> Imre A. Szabo wrote:
I actually like the system. Its a nice change of scale from FT, where you
command an entire task force and still have a good game, in B5W I can have
just as good a game and only have to worry about a single ship and its
fighters. I do agree about player aid sheets and the maps and counters. a
player aid sheet would be a godsend and i don't ever plan on using the map
sheets once the hexless rules (pormised in the narn centari war suplement if
memory serves me correctly) comes out. the die rolling isn't so bad once you
get the hang of it. the game uses simoultanious fire so players can pair off
and resolve all gun play fairly quickly (once agian a player aid sheet would
help greatly). Fighters are fairly effective aginst captial ships. tho there
are many suggestions for fixing this...
for a quick run-down of the game...
opening phase: everybody sets the electronic warfare and declares
acceleration/decceleration, then rolls
initative
movement phase: ships then fighters move according to initative (notice that
you had to declare
accel/deccel a ohase ago, makes movement pretty tricky, especally for
fighters)
fire phase: simoultanious fire takes place now. thats it. not to difficult
once you get the hang of it. but diffenetly not like FT.
> On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Scott B. Jaqua wrote:
http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu
> [quoted text omitted]
Just got the Earth Force Source book!
I am *most* impressed with the vector movement system. A superior variant on
the system used in MAYDAY by GDW. ( the Mayday system needed *three* counters
for each ship!)
And the rest of the game is polished and fast moving, like the parent Full
Thrust that we know and love.
I'm going to be playing a few games of EFSB along side some games of B5 Wars,
but just by reading the rule books I'm already biased in favor of EFSB.
> At 20:51 1/20/98, Winchell Chung wrote:
For the sake of those of us not flush enough to buy both, could you give a
rundown of how B5 Wars works? I've yet to meet anyone who owns, let alone
plays it....
> Jim 'Jiji' Foster wrote:
I've played B5 Wars alot. You roll dice to hit, you roll more dice for damage,
you roll even more dice for locations, and you roll still more dice for
critical hits. Too much pointless die rolling for my likes.
The game components looks cheap, and there are no player aid sheets. Which
means if you don't want to have to dig through the rule book evertime a
critical hit is scored, you have to type up the critical hit charts yourself
(or memorize them). The background for the counters are too dark, so they
don't look as colorful as they ought. They are also mounted on cheap
cardboard. The map is straight black with white hexegons. Even SFB has "color"
maps that are much nicer to look at.
Don't fight the Mimbari. The official point values are only correct if the
Mimbari player is stupid. If he's smart, your going to pounded scrap while
only doing at most moderate damage in a "equal point value" fight.
The fighters are too powerful compared to what you see in the show.
EarthForce is good "up close and personal" (short range). The Centauri are
good at medium range. The Mimbari are good at long range. The
Narns aren't good at anything (so-so at everything).
That's B-5 Wars.
Jim: There has been a pretty good discussion on B5 Wars on rec.games.board and
rec.games.miniatures.misc. You can search old newsgroup postings, if you
have web access, from http://www.dejanews.com or
http://www.reference.com,
though Deja News seems to have archives going back further. Try individual
searches with B5 and Babylon.
Quick skinny on it is basically that it's put out by folks that have done Star
Fleet Battles extensions, that this seems better, as well as more tailored to
B5. Still on hexes. Least, it hasn't developed a rule set
worthy of a lawyer/solicitor's office... (Hmm.... barristers would have
more books, right?)
The_Beast
jfoster@kansas.net (Jim 'Jiji' Foster) on 01/20/98 11:16:37 PM
Please respond to FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
cc: (bcc: Doug Evans/CSN/UNEBR)
Subject: Re: EFSB
> At 20:51 1/20/98, Winchell Chung wrote:
For the sake of those of us not flush enough to buy both, could you give a
rundown of how B5 Wars works? I've yet to meet anyone who owns, let alone
plays it....
> At 20:51 1/20/98, Winchell Chung wrote:
I have the game (if you can call it that). 1st let me state for the record,
this is all a matter of my personal opinion. Rant mode on.
1) The EFSB is a supplement and yet it covers more ships then B5W.
2) If you like Star Fleet Battles, you will like the detail level in B5W.
Other wise, a ships systems diagram for each fighter, is a little much.
3) The quality of the miniature leaves much to be desired. In addition
miniatures are coming to market at a snails pace. (This is not to say I won't
be using B5W minis with EFSB when I can actually get some.)
4) Turn sequence is very time consuming.
All things considered, If you want to play a 2 or four ship combat, it is ok.
For a fleet battle, forget it.
> On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Scott B. Jaqua wrote:
Hopefully that will change very shortly. Agents of gaming used to contract Bad
Dog designs to do the casting for B5W. Needless to say, AOG was not happy
either over the the junk that Bad Dog was churning out. AoG now has complete
control over the casting of B5W miniatures. As for the mini schedule, things
have appeared to have picked up. I've recieved word from AoG that they are
releasing many capital ships at the end of the month (including EA ships and a
redesigned version of the Minbari warcrusier with more surface detail than the
Bad Dog version.). They are spinning them now and hop to ship them out on the
week of the 30th.
Later, Mark A. Siefert
"In my life, I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would
pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones and then throw themselves
without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself. Never
surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help
but be moved to tears by their courage... Their stubborn nobility. When they
ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns, they used knives
and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent."
-Emperor Londo Mollari
Re: Humanity and the Earth/Minbari War.
"Babylon 5: In the Beginning."
Excerpts from FT: 21-Jan-98 Re: EFSB by Tre Chipman@intelli.com
> Personally, I didn't care for it much. The ships seemed to be a
Actually, given the way that the way that damage can penetrate through the
outer layers of the hull to the interior structure, not to mention the way
that some weapons (or, a volley from a ship) can just slice through a large
number of boxes, I don't think they did too poorly. Admittedly, they could've
had the same effect by making weapons do less damage, and having fewer boxes,
but anyway.
As for the time, though, it *can* take a while. A friend and I played a Primus
BC vs. G'Quon cruiser battle (no fighters), and it basically ended up a
draw... one side of my G'Quon fell off partway through the battle, and the
majority of my weapons were destroyed, but I still had both of my main cannon.
My friend's Primus was reduced to near
scrap-metal with only two of the secondaries left, and he turned tail
and ran.... A lot of fun, but it did take several hours, though the
pizza break and let's-get-to-know-the-rules didn't help. Unfortunately,
my firend's down in florida nad I haven't played again since.
One comment, though: Chris Weuve's (sp?) vector movement system is, IMO,
a *lot* better than the half-*ssed movement system in the B5Wars
rules....
Later,
> For the sake of those of us not flush enough to buy both, could you
[...]
> All things considered, If you want to play a 2 or four ship combat,
Ya know, that's amusing. When my group was playtesting it, we had the same
feeling, but the AOG guys kept telling us this was meant for fleet battles.
Heh. :)
Mk
> At 11:16 PM 1/20/98 -0600, you wrote:
Personally, I didn't care for it much. The ships seemed to be a little overly
complex and clunky. They had increased the level of game resolution so that
even fighters had a few systems and damage boxes, and at that scale, the ships
ended up having tons more damage boxes that I thought were really necessary. I
got the feeling that ships could have battles that lasted nearly forever, and
given the frequency which ships bite the dust in B5, I didn't think it
captured the flavor or spirit of the show very well. Some of the manuvers were
kinda cool, but overall, I was pretty disappointed. On the otherhand, I think
that EFSB did an excellent job, but then again, I've always felt that FT was
perfect for modeling B5 games. Come to think of it, any of the B5 rule mods
online applied to FT are superior to B5W.
Take care,
> Don't fight the Mimbari. The official point values are only correct
If you've seen "In the Beginning", some of the battle sequences in there
should give you an idea of just how dangerous Minbari fighters actually are.
Ask Earthforce regulars who survived the Battle of the Line how nasty they
are! (seriously, their point value may be off (on the low side) but they
should be dangerous if the flavour of the show is to be preserved).
> On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
> If you've seen "In the Beginning", some of the battle sequences in
Actually, I think this makes a good point. Point value is not really for
"balancing battles" - in real life, if the enemy has a force as capable
as yours, you're both likely to try to avoid conflict if you can. Rather, it's
useful afterwards for judging the skill involved. If your
1,600-point fleet vaporised my Strikeboat, that's not much credit to
your skill - but if I managed to take out one of your escorts first,
that's a lot of credit to me...
The applicability to this situation, I think, is that the Minmari should have
point values in keeping with their strength; but when setting up a scenario,
"equal points value" is not the way to do it.
> For the sake of those of us not flush enough to buy both, could you
Well, I don't mind the game and in some ways I prefer it over EFSB rules.
Don't get wrong, I love Jon's rules and I'll be playing with them a helluva
lot, but i think that B5Wars is good in its own way.
When I want a more detailed battle with few ships, I play B5Wars. Sometimes
its fun working out how much power you've got where, how to use it and why. I
like the level of detail, although the detail on the fighter sheets is a bit
too much for my tastes. All in all I like the game, but I only use it for
smaller battles of only one or two ships per side. Any more and it just gets
bogged down. I also don't think its too cumbersome as once you get to know the
rules, its really quite easy.
But I love the EFSB rules as they are very similar to my personal favourite
Full Thrust. The only gripe is the lack of detail on the weapons and the use
of Energy Mines. With only Pulse Batteries, Beam Systems, EMP Guns and Energy
Mines, I like the higher level of detail on the weapons listed for the ships
in B5Wars. And I think that while nice and dangerous like they should be, the
range of the Energy Mines in EFSB is a little too short, but that's just my
view from what I've seen in the show. But I must say that I love the VMS rules
is EFSB and the game is simple and easy to learn.
> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Jim 'Jiji' Foster wrote:
> For the sake of those of us not flush enough to buy both, could you
Comparison with EFSB, it's a matter of taste. B5 Wars sacrifices a bit of
playability for more detail. For instance, the ship damage sheets have damage
boxes to check off for *every single weapon, drive, engine and sensor*!!
The game comes with some very nice cardboard ship counters with wonderful
illustrations. The game comes with 12 metal miniatures, 3 fighters for
EarthForce, Narn, Centauri and Minbari.
The combat system is ok, but the movement
system is pretty ad-hoc. Owners of the game
should subsitute the vector movement system variant developed by Christopher
Weuve and Arius Kaufmann, available at
http://www.wizard.net/~caw/vms.htm
The Hit Location chart determines what item was hit. Some items are in the
ship's core, these are called "Primary" items.
The hit table uses 1d20, rolls of 1-18 hit
various non-primary items (thrusters, weapons,
jump engines, etc). Rolls of 19-20 mean
that one got lucky, and gets to roll 1d20 on the Primary Hit Location chart
(sensors, engines, hangars, reactors, C and C).
Weapons have different firing options. Standard: take the volley's damage
points, subtract the armor of the item hit (each weapon, drive, engine, and
sensor has their own armor rating!) and check the remaining damage points off
the item. When all of the points are gone, the item is toast.
Raking: the volley's damage points are divided into separate volleys of 10,
with the remainder going into a less than 10 volley. Each volley gets a
separate roll on the hit location chart.
Piercing: the volley is divided into two volleys. The first is treated like a
raking volley. The second volley gets to roll on the Primary hit location
chart!
Plasma: as standard, except the amount of damage points goes down with each
hex of range between firer and target ship.
Sustained: only in the most advanced weapons, when these hit, by feeding power
into the weapon on the next turn, it continues to inflict damage on the
target.
When a ship system undergoes damage, it has to roll on the critical hit table.
50% chance of nothing happening, 50% chance of something dire.
If a system has all its damage boxes destroyed, and there are damage points
left over, the remaining damage goes to "structure". There is a Forward
structure, Aft, Port, Starbord, and Primary. When a structure block is totally
destroyed, *all* items attached to that block are destroyed as well!
In summary: EFSB is for people who want more action, faster gameplay, and less
detail. B5 Wars is the opposite.
IMHO, EFSB gives more "bang for the buck".
> Winchell Chung wrote:
I disagree with people who claim that B5 Wars is more detailed then EFSB. B5
Wars has more pointless detail then the EFSB, and yet leaves out some key
aspects.
The single most important aspect of all ship combat games from the late 1800's
to the far future should be fire control directors (not really
listed in B5-Wars). If you take them out, your opponent can not return
fire accurately. The problem is that they have to be mounted on the exposed
surface of the ship (how are you going to mount a radar that works behind 12"
armour), and can not be heavily armoured (when was the last time you heard of
a radar dish with 12" armour built in???). The German Battleship Bismark was
destroyed by British (or forced to scuttle, depending on who you believe),
because it could not return fire accurately after its fire control directors
were destroyed. In modern warships, try launching a missile without a fire
control director... EFSB deals with this quite well with threshold checks. You
can lose them all after only minor damage (first threshold check). I know this
from experience...
Another problem with B5 Wars is the way damage is handled. These weapons are
going to be able to knock out system on the opposite side of the ship from
where the ship was hit. It's called penetration. EFSB deals with it elagantly
by threshold checks, B5 Wars ignores it inspite of all its "detail."
The last major problem with damage is that in the show, once in a while you
see ships suffer catastrophic damage. It exists in EFSB, but is not in "more
detailed" B5 Wars. Lucky shots have been a part of warfare for centuries.
EFSB has its problems too. Some of the ships just don't look right. It does
not convert easily to a hex map. Fighters are too abstract (compared to too
powerful in B5 Wars).
> At 08:16 1/21/98, Scott B. Jaqua wrote:
Ack!:P I think I'll avoid it on that basis alone... that's one of the reasons
I like FT so much. It's a game I can play, and more importantly, teach to just
about anyone in a matter of minutes.
> 3) The quality of the miniature leaves much to be desired. In addition
Hmm. What, specifically about the quality turns you off? I also was planning
on getting some (once the glacier finally oozes into my local game shop) and
putting them on FT bases. Are they as bad as the Star Blazers minis that I've
seen about?
> At 09:47 1/21/98, Doug_Evans/CSN/UNEBR@UNebMail.UNeb.EDU wrote:
Looks like I'm going to have to start lurking on r.g.m.m. again...
> Quick skinny on it is basically that it's put out by folks that have
Well, it may not yet, but if it's designed by SFB aficianados, surely it will
in time, ne? Blood will tell....
> At 21:12 1/21/98, Winchell Chung wrote:
<snip> Although I appreciate the detail....
> In summary: EFSB is for people who want
This mirrors darn near everybody else's opinion as well. As I think I'm
rapidly mutating into the older/simpler type of gamer (just to cross
threads:) I think I'll stick with EFSB.... which I bought first anyway because
$20 seemed like a lot better risk than $50....
> IMHO, EFSB gives more "bang for the buck".
The survey is probably pretty biased, given than most everyone here is a
serious fan of FT... I wonder if the proportion of gamers for/against
B5W would be the same in a more general segment of the gaming population?
Assuming there is such a thing...
I'm going to have to throw in my piece here.
I began playing wargames with SFB when I was about fourteen. I played for
about two years until I realised how much dough I'd dumped on the game so far,
and how many rules upon rules were piling up. Got out of it. Had some brief
affairs with land combat games, like 40K (Urgh!) before I discovered FT and SG
and DS. Now, I have owned B5W at one time. I only
had to glimpse at the rules, the SSD-style ship sheets, and the Megahex
copy maps to know what system had influenced AoG in the making. Needless to
say, I unloaded that game like a hot potato. I then picked up the EFSB. This
is exactly what I wanted. An easy, realistic, quick, satisfying game, fully
compatible with FT and one of my favourite background settings: B5. You can
bet that I'll buy the B5W minis, though, as I think someone else has already
mentioned...
GZG's systems are some of the very best on the market. Simple, playable,
with minimal record-keeping, high realism, a totally engaging background
of their own, but also totally convertible, and AFFORDABLE. For a student like
myself, this is key. A company out to make a good game without screwing the
gamers on the receiving end gets my vote every day of the week and twice on
Sunday. So far, GZG and DP9 top the list.
Hats off to Jon, and Mike for their excellent work. Here you have a gamer for
life.
> Drew M Losos wrote:
Had
> some brief affairs with land combat games, like 40K (Urgh!) before I
Needless
> to say, I unloaded that game like a hot potato. I then picked up the
Speaking for myself, I'm not yet willing to drop B5W just yet. I admit there
are quite a few areas that need fixing, and these can be repaired in later
editions. I too like simplicity in games. However, I don't think that B5W can
even be compared in complexity with SFB. I have found the turns to be much
faster, the rules to be much easier (though not as simple as FT).
The areas of B5Ws that I don't like are the ham-handed vector
movement system. Nice try boys, but you can do soooo much better. That, and I
think that the weapons are a little enemic. They can cripple, but not destroy
like they do on the show.
Later,
[quoted original message omitted]
(snip)
> 3) The quality of the miniature leaves much to be desired. In addition
I understand the the quality will improve once the new minis come out. But the
ones currently in my local shop are all made by Bad Dog. I raise dogs, and it
looks like one of mine chewed on the minis before they went into the pack.
Flash is a way of life with these minis. They have poor detail and a bad case
of mold marks. The hole for the stand is about 3 times to big around and not
very deep. You have no choice but to glue the minis to the stands. Back when I
used to play STFB (18 years ago), at least the minis fit on the bloody stands.
> J. Scott Miller wrote:
Got it in one!
'Neath Southern SKies
Does anyone know where I can pick up a copy of this? I ordered one from Amazon
but they just told me they can no longer get it.
> Does anyone know where I can pick up a copy of this? I ordered one
Roger,
The bad news is this has been out of print for some time. I'll look around for
you in my area, but I don't hold much hope. There are some used book and used
game sites on the web. I would try these next, if I were you.
***
The bad news is this has been out of print for some time. I'll look around for
you in my area, but I don't hold much hope. There are some used book and used
game sites on the web. I would try these next, if I were you.
***
Good news is that a lot of folks bought then dumped it when they found the
RPG not their taste. I've seen it around for $10-15 in used bins. If
anyone's
interested in a used, not totally-trashed one for about that, drop me a
note
Roger asked:
> Does anyone know where I can pick up a copy of this? I ordered one
There's a couple at my local RPG store on the shelf. But that's in New
Zealand, and for about US$40.00, rough conversion.
Let me know if you want it.
In a message dated 1/31/2000 8:39:10 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> jaqua@centerlinewheels.com writes:
> Roger,
Titangames.com had a copy the last time I checked.
-Stephen