Today I took my ships out for their first test run, and since there seemed to be some interest in Full Thrust I thought I'd write up a few recommendations on how to get started...

I know that many people who play miniature games first get hooked on the minis, so that might be the best place to start. Most of the newer ships (and their rules) you can see here, and if you're curious about the old design ships (which are being phased out though) there's a comprehensive list here (scroll down a bit for Full Thrust). Unfortunately most of the pictures are rather small and of unpainted minis, but it's better than nothing.

Now, if you've found a fleet to your liking let's continue to the rules! It can be kind of confusing when you start looking into the different rulebooks and how they keep updating and changing and with new rules also being published on the web. My suggestion is that you first head over to Ground Zero Games' homepage and download the Full Thrust Light ruleset and read that through. It's the most up to date rules and it's also a hint of what we can expect from Full Thrust 3rd ed. when that finally arrives. It's the basic rules covering cinematic movement (as opposed to vector) basic weapons like Beam batteries and Pulse Torpedoes and rules for two starter fleets for you to get going. All in all a good introduction.

When you've absorbed the basics there are basically two ways to go; first you could go back to GZG and download the rest of the Full Thrust stuff (including the two Fleet Books and More Thrust) and start working through those. Be warned though that rules in the Full Thrust book is superseeded by rules in More Thrust, and then those are superseeded by rules in Fleet Book 1 and 2. What you could do instead is download Full Thrust Remixed (UPDATE: I'm not sure that link works anymore so you can get it from my Google docs as well, here) which is a semi-official compilation of the most up to date rules from the different rulebooks. It's a lot more handy than flipping through different books looking for rules and should work as a stopgap until the 3rd edition. In any case I still think you should download all the full books as they have lots of background info and rules for the seven original fleets in them. Another similar project is Full Thrust Cross Dimension which has also compiled all the rules from the original books as well as new rules (like the UNSC Grasers) into one book and also added and tweaked a few rules here and there. It's definitely worth a look at. Again, if the link doesn't work download it from my Google docs.

EDIT: Late 2014 a group called the Emerald Coast Skunk Works have released Full Thrust Continuum which is a rewrite of the Cross Dimension rules, incorporating some new ideas and continually creating SSDs for GZG's newer ships that still don't have stats. It's apparently done with the blessing of Jon Tuffley and the general murmurings seem positive, so check it out!

Now, GZG has released a lot more fleets since Fleet Book 2 and has also updated the old fleets with newly designed ships. Rules for these updated and new fleets can be found together with other beta rules at the aforementioned Full Thrust Fleet Resource.


So, I hope that's enough, but not too much, information to get you started! If you have any questions just fire away...