The book is very thorough in it's explanation of the rules. There's a lot of attention paid to detail.

However, the rules themselves are not what I wanted from the Call to Arms series. This edition makes the rules a lot closer to Star Fleet Battles or Federation Commander in terms of complexity, detail, and resolution time. What I like about the Call to Arms series of games is that they are faster and can therefore support larger engagements. What I was hoping for was Amarillo Design Bureau to go into the rules set up initially by Mongoose and to tighten them up with balance tweaks, examples and rule clarifications.

The rules that I got I didn't recognize as being from the same system. If you are like me and wanted an airtight update to the Call to Arms ruleset for Star Trek that maintained the low complexity and rapid tempo of the previous games in the series, this book is not that. If you are looking for a detailed space ship wargame that can support larger fleets than Starfleet Battles or Battlefleet Gothic, then this should be a good set for you.

This is a great addition to the Star Fleet Universe allowing quick play of battles involving multiple ships per side with enough chrome to keep the feel of Star Fleet Battles without the complexity of more detailed systems.

The deluxe version has more background detail, some painting hints for minitures and few other things over the basic version and worth the extra dollars. Layout is very nice with the only negative being a lack of a consolidated combat table to show dice rolls to hit, damage and explaination of the weapon details without flipping back and forth through the rules. No big detail as we made our own but new players could benefit by having everything at hand for the first few games.

Based on the publishers website this should be well supported with future supplements to add more races, ships and probably options/complexity. The system is clean and allows for a lot of house rule options to add more complexity if that is what you are looking for. System is geared towards minitures but can easily be converted to hex and cardboard.

If you want to play Federation and Empire and game out some of the battles in detail this might be the engine to make it happen.

Pros: Star Fleet, fun, not much book keeping, great feel for the genre. Easy to teach new players. Cons: Very little, maybe add a consolidated combat chart.