RP: Space Battles: A Spacefarers Guide is a new game I’ve put together and – as might be guessed from the title – it’s all about battles between fleets of spacecraft. John Stallard has very kindly agreed to let me tell you a little about it. First off – it’s not a Warlord game – the rulebook is published by our friend John Wombat of Wombat Wargames. And it is a rule book and not a big boxed game full of fancy components and all that malarky. I put the game together to take advantage of the numerous spaceship models I’ve collected over the years, and you can use any models you have or might want to acquire.
Inspiration has been taken from classic science-fiction of the golden age, including such writers as Asimov and EE ‘Doc’ Smith, and such film and TV shows as Forbidden Planet, Buck Rogers and – inevitably – a dash of Star Trek. It’s all about rival fleets clashing over strategic hyperspace routes, pirates raiding convoys, nimble ships ambushing war-worn battle fleets, and beleaguered space stations fending off massed attackers whilst reinforcements rush to the rescue. The action is fast-paced and decisive, with minimal recording and critical step damage, that exposes weakened ships to destruction, leaves crippled ships drifting in space, and reduces others to lifeless hulks.
As well as the core game rules – which are easy to learn – there are advanced rules that expand the scope of play, an index of different ship types from tiny couriers to vast orbitals, a scenario section with introductory missions and more complex encounters as well as a fleet action for full-blown battles, and a simple campaign system that allows players to gain technological advantages from game to game. There’s also a background section based on my own imagined ‘known space’ galaxy, which has further rules for each race, for those who wish to make use of it.
The game is, I confess, somewhat unusual in that it makes use of two packs of playing cards, rather than dice, to resolve shooting, the effect of shields, encounters with debris, damage control and all the sorts of things you might reasonably expect a spaceship to get up to. It’s also played on a gridded board – which is easy to improvise using a typical gaming mat as described in the book. A few dozen tokens are required to mark damage – designs are included in the book for players to copy or you can download the same page from the Wombat Wargames website.
Further rules and articles will appear in the Wombat Wargames magazine – Shadows of Centralis – and the Wombat Wargames website. The rules themselves are available from Amazon in all territories, these are the links for the UK and USA.
The latest Wombat Wargames releases, as well as more information on Space Battles can be found on the publisher’s website, as well as my own blog.
Wombat Wargames: https://wombatwargames.com/space-battles-a-spacefarers-guide/
Rick’s blog: https://spacebattlesaspacefarersguide.blogspot.com/
