Frustrated by space battle miniature games that didn't offer a ton of options beyond 'move and shoot', Hendar23 designed CORVET, a free skirmish tabletop game that involves granular ship management. Like the PC indie title FTL: Faster Than Light, CORVET allows you to control the individual crew members piloting your vessels, having them man system, make repairs, and hopefully not die in a fire.
Though the similarities to FTL are obvious, the initial germ of the idea actually came to Hendar when he was playing another fleet battle game. "The fight had descended into a clustered meat grinder in the middle of the board, as usually happens in these games," he says. He tells Wargamer he couldn't help thinking the experience would be better with fewer ships and more control.
"A ship isn't just legs with a gun; it's a composition of systems and people that work together," Hendar reasons."I wanted to reflect that."
A turn of CORVET is split into multiple sections. Before any ships move or guns fire, there's an engineering phase. As well as determining the actions of their crew, this is when players allocate power to the different systems they'll use in the systems phase - from shields to engines to weapons - which requires them to plan ahead and predict their opponent's moves.
From using ion weapons to disable shields to taking out crew members with lucky shots, there's a lot of superficial similarities between CORVET and FTL when it comes to combat, though with the addition of movement and positioning, it'll obviously play very differently. Hits are also assigned to rooms randomly, so you can't surgically shut down specific systems the way you do in the PC title.
A unique CORVET rule I love is the inclusion of emergency orders, like overloading the reactor for a burst of extra energy or opening the airlocks to put out a fire. These might be lifesavers at times of crisis, but each comes with catastrophic consequences if luck isn't on your side.
Hendar23 says the rules for CORVET came together very quickly. In fact, he put the whole thing together while taking a break from a more bothersome game design project.
"The most challenging part is finding time to playtest! I have a small child and nowhere to set up a permanent game table, so finding a couple of hours of uninterrupted time to play is hard."
As well as putting effort into balancing, the designer also has plenty of additional content planned. Coming up next are rules for designing your own ships, with a point-buy system that'll let you kit your rust buckets out however you choose, picking weapons, assigning upgrades for your crew, and so on.
"Other stuff in the works is more ship types and more systems and weapons."
You can check out CORVET yourself, as the rules are available online and totally free. You should also take a look at our list of the best free wargames, or come share your best paintjobs in the Wargamer Discord.