Battleship Sunk!

Based on a review from GeekDad, my wife bought me a new board game for my birthday, Battleship Galaxies. It arrived last night so we broke it out and tried out the first basic scenario.

Despite the name, the game only bears a slight connection to the old school Battleship. Instead of two ocean navies battling it out in a time before radar or satelites, you have two space navies battling it out in the depths of space. All of your pieces appear on the board so there is no guessing where the enemy is. Instead, it’s a tactics game of trying to out maneuver each other. The holdover from the the classic game plays out when you roll an attack. You roll a lettered and number die, getting something like B7, and then compare it to a graphic of the ship you are attacking. Depending on the ship, B7 might be a hit, might be a miss.

Each ship class has some unique features and the two sides have some variety from each other. In general, he ISN has ships with lower shields but tough hulls and more weapons. The Wretcheridians (yeah the names pretty stupid) have more shields and stronger weapons, but less of them and shorter ranges. Certain ships can ‘buff’ up other ships giving you real support craft. For instance, the ISN Torrent, serves as an AWAC (or Raptor for the BSG crowd), allowing you to hit the enemy from farther away, and with certain tactics cards, avoid damage. The main ship of the Wretcheridians can be really hard to destroy with its super shields.

There are several different scenarios with the game that can change up your goals. There are different terrain features that can have different effects. It’s a two dimensional board which eliminates one of the unique features of space combat, but that would be to complicated to do in a board game.

You also have the ability to self-select which ships and tactics cards you use in a game, adding variety and a level of strategy similar to a trading card game. I get the impression they will be adding expansions to the game that adding in more ships and more tactic cards along with new scenarios.

It was an enjoyable game, and despite my wife not being that big into strategy games, she also enjoyed herself. It does make me wish for a similar style computer tactical combat game. Something that is at least semi-turn based with ships of different abilities so that each fight can go a number of different ways. Star Wars Rebellion was the only one I can think of that came close. There you had some ships with different abilities and a 3D map. Though maneuvering only provided a slight tactical advantage, and the abilities of ships were limited use.