Battlestations!

is a fun little pulp SF game that I've played before and reported on here before.



Battlestations Report: Galactic Civil War & miniatures
Gameday: Second attempt at BATTLESTATIONS
GameDay: Battlestations


A gent named Curufea (real name: Peter Cobcroft) has come up with what I think might be one of the definitive fansites out there, a wiki he owns and maintains. It has loads of useful infomration.

Check it out!

http://www.curufea.com/Wikka/wikka.php?wakka=GamesBattlestations

Curufea (who published a variant for the Le Grand Cirque game I designed) is trying to be a completist with this wikki thing; there's a lot of information packed away in a tidy wikki format. Recommended.

This time for BATTLESTATIONS, a game I really like. You win a copy by pinning a pin on the DICE TOWER Frapr map. Here, I'll make it easy for you.

http://www.frappr.com/thedicetower/map#addyourself

Noticed this from "SaintRigger" on TMP today.

Hey guys and gals. I finished up a batch of the Battlestations minis sculpted by Tom Mason for the battlestations game (Which is brilliant – so check it out! battlestations.info) These guys are lanky in comparison to the other 15s I've done, but thats cool because it really gives them that fun pulp sci-fi feel. I've included a 28mm figure in one of the pictures to give a sense of scale (and one day I might finish painting that too) Anyways – check 'em out and let me know what you think. Saintrigger's Gallery link

A few selected piccies:



Nice Paint Job, Saint Rigger! I'm not crazy about the human figures at all. They are too tall and too skinny. They look like a cartoon.

Still, I have to love those aliens. I could only find BIPED life at Stargrunt Minis (when I bought my human crew).








I'm only linking to a couple of piccies here, as Saint Rigger has done an excellent job of both painting and cataloguing his efforts. I posted this note because I've recently bought (and really like) BATTLESTATIONS! and am tracking developments of the miniatures line and further expansion sets. Follow the link above for the straight skinny!

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New from Ebay

I just scored the FIRST expansion set for BATTLESTATIONS (can you tell I'm rather taken with this semi-rpg, semi-skirmish miniatures game system?). This is Galactic Civil War (GCW). The GCW module introduces a new alien race, the WHISTLER, which looks suspiciously like a giant singing tumbleweed. The designer of this game clearly likes multi-armed non-humanoid aliens, and I have to applaud him for that-- humanoid aliens (such as the endless parade of Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Cardassians, and blah blah blah) would, at best, be a fluke in reality. The Whistler has a jet-pack like ability to PUFF themselves from one square to another in Line of Sight. Pretty handy on those shipboard fights.



There's a few new character actions: Coup de Grace (now that's grim!), Quickswitch, and Quicksnatch. All very Hollywood. The new ship actions are Sideslip and Evasive Maneuvers, and those are VERY interesting... considering how many LUCK ROLLS I've blown on dodging missles.

There's a whole passle of military hardware in this thing... but my absolute favorites are the new FIGHTER BAY and MINELAYER tiles. The fighter capability allows you to extend your ship's range and take the fight to the enemy. The minelayer allows you to leave a nasty surprise or two.




There's a ton of scenarios, characters and stuff, all of which I've only given a cursory glance at.


In summary, a very nifty addition to BATTLESTATIONS. I like the new stuff.. actually, I don't own the original rules yet, but I plan to buy it as soon as I can score a copy. I've just played the game with other people's rules so far, but I like the rules and I like the universe this game is set in. GALACTIC CIVIL WAR goes a long way towards expanding the universe and giving it legs.


Turns out the Gorilla people are working on miniatures for this game, which are very welcome indeed. I've already ordered some in scale GZG minis for use in this game... they are not an exact match but they'll do, for humans at least. The new Gorilla Games minis definitely match the multi-arm alien races in the main game, and they would be hard to match with anything out there today.



I'm not crazy about their human figures, which are quite spindly looking. But I like their silicoids, tenacs and other weird and ropey looking critters.

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Nick put together the scenario: it was short and funny, with lots of twists. We were escorting a scientific ship to a crystalline planet. The scientists were supposed to fire four probe missiles into the planet. Somehow, WE (not the science jocks) figure out that this action will destroy the planet. So we beam aboard the science vessel and cold cock the guy firing the probes. As we sort out that mess, the enemy, klingon-y looking vessel shows up to make life difficult.

Nick writes:

Our Heroes quite handily defeated the Silicoid ship --
with 3 missiles chasing after them they were thinking
maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to get out of Dodge
anyway --- but then one missile struck and a couple of
blasts from the Apathy's cannon took the KillMurder
over a threshold check -- and I rolled snake eyes.
Boom!

I think Harry and Art stole the show by having Art's
"Sarge" character:
1) Launch a missle from the Apathy
2) Be teleported over to the DitDitDit
3) Knock out the boffin manning the missile bay -- who
had been launching science probes
4) And finally launch a missile from the DitDitDit at
the KillMurder

I think next time I'd like to just try out a basic
ship to ship combat -- the rules seem a bit
cumbersome in that respect in that you roll to "hit",
then you roll TWICE more to see if you hit the
silhoutte of the ship. If you do, then it's a
critical hit and that follows one set of rules. If
not, then it's a different set of rules. It's
confusing and I'd like to understand it better for
next time -- I think a flow chart of some kind is
called for.

I had to leave early ostensibly being there just to get Garrett a birthday prezzie. I bought him PIRATE's COVE, by Days of Wonder.

We played this neat little semi-RPG, semi-skirmish, space battle game last week. BATTLE STATIONS, by Gorilla Games. Battlestations is a character-based adventure game of simultaneous ship-to-ship and boarding combat in space. Players work together against the forces controlled by the referee. Battlestations can be played as one-off missions or as part of an ongoing campaign. You’ll track character’s positions on the spaceship layouts and the ships’ positions on the hex map. The action in Battlestations is literally character driven. If you want the ship to turn or speed up, a character has to take an action to make it so. If you want the ship’s guns to fire at an enemy ship, a character has to take an action to fire the guns.

Lots of fun. I played "Chef", sort of like Steven Seagal in space. We bumped into a ship derelict drifting in space, containing Cylons who are trying to board our ship to get off of the derelict where they had been stranded for 100 years.

I got my character killed in a fire fight, but I had a great time.

The system is elegant and fun, and best of all, generic. You can play with any kind of ship (we used Galoob toys) and any SF style ship infantry figures. I intend to pick this up and get 15mm SF figures, if I can find any.

More Pictures:

A ship status card showing how energy is moved around to ship systems.

A (rather blurry) character sheet showing my character, "Chef"

The small corvette layout we played on, made of generic pieces.


Very cool stuff.