Traveller's Board Wargames

[Supplement Four]

I never see much discussion of Traveller's board wargames. I think Invasion Earth / Imperium gets the most "press". Every once in a while, I'll see something about Fifth Frontier War. There's hardly anything about Dark Nebula.

Do people play these games?

Or, is it just that, they're a board game, like Monopoly, so there isn't much to discuss?

Come to think of it, I've owned FFW and Dark Nebula for many, many years. Never played either of them. Counters remain unpunched.

 

[aramis]

I have, in the past, played entire campaigns of Imperium.

3rd millennium is execrable. (Got it. It's crap. The changes were all for the worse. nothing more to be said there.)

Never got 5FW nor Dark Nebula.

Talk about Invasion Earth too much.

BL and BR are both over-complex to play.

Use Mayday and Snapshot mostly for counters & maps, and not for the rules.

Have striker and AHL... used to use AHL for combat before MT came out.

Got Power Projection Fleet, cause I Love Traveller, and I like Full Thrust... and I hate it. It turned left everywhere I would have turned right.

I haven't bothered with ACQ...

 

[Jeff M]

I am - very slowly - working on a variant of Imperium/Dark Nebula to play something like a Trillion Credit Squadron campaign as a con game. Ideally, I want to scale the I move/you move mechanic to a multi-player game with strategic initiative/interupts as part of the mechanic. Also, wanted to include plotting, fleet organisation/moves, limited intelligence and economic management (derived from both 5FW and some of the Imperium Games volumes). One day between work/study/publication writing I might get around to it.

Jeff Malone

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

A friend of mine had "Imperium" back in high school, and we played a couple of rounds of it back in the day, as I remember. He had "Snapshot" too, although we didn't use those rules all that much.

I know he held on to his Traveller stuff, so I'm guessing he still has those games in his possession.

And I got "Fifth Frontier War" when it came out. I spent quite a bit of late summer/early fall wonking around with it that year. I loved the game, but don't seem to have it anymore. When I went off to college a year or so later it stayed home, where at some point it just ... disappeared. It's probably somebody's third-hand eBay score by now.

 

[jec10]

Have had 5FW since "back in the day" - have spent countless hours trying to perfect the ultimate Zho strategy to win under the victory conditions set in the game (and before Corridor reinforcements arrive). Great fun game, a bit like Pacific War in space: the Zho/Japanese seeking to deliver the knockout blow before the overwhelming power of their enemy can be brought to bear.

Have had AHL for many years and have always loved it for close quarter battle and action aboard. Has never been surpassed IMHO.

Just got Invasion: Earth, but I'm looking at it more from the mechanics of planetary invasion point-of-view rather than as a game at the moment.

 

[soloprobe]

I used to play STRIKER.....in the days before Warhammer 40k. The last time I played a TRaveller board game was TEWHILL's copy of AHL.....

 

[jappel]

I've played Fifth Frontier War several times, or at least begun games. In 2004 I ran a double-blind PBEM game with individual players taking the place of the fleet commanders that got through about 8 or 9 turns before a nasty RL incident knocked the train off the tracks. I posted about it several times here and on the TML; you should be able to find the discussions here in the archives.

AHL was my preferred set of rules for PC-level engagements for many years, and I've played several of the scenarios that come with the game.

 

[weasel fierce]

well, if it counts, we're starting a Striker campaign in connection with a new GURPS Traveller game very soon

 

[jec10]

well, if it counts, we're starting a Striker campaign in connection with a new GURPS Traveller game very soon

I'd be interested to hear how it goes. Any chance of posting units orgs and vehicle designs on COTI?

 

[weasel fierce]

yeah, certainly. Not sure how much vehicle design we'll do, but I;ll see what I can get out here

 

[jec10]

yeah, certainly. Not sure how much vehicle design we'll do, but I;ll see what I can get out here

Happy to do any vehicle design for you if basic requirements specified. The spreadsheet here..
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/ct-striker/?yguid=272957475
makes vehicle/weapons design a breeze.

 

[weasel fierce]

ah very nice. Its going to be platoon actions, so mostly some basic APC/IFV types. I'll do some planning this week, to see what we end up with.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

The only boardgame I owned for the longest time was AHL. I loved it and I did play it.

In the past few years I scored FFW, Mayday and Snapshot on ebay. I have a dream of running FFW concurrently with an RPG campaign. I love the Snapshot rules--better than AHL, but for reasons that escape me right now.