Sometimes you wake up with a hangover from drinking too much, but this week, I'm going to be dealing with something far more sinister. It's like a "life hangover" from being drunk with fun; coming down from the last two weeks may prove to be worse than coming down from an ecstasy-and-crack-fuelled adventure at a nudist nymphomaniacs convention. Well, maybe, anyhow.
It all started with a joke from a buddy of mine who does it for a living: An arctic baby seal walks into a bar. The bartender asks "What'll it be?" The seal responds, "Anything but a Canadian Club!" Cue rimshot and commentary about the veal and tipping waitresses. It ended with red eyes, 4 hours of sleep, and a deep sense of dread for the timeframe between this very moment, as I'm writing this, and the first day of GenCon.
Well, I'd better back up and explain what the deal is. I am coming off of one of the best two-week stints ever, and it just ended with my participation in the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH. After reading the aforementioned joke on my buddy's Facebook page, I got in the car and headed to the airport at high speed as I had to head to Colorado for a class at the School of Mines in Golden. I was already running late, as usual. I realized five miles into my jaunt that I had forgotten my laptop, so I pulled a 30-MPH E-brake U-turn in the middle of the road, speeding back to the crib at 90 to get my forgotten lifeline to the universe. Kiss the wife again, kiss the babies, and out the door I went. Didn't even get a ticket, and I really should've.
There was a choice parking spot when I got there, but unsurprisingly, I was still pretty late to the ticket desk, and I got there just in time to have the kiosk tell me that I was too late to check in. I spoke to "Bob", a very nice Delta counter guy at the Cincinnati Airport. He asked if I had any heart problems, to which I responed with a quite quizzical "no", and he then replied that I should run my ass to the gate, like NOW. So I did. I was there just in time to sweat on a large Latin gentleman who really should've had 2 seats and a grandmotherly older lady who had the aisle. 2 hours later I was wheels-down in Denver, having done all the backlogged work I had to get done on the plane. I get to the shuttle, and they headed for the rentals the moment I got there.
There was no line at the rental place, and no traffic on the way to Golden. I showed up in time for a wonderful catered lunch and small talk with collegues and friends. The following presentations in the class were exceptional, and even the hotel room afterward was nice. Things just couldn't go wrong for me. It was the beginning of a charmed life.
After three days in Denver, I was anxiously awaiting the drive home because a really good friend of mine who some of my readers may know, Rychean from Heroscapers (Mark), the God Emperor of Heroscape Himself, was going to be sitting at my house as he had flown into Cincinnati at 3:30 and caught a cab to the house. I got home wihtout delay, and sure as snow melts in summer, there was my beautiful wife, my wonderful kids, and my dear friend to greet me. Hugs and kisses ensued (family, not Mark) and the adventure began.
The reason he had flown in, I might note, is that the following day we were going to head to Origins in Columbus. For the uninitiated, it's one of the oldest board game industry trade fairs in the United States. We had planned to be there at 10AM to meet up with the Heroscapers from the area and play some tournaments, but I was there for darker purpose, to be sure. I had to cause some trouble to someone, and I had to score some free stuff. Oh, and I had to see some seriously freaky people.
I spent that night drinking with my amazing wife, Mark, and some good friends who happen to be neighbors, introducing him to playing Epic Duels on Halo terrain, which he is now completely and hopelessly addicted to, and talking about the adventure to come. It was a blast, and so much so that I forgot to pack a Heroscape army or two. So, suffice to say, I thought I would be hosed.
Now it wasn't all fun and games because I had some work to do in Columbus in the morning, so I headed to my appointments while Mark did his thing, and later we'd hook back up at the convention. It's the story of my life: work always gets in the way of fun, just as it did at Trashfest. We entered the center and I was told that a 5$ pass would get me into the dealer hall, but to actually play in any games, I'd need the 35$ deal. What a crock of shit. Anyhow, 35$ later, I was back on the road to go buy some metal waste.
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A week or so ago I received a very advance copy of Battleship Galaxies, one of the most anticipated games of the year, and from the time I opened the box I was mesmerized by the amount of time and detail that the folks up in Pawtucket have put into this game. I have to say that I'm utterly impressed. From the player shields that allow you to hide your reserve forces behind Saturn, to the well illustrated cards, to the great looking ships, everything is absolutely perfect.
I'm not shocked, since these guys are the same ones who developed some of my favorite games such as Battleball and Heroscape, but since there has been very little in the way of press on this game, I wasn't sure what to think. Now that I've played it over ten times, I can tell you without reservation that it was wholly worth the wait.
Battleship Galaxies is nothing like the old Battleship game that every person not living in abject squalor has played at least once in your life. Oh no, this is not that game, not remotely. There is also the conjecture that this is just Heroscape in space, since Craig Van Ness was the principal designer along with two other Heroscape masters, Colby Dauch and Jerry Hawthorne. That, also, is absolute rubbish, and not only does this game not share much kinship with that particular game, it's quite unique when viewed against other space-based tactical games, other than the concepts that have been around since H.G. Wells and the like had first envisioned travel through the aether over a century ago.
As Luke, Dale, and J.P. from the Opinionated Gamers said when they played my copy, no more can you say, "You sunk my battleship!" Saying, "You sunk my F-51 Blue Sparrow Small Fighter" simply doesn't roll off the tongue as easily. Players select a side, choose a fleet size, and then choose their ships and tactics cards in order to prepare for battle. Every decision, from the minute you choose a side, makes a difference in this game, and what truly makes it special is that it's not simply a toe-to-toe blunt force combat game, it's far more about making executive decisions at the right time and utilizing what you have in the most valuable way you can.
Then there's about 100 tactics cards or so, most having three copies each, with half applying to each faction, as well as two reference cards. These cards are all very nicely illustrated and tie into both the theme and the comic book, so for those who took the time to read it, you'll get a sense of 'caring' about the characters in the context of the overall story. The purpose of these is to recreate events on the battlefield, such as attaching a flag officer to a ship to provide a command bonus, or to equip a ship with extraordinarily devastating ordnance, to send an away team to sabotage or board enemy vessels, and other such things.
To add to the goodness in the box, there's these two really well built cardstock shields that provide you a way to obscure your forces to recreate a skirmish where neither side knows the force strength of the other. There's two large, quad-fold boards that can be played separately or laid together for larger playfields, both of which are nicely illustrated with space scenery such as nebuale and stars, as well as having marked spaces for nicely illustrated, and varied, tiles that are laid face down and provide boons or hazards during gameplay. There's also two energy references that are accompanied by two thematic pegs with which to track your fleet's shared pool of energy. The purpose of this is to limit what a fleet can do on its turn, and the design is such that it's very simple to track.
In this day and age of nearly unfathomable game rules, this is a breath of fresh air. It's about time someone started making rulebooks that don't require sixteen pages of errata on the company website in order to play.
The back of the manual has eight built-in scenarios that are both challenging and interesting, and vary from the simple decisions of your starting fleet all the way through giving both sides a relatively complex objective and leaving it up to the players how to best achieve it. From top to bottom, this is a very well designed game.
Finally, I should note that you can only have one named ship on a side, so not only is this not a collectible game, there is no real draw to go out and buy multiple sets of this in order to enhance the experience. It's completely stand alone, and there's no more you need to buy to make the game better. Well, that's until the almost-certain expansions hit the shelves, but quite honestly, there's enough game in this box as-is that I think it will be a good while before you're clamoring for new units and tactics cards. I'd also be surprised if a crop of Hasbro-created and fan-created scenarios didn't start popping up all over the place.
The background comic underscores how cool a story the game surrounds, if a little cliche in concept yet strong in execution, and I'd really like to see how it plays out. As a total Star Wars nerd and a disciple of the Emperor of Mankind, I was a little unsure of how I'd like the story since Star Wars is one hell of a hard fictional universe to compete with, but the comic, the cards, and the ships all have done an excellent job of keeping me interested.
Now that you know what's in the box and a little about the game, let's talk more about the gameplay itself, because nice bits are nice to look at, but they don't always equate into something I even remotely want to play. Luckily, this game has been like heroin to a junkie for me so far, with no sign of letting up.
Now that a fleet's been selected, the rubber hits the road. Each team draws five cards from their deck, with the ship cards and models hiding behind their shields, they determine who plays first. The first team or player will move their energy marker to five and the opponent will move theirs to ten. It's at this point that the game begins in earnest, and the bloodletting can now ensue.
Players' turns are in order, and always have three phases to complete before ending their turn. The first phase is the energy phase where players add ten energy points to their counter and draw a single tactic card from their deck. There is a hand limit of ten cards per side, so if you've hit your limit, you aren't allowed to draw a new one.
Going back to the use of tactics cards, these can be played at whatever time is specifically listed on the card, so players need to keep this in mind so they don't forget to play a critical card and lose an opportunity. Another key point is that cards often cost energy to bring into play, so the smart admiral will keep a small reserve of energy to be sure to be able to play a card when they wish.
The second phase of the game is the deployment phase, and this is when ships are launched either from the reserve or from a carrier onto the battlefield. To do this, players simply look at the ship's card that they wish to deploy, reduce their energy amount by that value, and then place it on the board. Ships coming into play from the reserve start on the back starting line of the playfield, which is highlighted white, and ships launched from a carrier are put into play adjacent to that carrier.
A very slick mechanism for launching loaded carriers is that behind your screen, without announcing it, you can place all carried ship cards underneath the launched carrier card, which is placed near the playfield so that all players can see it.
I've effectively used this to launch surprise attacks, drawing in enemies to my capital ship while subtly reserving energy for the planned counterattack. It's devilishly satisfying to have your opponent believe that you've left yourself exposed, drawing them in for the anticipated death blow, just to launch two squadrons of fighters and a frigate, causing the opponent to loudly utter words not actually listed in a Miriam-Webster dictionary. The cards are reasonably thin, and if you line them up to hide the transported ship cards, it's one hell of a way to ruin a buddy's day. On the downside, if your carrier is destroyed before you can launch your fighters, all hands are lost.
Once the deployment phase is done, players can now start the activation phase, and that's where the plaxma (yes, plasxma, not plasma) bolts start to fly. Each ship has an activation cost, which again is noted in energy points, and a player will activate each ship they elect to in turn, moving and attacking with each. Each ship has a move value associated with it, and once it's been moved if the player chose to move it, you can check each weapon's range on board to determine if they have a valid target.
If you can attack, you can use all weapons on board that are within range to attack, and to do this you must spend energy to charge them. The charge amount is listed on the card, and all of the stock weapons have a charge value of zero, so you get free shots if you use only your stock weapons. Tactics cards can be attached, as noted, and some of these act as secondary or tertiary weapons which do require a charge to fire.
Regarding movement, a key strategic aspect is the effects of Electronic Countermeasure damage. If any ship comes in contact with an enemy ship, the player who was approached may roll the D8 die, and on a roll of five or higher, the encroaching ship takes damage. Damage is dealt depending on size, with large ships taking three damage and small ships only taking one. Certain ships are immune to this, and these make fine boarding vessels, provided you have a sabotage card in hand and the energy to activate it.
Some weapons allow for more than one attack, and players can attack any valid target they wish so they're not locked into attacking a target with a weapon that has multiple attacks if you anticipate destroying it on the first shot. Also, some weapons have limitations or bonuses against some targets, such as a point defense cannon array that can only attack small ships or a weapon that passes shields and deals direct damage.
Some ships also have powers that affect targeting, such as the Wretch fighters that can't be attacked by nonadjacent ships when adjacent to an enemy ship. Others have powers that affect range and strength of attacks, so when developing a fleet and tactics deck it's imperative to consider these powers, as well as card powers that can affect targeting and damage.
As noted, for each attack you make you must roll the dice. Your opponent will then refer to the target ship's card and determine if it was a hit or not based on the schematic grid illustration. If a shielded ship takes damage, you simply remove the blue shield markers from that ship's base, but if it's shields are depleted, you place red damage pegs on the base. If a ship has exceeded its hull value, it is utterly destroyed and removed from the playfield. Again, if an unshielded ship takes a critical hit based upon the hit location rolled, that ship is instantly blown into a fine powder, with all hands lost to a vacuumy grave.
Play continues with each side taking turns playing their phases until either the scenario objective is completed, one side is completely devastated, or if both sides have run through all of their tactics cards twice. I should mention that when you run out of cards the first time, you simply shuffle your discard pile, but if you run out again, you're out of luck for the rest of the game and cannot draw any new cards. In the case of a premature end due to running out of cards, the player with the highest combined launch value of all remaining launched ships is declared the victor.
In the final analysis, I can say that I unequivocally, absolutely adore this game. It does almost everything I want a space battle game to do and it has little in the way of worthless chrome rules. I've played everything from Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles and Hard Vacuum to Battlefleet Gothic and Starmada, and this one is hands-down the most fun to play. I would put this up against its so-called peers any day of the week and I'd bet good money that the opposition would lose that Pepsi Challenge all day long and twice on Sunday.
The bits, the theme, the rules, the art, and everything about the game screams to the heavens that it was well tested, well balanced, and has been put through the wringer to render off all the fat, leaving it a very lean, very approachable light tactical war game that will stand the test of time.
Why Battleship Galaxies Is Out Of This World:
- The components are absolutely top notch, with huge production value
- The rules are simple enough to learn easily, but allow for tremendous strategic options
- The story is compelling enough to interest you, but not so cumbersome it becomes a liability
- The sheer variety of ships and tactics cards is staggering for the $50.00-ish price point
- There's a friggin comic book in there, man, and it's not an afterthought
Why The Wretch Aren't The Only Ones Retching:
- I would have liked to see more weapons and boarding tactics cards rather than multiples
- As much as I hate to admit it, I'd have liked to be able to have multiple squadrons of like fighters
- I would've liked to have seen a wider variety of vessels such as corvettes, repair ships, destroyers and the like
- The boarding aspect of the game is a hair on the weak side, but effective
Overall:
If you like space fleet games, and you're sick of spending 10 hours simulating a battle between two fighters, this is totally the way to go. Hell, if you like ANY tactical light war games, this is the way to go. It gets virtually everything right, and everything the design attempts to do it does exceedingly well. If you have money to spend on a game in the near future, this is the one.
Rating:
4.75/5 Stars
There's a preview on Heroscapers.com, here, which is run by Colby Dauch, one of the designers:
http://www.heroscapers.com/community/blog.php?b=1804
I'd love to tell you where to read the rules, or learn more, but you're going to have to wait because it's not on the Hasbro site yet! For the time being, check out the Battleship Galaxies game page on http://www.boardgamegeek.com/!
As soon as this is released, if you want to give it a try without dropping the $50.00, try http://www.boardgameexchange.com/ and rent it, or you can pre-order it right now at http://www.coolstuffinc.com/!
As you know by now, Wizards of the Coast has really been hitting the hobby gaming market very hard of late, with Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon coming out and changing the way a lot of people look at dungeon crawls. Well, they've done it again with Conquest of Nerath, which is a light war game which takes place in the realm of Nerath and has two to four people hacking, catapulting, vortexing, and burning one another's armies to death for control of the world. I got this advance copy from Wizards as I'd requested it some time ago due to my interest in their new breed of boardgames, and they were kind enough to oblige me.
I hadn't heard much about it, though, other than in Steve Avery's preview where he likened it to Risk, which is definitely not one of my favorites, but once it came in I realized he missed the mark in his assessment, thankfully.
It's not much like Risk at all, really, but instead is much more closely to related to Conquest of the Empire, but when you add in the large variety of different unit types, each with special abilities and weaknesses, the game really becomes a truly unique blend of proven mechanics and new, exciting concepts that results in a truly interesting game. I'm a big Milton Bradley Gamemaster fan as well as a long time fan of D&D, so this game seemed to be right up my alley when I read the rules, and after playing it, I've found that it is one of the best "Dudes on a Map" games, to steal Ken B's phrase, that I've played.
The concept of this game is that four factions, who may forge permanent alliances with another specific faction, roam the lands looking to start trouble, take lands from their enemies, and explore dungeons for treasures beyond imagination. The factions are made up of the standard fantasy fare you might expect from Dungeons and Dragons: elves, humans and dwarves, goblins and orcs, and the legions of the damned.
In a strange twist, the only alliances allowed are between the human/dwarf faction and the elves and between the goblin and undead factions. Further, there are a variety of ways to play in that you can either go for the long version that requires you to take all enemy capitals, or you can go for the shorter versions that allows for victory points to be used to determine a winner rather than having to play a ten hour slugfest if you just don't have that kind of time.
Now, if you based the game's value based solely on the contents of the box, that alone would be reason enough to set this up as Game of the Year. There's about 250 wee miniatures in four colors and nine types, there's maybe sixty small plastic poker chips in two colors, there's perfectly illustrated cardboard dungeon doors, gold bricks, and conquest markers, and then there's the dice. Oh, so many lovely little dice, and in lots of colors and denominations.
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