A Billion Suns: Interstellar Fleet Battles

Osprey Wargames #26

by Mike Hutchinson, Zeeshawn Durrani (Illustrator)

A Billion Suns is a wargame of interstellar combat that puts you in command of fleets of powerful starships, from squadrons of agile, but fragile, fighters, to hulking and powerful capital ships. When combined with some spaceship miniatures, a tape measure, a deck of playing cards and some dice, this rulebook provides everything you need to play exciting and tense tabletop games of interstellar exploration and combat. Using simple dice pool mechanics, you must carefully manage your resources and seize the opportunities that come your way in order to lead your fleet to victory and assert your dominance over the stars.

Genres: Science Fiction

149 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2021

Reviews

[Andy Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting take on SF wargaming from the designer of Gaslands. For the price (less than £10), this packs a lot into its 64 pages. Shows signs of having had more time to develop than Gaslands 1e (I remember Mike at a convention telling me he'd had to rush that out while busy with family commitments). Also had the benefit of members of the Gaslands community playtesting and helping development.
The game has three key USPs:
1. Component agnostic. You are encouraged to play using whatever minis you have from other games, any cheap spaceships you can find or scratch-build, or even simple markers and counters if you want.
2. Multiple playing boards. Using "jump points", you can hop your battlegroups between tables to complete different objectives or reinforce where needed. e.g. In the room I'm in now, table 1 might be the dining table I'm sitting at, tables 2 and 3 the folding occasional table, four the seating area of the sofa. More prosaically, you can mark a large table into separate zones.
3. There are no "army lists" or points totals for scenarios, and you can deploy any ships you want, but the ships you "recquisition" come out of your victory points so efficient and effective deployment is rewarded.
This last point ties in with what at first appears to be flavour text but in the later section on "contracts" (or scenarios) becomes clearer - you play as the CEO of a future corporation, not as the leader of a military or nationstate etc - the flavour text for each contract (each game has three, generated by drawing playing cards) is delightfully cynical. You play for (and spend) Credits. It's all about the bottom line.
You probably coul dreskin some of that lore to run more conventional SF, but there are other games out there if you want to play the Battle of the Line or Wolf 357 style epic space fleets. This is a fun, clever little set of rules I look forward to trying out.

[Arseni Kritchever · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun little generic miniatures game about small fleets of space ships battling it out for objectives, trying to achieve the most with as least as possible, from the creator of Gaslands (which is an awesome game). Some cool stand-out mechanics:
- Play across multiple tables (or sectors) at once, Jumping ships in and out and across tables.
- Lower rolls are better so smaller dice are more likely to hit, but smaller dice also produce less damage. So it really simulates the nimble accurate fighters trying to attack massive lumbering battleships.
- Objective-based scenarios and campaigns. It's not about lining up your fleets and blasting away, but about accomplishing objectives as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- Persistent campaign mode where your corporation grows and expands and gets customized.
- No need to make fleet lists before the battle. Just Jump In whichever ships you need, but the more ships you use, the fewer victory points you score at the end.

The book's layout is really nice and clean; there are sidebars on nearly every page clarifying rules, reminding of other rules, or with designer notes. For a book of this size (it's very small really), it packs a ton of content.

The only thing I think could be improved is the section on targeting and attacking. The rules are a little muddled for me, and I would've liked more detailed examples and diagrams.

[Andrew Tuttle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Billion Stories in the Naked Galaxy

A refreshingly different wargame, not a naval slugfest in space but a thoughtful game of resource management... with interstellar fleets to aid the negotiations.

[Joel Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corporations send out fleets of space ships against each other in order to achieve profit dominance. The system looks interesting. One of the intriguing mechanics is the ability to leap through portals to other tabletops and surfaces, so the game is more three-dimensional.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very atypical wargame rules, which will take quite some practice to get the hang of. Quite dig the look of it- very much on the forefront of what I want to get on the table soon.