Review of Quad-S (Strategic Starship Skirmish System) Rulebook 1: The Ku'Son'Ri

When you buy a ruleset, you expect a certain number of things. You expect to get some rules, some background, and perhaps some game related fiction. You want a playable game. And, you generally prefer it not to be mired down in excessive rules, needless options, and tons of elements you never plan to use. Roleplaying games have had this for a while - with the various modular game systems like GURPS, Fuzion, and so forth. Tabletop games haven't seen the same sort of options.

Enter Quad-S. Quad-S gives you a complete side for a playable game. It is both a sourcebook for the Ku'Son'Ri, and a complete ruleset for using them in Quad-S. It includes all of the rules, the background, a map sheet and even the counters to play. You get some basic information about the other races in the Quad-S background, but just enough to wonder about them. It's a playable game book. Plain and simple.

The Ku'Son'Ri are a race of Cyclopes that live in a strong clan system. The good of the individual is subservient to the good of the Ku'Son'Ri as a whole. It is through this dictate that the Ku'Son'Ri have become the well-disciplined warriors that they are.

The meat of this book is the rules for the Quad-S game. The rules are not overly complicated, and easy to pick up. After a single read through I was able to grasp the game system; and I was playing it in about 20 minutes.

Since this the Ku'Son'Ri book, it includes all of the rules needed to operate them in the game. The Ku'Son'Ri use both lasers and Penetrating Particle Reactor Missiles (called PPR or "pepper" for short), so the book includes the full rules for both.

Ships use a power allocation system to operate. Each ship has enough power to do everything, but not all at the same time! Half of the challenge in the game is mastering where to put power at the right time. Do you put max power to the shields, or ECM? Pour it into the drive, and get the heck out of here, or turn the ship around and blast the heck out the enemy?

The game uses a D20 to hit, based on range and the usage of Electronic Counter Measures. Damages runs the gamut of polyhedral dice, based on the weapon used. Ku'Son'Ri Light Lasers do only D6 damage, but Heavy Lasers hit for a much more respectable D10+4. PPR Missiles do D6 for EACH structure grid on a ship; enough to hurt large ships and severely maul smaller ones...

The Ku'Son'Ri have 8 ships to choose from, from the small T'Kel to the monstrous Gra'The'Nom. The T'Kel packs only a Light Laser, but is agile enough to maneuver itself into good firing arcs and hopefully avoid enemy fire. The Gra'The'Nom, on the other hand, is a bit of a lumbering Dreadnought... but armed well and with enough power to protect itself from a lot of enemy fire. The Ku'Son'Ri ships are each equipped to take the fight to their foes, and survive.

The game also has 7 scenarios to use with the Ku'Son'Ri. Some of them are completely straightforward - in Meeting Engagement, you fight until one side is destroyed or retreats. In others, such as Base Attack, one side must destroy the base of the other fleet within 20 turns or less. The scenarios offer tips in what ships to use, but they are all Ku'Son'Ri. The book doesn't assume you own any other pieces of the Quad-S system in order to play them.

The game has a few pages discussing honorable play and the creation of scenarios. Since the game lacks and points system (and an explanation is given in the book), creating "fair" scenarios is going to take some tinkering, but that's half the fun, right?

The only real downside of the game is the mapsheet. For a decent game, it requires you to make 12 photocopies of it to create a good playable game. Obviously, the use of another companies hex-based map sheet (with a space background!) comes in very handy.

Also, in the lean format, some of the rules are relatively easy to gloss over. I was a bit confused about how shields worked, because I missed the sentence about their effects on damage. The slim book leaves very little room for extensive rules explanation. But that's the price paid for keeping compact.

The presentation of the game is nice, and not overdone. The book comes in a plastic spiral-bound format, which makes it quite easy to photocopy the mapsheet and the ship control sheets. The front and back covers are full color; the interior well laid out black and white. The text is laid out in a readable single-column format. The artwork on the counters is very well done - it is a pity that the counters aren't reflected on the ship control sheets, however.

Overall, I think that the Quad-S format is a good one, and the game itself is a good game to play. The learning curve is low, making it an easy intro game. Getting a full, playable system for $15 isn't half-bad, either.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)