Red Alert
Official Rules!
Keywords
Scenarios
Scenarios in Star
Trek: Red Alert! expand the game’s possibilities, giving you new
objectives and types of battles. What follows is a brief guide to
scenarios and scenario construction. First, we’ll examine the basic
features of a scenario. We’ll use Balance of Terror, the scenario from
the examples above.
Were Balance of Terror a
scenario disk in Star Trek: Red
Alert! it’s stats would read:
Name:
“Balance Of Terror”
Mission Type: Seek & Destroy
Teams: 2
Players: 2
Factions: Romulan vs. Federation
Point Value: 30
Mission: One Romulan ship, one Federation ship, one line drawn in the sky. Someone has crossed a sensitive border. Each side believes the other has committed the infraction. Surely an act of war!
Setup: Teams start on opposite ends of the table, each fleet within Range: 1 of the end of the table.
Restrictions: None.
Victory: The first player to destroy the enemy fleet wins.
Names in quotes
refer to episodes of Star Trek.
All the episode-based scenarios in the Premier Edition of Red
Alert! are from Star Trek: The
Next Generation.
Mission Type is
purely flavor text.
Number of Players
refers to the total number of players in the game. If this reads: “6”
and there are two teams, then you probably want three players on each
team. For this reason, always cross-reference the number of players with
Teams. It’s not required that teams have an equal number of players, but
it’s generally best if they’re even.
Point Value
indicates how much each team—not each player—has to spend on ships,
crew, and tech. A 100-point scenario therefore grants each team 100 points
to spend on its fleet. Players are not required to divide the points
evenly, although they should agree. If, in a 100 point scenario with 2
players per team, one player’s fleet cost 58 points, those 8 extra
points must be given to him by his teammate, who would then have only 42
points to spend.
If your team can’t
agree on spending points, designate a team captain to oversee fleet
building.
Factions describes
which factions we recommend you use. Some scenarios are entirely generic,
for use with any factions. These read “Factions: Any.” The rest are
described from one faction’s point of view. You’ll see a symbol for
that faction in the background of the scenario disk. There’s a Klingon
scenario, for instance, which sees the Klingons attempting to free some
prisoners being held by the Federation. Since it’s a Klingon mission,
the point of view is Klingon and the language is slightly different than a
Federation version would be.
Mission is a brief
overview of the scenario from a story-based point of view. You won’t
find any rules or game mechanics here. If you want to quickly understand
what a scenario’s about without referencing all its stats, read this
first.
Setup tells you
where all the ships, terrain, and additional disks are placed at the
beginning of the game. There’s some standard language here. “Teams
start on opposite ends of the table, each fleet within range: 1 of its
end” is used often. By that we mean that the teams start at the ends
furthest apart from one another, not along the wide sides of the table.
Restrictions make
the scenario more interesting by reflecting the stated goals of the
factions. Many scenarios have no restrictions.
Victory describes
the conditions necessary to win! Again, there’s some standard language
here. “Points for ships” means that players get points for every ship
they destroy, equal to the cost of the ship. Whoever has the most points
when one side is out of ships, or the other victory conditions have been
fulfilled, wins. This is similar to another common victory condition:
“destroy the opposing fleet.” Under this condition, the opposing team
loses when its last ship is destroyed. Points are not kept track of. In
all cases, the game isn’t over until the end of the turn during which
victory conditions are met.
Other victory conditions
require your team to achieve a certain goal. In some scenarios, you’ll
win as soon as the goal is achieved, in others you’ll get points for
achieving the goal. In these latter scenarios, it’s usually possible for
your opponent to win through other means, or by destroying your fleet.
Designing Your Own Scenarios
Scenarios have few
elements, are easy to design, and fun to playtest!
We calculated that the average ship with average crew and tech
onboard is worth a little less than 50 points, so we gauged the total
point values of the scenarios by deciding how many players should be on a
team, and multiplying that number by 50. We then raised or lowered the
value based on how nasty we thought the scenario should be. Some scenarios
are best played with one ship per player, with light crew and tech.
Others, such as the Borg scenario, are designed for several ships per
player, with lots of expensive crew and tech.
We encourage you to
develop your own scenarios and send them to us. Make sure you play it a
few times, iron out the bugs, then send it in! If we like it, we’ll put
it on our website and credit you with the design. Visit
www.lastunicorngames.com for complete guidelines.
Keywords
The following are some of
the keywords used in the game. There are many other keywords in the game;
they describe the disks’ general function and sometimes make them the
target of other disks’ special abilities.
Armada: Disks with this
keyword affect all ships on the same team, including ships controlled by
other players.
Boarding: Effects
preceded by this keyword occur only during Step 4: Boarding.
Bridge Crew: Crew with
this keyword are vulnerable to Bridge Crits. When a ship suffers a Bridge
Crit, all revealed Bridge Crew are eliminated.
Constant: Special
abilities with this keyword give the controlling player the option to
continue generating the effect the next turn by keeping the disk with
Constant flipped during the Step 5: Ready.
Crit: May occur when
inflicting a critical hit.
Rozhenko‘s special
ability reads: “Crit: Change crit to bridge crit if target doesn’t
have one.” This allows the player to change any critical he’s
inflicting to a bridge crit (if the opposing ship doesn’t already have a
bridge crit).
Damage, Hull, and Shields
all have their own icons used in special ability text.
Fleet: Disk with this
keyword affect all ships controlled by the same player.
Intel: Disks with this
keyword generally affect other players’ crew and orders. Obsidian Order,
Tal Shiar, and Tal Diann are all considered Intel.
Order: Five different icons represent each of the different orders in the game. When an order icon appears in the ability text of a disk, it means “when executing this order.”
Cardassian Flight Control
Officer Jasad’s special ability reads; “: Execute order at any point
during movement.” This allows the player controlling Jasad to change his
ship’s direction at any point during movement, but only once and only
when executing a Change Heading order.
Personal: Tech disks with
this keyword affect crew during boarding. These effects are granted to all
crew from from the personal tech disk’s ship, even when those crew are
aboard another vessel.
Sacrifice: Disks with
this keyword must be removed from the game to produce their effects.
Security: Security crew
specialize in ship defense and cannot beam off your ship.
Start: Certain disks give
bonuses before the game actually begins.
Lt. Cdr. Worf’s special
ability reads: “Start: Add 7 points of Away Team crew.” These points
can only be used to purchase disks with the Away Team keyword. The player
need not spend all these points.
The Romulan upgrade Reinforced Hull increases the maximum hull of the ship. This bonus occurs at the beginning of play and remains even if the upgrade is later destroyed.
Unique: Only one of each
unique disk can be in a game. Teammates must decide among themselves how
to allocate the various Unique disks among their individual fleets. All
ships are Unique.
Vs: Some disks grant a bonus when opposing fleets with certain qualities. In these cases, you gain that ability text if any ships in the opposing fleet, or the threat in the scenario, meet the required condition.
Red Alert is property of Last Unicorn Games/Wizards of the Coast