Another old set of photos, of a fleet-scale game of the Battle of the Line, from the Babylon 5 Universe, using the Babylon Fleet Action rules from the now defunct company,
Agents of Gaming.. AoG was a good, if somewhat self-indulgent, company that produced
Babylon 5 Wars and
Babylon 5 Fleet Action.
Babylon 5 Wars looked and played a bit like a streamlined version of Star Fleet Battles, and while fun, could take a long time to complete a game. B5 Fleet Action organised mutliple ships into squadrons, factored in weapons, shields and maneuvre, and enable players to engage in large fleet actions and finish in perhaps four hours.
These are old pictures, dating from 2001. I think they were taken on film, developed and then scanned. They were lurking on an old Iomega Zip disk - remember those? Like a 3.5 diskette on steroids, they were.
I don't quite remember which side won the scenario - I tend to think that the Earth Force had to simply hang on for a certain number of turns, at which point the Minbari, who are up to this point wiping the map with the earthers, suddenly and mysteriously ask for a truce. The rest is Television History...
I do remember the Evil Minbari Warlord, Myk'Ry'an, upon discovering the location of the Earth command ship (the only carrier on the map, hmm...) decided to concentrate fire, decapitate the Earth fleet, and break my scenario. Only some desperate maneuvre on the part of the carrier and escorts helped avoid disaster.
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| Hold the Line! The Minbari Advance |
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| The blocky, wedge-shaped carrier and command ship (bottom centre) takes evasive action. |
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Two Hyperion cruisers, flanked by two pairs of Nova Battleships
Smaller escorts and some GZG in foreground |
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| The Minbari Fleet |
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| The Earth Alliance Command has ships to burn, which is fortunate, 'cuz they do. |
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| The Earth Alliance Fleet |
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| Fire, you Fool! Fire EVERYTHING! |
Finding these pictures made me a bit nostalgic. I think I'll try this scenarion again, or a smaller part of it, using Starmada...
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2 comments:
I'm not sure I care for that hex grid, but I think I would have enjoyed that game. The fleet actions in the B5 series were memorable television. I always liked how half the humans in the series said they were at the Battle of the Line, which is pretty amazing considering that most of the Earthers were wiped out there. :)
Great post, and always fun to see photos from the old days.
Michael,
Thanks very much for commenting.
I'm with you regarding the hexes - the game could be translated to hexless, using inches and 60* turns - except the Narn energy mines needed a numbered grid for targeting purposes.
Typical Narns, doing it the hard way.
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