Game: Greater Space Battles - My first impression

I told the author of this game I would post the review I wrote last year. I should do it now before I forget.

**First published September 23, 2014**

Here is my review, of sorts, for the game I downloaded and tried out last week, Greater Space Battles, by Tom Wiggins.

The game was created to be solo-friendly, which I explained last time as the biggest reason for wanting to try it out. The designer states that he isn't totally happy with the rules, but that they worked for him well enough that he had fun with it.

I had fun with the game and thought most of the rules worked quite well. I put all of my battle-ready (what I had that was mountable and painted) spaceships into two teams of three ships each. One team I will call the Bolars, as the fleet consisted of two Bolar cruisers from the Yamato/Star Blazers series (plans found on the-blueprints.com) and a smaller ship of my own design which I classed as a destroyer. The other team was made entirely ships of my own design. I will call team two the Sharks, as the designs remind me of sharks. The Sharks had a heavy cruiser, a cruiser, and a frigate.

My scenario went thusly: the Sharks are cruising along at low speed (speed 1) and the Bolars come in to the attack at speed 3. A battle ensues.

I did not get to finish the game, though I played for at least 1.5 hours. Much of the first part was constantly looking at rules for what to do in each phase of a turn (initiative, power allocation, etc.). But things played out more smoothly as the game progressed.

In brief, energy allocation and critical hits are the items affected by ship-to-ship fire. For energy allocation, each ship has five power-up configurations to choose from. As they take on hits (rolls of 1-5 on hit dice), options are removed. These can be repaired in a damage control phase at the end of each turn. Rolls of 6 inflict critical hits. Amass enough crits to equal the size rating of the ship, and it's out of the game. Critical hits may also be repaired.

The results?
Turn 1: The Sharks and Bolars both speed up to close the distance between each other as quickly as possible. No shots fired.
Turn 2: Shooting starts from both sides at extreme ranges with no hits, as might be expected. The fleets continue to close, though at this point the two smaller ships veer off to stay out of range of the opposing big ships.
Turn 3: Bolar cruiser Blue fires on the Shark heavy cruiser, causing some damage. The Shark heavy cruiser sends a powerful shot at Blue Bolar and completely cripples it and deals a critical hit, leaving it drifting. The other ships fire, inflicting minor damage to each other. At the end of turn, Blue Bolar recovers two power options.
Turn 4: Blue Bolar is unlucky in energy allocation rolls and does not get any power for manoeuvres. It is basically useless for the turn. Purple Bolar is unable to fire. Bolar destroyer scores a 3-option hit on Shark cruiser. Blue Bolar fixes another power option and the critical hit.
Turn 5: Blue Bolar starts turning to rejoin the battle, the other ships, having shot past each other by this time, also use manoeuvres to prep for the next pass. The Bolar destroyer takes a critical hit from the Shark cruiser. The smaller ships have closed on each other (side by side actually) and fire. The Bolar destroyer fails to penetrate the Shark frigate's shields, but the Shark frigate rolls very well: a second crit. The Bolars are down one ship.
Turn 6: More manoeuvring and long range fire with little effect on the remaining ships.
Turn 7: More close-up fire, a critical hit dealt to the Shark cruiser. I ended the game as it was getting late.

Final score: Sharks maintain all ships, take 1 crit on cruiser. Bolars lose one ship (equal to 2 crits) and take a crit on the Blue cruiser.

Post-battle thoughts.

I forgot to mention that I played using one of the hex mats from my copy of Renegade Legion: Leviathan instead of measuring out distance as explained in the rules. I found this made movement and manoeuvring very easy.

All I had for energy allocation tokens were poker chips. These were too big and I need something smaller when I play again. I really liked the power allocation scheme. Having to roll and then choose an option that best suited the ship's situation with the power available from the roll was interesting. I think the reduction of options as a result of damage gives a real feeling that systems are damaged, despite not using the more common damage tracking method of marking check boxes.

I did not like the ability to repair critical hits. Since these are the only way to defeat a ship, I thought that fixing the damage would make the game go too long, so I started disregarding those repairs when rolled during the last third of the game. It was only by ignoring this rule that any ships were lost at all.

All in all, it was an enjoyable game to play solo. It would probably work rather well for two players, but all the rolling might take too long, I think that for two players I would rather try to play Full Thrust, if I were to convince someone else (probably one of my brothers) to play with me.

Thanks for reading. If you are even remotely interested in trying a space capital ship battle game, and have no-one else to play against, I recommend you try this game.

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