These rules are OK, but hardly in the same league as Full Thrust or Starmada AE - some criticisms being ...

1. Full Thrust is simpler, requiring less fiddling - EG: You won't see an FT player having to reduce shield stremgths before armour and damage.
2. Both Full Thrust & Starmada AE are easier to access - and way more flexible. In FT your beam batteries are whatever you want them to be (whether it's lasers, particle beams or fancy meson/quark guns), in Starmada you can actually design your own weapon systems, but in CBF you get what they think your settings ships should be armed with (which all sound rather Star Warsy to me). For a generic system your surprisingly restricted to what options the designers have given you. It feels like a ruleset written for a specific setting with only a bit of extra thought given to playing non-setting specific games.
3. Both Full Thrust & Starmada are visually much more appealing - FT with its ship displays and Starmada with it's printed records - even Starmada's Drake notation is superior. CBF relies on densely formatted printed record cards with written text records for each shield facing, armour, hull points - in a way it's mor elike some of the old 1980's wet navy wargames I played many years ago.

However ... the game itself is quite good as a ruleset, and plays better than it looks - if some of the niggles with it were tidied away and the limitations reduced it'd be better. But for me I felt rather disappointed with it.

Well according to the product description this is supposed to be a cross Genre set of rules, any genre, any ships, any weapons, and it is going to expand to cover other playable genre's, well dont believe it, while it's initial offering is solid even good, the author has decided not to support his initial product by expanding the playable and most sought after genre's with more offerings, letting a bunch of his customers down in the process. The Man vs Machine Expansion is good, but the Stars Reach expansion is just lacking. Also dont ever criticize the author he wont listen to any constructive criticism, dissent or anyone else's opinions.

This rulebook is well written. It's clear, concise, and easy to learn. Gameplay is fun and fast. The starship construction rules are great- detailed yet simple to learn and use. This is my new favorite starship rules set, I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an easy to learn, fun to play set of starship combat rules.

Really enjoying this game. I've recently looked into multiple rule systems like Full Thrust, Firestorm Armada and Starmada, and this one is definitely my favorite. The ship construction is extremely fun and easy with the ship construction spreadsheet, and the gameplay is fast and tactical.

Outstanding Space Combat system for an incredibly reasonable price.

Very versatile, very streamlined, very fun.

The ship designer makes creating your custom fleet easy and straight-forward.

Can be used for any canon imaginable. The fairly modular system makes tweaking rules or designs very effective while minimizing impact on the rest of the game.

A great buy for anyone considering Space combat systems.

Our group discovered these rules a few weeks ago and have played about a dozen games between us so far. Overall, we really like the rules. It has an amazing ship construction design (wiht an Excel worksheet that you can use to help design the ships), a vairety of weapons and defenses as well a unique Technology Level feature that allows you to create ships/fleets with whatever feel you want.

This product is WELL worth the $15.

For a full review, check out my post on SCN: http://www.star-ranger.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6360

Jester

Good set of rules, alows lots of options and shields, armor, different levels of tech. Type of game that could be used for different settings. includes easy to use excel program to design your own fleets.

Colonial Battlefleet uses some of the same basic rules from Naval Thunder, but improves on them and adds twists to make them prefect for space gaming. The rules are simply to learn yet complex to play as you have to make decisions about when to move, shoot, launch fighters and missiles. The game has tech levels which allow you to customize the game to any background or period and a build program that has tough decisions as to speed, weapons and extra equipment. All of this, and you don’t have to write orders!

While it might dissapoint some that this isn't a BSG specific game, it's not supprising given that now that it's a for-sale thing that would require expensive liscensing. However, it should be noted that there is a very flexible tech-level system which can be used to create your own factions, and they can easily be adapted to create BSG.. .especially since the base rules came from a home-made system designed around BSG. Just make a faction with no shields, high conventional weapons and high fighters... there ya go :)

As for a basic review: there is a lot of freshness here compared to other popular starship mini combat games. Ships are assigned roles which provide bonuses, so not all abilities are determined by the equipment you install at construction. Weapons are balanced as anti-shield or anti-armor, so it actually does make sense to have some diversification in the weapons you equip. It uses an initiative system with a twist that prevents the conga-line of spaceship you get from you-go-I-go init systems like you find in games like Silent Death. It has the most practical rules for cloaked/stealth ships I've ever seen, although they might be too abstract for some people. So far I've found the construction rules to be fairly unbreakable. Armor is pretty well modeled, where you have to penetrate it to get full effect, rather than armor just adding some hit points to the ship ala Full Thrust. Fighters are pretty well balanced, in my opinion, although they get a lot more powerful in a game with no shield tech, like the BSG setup I suggested above. I have found that battles rely a great deal on how you position your ships and focus your fire, and how well you build your ships. There's little chance to win if you just hope for good roles.

There are some cons though: it's not a highly complex game... Attack Vector this is not. Firing arcs are very broad, so different ships with the same role often feel kind of similar to me. Critical hits are somewhat devalued in my opinion, because they are fairly easy to repair. And balance and non-breakable construction systems come by way of artificial limits on certain aspects, such as area point defense for escort type ships is determined by the role, so all escorts are the same.. you can't sacrifice extra offense in order to make your escorts better at lending point defense to your carriers. There is also a bit of ambiguity about certain things in the rules, although the designers are very active on their board so its easy to get questions answered.

All in all I am having a lot of fun with the game and would recommend this game to anyone who likes games like Full Thrust. It's cheap, its well ballanced, and it's not just the same mechanics as other games recycled through different fluff.

I found the first edition of these rules online a few months ago and was really excited. I love miniature games, painting minis, and Battlestar Galactica. My friends and I were looking forward to the release of the new edition because, while we like the old rules, we were excited about the greater depth the new rules said they had. And they do - in spades. It just has nothing to do with BSG or the older rules. It's a fine rules set, but it is no way an appropriate follow-up in the BSGesue vein of the first rules set. If you want a hex-based space combat game. This is a great choice. If you are expecting a logical continuation/expansion if the earlier Colonial Battlefleet, do not buy these.