Slag!: Combat on the High Frontier

Slag!: Combat on the High Frontier is a 1995 wargame published by the Blacksburg Tactical Research Center that focuses on tactical starship combat. Players design their own starships by assigning weapons, engines, sensors and other systems to different zones of a ship plan, then bring those custom designed ships into combat against an opponent using a hex grid or an ordinary chessboard, with included stickers providing the counters. Damage in Slag! is resolved deterministically from each ship's own statistics rather than by rolling dice, so the outcome of an engagement depends on how well a player has balanced offense, defense and mobility when designing their ship rather than on random chance. The entire rules set fits into just twenty eight pages, making it a comparatively compact entry in the tactical starship combat genre next to more elaborate rules heavy competitors.