Learn how to play - set up

Dog Fight: Starship Edition is a tactical combat game for 2 or more players. Set up involves a map, cards, and tokens. Players each bring their own deck and ship to the game. Starter sets each provide  a deck, one ship, as well as 2 square maps and plenty of game tokens.

The starter deck is merely the beginning. You can customize your deck with more cards from the numerous product releases currently available.

Action Deck

The Action Deck is limited to a maximum of 100 action cards, but no minimum limit. Each starter deck provides nearly 50 action cards. This serves as a good launching point for later ship customization.

The yellow Ship card does not count toward the 100 card limit. There are additional rules to assist in game play, such as Skeleton and Full Complement rules to start the game with extra equipment. If you use either of these rules (highly recommended) these cards are equipped to your ship during game set up and don't count toward your 100 card deck limit.

Included Pieces

The starter sets each include 2 cards designed to be cut into game pieces: a ship token card and game counter card. A ship token card provides 2 copies of your ship piece. The game piece counter card includes enough game pieces (should you choose to use them) to supply one player, including Hull, energy, overheat, armor, and generic counters.

Additional Items

Not all cards are the same. Some may require the roll of dice. Some may require tokens of some sort (called “counters”), and coins can serve this purpose. You may also want to protect your cards in card sleeves. To keep track of your ship's Hull and other stats you can use a dice set, tokens, or you can use a Ship Calculator.

Player Mat

Beginning with either a starter deck or a customized deck, gather any game components you plan to use. A recommended layout is provided in the included Player mat.

The mat is divided into the Ship space, the Action deck, the ship's token space, the discard pile, the equipment row and the action row (the Tiers).

1. Separate your yellow ship card (the capital ship, red backed) from the Action Cards (blue backed).
2. Place the Ship card, Action deck, Hull, and energy counters as indicated on the recommended layout.
3. Set your ship's Hull strength using the included Hull counters (or however you choose to keep track of Hull).
4. Add energy counters to your ship according to its EC (energy counter) designation.

Your vessel's counters, current state, Discard pile, and current hand size are public information to which all other players in the game are entitled to know upon asking.

Next: the cards