I've seen a few reviews of A Billion Suns, but watching Mr Wargaming's solo campaign was what really made me want to give it a try. I have lots of starships bought for Full Thrust, which will work fine for A Billion Suns.
I downloaded the quick start rules and persuaded the kids to give it a try. We sorted through my boxes of starships and found some suitable fighters, gunships and corvettes.
Number Two Son selected my Full Thrust ESU fleet. He didn't want to give his corporation a name, so their identity will remain a mystery for the time being.
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| Strikeboat (gunship), fighters and Corvette. |
Number One Son went for the NAC fleet, with its Star Wars themed fighters (the A-Wing proxies are actually ESU light fighters), plus some Space: Above & Beyond ISSCVs (Inter-Solar System Cargo Vehicles) standing in for gunships. They are employed by BugLab.
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| Corvette, fighters, ISSCVs (gunships) |
The trial game calls for 3 beacons to be set out in 2 separate playing areas. I grabbed Mrs Mini Metal Mayhem's jewellery-making box (with her permission) and found some nice beads. These were mounted on pieces of paper clip, sprayed black along with the base, then painted with gold and silver acrylics to produce the beacons.
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| Beacons from beads and paperclips. |
After our recent Voidfighter game, I made an order from eM4 Miniatures for some Silent Death fighters - just before I found the fighters I already had when sorting through the starship boxes. I should have thought of looking there in the first place!. Anyway, at the same time, I filled in my shortfall of D12 and D4, but also got a new set of D6 in rather nice purple and black with gold spots, a nice space nebula-like effect suitable for space battles.
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| Space dice! |
This game was also my first opportunity to try out my new "space game mat", which is actually a space shower curtain obtained for under £10 online. The only problem is the folds from how I had it packed away, but I'm going to roll it up from now on, which should make it much flatter next time we use it.
For the 3-turn introductory game, you place 2 beacons in one sector (circled green on the left), and one on another sector (circled green on the right, with the large metal ruler separating the 2 sectors). BugLab jumped a squadron of fighters (circled blue) into sector 1, and the other corporation jumped a squadron of fighters into sector 2. Ships jumping in have to arrive at least 10" from the objectives.
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| Fighters jump in at the start of turn 1. |
Both squadrons then flew their full 6" towards the nearest beacon. The fighters cost each corporation 2 credits to jump in. We marked this with a couple of red counters for each side to show their debt. There was no fighting because they were each the only occupier of their sector.
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| Unnamed corporation fighters approach their beacon. |
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| BugLab fighters approach their beacon. |
At the end of the turn, they earned credits: 5 for having the greatest mass of ships within 6" of a beacon, plus another 5 for having the most ships in a sector. We removed the red counters and gave each side 8 gold counters to show their profit so far.
Turn 2 saw an unnamed corporation corvette jump into Sector 1 (costing 5 credits) to contest control. BugLab jumped a gunship into Sector 1 (cost 3 credits) to reinforce their fighters.
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| Gunship vs. corvette. |
In Sector 2, the fighters circled the beacon, ensuring they remained within 6". In Sector 1, the gunship accelerated 6", passing the corvette to try and secure the other beacon. The corvette's auxillary blasters caused a point of damage to the gunship as it flew past. The corvette then made use of its full 10" move to sweep past the gunship, though it took a couple of points of damage from the gunship's auxillary blasters.
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| Gunship vs corvette due to my rules mistake. |
The BugLab fighters remained close to their beacon to ensure they retained control of it. At this point I made a mistake. We did all the active attacks for the ships, in this case only the gunship had anyone in its fire arc to shoot at. This was WRONG! Each ship is supposed to move, then suffer passive attacks from enemy ships, then make its own active attack. So the gunship should have finished its entire turn (which meant there would be nothing it could shoot at in its fire arcs) before the corvette moved. As it was though, due to my error, the gunship fired on the corvette and through some very lucky dice rolling, destroyed it. Having jumped in behind the corvette though, the gunship was beyond 6" from the beacon and was therefore unable to hack it to earn the 5 credits available. Both sides earned a total of 10 credits, 6 for the one beacon each controlled, plus 5 for control of a sector.
On the third and final turn, the unnamed corporation jumped in a second squadron of fighters (cost 2) to protect the beacon they controlled. This gave them an extra 5 credits for the beacon plus 5 for controlling the sector.
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| Extra fighters incoming to Beacon 3. |
BugLab jumped additional fighters into Sector 1 as well.
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| BugLab fighter reinforcements arrive on the left. |
The BugLab fighters and gunship converged on their second beacon, ensuring they'd earn the extra credits from hacking it. They earned 10 credits in total for the beacons, plus 5 for controlling Sector 1.
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| Beacon 1 secured by BugLab. |
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| Beacon 2 secured by BugLab. |
The final score was 28 credits profit for BugLab, but only 21 Credits for the unnamed corporation.
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| Anonymous profit 21. |
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| BugLab profit 28. |
Despite some grumbling from Number Two Son when his corvette was destroyed, both kids enjoyed the game - though fidgeting and arguing was very distracting and might have contributed to my mistakes with the rules! Re-reading them, I've realised that they should have been able to bring in more than one ship on a turn. I read the paragraph "Players take it in turns.... to jump in one ship." I thought this was a very simplified version where you only get one ship per turn to keep it quick and easy, but that's because I missed the second sentence that says "This continues round and round until all players have passed."
We'll have another try, but using more ships, and hopefully getting the firing correct too! I think I'll be getting the full rules, the kids are very eager to use all my fighter carriers, frigates, cruisers, battleships and destroyers as well. For "utility ships" required, I have various freighters and small transports which should work fine, as long as we can remember which side they are on. I have some polystyrene spheres which can become planetoids and some asteroids made from torn up car washing sponge.
To finish, a picture of all our gold counters, which Number One Son felt should be positioned in the centre of the star on my space shower curtain...
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| Gold! |
