Fleet Commander: 1 – Ignition

It took something close to the end of the world for Fleet Commander: 1 – Ignition to finally hit the table. I had grabbed it as an impulse buy at Essen, probably five years ago, together with all the expansions, with a rather different idea of what the game would be. By the time I got around to opening it, the Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter had already appeared, and that is obviously light-years ahead for me. Still, during lockdown, I was looking for exactly this kind of thinky two-player game: a few dice, miniatures, some thought, and rules that do not require reading a manual all evening. And there it was, leaping off the shelf like the broom in Fantasia.

The game’s core is its roll-and-keep dice system, and it is clever enough to give decisions a pleasing tension. This is not simply about rolling and hoping: choosing which results to keep is what brings thought into the game and supports the space confrontation against other titles in the genre.

As a two-player game, interaction lies in the clash between the fleets and in the choices created by those dice. The rules remain straightforward, which makes it approachable when you want miniatures and tactics without excessive weight, while the expansions add depth and more reason to return to the table.

Fleet Commander did not thrill me, but it did not disappoint me either. With all its extras it becomes noticeably fuller and more replayable, and its central mechanism is smart enough that it deserves not to be forgotten on the shelf again. Where it loses every point is its retail price, which was—and, from what I can see, still is—at proper “wtf” levels. For a game you enjoy setting up with its miniatures for a clean, short space duel, that is very hard to ignore.