"Massive New Blakes 7 Wargame" Topic

Forgive me pitching this to you folks here… I've been working on writing this game for 10 years and now it is finally finished!

Here's the blurb…
Blakes 7 Battle Factions is a complete in-depth wargame for 28mm miniatures. At 186 pages / 93,249 words, Blakes 7 Battle Factions uses a unique exclusive rules system specially created to capture an immersive in-universe feeling for Blakes 7 specifically. Realistic breadth and depth is given to the playable characters reflecting their personalities as shown in the series, whilst retaining fast-paced action and enjoyably versatile, easy to understand playability. A very substantial thick tome of rules & background (when printed, anyway), this entirely free pdf contains an exhaustive selection of over 90 Blakes 7 characters and unit types, an extremely comprehensive scenarios section, and mountains of insightful connections and background detail. If you've ever been interested in Blakes 7 wargaming this is the specifically in-universe ruleset you've been waiting for…
I've written it in the style of an early 80's wargame. I figured if you like Blakes 7, you'd appreciate that too.
It's yours for free.
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link

Thanks for your generosity. B7 has always been one of my favourite Sci-fi shows, and I'll be giving this a read. I've also got a number of the minis so perhaps they may get painted & played with beastinthebroch.com/shop

Thank you for your effort and generosity. Looking forward to reading it!

One of my favorite shows from the 80's. Sadly, I watched part of an episode recently and just couldn't get into it.
I'll definitely give your rules a read, though and thanks for the work and dedication you put into it!

That's a huge effort and needs a serious read.
Very pleased to see Daleks making an appearance… not too fancifu; as I read somewhere that they nearly could have been the aliens in Star One.

That IS very generous.

Thank you!

I could use a brief overview and summary of the factions, if anyone can provide that.

I watched some episodes back in the day, eons ago, and admit to not grasping a lot of the backstory.

Of course I know Servalan was one of Blake's nemesi.

Sontarans, possibly another, or were they on Dr. Who?

Could use info on others.

Sontarans were indeed on Dr Who.

Basic overview of Blake's 7 from my ancient memory…

Galaxy run by evil Federation. Blake is freedom fighter who escapes from prison ship with small band of fellow cons. There were never actually 7 of them, though! Some of the group are not so interested in freedom fighting, would prefer to get rich dishonestly!

They find an abandoned space ship from some unknown, more advanced civilisation. Ship is faster, more powerful etc than Federation ships.

Blake dies at the end of, I think, series 1. Avon, a highly intelligent fraudster, takes over as leader. Various other characters come and go during the show's run.

Servalan is the big boss of the Federation. Probably the sexiest evil big boss ever. She and Avon are very attracted to each other so you're never quite sure if they are going to kill each other or shag each other!

The whole tone of the show is quite dark. Very different to what the BBC expected when they commissioned it, which was a sort of 'British Star Trek'.

Yeah was much darker than most other sci-fi in the 70s.

I don`t really remember the beginning of B7 (too young I supose) but the Scorpio stuff I do remember.

Shame it finished when it did, but they did very, very well with tuppaware and various vaccum-cleaner parts (I am looking at you SLAVE) LOL, to build their sets out of.

Have fun people, I am off to play Space Vixens from Mars, with my tongue very firmly stuck-in-cheeK!

Glen

Vila weighs 73 kilograms…

The series was mocked for its low budget, but you can't expect Star Wars on a 1970's TV budget. The strength was in the characters and writing. So many quotable lines.

Outstanding character based drama. They had to solve problems using their intelligence and qualities, not just "reversing the polarity". I re-watched this not long ago entirely on YouTube and I believe it holds up after all this time. Way darker than I remember as a teenager. Some characters weren't treated all that well.

Tempted to have a read of these rules, although there's no shortage of skirmish level sci-fi rules.

My favorite experience was watching an episode at a buddy's house. His dad walks through,
dad: "What are you watching?"
us: "Blake's 7"
dad: "Which one's Blake?"
us: "He's dead"
dad: "I only see four"
us: "The rest are dead, too"
Buddy's dad walks off.

>>>there's no shortage of skirmish level sci-fi rules.

True, but these are specifically for Blakes 7, which has a lot of concepts difficult to quantify with the mechanics of other SF rulesets (such as how exactly psychic powers, intelligent computers, and other-dimensional entities without a physical presence can interact on the battlefield). The scenarios section is VERY BIG and is tailored specifically for the Blakes 7 universe. If you still prefer other rules, B7 fans could still enjoy the scenario section, as they could easily lend themselves to other rulesets.

>>> That IS very generous. Thank you! I could use a brief overview and summary of the factions, if anyone can provide that.

It's my pleasure to share it with you. :-)
There is an appendix listing all the possible factions, but I'll post a list here for you:

Federation Forces
o Servalan: Numberless legions of loyal Federation forces
o The Council: Many legions of warships but vacillating loyalties during Servalan's
"emergency" assumption of power (Circa Series C)

Resistance Forces:
o Blake's Freedom Party with Dev Tarrant and Brad Foster
o Blake/Avon's group and the Liberator Series A-C
o Blake and Jenna and whatever force(s) they associated with unseen during Series C & D
o Avon's group and Scorpio
o Del Grant and his mercenary commandoes
o Albian liberation forces
o Other mercenaries
o Free-Planet Forces
o Federation traitor fleets; possibly led by turncoat revolutionary idealists (Circa Series C)
o Post-revolutionary colonies using ex-Federation equipment

Breakaway Factions (traitor fleets – unaligned and of highly variable size)
o Defiant Planetary Governors
o Cult Personalities
o Rogue Generals
o Deserters in the wake of the Interstellar War (of any possible alignment)
o Ex-Federation troops turned freebooter space pirates after "obtaining" a ship
o Rogue Legions – ruthless marauders out for themselves

Other forces:
o Space pirates
o Gun-Runners
o The Terra-Nostra
o The Robotics Cartel
o The System
o Del Tarrant's gun-running operation during series A & B
o Amagon Space Pirates/Slavers/Smugglers
o Moloch II and his Rogue Troopers
o Space Rats
o Smugglers
o Spacers: Free-traders or adventurers
o Trading or commerce groups
o Bayban's Crew
o Scavengers on post-catastrophe worlds
o Bounty Hunters
o Hostile lower life forms
o Mutations
o Dream Heads

Non-Human space forces or empires
o The Epinal: High-tech and hostile to humanoids
o The 61 Cygni mystery beings
o Full-strength Andromedan forces Circa Star One
o Any remaining straggler groups from the Andromedan forces after the war; desperate to
return to their own galaxy or simply trying to survive
o Daleks…

>>>Thank you for your effort and generosity. Looking forward to reading it!

You're quite welcome! :-) It is my hope that the difference between games laboriously crafted out of love to a high standard of content and more stylish-looking games put on the market simply to exploit the gaming crowd will be palpable to all players who take the time to delve into B7 Battle Factions. My kindest regards to all! :-)

Thank you for all your effort and putting the game out as a free download. I brought the complete B7 on dvd only last week with the aim of finally painting the figures I brought from crooked Dice ( before they split ). I could never settle on a rule set that seemed to fit. Now here we are. Thanks again.

Hmmmm, good looking females and phallic shaped rocket ships, is there some subtext there?

BTW just What the hell is that "thing" she is holding in her right hand? Looks like something you'd find in the Fredericks of Hollywood catalog.

Hmm, long and pointy and apparently electrically powered???…Hmmm

Hair dryer. ;-)

'snap' Thats it, (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and Bob's yer uncle)

Took a few episodes, but I eventually came to love Blake's 7 (which got better after Blake left), when it was shown on the San Diego PBS station back in the late '80s or early '90s.

The original 7 were six humans plus the ship's computer, IIRC.

I guess all you guy will be off to cp model's then

link

The ship in B7 is the best designed ship ever in my opinion.

The thing in her right hand is a gun the 7 used if memory serves me right.

Ello again
Is it just my phone or is the Tubehead's link broken

Currently being repeated on Forces TV.

Darn, Netflix doesn't carry the series… :-(