Episode 3 is live!
In this episode, Nate and I discuss two games which deal with starship combat — but focusing more on what happens between the bulkheads rather than in the vacuum of space. First, Nate discusses the classic game The Awful Green Things From Outer Space. Then, Adam discusses a new release, Battlestations.
Show notes for Nate’s segment:
AGTFOS page at Steve Jackson Games
Tom Wham’s homepage
AGTFOS main page at the Geek
AGTFOS review at the Geek
The rule that won me the tourney: #2
Show notes for Adam’s segment:
Battlestations home page
Yahoo! Group for Battlestations
Battlestations page on BoardGameGeek
Please give us your feedback by either posting comments here on the roll2d6.com blog, or emailing us at roll2d6@gmail.com.
FYI.
Your 3rd installment is not updating on iTunes. Or maybe it’s just me.
Wow, that was fast — I literally updated the blog about 6 minutes ago. Good to see our listeners are so vigilant!
Sometimes the iTunes feed takes a while to update — they only poll our feed every few hours. I just unsubscribed and re-subscribed, and the new episode showed up on my list of subscribed podcasts. The iTMS entry still doesn’t show it though. Hopefully it will appear soon.
–Adam
It’s here! It’s here! It’s up on iTunes! Thanks Adam!
Two corrections to my Battlestations segment:
1) The published title of Battlestations does not, in fact, have an exclamation point. I don’t know why I thought that it did have an exclamation point … I must have been thinking of some other game.
2) The galactic society in Battlestations is the Universal Republic, not the United Republic.
My apologies for these errors.
–Adam
Correction: Nate wiped the ‘Awful Green Things’ Board with Joey’s naivete in that tournament. Great show guys!
Great show, gentlemen.
I wanted to mention that there was a really interesting flaw in the FASA Star Trek Tactical Combat game. In the supplement that shows to how to build your own ship, one might notice that the impulse engines have a huge advantage in the power-generated to weight ratio compared to any warp engine. Therefore, I built I gigantic uber-battlecruiser bristling with banks and banks of torpedoes and phasers by adding an extra 4 dozen sublight impulse drives. Power problems solved! It was like rolling a Volkswagen down a hill on 500 roller skate wheels. Sure, it could barely break warp 4, but nobody fights at warp speed anyway. Scotty would have been so proud (he *had* to have been a min-maxer gamer).
Thanks for the recommendation on Battlestations. I had seen this one on-line someplace and thought it looked like a cool idea, but wasn’t sure how well it played for the money. Can you add extra robots to your crew to make up for being short-staffed with out needing some sort of support module for them?
Great show. You’re 3 for 3.
Dan (the infinite tag-along-little-bro)
Re: Star Trek Tactical Simulator ship design rules. Actually a ship like that would have a valid use, as a “System Monitor” (as it’s called in Babylon 5 Wars). This is a ship that would stay in one system just to defend it, with big sublight engines and weapons, but crappy interstellar travel ability. So it actually was a valid design! Conceptually, anyway. It’s still a rules loophole.
As for Battlestations — no, bots take up just as much Life Support space as regular crew members (for their energy supplies, recharge stations, spare parts, etc.), so you can’t just add a bunch of extra bots. If you have enough players, you’re better off with more PCs than bots, since PCs can have higher attributes and they can also have Luck (which is used for rerolls).
But, being perpetually understaffed is part of the fun of the game, with your characters running frantically around the ship from one battlestation to another. Besides, whatever enemy ship you’re dealing with is probably just as understaffed as you are, so it evens out.
–Adam
Once again good show fellas.
I’m not into space combat games (probly cause i can’t find anyone to play ‘em with
but the show was intersting nonetheless.
Still looking forward to some more talk on car-wars!!! (and if y ever talk about bloodbowl make sure u mention fumbbl.com, the ultimate place for BB enthusiasts.)
Laters
FLo
FLo – You have my most awesome appreciation.. That link is fantastic.
I just set my mates up in a big ol’ Blood Bowl league.
Best of all, it removes one of Blood Bowl’s greatest assets but in doing so, destroys its greatest liability: Painted miniatures.
For me, it’s an asset, I did a lot of modeling/painting years back (used to work for GW part-time) so for me, the painting, converting and sculpting aspect of Blood Bowl gave a whole other level to the game. However, my friends couldn’t even be bothered to undercoat spray their teams. The game loses a lot of its impact when you’re playing with unpainted pewter.
However, the Java Client gets rid of all those problems and my friends all play eagerly with their squads – without needing to worry about painting
Plus the fact that the client knows all the rules and does all calculations for you, is a really massive plus – games take only a half hour or so and the only delay is in coming up with strategy, rather than calculating dice rolls.
Nate, Adam – follow that link – you’ll be happy you did.
My absolute pleasure Johnny boy!
Spread the love thats what I say!
Nate, Adam, when can we expect more fabulous mayhem from the dynamic duo?
Hey guys, love your show. Not trying to nag youg uys or anything, but how come your shows take a little long to get out? Even with the three that have been released you guys are still on the top of my list for podcasts, so maybe you should try to get out episodes more quickly. My two cents.
For the record, I tried the Stun/Kill fragment tactics in my first game a few days ago.
By luck I blocked the awful green things into a few rooms with Electric Fences and drew ‘5 Dice to Kill’ as an effect so my AoE stun wasn’t that necessary
Hey guys, looking forward to your next show!
Just a note of encouragement… your show is one I enjoy quite a bit.
Hey guys! I’m actually re-listening to the podcasts for the umpteenth time with the intent of commenting each.
I loved the tournament story and your “The Awful Green Things From Outer Space” segment was really interesting to me. I live in an area almost devoid of non-D&D/WOD gamers so I am always interested to hear about something else.
Hey guys.
Right-on in most respects as usual…..except….
I’ve GOT to comment on your inconsistency with regard to your love-dislike of the SFB universe…..
So at some points you say that you HATE SFB for its “alternate reality” license…it is Trek but NOT Trek….
…and then at other times you say you LOVE something (e.g. Prime Directive)….precisely BECAUSE it is “trek and NOT trek”
….I dont’ get it……
In episide 3, you say that the main feature of STIII:TCS is that it is “all about Power management”. Honestly, I have played both systems, and I found the Power Management aspects to be comparable (maybe not identical….but definitely comparable)……so I have to ask….WHAT IS IT you don’t like about SFB?
Despite the flamejob….truly DEVOTED to your show…LOVE IT!!!!!
-Jeff
Well, those two episodes are probably pretty far apart, so I could just say that my tastes have changed.
But I don’t hate SFB’s alternate Trek-universe, it’s just different. I’ll have to re-listen to this one to see if I really said that I hate it. And now that I’ve played Federation Commander, I’m less afraid to try out the full Star Fleet Battles system and I’d probably enjoy it. But, given that Federation Commander now exists … I don’t have any need to play the full SFB (and I don’t know anyone who plays it anyway).
Keep on listening! The next episode will come out … soonish.