Mike Brandl - 10:19pm Sep 29, 1997 PST (#107 of 107) last played: Mythos, Silent Death, Babylon 5 Wars Babylon 5 Wars finally appeared a few weeks ago, and I picked up my copy at the local hobby shop. Since I've been asked (in another discussion), I'll share my impressions for anyone who might be interested, now that I've had a chance to read the rules thoroughly and even play a little. At first sight, it looks a bit like an updated and slimmed-down TFG Star Fleet Battles, which is not too surprising considering that Agents of Gaming got their start doing SFB supplements. (FWIW, I haven't played SFB in decades, and never played that much of it, so take these comparisons with a grain of salt). Much of the similarity is just due to the subject - you could just as easily compare it to any number of tactical naval games. The differences are more significant: The first step in the turn sequence is power allocation, but, unlike SFB, it doesn't look so tedious. Most turns you probably won't need to do anything - there's a default allocation that provides all the power that the engines, weapons, and other systems require. You can power down some systems to provide more power to others, and you may have to power down systems as a result of reactor damage, but usually it takes care of itself. This looks to me like a BIG improvement over SFB's energy allocation, which made me wonder how many credits of accounting they had to take at Starfleet Academy ... Movement is semi-Newtonian, which is pretty close to the way things look in the TV show. Ships have a thrust allowance rather than a movement allowance, and will travel in the same direction at the same speed indefinitely unless they spend thrust points to alter either direction of travel or speed. Movement is along hexrows, and the cost in thrust points to change direction by 60 degrees and the number of hexes that must be travelled between direction changes are proportional to speed. Ships must move a number of hexes equal to their speed each turn, and spend thrust points to change their speed before movement. (In all, somewhat reminiscent of the movement system in FASA's Renegade Legion games). Ships may face in a direction other than the one in which they are travelling, but can only use thrust if they are facing in the direction of motion or directly opposite it. Not true Newtonian movement, but close enough to be interesting. Movement is sequential by class of ship rather than simultaneous, with initiative rolled for each ship. Combat is fairly simple, but does involve rolling dice for each weapon fired - one 20-sided die roll to determine if the weapon hit, and more to determine how much damage it did and how to distribute it, depending on the type of weapon. Ships have a number of Electronic Warfare points that they can allocate to defense (reducing the odds of being hit by all enemy fire) and offense (increasing the odds of hitting one or more specific target ships). Damage is allocated to individual systems and ship structure. Fighters and anti-fighter weapons have an effective range of only a few hexes, but some capital ship weapons can reach most of the way across the board. Fighter combat feels a bit like Silent Death, but where a simple Silent Death dogfight can degenerate into a game of tag (first ship moves blind, second ship runs halfway across the board to blast the first ship up the tailpipe, third ship does the same to the second, ... ), B5W fighters can pivot during the combat phase and blast right back (if they have some thrust points left over). Fighter damage allocation is more straightforward than for ships, with boxes marked off sequentially and critical damage taken with every third point of damage. There are also 'flight level' rules given for large engagements, with one counter representing a flight of six fighters (which just happens to be the number of fighters on a status display). I haven't tried a capital ship duel yet, but hope to this weekend. From what I've heard around the hobby shop, a game with a couple of ships on each side takes no more than an hour or two, but I can't vouch for that myself. I have played a 3 - on - 3 fighter engagement with my 13-year-old daughter, and it played nearly as fast as Silent Death (40 minutes for our first try at the game), but was a lot more even (only one badly damaged survivor left out of three Centauri Sentri medium fighter after defeating three Narn Frazi heavy fighters). I actually managed to win this one, although I'm currently 1 - for - 6 at Silent Death. The game components look good (aside from some quality control problems). The ship counters are attractive, the rulebook is reasonably well laid out, and the ship status displays in the back of the book are easy to copy without destroying the binding. The game comes with twelve pewter fighter miniatures, which list for about $28, making the $45 price tag look pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, all the miniatures I've seen so far are pretty poorly cast; mine required a lot of filing. According to AOG's web site, they've broken off their arrangement with their original miniatures supplier, and the rest of the initial shipment will be produced by Reaper. They plan on fabricating their own miniatures in the future. The one sheet of informational counters in my set was badly registered, but they're so generic that it's only a cosmetic problem. Well, it's 1:12 A.M. here and I have to get to work sometime in the morning, so I'll leave it at this. Attribute any errors or egregious idiocy here to sleep deprivation psychosis. Anybody else here played this game yet?