor to apply thrust and move the ship's vector token. You then move the ship on the board according to your vector and velocity. After navigation, you may decide to perform a crew action by placing a crew token in a slot and spending the required energy. The crew can do repairs, recharge the shields, and activate modules.
In the Sector Board Activation phase, the automaton is activated according to the rules on its card. If you have placed any deployed objects or dynamic objects on the board, you get to activate them at this time. At the End of the Round, you check whether you have fulfilled the current mission objective, and if not, your Refresh the ship's capacitors, recover crew tokens, and prepare for the next round.
During ship movement, you may collide with an asteroid or other objects and take damage, so you need to navigate carefully (ships don't collide with each other though). When your ship is damaged, you first remove cubes from the ship's shields for each point of damage taken and then roll as many dice as the removed cubes, and apply the result.
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