SPACE VOTING RESULTS:
Favorite Rules - Star Blazers Fleet Battle System

Star Blazers at Gen Con '99. Teaching the system to anyone who stoped at the table. =20 [3 Nov 1999]

My last space game was a simple slug fest with a couple of friends. [12 Apr 99]

My last game was a Starblazers FBS game against a relative newbie friend of mine. I am new to SBFBS myself, so we were evenly matched. We ran the Battle of Pluto Scenario out of the rulebook, with myself as the "Gammy" commander and my friend Ron as the EDF. We used the intoductory rules, and the fleets consisted of: EDF: SBB Yamato Gamillon: 1 Courageous (S-type) SBB, 4 Exterminator class SDD's

We started on opposite ends of the table, with speed 3. The Yamato had 4 pts of special energy accumulated.

Turn 1: Ron (EDF) won initiative, so I split off my destroyers and sent them screaming in, increasing speed to 9(?). My plan was to hurt the Yamato with the destroyers, then finish her with the battleship. The battleship closed slowly. Yamato increased speed to 5, and charged more special energy.

Turn 2: Ron again win the initiative roll, and so I bank the battleship slightly to the left, and send the destroyers ahead and to the right (to split his fire). The destoyers are now at speed 12, and my battleship at 7 or 8 ( I forget). Range is closing. He moves straight ahead, and opens fire on my destroyers. Like a white hot knife through butter, he drops 2 of 'em.

Turn 3: I win initiative, and close with the destroyers and and the battleship. He banks to the right, turning almost broadside to the destroyers. I fire my forward missle batteris on the SBB, and the guns on the destroyers are now in range. His SD and torpedoes stop most of my missles, but I get some hits, and some more from the destroyers, damaging a torpedo launcher. He blasts both the remaining destroyers to smithereens with his main guns, and hits my battleship with a smattering of missles, knocking out one of my main gun turrets and a missle launcher. He now has enough energy accumulated to use the Wave Motion Gun in the bow. I'm in trouble.

Turn 4: I lose initiative. He turns leftish (more towards me) and closes. I move my remaining ship (the battleship) straight or slightly right, I don't remember. We are nearly catty-corner to each other now. He lets loose with most everything, and do the same. He has hot dice, and my ship virtually comes apart. I'm down like 80%. I score hits with some missiles, and 1 of my main guns. He still has about 60 hull boxes left (down about 50%).

Turn 5: I get initiative, and although he turns towards me (trying to line up the WDF), I have already turned hard right, trying to put some distance between myself and the Yamato. He's hot on my heals, but out of position. I fire most of my remaining missles, and score a few more hits. My accuracy is suffering, with only 20% hull boxes remaining. I miss with my single rear-firing laser battery. He lets fly with the shock cannons again, and gets a lucky critical hit on my engine. KABOOM!

Commentary: I made a mistake splitting my forces. I should have held the escorts back to defend the battleship, and concentrated my fire better. He had hot dice, and turn 4 cost me badly. I swear revenge for the next time! [14 Apr 99]

Last space game was starblazers. 2 ship on the Cometine side with a ton of fighters, versus Yamato, another Battleship, and three destroyers. EDF got vaporized, but not after causing a lot of damage to the incoming fighters. There were just too many, and the defenses got overwhelmed. The two Cometine capital ships took *very* little damage, and the mission was deemed a complete success. [13 Apr 99]

My latest battle envolved a Gamilon carrier task force against an Earth Battle Group composed of several different battleship classes. The Gamilons were taken by surprise and launched a coordinated attack with battlecraft and destroyers to delay the Earth force, while the carriers made a run for it. Things were looking bleak for the Gamilons, until a critical hit took out one of the EDF Borodino class BBs. This event caused the EDF player to think twice about such a hasty pursuit, especially if it meant risking his heavy fleet units. The delay gave the Gamilons just enough edge to escape with their Carriers, but at the cost of sacrificing their destroyer escorts and a battleship. Emperor Desslok was not pleased and a punitive Gamilon task force was rushed to the area to seek revenge. [12 Apr 99]

At Winter Fantasy in Chicago recently, I refereed/demoed several games of Star Blazers Fleet Battle Syetem. One of the more interesting was between the mighty Gamelons against the dastardly Earth "Defence" Force. The Players started by picking out their ships. They got a little coaching so that there was some balance, but mostly they just picked models they liked. play started with two players in dagonally opposite corners.The grain of the hexes favored direct movement. The Gamelons knew right away that they had to close quickly and engage before the EDF heated up their Wave Motion Guns. The EDF also had the advantage in range, the the noble Gamelons, in Samuri spirit, took a step closer to their enemy. The exterminator class destyroyers bypassed the earth destroyers and began scoring hits. The Earth player got emotional and loosed a cloud of missiles against the Gamelons, which, along with the superior EDF beam weapons pretty much wiped out the small ships, but, EDF player rolled cold dice and an attack that should have eliminated the escorts allowed two gamelon destroyers to survive, unscathed. The Gamelon gloated, because he had emptied the missile racks of his enemy, and, they all bunched together for mutual defence. He then used his rather nasty "smite" system to dump a minefield in the middle of the EDF formation. This time, the EDF player rolled well, and the mines were less effective than they could have been, but the Gamelon player got a lesson in EDF destroyers. A cloud of EDF Missiles concentrated on the "flagship" took it out, but, by now the capitol ships were in range. The Gamelon had decided to just charge in and there was no formation of any sort left on either side just bunch of individual engagements. The Gamelons let loose with missiles and beam weapons, and the dice were kind to the Gamelons. All the EDF ships had 3-4 critical hits on them. The Gamelons had more ships, and while the fleet took as much damage, it was spread out more. Most Gamelons had only one critical. Now I gloated as I rolled for the criticals. An Earth Battleship blew up in spectacular fashion! The EDF player knew he had lost, but, by agreement and mutual exaughtion, the players allowed the EDF to use the one operational Wave Motion Gun that was "hot." The result was a dead Gamelon Battleship. The EDF escort screen was intact, but the capitol ships had all been mauled, one destroyed outright and others that had critical hit results that were more than nuisences. The Gamelons had lost most of their escorts, and had lost two capitol ships, but the core of the fleet was in very good shape. The one battleship was really a "gimme" and the EDF commander knew he would have to withdraw. Both playes had fun. I would have enjoyed it more if the mine attack had been successful, as the Gamelons would have been able to envelope the EDF. As it was, the cluster-f*** that resulted could have gone either way. [12 Apr 99]

Been Playing Star Blazers Fleet Battle System. A great game that's a lot of fun. [11 Apr 99]