Full Thrust Spaceship Wargaming

With Covid restrictions relaxing some here in Melbourne Australia, my local gaming group Axes & Ales (link) has been able to meet a few times in recent months. Last night we had over a dozen tables running with all manner of games being played, including Warhammer 40,000 (W40k), Infinity, some RGPs (D&D?), and Full Thrust.

A picture from the beginning of our first Full Thrust game for 2021.

What is Full Thrust?

#FullThrust is an enduring science fiction strategy wargame first published by England's Ground Zero Games back in the 1990s. It is usually played with miniature figurines representing imaginary starships, although unlike many games, the publishers encourage the use of any miniatures rather than only "official" ones. I know of a certain family who’s spent the morning building Lego starships only to fight them out that afternoon - lots of fun!

Three of the game's original books. I think I may have sold a fourth a decade ago?

The game has its own optional military science fiction/space opera universe, however allows players a high degree of creativity within the rule set. There are also many unofficial conversions to other sci-fi universes like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. I am a fan of the old Star Blazers cartoons (“Fire the Wave Motion Cannon!”) so when Full Thrust was first released, I quickly played many a battle involving the Space Battleship Yamato against evil alien hordes.

Here's one of my favourite ships: it's a 6-inch long Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers) plastic model from Bandai. I got a bit creative with it and ended up giving it a battering ram (?) in the form of an old GWS Epic! Titan's head. Apparently that GWS miniature is worth hundreds of dollars these days... so this might be worth a lot!

What makes Full Thrust a little different from many games is that all movement of ships is planned ahead of time, before the miniatures are physically moved. Players secretly write record their move orders and all orders are simultaneously revealed and implemented all at once. Each spaceship has a reference card much like those employed in Battletech, which is used to track the effect of the inevitable damage suffered during the course of an engagement. Like many games, once the players are familiar with the rules, it plays quite fast and make for an exciting, engaging affair.

I don't know why they made the ship travel right-to-left - it would have been that little bit easier to understand if it went left-to-right!

The diagram above illustrates 4 turns of movement. “MU” refers to Movement Unit, typically inches, “V” stands for Velocity (how many inches the spaceship will travel during the Turn), and “C” for the ship’s Course or orientation. It certainly isn’t a strict interpretation of physics, but after a few beers it rarely seems to matter all that much.

Each spaceship has a reference card much like those employed in Battletech, describing ship systems and used to track the effect of the inevitable damage suffered during the course of an engagement.

These are the sort of things that each player will have that details their ships' weaponry, control systems, and armour - if something gets damaged, it's as simple as crossing off a box or icon.

What happened on the night?

The Players

In the end there were five of us and we played for about 2-hours - I had to arrive a little later than the rest of the crew, but everyone was in a great frame of mind to learn about the game, drink beer, and swap hobby stories and ideas.

The game itself was very simple: blow up the enemy! It is always a interesting to include victory conditions rather than just fight to the last ship - a simple objective like protecting or attacking a freighter convoy can make a very enjoyable game. I wanted to ensure that there wasn't too much to take in and get the game's essence to the crowd. As such, playing such scenario-based games are best reserved for another day.

People brought some of their own spaceship miniatures and were understandably keen to use them. I had prepared my old (some being 25+ years old!) miniatures ready to lend them to the crowd.

The Rules and Game Aids

We employed the Full Thrust Lite (available here) rules: a stripped-to-the-basics version that introduces the game’s core mechanics especially for new players. They print up in as little as 2-pages (text only) but I found the 12-page colour version that includes some diagrams really hit the spot.

Each Player was provided with a A4 reference sheet detailing their fleet and used to log their fleet’s movement orders. If I was to run a similar session again, I'd find the time to pre-prepare the reference sheets so we could get to business without delay.

Also, because of the inclusion of the suns and asteroids, we also used Full Thrust's Asteroid rules (pg 25 of the rulebook). We were not disappointed with more than one spaceship succumbing to their Captains bravado and careering into a piece of space rock.

The Miniatures and Table

While Full Thrust can be played with huge fleets, limiting the game to a handful of individual spaceships per player usually provides more than enough opportunity to have an exciting game. 

The Club has some great terrain cloths (things you drape over the table to make it more attractive) and we were able to use an awesome 'space scape' that was full of stars, nebula etc. That coupled with some asteroids and suns I made earlier that day meant the board/table was even better than I had anticipated. A Full Thrust board is typically a large but sparely populated - we’re talking deep space after all! Sure there might be some asteroids and zones of cosmic radiation, but largely the conflict will take place in the cold, empty expanse of the void. In the past I've simply used a black sheet coupled with some rocks and gravel... easy done!

I've included some of the miniatures and scenery that I have in my collection below - we didn't use it all on the night, but chances are if you've read this far, you're here for the pics :-)

These blue ships are from Firestorm Armada (I think) - I've got about a dozen of the same style. I've also got a second fleet of saucer-shaped ships from the same collection that I gave one of my sons' for his birthday a few years back.

These are right relics. I made the 20+ years ago and gifted them to a son a while back. Once I found them, they need a fair bit of repair but just seeing them again put a huge smile on my face.

    

Here are some fleets moving into engage with each other. I was really happy with the asteroids and sun - simply styrofoam balls, blasted with my flame gun, painted and drybrushed.
I made all the stands for the ships and terrain using poker chips and bamboo skewers. They worked brilliantly and cost me only my time.

And what about the future?

One of the great things about Full Thrust is it’s very easy to setup and play - it only requires a fraction of the usual outlay of terrain and miniatures compared to most games. Also there’s lots of community support of the game - basically if you have thought that a spaceship battle game “should <insert something cool here>” there’s a good chance that someone has tried it before and shared their experiences for all.

The players enjoyed themselves and were definitely keen to play a game again and were all talking about employing some more variety in the fleets, some ‘alien technologies’ and even try a scenario or two. Like many wargames, Full Thrust can be played as a series of sequential gaming sessions as a ‘campaign’ which can be a lot of fun as well. I might even go as far as organising a competition. During the 1990's I played a competition at Cancon (a wargame convention in Canberra, Australia) and I still happen to have the associated rules. FYI I received the Full Thrust Nebula Award for excessive hubris, where a momentary lack of concentration had me order my flagship directly into a sun - got my Port and Starboard mixed up!!