Leaguefall

 

For eight centuries the Terran League was the glue that held Human civilisation together with over 25,000 settled systems united under one banner. The League brought unprecidented prosperity and technological advancement, but all good things come to end. A minor political dispute quickly escalated into open warfare leading to the first ever interstellar war in Human history. For 35 years warships traded blows in the void until the League itself began to fragment. 
Now, in 3598 there has been an armistice for 19 years, with the conflict now taking on a new character, no longer do the belligerants throw fleets at each other, instead they compete over the remnants of the League vying for supremacy. The Terran League is but a shadow of its former self but is still the most powerful of the Human powers, will it rise again?

Disclaimer - I have used AI Image generation to generate some pictures as I am not artistically that way inclined. Its a lot harder than you might think, which is why there is a lot of slop out there. Likewise, I have used AI to help format some documents and tighten up wording. 

What is Leaguefall?

Leaguefall is designed to be a tabletop miniatures wargame with each side controlling around 15-20 miniatures a side.
It used phased alternating activations rather than being an igougo or traditional alternating activation game. It is a d6 based system and will eventually have 5 core factions with my progress so far only covering 2 of them, The United Earth Federation and the Terran League.
I have left out a lot of things that create unneccassary book keeping, such as critical damage effects. 

Why have I done this?

I really enjoy tabletop wargames, my favourite genre is Science Fiction, and while my favourite game is currently Infinity (and always will be) mainly on account of the rules and how they play, I really, really like Space Battles. 

Imani May, current President of the Terran League

I've played quite a lot of games over the years and while I like a lot of them, I've always disliked certain things about them and I've always had the feeling that 'I could do better'. I have previously created a lot of fan ships for Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, and redesigned a couple of factions from the ground up.

So I thought, while I was redesigning the Drazi, and the pak'ma'ra I would have a crack at some of the rules in ACTA 2E rulebook. and it was then that I thought I would just write my own set of rules... and then build my own Babylon 5 fleets, after all, how hard could it be?

How hard could it be?

Writing rules is easy, lets get that out of the way. If you have a game you love and you want to add something to it, you can go right ahead, the structure is already there, and assuming you are familiar with the game you will have a good idea how it will interact with everything else. 
Writing a ruleset from the ground up is something else entirely, you run into the RAW vs RAI problem that gets a lot of people tied into knots. In the case of Leaguefall, I know exactly what i'm intending, its therefore a matter of getting what is written to correspond to what I mean. that is the hard part. harder still is to have mechanics that are both mechanically sound, but at the same time, not unfun.
Now I didn't start from a blank page, I have played lots of games as I have said, and I simply took concepts in some games that I liked, and ommitted things I don't like. I like the phased alternating activations of  A Call to Arms, I like the way orders are dealt with in Dropfleet Commander. I appreciate the simplicity of the Small craft rules in Battlefleet Gothic, while at the same time I've grown to dislike pretty much everything else. 
I also made a concious decision to not base the stats for ships around any already existing franchises. These serves several purposes.

FNS Valiant, Lead ship of the UEF Valiant Class

Firstly from a purely commercial point of view you aren't violating any IP, and second and the reason I did it, you don't have to design ships to meet anyones preconceptions of how powerful a certain ship is, or what it is or isn't armed with and so forth. That gives an immense amount of design space.

Its taken me 3 months of on and off again effort to get things to where they are now. I'm on my 15th draft of the rules and while there are still a number of things I might (probably will) want to change in the future. 

Where Can I get it?

I've put the draft playtest rules and a selection of ships for the CDF and UEF up on my patreon page for free. I don't have miniatures yet, that is something i'm planning on getting commissioned in the future, and I'm not a 3d artist so I will use AI Image generation for them for the time being. 
These are draft rules, so please bear that in mind. There are still plenty of things that need to be tidied up.

What's Next?

Over the next few weeks I will tell you all about the game, how it is played, the history of the Leaguefall universe, important persons, and how things like FTL work, as well as the sheer scale of humanity in this future.
There are also plenty of ships to add, rules to playtest and potentiaqlly change. I have to make decsions about whether abilities should be out of phase or tied to unit activations. Everything works mechanically, the test is whether it is fun, 

If you would like to try the rules and then tell me what you think, you can find them on my Patreon page, or you can buy me a nice cup of Coffee.

Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.

Credits

CDF Mars class is based on the Capitoline-class battleship from Space Engineers by Taidyr
UEF Valiant is inspired by the Beowulf class free trader from the Traveller RPG