For A Few Billion Suns More

Caesar and I played 'A Billion Suns' last night - his first go at the game. I took the time to explain the rules, because it's a game that's unforgiving of early mistakes, but eventually we got set up and started.

I chose to play at Scale 4, which actually made a real difference to how the game flowed compared to the Scale 3 games I'd played with Catherine. We ended up with three tables, and I broke out my new black cloths (which I may decorate at some stage, but are good enough for now. With one exception). The tables were 2' x 4' and two 3' x 2'. Contracts were the lucrative Rhexis Harvesting, Demolition and Mining. The big table had a couple of asteroids and three facilities, Table Two had the Pearl, an asteroid and a facility, whilst Table Three had a single asteroid.

The problem with the black cloth? It really confused my phone's camera sensors, so the photos were appalling. 

Here's Table Two, with the Rhexis Pearl in the centre. This contract can be easy to score, so we both committed ships to it; I went for medium utility ships on the hope they'd weather the storm around the Pearl better than the Caesar's more numerous light utility ships.

On Table Three I sent in a single utility ship to mine the asteroid there. Caesar responded by jumping in a flight of fighters. He planned to use them to soften up the asteroid, hoping to jump one of his utility ships from Table Two in later to pick up the ore. There's a limit on how many utility ships you can have in play, and all of Caesar's were committed to the Pearl.

Of course what happened is that his fighters blew up my utility ship.

He also jumped in fighters on Table Two, and took put my utility ships there. This gave him uncontested access to the Pearl on the first round of the game.

I didn't take any photos after that. I jumped in replacement ships on Table Two, and managed to contest the Pearl on round two, but Caesar managed to get the crucial catalyst and scored the whole contract himself. There was a fair bit of fighting involved though; I sent in some gunships to take on his fighters, and they scored a reasonable amount of damage on them, leaving him with only one wing. However the gunships were lost too. They successfully covered the crucial utility ships though.

On Table Three I tried to mine the asteroid again, but the fighters there saw me off. 

Caesar was the only one to start on Table One, sending a single bomber wing, with powerful torpedoes, to soften up the asteroids there. However he switched to the facilities when he realised that the Mining contract wasn't likely to pay out by the end of the game.

The third and last round of the game saw a flurry of activity around the facilities, as blowing them up was the only viable source of revenue. I sent in a few fighters, but didn't manage to destroy any of them. Caesar jump-hopped his fighter from Table Three to Table One, and used them to take out one facility, whilst his bomber wing took out a third. Finally his fighters destroyed the facility on Table Two, to give him a near clean sweep on that contract too.

Anyway, Caesar's company ended up with a tidy profit, and I made a massive loss.

Basically I under-committed on the first turn, and suffered for it, having to spend the crucial second turn trying to get back into the game. The Rhexis contract seems to be a key one to go for, since if you can get it the payout is straightforward. It becomes difficult if it is contested, though, and can be a bit of a gamble. Caesar's use of fighters was masterful; he had just enough to achieve what he wanted, and positioned them to make any movements by my ships dangerous due to reaction fire.  So it was a well-deserved win for him, in his first game. And I need to remember to spend more at the start.

 

'A Billion Suns' - Painting Continued

I based and undercoated most of the first batch of ships and objectives for 'A Billion Suns' yesterday. There's two fleets of the smaller ships there; larger ships will be in the second batch, since it doesn't look like they appear until you play the higher scale games.

Here are some jump points; enough for two players.

The ships. I'm still not quite sure what colour schemes I'm going for with them yet.

I still have a few vessels and similar to make for some of the contracts, including facilities and the awesome space-kraken. 

Back To The Shipyard

Although I have a nice set of counters for 'A Billion Suns', it would be nice to have some miniatures as well. I did make some spaceships a few years ago, but I'm not sure I'm entirely enamoured of the designs, and even if I can reproduce them. So I thought I'd make some ships especially for the game. And, as you might expect, I have resorted to lolly sticks.

At the scale I'm likely to be playing at the larger ship types aren't going to be a viable option, so my aim was to put together two forces of the smaller ships. I can do a second build session to expand this as required. Here's the start - utility ships (small and medium), gunships, corvettes and frigates.

I'm not planning on anything to fancy - I used small pieces of card to break up some of the flat surfaces. These are the final designs for (front to back) the gunships, corvettes and frigates.

And these are the utility ships

With the basic designs sorted, the next step was to replicate them in numbers needed for the game. I also looked at some flight stand designs, as well as how to do 'wings' - the 'fighters' in 'A Billion Suns'.

The production line at full stretch ...

And the results!

For each side I have produced 5 x Medium Utility, 5 x Small Utility, 10 x Wings (which can be marked as Recon, Fighter or Bomber as necessary), 6 x Gunships, 4 x Corvettes and 2 x Frigates.  

The small rectangular locks at the front are lifeboats, which are objectives for ones of the contracts. That will be my next build phase - making objective markers for the contracts.

Whilst out shopping the other day I found these great beads. They're about 1" square ...

... and make perfect Jump Points. I don't even need to paint them.

 

A Billion Suns Again

Catherine and I played another game of 'A Billion Suns' yesterday evening. Once again we went for Scale 3 and got Supply, Industrial Espionage and Whaling contracts. This meant three tables, but our dining table is really only good for two if we want space for admin and helms, so we pressed a kitchen work-surface into action as well.

We committed more initial resources in this game. Catherine ignored the Supply contract and sent four wings of fighters to grab a container ship and go for the Industrial Espionage one. She also sent a gunship and utility ship after one of the space kraken. I sent fighters after her fighters, some utility ships on the Supply contract, and a frigate and utility ship combo to hunt kraken.

Initial moves saw Catherine's fighter wings wiped out by mine (see the picture showing the five ones I rolled when shooting at her with passive fire), giving me a start on the Espionage contract, and her kraken-hunting force destroyed by the kraken after we seriously underestimated how nasty their attacks are. This wiped her ships out. I got the Supply contract well underway, and easily killed a kraken with the frigate to pick up and score a heart.

 
Catherine rallied and sent a swarm of recon wings to escort two of the container ships, allowing her to score all 12 Credits from the Espionage contract on the second round. However I scored the full amount on the Supply contract, plus a kraken heart to finish with a score tat was less negative than hers. I 'won' with -4 Credits whilst she had -10.

 
This game played really quickly and we felt we had a handle on what we were doing as well. However the Whaling contract wasn't one worth going after with any great degree of commitment, since it takes too long to reap its full benefits and the other two contracts have mechanisms which cause them to time out. We actually didn't play the third round - Catherine worked out that she couldn't stop me scoring the last cards on the Supply contract without pulling in new ships, which would have cost her more than I would have lost by not finishing the contract.

To be fair, my investment in a frigate for the whaling contract was a bit ambitious, although had we had more time from the other contracts I think it would have paid off; it killed two of the beasties during the course of the game, including jump-hopping to a new table and using railguns on one with Power to Weapons to score three 2 damage hits.

Anyway, I still haven't worked out how I'm going to put together ships and so forth for this game yet, so until then I'll be using these boring counters. But at least I'm playing.

Here's the pictures.

The game spread across three 'tables'.

Fighters compete to 'escort' a container ship whilst they search it for a rare specimen.

Hunting a space kraken.

Hunting a space kraken and not getting destroyed by it.

Blue wipes out the red fighters.

Collecting a kraken heart.

'A Billion Suns' - First Game

Catherine and I had our first go at 'A Billion Suns' this afternoon, playing a basic Scale 3 game. There's quite a lot of information to unload on a new player who hasn't read the rules before, but Catherine managed to get a reasonable grasp of what she had to do.

We drew our three contracts and got Shipping (picking luxury stuff up from a planet and selling it), Demolition (blowing up rogue space-stations) and Rhexis Harvesting (picking up weird energy from a 'pearl' surrounded by a dangerous energy field). The game was spread across two tables, which you can see marked here by a chalk line. On one table were the three facilities and on the second the planet and the Rhexis pearl.

I have outlined how 'A Billion Suns' works here, so won't repeat it. We both had a think about what resources we wanted to commit to the contracts. Catherine decided to harvest the pearl, whilst I decided that the shipping contract looked tasty. We both decided to demolish space-stations. I sent in a gunship, whilst Catherine was more frugal, and sent in a fighter wing.

Meanwhile on the other side of the galaxy, two large merchant ships approached a planet, ready to trade. Nearby, unphotographed, Catherine's utility ship was scanning the Rhexis pearl.

Back at the space-stations, I decided to soften one up and ended up destroying it. This scored revenue, but less than I would have got had I taken the time to erase the AI core first. Still, it was money in the bank, and a second station (with no AI) would pay for the gunship.

Catherine erased the AI from a station, and set her fighters back into an attack. The station's automated defences wiped them out. She jumped in a squadron or recon ships to try and finish the job, but they were wiped out too.

I was accumulating luxuries at the planet, and was ready to ship them out for a score. But I realised that Catherine was about to score big from her harvesting. And if she did it would end that contract as well. Since the demolition contract also had a time-limit. I realised that I wouldn't have time to score revenue from my shipping contract before the game ended (the game ends when two contracts can no longer score revenue). I jumped in a pair of fighter wings, sending them after Catherine's harvesting ship, hoping to destroy it before it reaped the full benefits of the pearl. I failed. She scored.

My gunship went after another station, hoping to take it out and justify its cost. The station's shields deflected my attacks and, to add insult to injury, the station then auto-destructed, ending the contract and taking out my gunship in its blast radius.

I did earn some revenue from the shipping contract, but not as much as I'd hoped.

Catherine won decisively, spending 5 Credits on ships and earning 12 Credits from contracts to pick up +7 Credits. I spent 11 Credits on ships and earned a measly 7 Credits in return for a total of -4 Credits. Instead of going after Catherine's harvesting ship I would have been better off jumping the fighters in on the third space station - destroying both of them would have left me in credit, if nothing else.

The game played smoothly and quickly, especially given that we hadn't played it before. We're both keen to try it again.