Thursday, March 30, 2006
Babylon 5 CGS
Although the number of Babylon 5 Component Game System players was supposed to be four last night, the Minbari never quite made it to the game, so Dave B. (Earth), Xavier (Centauri) and myself (Narn) sat down for a few hours to play out a three-player game.
Xavier and I arrived at Dave's place by around 7:30. After some 'za and drinks, we settled in to play. Since Xavier does the best Londo imitation, he got the Centauri (yes, seriously, I swear that's how we decided what Xavier was going to play). We divvied up our own tokens, set our homeworlds in position and then randomly drew tiles and placed them face down on the board.
The first problem appeared rather quickly. As we spread out ships out to start exploring, Xavier ended up right beside Ragesh 3 (how appropriate) and Dave ended up right beside another planet he could colonize. I found an asteroid field and the slipstream tile, which mean by the second turn, Dave and Xavier had pulled way ahead of me in gross economy. As they both discovered other planets to colonize, I discovered a wormhole.
Let's just say that Narn space kept my empire quite small. That said, though, I built up my military forces and sent freighters towards Babylon 5 so I could at least boost my gross revenue by four points (two for each freighter docked with B5 -- although it took a few turns for them to get there).
As the Earthers and the Centauri spread out and started to come into contact with each, they started fighting over colonies. Meanwhile, since I was weakened by my lack of revenue-generated colonies, I used treachery as my means. I tried to make the game resemble the series a bit. As soon as Xavier's Centauri had built a base on Ragesh 3, I played the Ravaged Colony card on that base, forcing Xavier to spend some cash. Another turn later, I played the Death Blossom card on poor President Santiago, nixing one of Dave's people. Then I set to work sending Tu'Pari in to kill off Dr. Franklin. Unfortunately, that was the first and last assassination Tu'Pari was able to complete, as Xavier and Dave had both developed a means to block Tu'Pari shortly after Franklin's much-deserved death. ;)
As we neared midnight, Dave had managed to get enough power on Babylon 5 to swing any vote in any direction he chose, so the few diplomatic cards that were coming out were being decided by the Earthers by that point. There was very little Xavier and I could do to stop Dave's political power, unfortunately.
Of course, this showed another flaw in the game. The game really wasn't written to take advantage of voting and diplomacy, so the rules for such seemed tacked on. Quite frankly, the poor diplomatic rules force the game to play more as an economic and military game rather than an economic and diplomacy game. This really detracts from the feel of the game, unfortunately.
Shortly after midnight, we finally called the game. Nobody was even close to winning, although I had certainly lost. The game is won by having twice as much gross economy as each other player. I had a gross economy of 14, whereas Dave had something like 41 or 43 and Xavier had about 37 or 39. While the Narn were right out of the race (even my brief military attacks on Earth's first colony failed miserably), Dave and Xavier were still so close in points that the game would have probably taken several more hours of play to declare a winner.
As Xavier and I were heading out, the three of us chatted about how the game could be fixed. While there are certainly some elements of the game that are pretty neat, the rulebook is an unreadable mess and many of the rules don't seem to make sense. Additionally, the game seems to be unwinnable in a short period of time, and I really don't think the fun of it lasts all that many hours.
There was some talk about rewriting the rules, making up more voting/diplomatic cards and setting a turn limit to the game (with winning conditions based on who had the best economy at the end of X number of turns), but now that I've had a few more hours to think about it, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Dave and Xavier may still feel otherwise.
Still, I'd like to give the B5 CGS one more try, preferably with a full four players.
Xavier and I arrived at Dave's place by around 7:30. After some 'za and drinks, we settled in to play. Since Xavier does the best Londo imitation, he got the Centauri (yes, seriously, I swear that's how we decided what Xavier was going to play). We divvied up our own tokens, set our homeworlds in position and then randomly drew tiles and placed them face down on the board.
The first problem appeared rather quickly. As we spread out ships out to start exploring, Xavier ended up right beside Ragesh 3 (how appropriate) and Dave ended up right beside another planet he could colonize. I found an asteroid field and the slipstream tile, which mean by the second turn, Dave and Xavier had pulled way ahead of me in gross economy. As they both discovered other planets to colonize, I discovered a wormhole.
Let's just say that Narn space kept my empire quite small. That said, though, I built up my military forces and sent freighters towards Babylon 5 so I could at least boost my gross revenue by four points (two for each freighter docked with B5 -- although it took a few turns for them to get there).
As the Earthers and the Centauri spread out and started to come into contact with each, they started fighting over colonies. Meanwhile, since I was weakened by my lack of revenue-generated colonies, I used treachery as my means. I tried to make the game resemble the series a bit. As soon as Xavier's Centauri had built a base on Ragesh 3, I played the Ravaged Colony card on that base, forcing Xavier to spend some cash. Another turn later, I played the Death Blossom card on poor President Santiago, nixing one of Dave's people. Then I set to work sending Tu'Pari in to kill off Dr. Franklin. Unfortunately, that was the first and last assassination Tu'Pari was able to complete, as Xavier and Dave had both developed a means to block Tu'Pari shortly after Franklin's much-deserved death. ;)
As we neared midnight, Dave had managed to get enough power on Babylon 5 to swing any vote in any direction he chose, so the few diplomatic cards that were coming out were being decided by the Earthers by that point. There was very little Xavier and I could do to stop Dave's political power, unfortunately.
Of course, this showed another flaw in the game. The game really wasn't written to take advantage of voting and diplomacy, so the rules for such seemed tacked on. Quite frankly, the poor diplomatic rules force the game to play more as an economic and military game rather than an economic and diplomacy game. This really detracts from the feel of the game, unfortunately.
Shortly after midnight, we finally called the game. Nobody was even close to winning, although I had certainly lost. The game is won by having twice as much gross economy as each other player. I had a gross economy of 14, whereas Dave had something like 41 or 43 and Xavier had about 37 or 39. While the Narn were right out of the race (even my brief military attacks on Earth's first colony failed miserably), Dave and Xavier were still so close in points that the game would have probably taken several more hours of play to declare a winner.
As Xavier and I were heading out, the three of us chatted about how the game could be fixed. While there are certainly some elements of the game that are pretty neat, the rulebook is an unreadable mess and many of the rules don't seem to make sense. Additionally, the game seems to be unwinnable in a short period of time, and I really don't think the fun of it lasts all that many hours.
There was some talk about rewriting the rules, making up more voting/diplomatic cards and setting a turn limit to the game (with winning conditions based on who had the best economy at the end of X number of turns), but now that I've had a few more hours to think about it, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Dave and Xavier may still feel otherwise.
Still, I'd like to give the B5 CGS one more try, preferably with a full four players.
// posted by Chris @ 10:09 AM 
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