# Velocity Vanguard *Created:* 2026-10-18, *Modified:* 2026-10-26 ![[Velocity Vanguard (cover).jpg|600]] **Velocity Vanguard** is the near-future commercial space race made into a physics-based board game — humanity, barely past the moon, is fighting over the inner asteroid belt's fortunes, and you're one of the corporations, syndicates, and outright warlords shipping them back. Precarious Games' debut is a game about *momentum* in the double sense: the inertia that keeps your ships drifting through space, and the corporate momentum of everybody trying to get rich before the thing that's waiting out there catches up. ## Setting Not long ago, humanity made its first real foray off-world — the moon, then the inner asteroid belt — and discovered that extraterrestrial resources were worth staggering sums. Governments, "plagued by internal issues and corruption," could not deliver, so the power passed to **international conglomerates and syndicates**, and the race for dominance began. Against that backdrop the players field their **Vanguards**: fleets of customizable ships belonging to the era's dominant factions — **Wolf**, **Terran Reach**, **Rift**, and **Proximi** — each faction's ships carrying its own strengths into the sector board. Play runs from cooperative, non-combat missions through survival scenarios to all-out battle royale and competitive skirmish, solo or in teams. ## Mechanics **Velocity Vanguard** is a board game of vector movement and crew actions on a hex sector board, and its signature is that **your ships don't stop when you stop steering**. - **Rounds & Phases** — a round has four phases; within it players take turns in clockwise order activating their available ships until everyone has gone. - **Crew-token activation** — on a ship's activation you spend crew tokens into its action slots (navigation, weapons, systems); slots marked with a specialist symbol require a **specialist crew** card. - **The physics** — movement is the heart of it. A **Navigation** action spends energy from a capacitor to apply thrust to the ship's **vector token** on the Velocity Board — rear, yaw, or lateral thrusters — and the ship only moves as its vector dictates, with a "velocity helper" token showing where it's heading. You don't drag a mini across the board; you apply a vector and let inertia do the rest. - **A ship's guts** — each ship runs a dashboard with **shields & hull**, a **reactor** and **capacitors** (energy that flows between them), and a **module bay** into which you install **modules** — weapons, defenses, scanners, support — chosen per mission by drafting, budget, free-for-all, or a recommended load-out. Ships are customized by their creator faction. - **Automatons** — missions often add non-player ships and objects (defense stations, automated enemies) that run on their own **passive or aggressive** stance and action flow. - **Damage & ship loss** — hits work against shields then hull; modules can be disabled and reactors pushed to critical failure. - **Missions & skirmish** — the Rulebook's Mission Guide drives play (beginners start with **Flashpoint**); the **Skirmish Rules & Objectives** expansion layers on single-mission or **mission-campaign** play, team setup on Velocity Boards, faction-and-ship selection under a Module Capacity Limit, and single-use **upgrade tokens**. ## Editions - **v2023.1005 (2023)** — the core Rulebook in the user's collection, by **Precarious Games LLC**. *In the library.* - **Skirmish Rules & Objectives (v2023.1005)** — the skirmish/campaign supplement. *In the library.* - The game's crowdfunding history is a cautionary tale for the hobby: **the original Kickstarter funded but never delivered its games on time**, and the relaunch has still not delivered — and, as of late 2026, backers have been asked to pay an **additional payment of roughly 95% of the original shipping cost they were charged**, just to cover shipping that got more expensive in the meantime. Rules and missions are also available through [Precarious Games' app](https://vv.apps.precariousgames.com/). ## References - [Velocity Vanguard — BoardGameGeek](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/317398/velocity-vanguard) - [Velocity: Vanguard — Precarious Games](https://www.precariousgames.com/) - [Velocity: Vanguard — Kickstarter relaunch](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/precariousgames/velocity-vanguard-relaunch) - [Velocity: Vanguard — Gamefound pledge](https://gamefound.com/en/projects/precarious-games/velocity-vanguard) - [Velocity Vanguard — Meeple Mountain review](https://www.meeplemountain.com/boardgame/velocity-vanguard/)