"Battlestars Vs. Basestars board game." Topic

If you like Battlestar Galactica themed miniatures games you may like a board game I've been working on. You can check it out here:

link

Here is a link to a zip file of all of the game components. The file is very large -- approximately 116 MB.

sdrv.ms/MUeaRg

The game map is approximately 3'x5' in size. I had it printed on a vinyl banner at allstatebanners.com and it works great.

I had the playing cards printed at make-a-deck.com and was very pleased with the results. In the zip file you will find two generic files: Colonial Deck Design and Cylon Deck Design. These files can be loaded in the card builder application at the make-a-deck website and order the two decks.

I use miniatures from FASA Hangar 18 for the Galactica and Pegasus and miniatures from the Fantasy Flight Games Battlestar Galactica board games. Other miniatures lines may work as well. The large hexes on the map board are about 3.75" across and the small hexes are about 1.25" across. If you don't have miniatures, you will find .pdf files you can use to print tokens for all of the ships and other units. I had my tokens and ship cards made at printplaygames.com/.

I also mounted my ship cards on magnetic sheet affixed to black chipboard and magnetized all of my playing pieces.

I welcome feedback on the wording in the rulebook and scenarios. The rules are complete, but the scenarios are still being play tested for balance. If you come across something ambiguous, contradictory or unbalanced please let me know so I can fix it.

Looks great! I'll d/l the files when I get to my desktop.

Thanks for sharing!

I keep resisting Playing Battlestar Galactica games but this one looks real cool. Nice job sir.

Hmm hexes within hexes… That sounds interesting and very handy for some games.

I really like this!

I just realized that the .pdf files for the small unit tokens contain a note incorrectly saying to trim the tokens down to .75". They should be trimmed to 1.25".

I'd say just from the looks of it I'm interested! Way kewl.

Way awesome cool looking game. Thank you for posting the links.

Thanks again!

I gather you detected the slight whine in my voice about working out the parts. ;->=

Right back to 'You da man!'

Doug

Good job sir!

Looks great.

I just posted your information/website at our BSGgaminginminiature yahoo group.

link

David G.
gamerarchitect.blogspot.com

CorSecEng, I would think the dual scale hex map would be very useful for naval wargames featuring aircraft carrier battles.

Assuming you are associated with the CorSecEng gaming supply company, I actually looked at your website for a suitable hex map for my game and was disappointed that I didn't find a dual scale hex map there. I have heard great things about your gaming mats from numerous people.

Allen57: Resistance is futile. Oops, wait, wrong universe.

Good stuff Daricles!

The rules are in .htm format, any possibility to get these in .pdf like the parts zip file?

Cheers
Kevin

Is it possible to ask some questions about the rules? Can I send you an email?

thanks!

Kevin,

I'll work on posting a .pdf version of the rules. It requires a little bit of tweaking to get the pagination right.

Alan

MichaelTaylor,

Sure, you can email questions to me at bloniarz@hotmail.com.

Alan

After some additional play testing, I updated the website with version 1.1 of the rules. The changes were minor:

Revision 1.1

Added an appendix to track revision history.

Missile movement – clarified that missiles are placed in an unoccupied launch point when launched by a battlestar or basestar.

Boarding Party Actions – boarding parties can now move to an adjacent ship location rather than along a fixed path from Launch Bay to Weapons to Command.

Fighter Combat – clarified that fighters can deal damage on a roll of a six when directly behind their target and within three small hexes. The previous wording led some people to believe the fighters had to be directly behind the target and adjacent to the target.

Resolving Damage against a Fighter Unit – added a hit point table and improved the wording a little bit without making any functional changes.

Civilian Ships in Combat – improved the wording a little bit without making any functional changes.

Some modifications were made to some of the scenario objectives (Attack on Colonial One, Escape From Ragnar Anchorage, Gather the Fleet). Scenarios are still being play tested for balance.

Kevin,

Here's a link to a .pdf of the rules (Rev 1.1). However, I recommend using the website since it will always have the current version of the rules.

sdrv.ms/1c8n6YS

Does anyone know where I can find a good top-down view of the resurrection ship?

I'd like to create a scenario involving the resurrection ship, but can't find a good top view of it to make a ship counter.

Thanks for the PDF Alan, I will keep looking at the website to keep up to date. Nice work on the game, need to sort this out and see if I can't interest a few of my buddies to play. I have a bunch of miniatures, half painted of course, that I've been wanting to get on the table so maybe your game will give me the motivation I need to push on.

Cheers
Kevin

The BvB website has been updated with a new Scenario: Battle at New Caprica.

Also, the components zip file has been updated to add some Dradis tokens that can be used to mark Raptors and Heavy Raiders that are using EW.

I will check it out again. I was still struggling with the print-and-assembly last announcment, but going back this weekend while on work, I'll give it another shot.

Thanks again!

Does anyone know where I can find a good top-down view of the resurrection ship?

Sorry, missed this before. I know there are some 3D models that you can rotate, perhaps at Shapeways. I'll do some searching. Might get an image, top down, out of one of those.

Doug

Thanks, Doug. I have some feelers out to try and pick up a resurrection ship cast in resin. Hopefully that will pan out.

Not a rotating model, but one man's attempt… ;->=

Doug

Amazing stuff! Looking forward to going through it all. And thank you for so generously sharing your hard work with us all.

Thanks, Doug! That will work until I can get my hands on a resin model.

This looks awesome!

Gonna have a good read through the rules this week when I get some time, but first impressions are very impressive!

top marks!

Thanks, CJ. I hope you enjoy BvB.

I welcome feedback on the rules and scenarios, especially play test results that can help me balance the scenario objectives.

Daricles, I ran a game of this yesterday for my local gaming group. I was fortunate enough to find some painted models at a Fall In flea market, but I'm trying to find a source for the metal models as the seller didn't know what brand these are. My questions for you, if you don't mind:
1. What are the effects on a large ship for a loss of the Command box? I found Weapons and Launch Bay, but couldn't find Command.
2. If you play a card to cancel the effect of a "remains in play" card, can the opposing player immediately play a "cancel the last card played" card to keep his "remains in play" in play?
3. Can you tell me which of the FFG BSG board games you got the Vipers, Raiders, and Heavy Raiders models from?
4. With only 12 fighters per Basestar Battlestar, it seems way too weak for the Cylons. In the series they always had waayyyy more fighters than the poor Colonials. Am I missing something about how many fighters each Basestar can put out?
Thank you for all the work you put into this game. We had a blast! One of my buddies, who DOESN'T play SciFi games, actually got excited and started coming up with ideas about playing the game. Thank you for your contribution to the hobby!

MIMW,

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the game! I'm happy to answer your questions.

1. When all of the command boxes on all of the ships under a player's control are damaged then that player can only play one card during each TEAM turn. So, if you control one ship and that ship's command box is damaged you can only play one card during the Human team's turn and one card during the Cylon Team's turn. (Cards that have to be played immediately do not count toward this limit). If you control two ships then the restriction doesn't trigger until the command box on both ships under your control are damaged

The rules for this are in the second paragraph in the section on playing cards from your hand.

2. Yes. You can cancel the effect of a card that cancels a card that remains in play resulting in the remains in play card remaining in play.

3. The Viper MkIIs, Raptors, Raiders and Heavy Raiders are in the basic BSG board game. The Viper MkVIIs are in the Exodus expansion and the Basestars are in the Pegasus expansion. Unfortunately, it takes multiple copies of each to get enough minis for BvB unless you can cast your own. I ordered my Galactica and Pegasus from Ravenstar Studios.

4. When you say it seems weak do you mean in terms of game balance or do you mean in comparison to the numbers seen on the show?

If you mean weak for game balance then I haven't seen that outcome in my games so far. The fighter balance has been pretty even in the games I've seen so far. However, most of my playtesting has been with four or five players with only a few two ar three player games.

The important thing for the Cylons is that their destroyed fighters go back into their pool of reserves and can be launched again whereas the human fighters are removed from the game when they are destroyed.

I have noticed that new players tend to want to conduct combat with their ships a lot rather than launching fighters. I have found it best to prioritize launching fighters until you have about 9 or 10 in play.

MIMW, which scenario did your group play? Did you find the scenario objectives to be properly balanced?

Thanks so much for the answers and info! We played Zero Hour…scenario one…with two players, plus myself running the game and my historicals-only buddy helping to run it. Since it was our first game, we talked through a lot of things and we missed some things. I missed the bit about the Cylon fighters going to reserve when destroyed; the Galactica couldn't launch more than one fighter per turn to save their lives! In the end, the Cylon player had three "remains in play" cards on the table…Cylon Assassin, Fuel Shortage, and Ammo Shortage…so the Galactica was ham-strung and finally succumbed to a salvo of missiles. Interestingly to my comment about the numbers of fighters (which I realized after hitting Submit was dumb!), there was only one Colonial fighter destroyed to about six Cylon fighters. It was the cards and the missles that won the game.

Yeah, I can't afford multiple copies of the board game so I guess I'll have to go with one of the above.

Thank you again for a really good game!

Ouch! When the Cylons get out all three RIP cards at once for a good chunk of the game it gets pretty rough for the Humans.

Galactica's launch rate does suffer from having only one working launch bay. The starting cap and the Alert Vipers and Hidden Reserves cards help out. You can also play a card to reroll a bad launch die roll if you need to get more fighters out in a pinch.

Thanks for the feedback. My gaming group seems to like the Gather the Fleet scenario best. You might want to give it a go next time.

Alan, we played Gather the Fleet last night…man, did we have a blast! The Humans won; they were able to jump off four civilian ship tokens, including Colonial One last, and didn't lose either Battlestar. We had two Basestars in play. The Cylons learned some lessons about prioritizing targets…the hard way…and we all learned the value of the cards. One Human player rolled doubles just about every time he shot with his fighters! It is a very exciting, enjoyable game; I've got guys who are primarily historical players asking to play it again and again! Great job on the game!

In that aboved mention "Gather the Fleet" game we thought the Humans had a MAJOR vistory but in the end it was very close…if we would have gone one more tunr the Humans would have ran out of cards to pull… We qucikly learned that the cards are a very important part of the batte tactics. As the Human fleet commander said after his first game "you can get caught up in space comabt and forget about cards in your hand and or deck!" Having a blast playing the game system…this from a historical gamer.

SFC Retired

I'm glad you guys are enjoying the game. I'm still playtesting the scenarios. As you play through some of the other scenarios please let me know what you you think about the balance. I appreciate the feedback.

I just listed a lot of 16 hand painted BSG miniatures on eBay containing 8 Viper MkII, 4 Viper MkVII and 4 Raptors. This just happens to be the same number of miniatures needed for the Galactica in my Battlestars Vs Basestars board game.

auction

If they sell at a price that is economically feasible (i.e. I don't lose money) I may sell more.

BvB revision 1.3.7 has been posted to the website. This revision includes the following changes:

Clarified that cards that must be played immediately do not count toward the one card per team turn limit when all of the command locations of all ships controlled by a player are destroyed.

Moved the rules for landing fighters out of the scenario special rules and into the main rules. Added rules for landing fighters on friendly ships.

Moved the planet rules out of the scenario special rules and into the main rules.

Corrected the Scenario 2, five player Cylon setup.

Corrected the Scenario 5, three player setup.

Corrected the Scenario 6 set up to include missing instructions to place a damage control marker under Starbuck's Viper in some of the set ups. Added a draw condition to the scenario objectives.

Improved the wording in Scenario 7, five player set up.

Added a rule to Scenario 8 to prevent Baltar's Raptor from safely camping on the planet after it is rescued and added a draw condition to the scenario objectives.

Another lot of 16 BSG miniatures is up for auction. This lot is 12 Viper MkVII and 4 Raptors painted in Pegasus blue. Just what you need to outfit the Pegasus in BvB.

auction

This is really amazing work. I'm in the process of gathering everything I need to introduce this to my gaming group. One question--do you have the cards available as an image file (jpg, bmp, png, gif or tiff)? I'd like to get custom decks made from a less expensive vendor, but to do so I need files with one of those file extensions. Please excuse me if this is just my own technological ignorance/inability.
Again, thanks for sharing this.

I can put something together for the card images this weekend. Does the vendor you want to use have a template? i.e. How do they align the card faces with the card backs?

This is the people I was looking at using--their system is pretty simplistic, just upload images and drag & drop.

link

I'll make up a file this weekend that will work with this vendor. I want to give them a try myself.

Great, thanks!

Here is a link to a .zip file containing all of the BvB card art in .png format:

1drv.ms/1wr82P9 (Choose "PNG Files")

I tried the files out with the Printer Studio website and everything seemed to work fine. You can get the card counts from the appendices of the BvB website.

I also added the .png card art to the BvB Parts file.

Wow, terrific! Works great. I'm ordering decks today--I'll let you know how they look.

The BvB website has been updated with revision 1.3.9. This revision adds two new scenarios:

Scenario 11: Fear the Reaper. This scenario recreates the Colonial attack on the Cylon resurrection ship.

Scenario 12: Mutiny! Explore what might have happened if the tension between Admiral Cain and Commander Adama reached the breaking point resulting in open hostility as the two leaders battle each other for the loyalty of the fleet.

The BvB parts files has also been updated with two tokens for the resurrection ship. One is a top down view like all of the other ship tokens and is very boring. The other is an isometric view of the ship, which looks cool but is a little out of place with all of the other top down tokens. Use whichever token you prefer.

For the benefit of anyone who has been following along, I ordered a banner using Daricles's image on Friday morning from the vendor in his post above. I received a proof via email about an hour later and got the banner in the mail today (three days later!). It looks really nice--can't wait to play on it!