ven though production on the final season of Babylon 5 has wrapped, the show's popularity continues to grow. Once it's gone, fans yearning for more of B5's interstellar intrigue can get a fix from this collectible card game.
The Premier Edition of the game comes in four 60-card starter decks--one each for the Humans, Minbari, Centauri, and Narn. Each race's deck comes with 50 cards tailored for its species, plus 10 random extras. Two to four people can play at a time. The heart of the game lies in conflict cards. Conflicts range from bold military strikes to subtle political maneuverings. When a conflict is declared, each side uses the abilities of characters and fleets they have in play to support or oppose the conflict. They can also play event cards that temporarily raise or lower character abilities. In general, a successful conflict builds the influence of the player who initiated it. Increasing influence enables players to bring more fleets and characters into play, and counts towards power. The first race to achieve a power score of 20 wins the game, establishing itself as the dominant force in the galaxy.
How each race goes about gaining power reflects its strengths and weaknesses--the same dramatic ingredients that drive the television series. The Centauri are masters of intrigue, for instance, while the Minbari are supreme diplomats with powerful fleets to back them up. All of the show's characters--the ambassadors, their assistants and others--contribute their unique abilities as well. Players may also ally with the mysterious Shadows or Vorlons to increase their power, but not without costs...
Complicated and multi-layered, just like the show
While many card games based on media properties tend to be stilted derivatives of the dramas that spawned them, the B5 CCG really feels like watching the show. How the characters affect the game, the nature of the conflicts and their outcomes, are all reminiscent of the program's mood and themes. Sometimes the game overextends itself to reproduce historic events. Delenn, for example, can transform into a human being, but it takes a three-card combo, which is pretty difficult to swing.
The stats and symbols on the cards are very hard to read at any distance, but the photo choices are appealing, especially the spaceships. And Precedence deserves hearty applause for making the show's central characters not just common, but essential (all ambassadors start the game on the table). No more pretending to like playing Star Wars with no Luke: get G'Kar on the table with the Deep Space Fleet and look out trouble!
The rulebook does a good job of presenting a complex game. It's well organized and even has an index. Strangely, some game elements, like the interracial tension-tracking system, barely affect the game. It's as if the designers cooked up more ideas than they could easily fit, but left them in for decoration. The game also suffers from "abacus syndrome" as modifiers pile up and conflicts require some hefty math to resolve. There are at least seven different kinds of tokens.
Is it fun? B5 fans should definitely get a kick out of the game's use of characters and confrontations from the series, but newcomers are bound to be a little confused. Those who enjoy long, intricate games of political scheming and intrigue should find it entertaining.
