I'm going to begin with a game which was my first foray into the world beyond Games Workshop. This game is Babylon 5: A Call To Arms. It is a fleet combat game based on the epic (and in my opinion, vastly underrated) 5-year long sci-fi series that ran from the mid-90s. I only got into it a few years back when my dad started watching the dvds, but now I'm a die-hard fan, having watched it right through at least four times.
I happened upon the game during a google search in the middle of a B5 phase, and quickly bought a starter set, which contained the rulebook and a set of card counters representing the ships. The game itself is remarkably simple and yet full of depth, and faithful to the series. As a result, I moved on to collecting the miniatures.
Here are a few samples of my collection. Up first is the White Star, without a doubt the most elegant and beautiful ship in the series. It is a combination of both Minbari and Vorlon technology, both of these races are very advanced, particularly the Vorlons. They are very agile and pack a considerable punch for their size (that little bump with the yellow bit on top of the ship is the bridge). The White Star becomes the iconic "good guys" ship from season 3 onwards.
(Steel Legion infantryman shown for scale)
Next up is the current workhorse of the Earth Alliance fleet, the Omega-class Destroyer. These bad boys pack a huge punch with batteries of pulse and laser cannons. However, they are pretty slow and not very maneuverable. These ships feature a very distinctive rotating secion in the middle which at the time was Earth's only means to generate artificial gravity. This is probably one of my favourite ships, both in the series and the game.
Here we have the Hyperion-class Heavy Cruiser, which was the mainstay of the Earth Alliance fleet before the Earth-Minbari War. Like the Omega, it uses both pulse and laser cannons, but less of each, isn't as well armoured, and cannot generate artificial gravity for the crew. However, it is more maneuverable.
Finally, we have the Starfury, the main fighter used by Earth. These craft are highly maneuverable, and have the edge when dogfighting all but the most high-tech of ships.
These are normally supplied six to a base, but I ordered some custom bases which fit three, meaning I only need to buy half as many (or I get twice as much, depending on how you want to look at it). For an idea of scale, the black base is a 1" square.
So that's a quick taste of how it looks. The centerpiece of my collection is Babylon 5 itself - I managed to find an old model kit of it on ebay. I'll save that for my next post, in which I will also give a battle report in order to introduce how the game works (I've always thought it was the best way to show and explain a game to those who haven't played).
The game has had a few ups and downs, with the biggest down of all almost upon us - support is being pulled in June. The license will expire and Mongoose Publishing have no plans to renew. This means the miniatures will also no longer be produced, and as such I'm pulling out all the stops to grab what I can. I want to have a decent fleet for each of the ones seen in the series: Earth, Minbari, Narn, Centauri, Vorlons, Shadows, League of Non-Aligned Worlds (primarily Drazi, Brakiri and Vree), ISA and Drakh, with a few Raiders, Civilains and the First Ones. A lot of the ships in the game have been made up to flesh out the fleets a little, but I want the bulk of each to be made up of official ships. I'll also be scratchbuilding/kitbashing space stations for each race (except Earth, who have one in miniature already), as well as the Vorlon and Shadow Planetkillers. The ultimate aim is to be able to run club campaigns using the rules provided in the book, with all these races available to the players, and to be able to play all of the "historical" scenarios based on events from the series.
If any of you know anyone who is selling off Babylon 5: A Call To Arms minis, please let me know as I'll be glad to make a deal with them, especially if they're in the UK.
At present, I'm actually stripping the White Star in order to give it an improved paintjob, brightening it up a bit and adding a green tint to be more faithful to the on-screen version. After that, I'll attend to my Earth fleet, and order some more bases to get all my fighters done as well.
I hope you've enjoyed this little look at something different, and stay tuned for next week's introduction to the game mechanics with a battle report (probably Saturday).
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