Saturday was another fun day playing a new game we have designed.
This game is a space battle game, of which there are many nicely done ones out there already. However our game is designed around the idea that the games and ships are HUGE. And so they are.
It's a good thing this was fun, the work involved in preparing the parts for this was considerable. Over all what we wound up making just to play the game was:
8 x Starship
16 x Flight Stands (adjustable)
64 x Ship Section Sheets
320 x Ship Blocks
30 x Starfighters
24 x Missiles
8 Fighter/Missile bases
13 x Dice
That was a lot of work, but it all payed off I think.
This game differs from others in two ways; First it's freaking huge. All ranges are measured in feet, and the lowest measurement used in the game is 6 Inches. Honestly this part isn't required, it would work just as well with more normal sized miniatures (but what would be the point in that?).
Second, the ships in this game have a Size Value that determines their engine type, the hull value, and the amount of crew in each section, and that is all. There are no systems for the ships.
Instead the ships are assigned crew blocks, the ship type number of crew in each section. There are eight sections on each ship, front, back, right, left, and a Dorsal and Ventral section of each.
The crew blocks each have six abilities, at the start of a turn the player chooses what each crew block is doing and this determined the systems for the ship. For example, if Eric has three crew in a section and asigns them all to fire an energy weapon, then that section fires a type-3 energy weapon. Next turn he may rearrange them to fire a type-1 energy weapon, a type-1 mass weapon, and a flight of missiles.
You see, it all comes down to the crew.
The Game
We had to play this at Elona's studio since we don't have room for this anywhere else, and in gathering the massive amount of parts I completely forgot to bring the camera. Elona stopped by at one point and took these shots, so we at least have something to present here.
The game involved eight ships, a Command ship Class 5, a Class 3, and two Class 1 ships on each side. I played the grey fleet composed of the Longstreet, the Shiloh, the Pea Ridge, and the Manassas. Eric commanded the Urquhart, the Midway, the Kursk, and the Caen.
I didn't note a turn-by-turn of the game since we had no camera to record it with. The first few turns were standard in gaming with both sides doing little more than moving forward. Some long range shots were exchanged but had no effect. I moved the Longstreet off to the left rather than straight on, this made it fall behind the rest of the fleet.
The two fleets met near the middle of the room, and an awful firefight furball kind of thing erupted there.
Fighters were launched, missiles were launched, torpedoes were launched, mass and energy weapons fired.
The "first blood" went to me, the Pea Ridge blasted a hole in the Caen and set one of her ventral sections on fire.
It became quite obvious at this point that having crew assigned to battle fires was not a bad idea...
The Shiloh was the first to suffer major damage, Eric's torpedo impacted the forward Dorsal section and obliterated it, the section below it, and one of the sections behind it. The Manassas suffered a similar injury when she took a blast of Coordinated fire from the Midway. Fortunately for most of the crew the captain had the foresight to order Brace For Impact. That order disables all of the crew (since they are now bracing rather than working) and places all ship sections into Lock Down status. The loss of her forward section was bad, but the Locked Down status of the ship prevented the air from venting at least.
At this point three of my ships are quite damaged, Eric's not terribly so. This is the result of Eric having his command ship, the Urquhart, right in the middle of the fray and mine being way out of position. My ships were pouring fire into the command ship, but it wasn't able to overcome the armor. On the other hand, the Urquhart wasn't able to fully bring her power to bear on any one ship as she had to contend with ships on all sides.
About this time the truly stupid occured. This game is played in 3D, so ships can raise and lower, and they don't move terribly fast so when plotting movement it's pretty easy to see (or guess) who is where. Somehow we ended up with not one...but TWO collisions taking place on the same phase of the same turn! Fascinating. Stupid, but fascinating.
The Manassas collided with the Midway, which was totally the Midways fault. She changed elevation to pull off her Coordinated dorsal/ventral shooting trick and that put her exactly in front of the Manassas. The Manassas lost both of her Dorsal mid sections, and the Midway lost her ventral forward section. That hampered the Midway quite a bit later on as she wasn't able to engage any ships below her in the front arc.
Almost directly below that the Pea Ridge and the Kursk collided. This was neither ships fault, it just worked out that both ships were trying to be in the same place at the same time. Physics has some sort of problem with that. Anyway, both ships suffered pretty badly. In fact, the venting of the atmosphere on the Pea Ridge disabled almost all of the crew and that was the beginning of the end for her.
Jumping forward some, the Pea Ridge struck her colors but couldn't physically retreat since she had only her Bridge section remaining. The Manassas retired from battle, the Shiloh stayed for a few more turns but eventually also retreated.
The Caen and the Kursk both struck their colors, and eventually so did the Urquhart. The Midway was simply surrendered by Eric at the end.
That last section came about relatively quickly, and that was due to the Longstreet. Remember that I moved her out to the left? Well she finally made it into combat range, and because she was so far behind she engaged without any damage.
More importantly, she was far to the left of the battle and so I was able to move all of her crew to the starboard side.
That meant she was firing off devastating broadsides, effectively a type-28 shot each phase. And she launched a torpedo that devastated the front of the urquhart, breaking her armor there and starting her demise. While the type-28 broadside was firing at the Urquhart, a type-10 was firing from the front into the Midway, and missiles were launching from the rear into both.
Moving the Longstreet to the far outside of the battle is what won me the game, she came in undamaged way late in the game and was able to generate tremendous blasts because she didn't need to man her Port side at all. She suffered some pretty serious damage when the Midway launched four full salvoes of missiles into her (24 missiles, each doing 1d6 of damage), but the wasn't crippled.
In the end the Urquhart actually tried to ram the Longstreet, but missed and then struck her colors. The Midway was still active, but Eric figured she wouldn't be able to stand against the Longstreet alone, so he conceded the game.
Pro
- The game played very well, although kind of slow. I felt like there was more "meat" than a regular space battle
game normally has. I wasn't just commanding a fleet of ships, but a fleet of ships that were all manned and crewed. The crew and section detail is what added a feeling of consequence I guess you could say.
- The visuals were excellent.
- The ships are gigantic.
- Eric made us a bunch of dice out of Six Inch cubes. It's almost a game itself trying to roll 12 dice when each die is 6" across. That was excellent.
- the fighters Eric designed are amazingly cool.
- Nothing was broken. This was a "playtest" since it was the first game, but we found no flaws this time. We adjusted one rule regarding missiles, but only because we thought that it could possibly be abused by some people, there wasn't anything really wrong with it.
Con
- It was really long. That's not really a bad thing I guess, but it's not a Pro either. I can't really even say why it was so long, though we have ideas.
- 1 The ships were too big. The Class-5 ships were just too large to make it a faster game. Smaller ships, or maybe an unbalanced fleet would be better.
- 2 rolling the dice. It was an adventure every time you had to roll a die, and that adventure always began
with you running all around the room to gather up the dice you needed. Fun, but definitely time consuming.
In the end it was a really fun game, and one that I look forward to playing again.
This game is a space battle game, of which there are many nicely done ones out there already. However our game is designed around the idea that the games and ships are HUGE. And so they are.
It's a good thing this was fun, the work involved in preparing the parts for this was considerable. Over all what we wound up making just to play the game was:
8 x Starship
16 x Flight Stands (adjustable)
64 x Ship Section Sheets
320 x Ship Blocks
30 x Starfighters
24 x Missiles
8 Fighter/Missile bases
13 x Dice
That was a lot of work, but it all payed off I think.
This game differs from others in two ways; First it's freaking huge. All ranges are measured in feet, and the lowest measurement used in the game is 6 Inches. Honestly this part isn't required, it would work just as well with more normal sized miniatures (but what would be the point in that?).Second, the ships in this game have a Size Value that determines their engine type, the hull value, and the amount of crew in each section, and that is all. There are no systems for the ships.
Instead the ships are assigned crew blocks, the ship type number of crew in each section. There are eight sections on each ship, front, back, right, left, and a Dorsal and Ventral section of each.
The crew blocks each have six abilities, at the start of a turn the player chooses what each crew block is doing and this determined the systems for the ship. For example, if Eric has three crew in a section and asigns them all to fire an energy weapon, then that section fires a type-3 energy weapon. Next turn he may rearrange them to fire a type-1 energy weapon, a type-1 mass weapon, and a flight of missiles.
You see, it all comes down to the crew.
The Game
We had to play this at Elona's studio since we don't have room for this anywhere else, and in gathering the massive amount of parts I completely forgot to bring the camera. Elona stopped by at one point and took these shots, so we at least have something to present here.
The game involved eight ships, a Command ship Class 5, a Class 3, and two Class 1 ships on each side. I played the grey fleet composed of the Longstreet, the Shiloh, the Pea Ridge, and the Manassas. Eric commanded the Urquhart, the Midway, the Kursk, and the Caen.
I didn't note a turn-by-turn of the game since we had no camera to record it with. The first few turns were standard in gaming with both sides doing little more than moving forward. Some long range shots were exchanged but had no effect. I moved the Longstreet off to the left rather than straight on, this made it fall behind the rest of the fleet.
The two fleets met near the middle of the room, and an awful firefight furball kind of thing erupted there.
Fighters were launched, missiles were launched, torpedoes were launched, mass and energy weapons fired. The "first blood" went to me, the Pea Ridge blasted a hole in the Caen and set one of her ventral sections on fire.
It became quite obvious at this point that having crew assigned to battle fires was not a bad idea...
The Shiloh was the first to suffer major damage, Eric's torpedo impacted the forward Dorsal section and obliterated it, the section below it, and one of the sections behind it. The Manassas suffered a similar injury when she took a blast of Coordinated fire from the Midway. Fortunately for most of the crew the captain had the foresight to order Brace For Impact. That order disables all of the crew (since they are now bracing rather than working) and places all ship sections into Lock Down status. The loss of her forward section was bad, but the Locked Down status of the ship prevented the air from venting at least.
At this point three of my ships are quite damaged, Eric's not terribly so. This is the result of Eric having his command ship, the Urquhart, right in the middle of the fray and mine being way out of position. My ships were pouring fire into the command ship, but it wasn't able to overcome the armor. On the other hand, the Urquhart wasn't able to fully bring her power to bear on any one ship as she had to contend with ships on all sides. About this time the truly stupid occured. This game is played in 3D, so ships can raise and lower, and they don't move terribly fast so when plotting movement it's pretty easy to see (or guess) who is where. Somehow we ended up with not one...but TWO collisions taking place on the same phase of the same turn! Fascinating. Stupid, but fascinating.
The Manassas collided with the Midway, which was totally the Midways fault. She changed elevation to pull off her Coordinated dorsal/ventral shooting trick and that put her exactly in front of the Manassas. The Manassas lost both of her Dorsal mid sections, and the Midway lost her ventral forward section. That hampered the Midway quite a bit later on as she wasn't able to engage any ships below her in the front arc.
Almost directly below that the Pea Ridge and the Kursk collided. This was neither ships fault, it just worked out that both ships were trying to be in the same place at the same time. Physics has some sort of problem with that. Anyway, both ships suffered pretty badly. In fact, the venting of the atmosphere on the Pea Ridge disabled almost all of the crew and that was the beginning of the end for her.
Jumping forward some, the Pea Ridge struck her colors but couldn't physically retreat since she had only her Bridge section remaining. The Manassas retired from battle, the Shiloh stayed for a few more turns but eventually also retreated. The Caen and the Kursk both struck their colors, and eventually so did the Urquhart. The Midway was simply surrendered by Eric at the end.
That last section came about relatively quickly, and that was due to the Longstreet. Remember that I moved her out to the left? Well she finally made it into combat range, and because she was so far behind she engaged without any damage.
More importantly, she was far to the left of the battle and so I was able to move all of her crew to the starboard side.
That meant she was firing off devastating broadsides, effectively a type-28 shot each phase. And she launched a torpedo that devastated the front of the urquhart, breaking her armor there and starting her demise. While the type-28 broadside was firing at the Urquhart, a type-10 was firing from the front into the Midway, and missiles were launching from the rear into both.
Moving the Longstreet to the far outside of the battle is what won me the game, she came in undamaged way late in the game and was able to generate tremendous blasts because she didn't need to man her Port side at all. She suffered some pretty serious damage when the Midway launched four full salvoes of missiles into her (24 missiles, each doing 1d6 of damage), but the wasn't crippled.
In the end the Urquhart actually tried to ram the Longstreet, but missed and then struck her colors. The Midway was still active, but Eric figured she wouldn't be able to stand against the Longstreet alone, so he conceded the game.
Pro
- The game played very well, although kind of slow. I felt like there was more "meat" than a regular space battle
game normally has. I wasn't just commanding a fleet of ships, but a fleet of ships that were all manned and crewed. The crew and section detail is what added a feeling of consequence I guess you could say.
- The visuals were excellent.
- The ships are gigantic.
- Eric made us a bunch of dice out of Six Inch cubes. It's almost a game itself trying to roll 12 dice when each die is 6" across. That was excellent.
- the fighters Eric designed are amazingly cool.
- Nothing was broken. This was a "playtest" since it was the first game, but we found no flaws this time. We adjusted one rule regarding missiles, but only because we thought that it could possibly be abused by some people, there wasn't anything really wrong with it.
Con
- It was really long. That's not really a bad thing I guess, but it's not a Pro either. I can't really even say why it was so long, though we have ideas.
- 1 The ships were too big. The Class-5 ships were just too large to make it a faster game. Smaller ships, or maybe an unbalanced fleet would be better.
- 2 rolling the dice. It was an adventure every time you had to roll a die, and that adventure always began
with you running all around the room to gather up the dice you needed. Fun, but definitely time consuming.
In the end it was a really fun game, and one that I look forward to playing again.
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