Season 2 of Star Strike Development finally begins to drop today, with the release of Admirals: Star Strike 2nd Edition! This new edition fixes a number of issues found during the life of First Edition, and is compatible with all First Edition cards and tokens. Without further ado, lets answer some quick questions about the game and its new edition:
What is Admirals: Star Strike?
Admirals: Star Strike (or A:ST for short) is a Tactical Space Combat game where you take on the role of an Admiral in a hyper-futuristic mega-galaxy. Players assign Orders to their ships to improve their abilities, designate long-range Strikes against distant targets, and get into the thick of deadly close-range boarding Skirmishes to control territory and devastate enemy vessels.
Designed from the ground-up to be played with either professionally printed materials or personalized home-printed sets, A:ST delivers a compact tactical wargaming experience to your local game store or your dining room table.
What is the Star Strike setting?
In a far, far distant future, a group of immortal beings known as the “Followers of Zeus” used an artifact called the Olympus Key to reforge the universe into a singular, massive galaxy. Called Grandis by its inhabitants, the majority of life in this galaxy was wiped out during the moment of its creation.
Now, as the survivors of Grandis come to understand the truth behind the existence of their galaxy, the Selourian Warlords are waging a campaign of extermination, searching for an artifact to destroy all life in the universe with a single psionic impulse. Myla Jerrik and the crew of the ASV Ranger believe this artifact to be the Olympus Key itself, now holding the psionic essence of an immortal gone mad.
Will Season 3 bring Third Edition? Why Second Edition now?
Heavens, I hope not! The decision to jump to a Second Edition was the result of two major influences.
First, a number of interactions in First Edition didn’t have the intended effect, and caused many edge case problems where players lacked an answer to “What could I have done differently?”. Some of these problems had already been addressed in beta rules or rules introduced in the 1.2 Merridia version of First Edition. These tests allowed us to better understand some of the interactions inherent to our system, and a complete overhaul of the rules allowed us to better tune certain rules for fun, flavor, and decision value.
The second influence was the structure of the First Edition rules themselves. Designed to walk a player through each step of play rather than lay out a rules system, the First Edition ruleset provided the framework of the game in a friendly matter, but there was no easy way to delineate where or when various interactions may occur (and some terms were not properly defined as a result). Second Edition solves this problem, as it is based around the Rules Reference, a Quality System-Inspired rules document designed to be far more definitive than any “Intro to play” could ever be.
As for Season 3, Second Edition will be sticking around for a while. The next season is largely just framework at the moment, but players can expect the long-anticipated new major Factions to start making their appearances…
This all sounds cool, where can I get it?
The Rules Reference (as well as updated Power Points, or PP, values for Constructed Play) can be found on the updated landing page for the game:
You can also find print and play files of 4 each of 20 different Starships (5 each for 4 Factions) in the new Season 2 formats, plus all Season 1 digital print files, on our Patreon! Subscribing gives you access to every Digital Release from Cage Free Games, and Patron exclusive content such as Tom’s real-time Dev Log on Discord, Star Strike Wallpapers, upcoming Patron-exclusive videos and previews, and more!
So what’s next? Season 2 is just getting started, with a number of updated and upgraded cards, accessories, and new starships coming soon, as well as the Season 1 Story Collection (the first half of which will release on The Game Crafter as an easy and high quality Intro Set). The Grandis story also continues, with more Officer Logs and new Video Logs coming soon.
From both of us at Cage Free Games, and from our playtesting group, we wish you happy gaming and a good weekend!