Battlegroup Cards & the Strategy Deck

The order that ships activate in is dictated by the owning players' strategy deck. This is a set of Battlegroup cards which list the contents of each of their selected Battlegroups.

A Battlegroup card might represent just a lone, powerful ship but more commonly it will comprise several Groups of ships.

At the start of each turn both players build their own strategy deck out of their force's available Battlegroup cards, stacking them in the order they intend them to be activated in over the course of the coming turn.

A player's number of available Battlegroup cards are determined when they pick their fleet (see Building Your Fleet for more details). It can potentially be varied by circumstances like scenarios requiring reserve Battlegroups to be held off-table or casualties wiping out whole Battlegroups.

Strategy Rating

A Battlegroup card's Strategy Rating is used to determine which player's Battlegroup activates first. The player with the Battlegroup card that has the lower Strategy Rating can choose to activate before or after the Battlegroup with the higher strategy rating.

Equal Strategy Ratings

If two battlegroup cards are revealed which have the same Strategy Rating both players roll a D6 and add their Admiral Value, the player with the highest total chooses who goes first. If both players' total is the same, roll again until one player's total is higher.

Losing Battlegroups

When all of the ships in a Battlegroup have been destroyed or are off the table for any reason the corresponding Battlegroup card is removed from the player's strategy deck and put to one side. If you reveal a Battlegroup card that no longer has any ships remaining, remove it from your deck and reveal the next card.