From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: RE: GDW: Belter review wanted - done! Belter ------ Belter is typical of GDW output in 1979, which is to say great for 1979 and not too bad today. Belter gives each of the first four players to take the part of a prospector, partnership, or coporation, with appropriately increasing levels of starting resources and victory levels. In the Advanced Game a fifth player plays the Peace Keeping Force (PKF). Basically, you buy ships, prospect asteroids, mine ore, gas, and CT (contra-terrene matter, aka anti-matter), haul it back and sell it. Pretty vanilla at the core. The price fluctuates, of course, and you need special equipment for CT Matter, but it pays more. You can put in installations, smelters, etc and hire laborers to increase your income. There are special regions of space with special rules, and in the Advanced Game there are public safety rules, bank financing, arms embargos, the PKF, and a poss ible revolt of the belt! Suddenly its not so vanilla. Oh, and of course you can cooperate with the other players, or shoot at them. Go ahead, take their ships, cargo, and crew. The latter can be spaced, ransomed, or hired, etc. You can even throw CT Matter at people. Combat is a good balance of chrome (beams, missles, boarding, good combat results) and simplicity. Its also expensive, which is good because it prevents the game from degenerating into petty fights - you only pull a gun when you mean it. Movement includes a momentum element but is very simple: you can manuever (six points of changing course 30 degrees or moving forward one hex, uses fuel) or coast (six hexes straight forward, use no fuel). I like this because it is space-like, but you don't have to spend ten minutes of your life figuring out how to get your ship to a particular point without coasting past it, etc. while the other players twiddle their thumbs. The PKF player has an interesting role: he or she cannot mine or sell, but as the Peace Keeping Force set up by Earth's hungry government their goal is to keep prices low, and their hands are not exactly tied behind their backs in how they get this done. They have a budget from Earth, troops, powerful warships (whereas the players have armed merchant ships), but you can't increase supply (and thus decrease prices) by shooting at people. They can take bribes, prevent costly wars, look the other way if peopl e mine illegal areas, flat out help players with cash & ships (to make them more productive), or, if all else fails, seize cargoes and dump them on the market to drive the price down! Players can defy the PKF if they have the weapons, but I imagine that's hard to do. But if at least two players are willing, they can start a revolt! I've never played in a five player game, but maybe someday. Belter comes in one of those 11.33 x 14.25 x 1.125 inch big flat boxes that probably come out to even measurements in the metric system, but which are sure to get crushed in your closet. The cover is that monochrome stuff GDW was doing back then, but its a particularly nice example of it, some space-suited guys laser-jackhammering an asteroid, big mining ship in the background. There are a whopping 480 counters, but they're not too exciting - black on color generic icon for unit type and an ID number. The map is actually kind of nice, 22x28 of flat black with a grey hexgrid and hex numbers, then colored dots for different asteroids, and planetoids. Its very simple, but it really gives the inky-blackness-of-space feel. The rules are 12 pages and are pretty clear. I've always liked GDW rules, the clean white look, attracitve font, the clarity, the lack of double-digit, decimal point numbered paragraphs. I played this game a couple of times, but its been too long for me to make any responsible comment on how game play progresses, etc. But its simple, clean, and lots of fun. There are a lot of new games I haven't seen that maybe better, but I'd play Belter in a heartbeat. It has a quality I prize highly that is increasingly rare in games and everywhere else - its not stupid. In fact, if I'm not the only person who still has a copy, let's get a jointly-moderated PBEM going.