Re: B5W question

>It's a hex based (although I think they just came out with a vector
system)
>representation of ship to ship combat in the B5 universe.  The
complexity
is
>between Full Thrust and Starfleet Battles, closer to the SFB side.  The
>couple of games I've played have been very slow paced even with just a
few
>ships.  The level of detail is high (allocating damage to the section
of
the
>ship where the weapon would have actually hit, allocating power to
weapons
>and systems, armor on individual systems, etc...) but the book keeping
is
>very time consuming.

B5W is a very "hands on" kind of game.	In my opinion, a person cannot
comfortably handle more that about 4 ships in a game by themselves (any
more, and it's more like work than it is play).  It does an adequate job
of
simulating B5 combat, with the exception of the way it handles fighters.
 In
the game, fighters are far tougher physically than they are depicted in
the
show.  In the soon to be released Second Edition, they've added a
fighter
dropout roll at the end of the turn to "kill" damaged fighters that
couldn't
be killed by the anti-fighter guns or other fighters.  Needless to say,
this
doesn't help to streamline a game that could use all the streamlining it
can
get.

You really don't have to allocate power like you do in SFB.  Most
systems
have power automatically allocated to them every turn.	You can shut
these
systems down and use the extra power elsewhere if you so desire, though.
The real time consuming part comes at the beginning of each turn where
you
do these "power shennanigans", allocate EW to target specific ships, and
figure which thruster you're channelling your thrust through.

As far as a Vector system is concerned, AoG will not be adding any such
thing.	There are a couple of sites on the Web that have very good
vector
movement systems for B5W if that is what you like to use.  In the
Narn/Centauri War of Retribution Atlas, they came out with a simple
hexless,
tabletop movement system.

>
>It's not a bad game, but more than I want to go through when I just
want to
>have fun blowing a friend's cruisers out of space.

It's not a very good "fleet" level game.  It is much better for smaller
engagements.

>
>They've just released a 2nd edition that's supposed to tie up a few
loose
>ends and add some new rules.  Haven't actually seen it yet.
>
The Second Edition is due out later in April, so don't buy the ones you
see
out right now.	Oh, and one of the goofy things they are doing is
putting 6
Narn Frazi heavy fighters and 6 Centauri Sentri medium fighters in the
boxed
Second Edition instead of the better assortment you got in the First
Edition
(3 of each of the 4 main races' fighters).

>The minis aren't bad either.

The minis are of good quality, but are oversized and thus expensive. 
They
are supposed to be coming out with a "micro" scale of mini (it's
actually a
normal sized mini - the kind they probably should have put out to begin
with) sometime in the ill-defined future.

All in all, it's a pretty good game.  It can be very time consuming
though
because of the detail involved.

Chris