Twenty years ago, Steve Jackson's Metagaming came out with the MicroGame called WarpWar, a two-player game of tactical space combat designed by Howard Thompson. The rights to the game were recently purchased by Excalibur Games, whom I hope come out with an expanded edition soon! Original 1977 copies, in mint condition, are available at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, VA, for $7.95 ($7.48 with tax after NOVAG member discount).

The game system is well written, simple (my 8 year old son learned and played 1 Learning, 2 Basic and 1 Advanced scenario in less than 8 hours in two days!), and short (13 pages with illustrations and examples of play). Two types of ships may be designed and purchased: Warpships and Systemships. Warpships may traverse the stars, Systemships cannot and must be carried between the stars by Warpships.

Movement is simple and strategic, not tactical like the "Full Thrust" (GZG) or StarFleet Battles (TFG) systems. Warpline movement, inspired by Joe Haldeman's "Forever War" collapsars, makes the distance between stars connected by a 'Warpline' 1 movement point, regardless of the number of space hexes between them. Warpships traversing space hexes without using star-to-star warpline movement pay 1 movement point per hex.

The combat system is diceless, relying on players writing orders and comparing tactical modes and relative weapon speeds on a table to determine results. Players need to design ships, write orders, and track battle-damage and Build Point (BP) expenditures. Record keeping is still less time-consuming and onerous than "Full Thrust". My son and I completed 21 game turns of the Advanced scenario and 20+ ship designs in 3 hours!

The game steps you through Learning, Basic and Advanced scenarios. At the end of the Advanced scenario rules is written: "Players who wish to develop more complicated rules to enhance their enjoyment of WarpWar are encouraged to experiment. WarpWar's modular design is easily expandable."

With two weeks of Christmas vacation, I finally got to do just that, to include some playtesting at the Game Parlor. I decided to (1) stick to diceless play, (2) keep algorithms simple and (3) generate Build Point Tracking and Ship's Orders sheets to ease record keeping. The rules suggested do not need to be combined to add to the flavor of the game, but using them all should not significantly slow the game down. I'll begin by describing the Build Point Tracking and Ship's Order sheets I'm using.

BUILD POINT TRACKING Sheet.

Seven columns. Leftmost column heading is 'Turn P, followed by 'Start BP', 'Salvage BY, 'R&D BF, 'Ships BP','BP Balance'and'Tech Level'. The salvage and R&D BP columns refer to added rules and are not needed for the game as is, since BP and tech level are easily tracked on scratch paper. When other rules are added, tracking needs to be clearer.

SHIP's ORDER Sheet.

Sixteen columns. Starting from the left, column headings are 'Location/Turn #', 'Combat Round #', 'Ship ID/Tech Lvl', 'Tactic (A,D,R)', 'Ship Drive', 'Beams', 'Screens', 'Tubes', 'Missile Drives' (6 columns) and 'Damage Rec'. Though I used shorthand (e.g., DlB4S3T2 mA=3, mA=4) forcing the data into columns makes reviewing the game easier and helps keep data accurate. Scrap paper for toying with ship designs is o.k, but once final, an ink copy of each design in play, on an index card, is handy and compact; useful for recording damage and missile loads in pencil so that original ship attributes are preserved for Repair purposes.

STAR EXPLOITATION (or, how to get more BPs):

Making each Star system worth a certain number of BPs was my first thought when reading the rules. This makes for a tangible economic motive for the conflict and allows success in battle to reap rewards. Starting with the 3 Base Stars for each side being worth 20 BP, then starsystems being progressively less valuable the ftirther from the Base Stars they were, I devised the following BP allocation (84 BP, map total):

Ur & Babylon: 8 BP @
Nineveh, Ugarit, Larsu, Mosul: 6 BP @
Erech, Sumer: 4 BP @
Isin, Eridu, Sippur, Susa: 3 BP @
Umma, Sumara, Mari, Kish, Adab, Nippur, Lagash, Assur: 2 BP @
Girsu, Ubaid, Jarmo, Akkad, Byblos, Khafa, Elam, Calah: 1 BP @

To get the BP, a player needs to have an effective, armed spaceship occupying the Starsystem at the beginning of his player-turn. Base Stars are always presumed friendly unless solely occupied by effective, armed enemy ships.

DICELESS TECH LEVEL (TL)

Increases (or, R&D BP): In the Advanced scenario, Tech Level is +1 every four turns (Turns 1 - 4, TL=O; 5 - 8, TL=1, etc.). No visible BP investment is required and both players increase at the same, predictable rate. The following table allows variable BP investments to pay-off at a predictable rate, with the fastest TL increases matching those postulated in the original game system:

INVESTMENT/Turn (R&D BP)	For # Turns	YIELDS	RETURN (# BP per TL)
0	Any	nothing	N/A
1	10	+1 TL	10
2	8	+1 TL	16
4	6	+1 TL	24
8	4	+1 TL	32

The new TL is applied to ship builds initiated the Game Turn following the last turn of investment. R&D investment is made in the'Build Ships' player event of a player's turn. R&D cannot be accelerated (e.g., spend 10 BP in one turn to get TL+1), but can be slowed if less is invested on subsequent turns... The last investment in R&D determines progress, such that an investment sequence of 8, 8, 4, 4, 4, 4 leads to TL+1, making the first two turns' effort an 8 BP loss. Expect a 30 turn game to involve as few as 2 TLs and as many as 6 with this rule.

SALVAGE:

In the game, repairs may be made to damaged ships at any of their home Base Stars. Repairs expend BP per the build cost of the repaired ship attribute, with original attribute value being the ceiling. When facing TL=5 ships with TL=0 ships, you'd rather like to use the BP invested in the TL=0 ship to produce TL=5 ships. Here is the salvage rule:

When at one of the original Base Stars, a ship of Original TL (OTL) may be salvaged and the resulting BP used to build ships at the Current TL (CTL). OTL may equal CTL in the case of damaged ships the player decides not to Repair. The return for undamaged, non-Warp Generator attributes' BP is calculated as 0.5 ^(CTL-OTL) *BP, rounded down. The following chart shows the effect of the calculation:

Undamaged BP (non-WG)	CTL	OTL	BP Multiplier	Salvage BP	WG BP
10	0	0	1.0	10	5
10	1	0	0.5	5	2
10	2	0	0.25	2	1
10	3	0	0.125	1	0
10	4	0	0.067	0	0

Warp Generators (WG) Salvage BP must be calculated separately (could use last column in above table), and their Salvage BP may only be used to construct other WGs.

SHIPBUILDING RATES:

It is uncommon for ships to exceed 40 BP value in the Advanced game, simply because you only get 10 BP/turn and have 3 Base Stars to defend and 3 to capture. Implementing the STAR EXPLOITATION rule will make larger ships more common. This rule is designed to differentiate build times for ships of widely varying BP values, per the table below:

SHIP BPs as Designed	# Turns in Shipyard	Example Initiate Build	Ship On Map
1-10	0	1	1
11-20	1	1	2
21-30	2	1	3
@ +5 or fraction	+1	1	3+(1 * #)

Example: A ship designed as 53 BP is started on Turn 1 (player's Ship Build event). The ship will be on map ready for play on that player's part of Turn 3+ (23/5, rounded up) = 5th turn.

SHIP CLASSES:

After a single ship of a class has been built, subsequent ships of the same design and same TL may be built more efficiently, coming on map 1 turn earlier than the first issue.

SHIP TL:

A player may always build ships at a TL lower than his current TL.

SIMULTANEOUS 'COUNT VICTORY POINTS' and 'BUILD SHIPS' EVENTS:

As written, the rules have each player in his part of the Game Turn count victory points and build and repair ships. Making those two events simultaneous in the Game Turn and leaving Movement and Combat sequential makes for a fairer and more realistic game.

MISSILE LOADER Design/Use:

Missile Loaders (MLs) are designed to haul missiles from Base Stars to load them onto ships whose missiles have been used in combat. The ML attribute can be added (or substituted for another) to any ship (System or Warp) at a cost of 2 BP per ML point. Missiles destined for transfer must be separate from those intended for use with launch Tubes (use Ms as an attribute to indicate Missile storage for the ML).

Each point of ML enables a ship to transfer missiles to 1 any other ships in the hex in 1 Game Turn for 1 movement point (both the loading ship and loaded ship expend 1 movement point to effect the transfer). Reloading cannot be done under combat conditions. Missiles loaded must be the same TL as the original missiles expended.

REPAIR SHIP Design/Use:

Rather than humping back to a Base Star to effect repairs, Repair Ships may be built to effect field repairs. The Repair Ship may be Warp or System type, but its Beam, Screen and Tube attributes should be put in parentheses, since they represent repair rather than combat capabilities. Custom counters with RS, RW identifiers may be used, too.

Adding ML and Ms attributes makes a well rounded ship. Repair ships may only repair those ships at their TL. Repairs cost 1 movement point per ship undergoing repair. Ship repairs cannot be effected in combat conditions. A ship may only be repaired up to its original attribute minus 1by a repair ship. PD systems cannot be repaired in the field. Repair ships expend their B, S and T attributes 1: 1 to repair damaged like-attributes.

Example: RW # 2, PD = 3, [B] = 4, [S] = 3, [T] = 2 repairs damaged Warpship # 3's Beam weapons, originally 6, damaged by 4 (currently 2), at Nippur. Both ships are TL = 1. RW#2 expends 3 of its B = [41 points, bringing W#3 to B = 5 (one less than original). After the repairs, RW#2's [B] = 1, which may be restocked at a Base Star up to its original value for 3 BP.

Obviously, there are many exciting possibilities for enhancing your enjoyment of the game. I highly recommend the game to anyone who hasn't played a spacewar game or hasn't got time for existing spacewar games.