Matt and I played through a two-player, two-ships-per-player version of Battlestations Fleet Action at Origins 2009. I’d like tell you a lot more about it than I’m going to be able to do, but I can’t. I can’t tell you more because even after spending a couple of hours at the table with this game, I don’t really understand much about playing it.
I have to be fair from the outset and explain the situation. Although Matt and I were not more than a couple of minutes late getting to the table, it appeared that the GM had already set up the game for three other players and had given them an introduction to the basic rules of play. He set the two of us up on our own board, effectively creating two separate instances of the game that he would have to GM. We (my table and the other one) were constantly pulling him back and forth to explain what to do. Since the game seems a bit rules-heavy, both tables needed the GM’s help constantly, even for the most simple actions. A “cheat sheet” of the core rules would have made things a lot better, I think. We couldn’t remember from one turn to the next how things worked.
Here’s what I mean by “rules-heavy” since your mileage may vary. Let’s say that you have ship A and I have ship B. It’s my turn and I’ve decided to fire my guns at you. (Bear in mind as you read this that the actual description might be wrong because I have an incomplete understanding of the game, but the gist of it should be pretty close to reality.) First, I have to look at how many squares we are apart. Then I add to that my shield level. Then add your shield level. Then subtract some other figure. I roll two dice to tell me if I’ve hit or not. Let’s say I do. Now I have to determine where I hit you. I roll the dice again. I look at the numbers on a chart representing your ship. I compare what I rolled to that chart. If I like where I hit, then we damage your ship in a straight line from front to back. If I don’t like where that hit, I can use character actions to re-roll the dice until I run out of actions or hit something good. Now, you have to add hull damage points to a chart in front of you. If your total hull damage is more than a certain number, you have to roll a die to see if your ship stays together or blows up. For each section of your ship that was damaged, we roll another die to see if the damage destroyed that section and/or the people in it. If it’s hit dead-center of the ship, we might be rolling 6 or 7 times.
Ship movement is also rather complex. If you want to turn your ship, you add your current speed to the size of your ship to get the number you need to beat to make the turn. You can reduce that number by using up crew actions. But it’s definitely not easy. We attempted to turn our ships several times but only managed to make one successful turn each, and that wasn’t enough to keep our guns pointed at each other. The smallest ship (which should have been the easiest to turn) was never able to execute a turn. I think changing speed might have even required a skill check, but I don’t remember for sure.
Combat in the game, apart from all the math and dice rolling, has rather a lot of interesting elements. You can fire a cannon, which basically cuts a hole through the ship from front to back. You can launch a missile, which takes time to get to the target, but does a fair amount of damage. You can use your teleporter to teleport a bomb to the enemy ship, or a crew member. The bomb explodes inside the ship and damages it. The crew member rampages through the enemy ship, attacking enemy crew members and possibly destroying modules. We were able to try out all these different options and they’re all variations on the same theme.
When I talked with the Gorilla Games representatives at a past convention, I was really excited about this game. It sounded like it would be a lot of fun and would give a “look and feel” of space battles from shows like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon 5. In fact, I wanted to buy the game on the spot, but stopped myself because has a $59.95 MSRP. For that kind of money, I wanted to be sure I actually liked it first. I’m glad now that I didn’t buy it.
I’d like to tell you this was a fun game, but I can’t. I’ve never even considered getting up and walking away from a game at a convention before, but I was very much ready to do so about 10 minutes into this one. If I hadn’t wanted so badly to like it, I would have. I can’t tell you there is anything really wrong with Battlestations. If you know the rules, it may well be an extremely fun game. But when you don’t know the rules and your only reference source is a GM who is busy explaining a different rule to players at another table, it’s an incredibly frustrating, seemingly complex, uninteresting game.
Having said that, part of me still wants to like this game, enough so that I will try it at least once more at a future convention. Maybe it will be there at Gen Con Indy in August. But if my next experience is anything like this one, it’ll be thumbs down for this game.