MongooseMatt
First Post
Hi guys,
A lot of people have been waiting for this one! Finally, in the stores, A Call to Arms will be released this week - the game of fleet combat in the Babylon 5 universe.
This game comes in a big, hefty box and upon opening, you will find a rule book, a big fat book of fleet lists, more counters than you can shake a dead Narn at and a glorious CGI poster to hang in your gaming room to get the right atmosphere going. While we have the full range of Babylon 5 ship miniatures available on our web site (and soon to appear in stores), A Call to Arms was designed from the outset to be stand alone - you will find enough counters in here to field almost any fleet composition you could wish for. . .
Anyway, Book One is entitled 'Rules', so I would suggest most start there. This is a 48 page book that begins by concentrating on giving you the basic rules you need to start playing the game. They are designed to be able to handle large numbers of ships at once (if need be) and so you will find the core rules easy to get to grips with and you will soon be playing in no time. Once you have the hang of moving, shooting, causing grevious damage and performing rudimentary damage control, you will be ready to add more advanced rules to your game.
The first of these are the Special Actions, of which each ship can perform one in a turn, if you so wish. These range from feeding All Power to Engines, to Closing the Blast Doors and Activating the Defence Grid. Special Actions are either hard to perform or are in some way detrimental to your ship, so the clever Admiral will watch carefully for the time to use them.
The Special Trait rules add specific characteristics to both ships and weapons in A Call to Arms, making them 'feel' like the ships you see in Babylon 5. For example, ships may have Adaptive Armour (White Stars and Vorlons), Interceptors (Earth Alliance) or possess Advanced Jump Engines (Minbari). There are rules to handle the famous beam weapons of various races, as well as specialist devices such as the Narn energy mines.
A section on Advanced Rules brings everything together in order to give your games far more depth - here you will find rules for Auxiliary Craft (such as fighters), Crew Quality, Multiplayer Games (have as many fleets as you want playing at once in this game!), Jump Gates, Jump Points (both in and out of realspace, creating some interesting tactics), Squadrons, Stellar Debris and Tactical Withdrawals.
All these rules are covered in 21 pages - A Call to Arms was designed to a) be quick to learn, b) handle large numbers of ships if players desired it and c) replicate what you saw on the TV screen onto the tabletop. I think we did it!
The rest of the book kicks off with several scenarios to get your fleets clashing in short order. From general Space Superiority missions to Carrier Clashes and Ambushes (think of using Jump Points with the latter, and you begin to see the scope of this game. . .), you will find a variety of tactics and fleet compositions will be needed if you are to retain control of space.
We have included a complete set of Campaign rules in this box set, allowing several fleets to compete for dominance of a whole star system. If you have been keeping an eye on our forums, you will know about the current office camapign that is currently raging at Mongoose Towers. We have also included 'Mega-Campaign' rules that span several star systems, though you will need to devote some months to that!
The first book ends with some rules on integrating A Call to Arms with D20 Babylon 5 RPG campaigns, and some wafflings from me about what we tried to do with the game.
I fear, however, that people will want to dive straight into Book Two - the Fleet Lists! This is a 96 page full colour book that covers somewhere near 100 vessels in 10 fleets, including the Earth Alliance, Centauri Republic, Narn Regime, Minbari Federation, League of Non-Aligned Worlds, the ISA, Raiders, Vorlons, Shadows and 'Other Craft' - space liners, patrol boats, merchantmen and such like.
You'll find all your favourites here from the White Star and Victory to the Omega, Shaodw ships and Sharlin warcruisers. All of these ships are reproduced in large numbers on the counter sheets that come with the game - for example, the ISA have enough counters to field 10 White Stars and 3 Victory-class destroyers. More than enough for your average battle! If your games do demand more, however, we already have extra counter sheets available on our web site (and pretty popular they have been already!), as well as the actual miniatures. And you cannot argue with a well-painted fleet. . .
We are supporting A Call to Arms in a big way and if you go to our web site, you will already find several free downloads, from new missile types for the Earth Alliance to variant fighter rules we would like people to try out in the event we go ahead with a Companion or 'Advanced' book to support the box set. There will be plenty of these coming, so keep your eyes open! Signs & Portents 14 has rules for variant Omega and Hyperion ships for the Earth Alliance, and there are more goodies coming in issue 15. On top of all that, later this week we'll be posting rules for a completely new type of campaign on the web site.
A Call to Arms is a box set priced at $49.95, and will be available this week from all good games stores and book shops.
A lot of people have been waiting for this one! Finally, in the stores, A Call to Arms will be released this week - the game of fleet combat in the Babylon 5 universe.
This game comes in a big, hefty box and upon opening, you will find a rule book, a big fat book of fleet lists, more counters than you can shake a dead Narn at and a glorious CGI poster to hang in your gaming room to get the right atmosphere going. While we have the full range of Babylon 5 ship miniatures available on our web site (and soon to appear in stores), A Call to Arms was designed from the outset to be stand alone - you will find enough counters in here to field almost any fleet composition you could wish for. . .
Anyway, Book One is entitled 'Rules', so I would suggest most start there. This is a 48 page book that begins by concentrating on giving you the basic rules you need to start playing the game. They are designed to be able to handle large numbers of ships at once (if need be) and so you will find the core rules easy to get to grips with and you will soon be playing in no time. Once you have the hang of moving, shooting, causing grevious damage and performing rudimentary damage control, you will be ready to add more advanced rules to your game.
The first of these are the Special Actions, of which each ship can perform one in a turn, if you so wish. These range from feeding All Power to Engines, to Closing the Blast Doors and Activating the Defence Grid. Special Actions are either hard to perform or are in some way detrimental to your ship, so the clever Admiral will watch carefully for the time to use them.
The Special Trait rules add specific characteristics to both ships and weapons in A Call to Arms, making them 'feel' like the ships you see in Babylon 5. For example, ships may have Adaptive Armour (White Stars and Vorlons), Interceptors (Earth Alliance) or possess Advanced Jump Engines (Minbari). There are rules to handle the famous beam weapons of various races, as well as specialist devices such as the Narn energy mines.
A section on Advanced Rules brings everything together in order to give your games far more depth - here you will find rules for Auxiliary Craft (such as fighters), Crew Quality, Multiplayer Games (have as many fleets as you want playing at once in this game!), Jump Gates, Jump Points (both in and out of realspace, creating some interesting tactics), Squadrons, Stellar Debris and Tactical Withdrawals.
All these rules are covered in 21 pages - A Call to Arms was designed to a) be quick to learn, b) handle large numbers of ships if players desired it and c) replicate what you saw on the TV screen onto the tabletop. I think we did it!
The rest of the book kicks off with several scenarios to get your fleets clashing in short order. From general Space Superiority missions to Carrier Clashes and Ambushes (think of using Jump Points with the latter, and you begin to see the scope of this game. . .), you will find a variety of tactics and fleet compositions will be needed if you are to retain control of space.
We have included a complete set of Campaign rules in this box set, allowing several fleets to compete for dominance of a whole star system. If you have been keeping an eye on our forums, you will know about the current office camapign that is currently raging at Mongoose Towers. We have also included 'Mega-Campaign' rules that span several star systems, though you will need to devote some months to that!
The first book ends with some rules on integrating A Call to Arms with D20 Babylon 5 RPG campaigns, and some wafflings from me about what we tried to do with the game.
I fear, however, that people will want to dive straight into Book Two - the Fleet Lists! This is a 96 page full colour book that covers somewhere near 100 vessels in 10 fleets, including the Earth Alliance, Centauri Republic, Narn Regime, Minbari Federation, League of Non-Aligned Worlds, the ISA, Raiders, Vorlons, Shadows and 'Other Craft' - space liners, patrol boats, merchantmen and such like.
You'll find all your favourites here from the White Star and Victory to the Omega, Shaodw ships and Sharlin warcruisers. All of these ships are reproduced in large numbers on the counter sheets that come with the game - for example, the ISA have enough counters to field 10 White Stars and 3 Victory-class destroyers. More than enough for your average battle! If your games do demand more, however, we already have extra counter sheets available on our web site (and pretty popular they have been already!), as well as the actual miniatures. And you cannot argue with a well-painted fleet. . .
We are supporting A Call to Arms in a big way and if you go to our web site, you will already find several free downloads, from new missile types for the Earth Alliance to variant fighter rules we would like people to try out in the event we go ahead with a Companion or 'Advanced' book to support the box set. There will be plenty of these coming, so keep your eyes open! Signs & Portents 14 has rules for variant Omega and Hyperion ships for the Earth Alliance, and there are more goodies coming in issue 15. On top of all that, later this week we'll be posting rules for a completely new type of campaign on the web site.
A Call to Arms is a box set priced at $49.95, and will be available this week from all good games stores and book shops.
