A Billion Suns: Interstellar Fleet Battles by Mike Hutchinson is a wargame published by Osprey Publishing.
The supplement is available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $16 and is available in printed form from sites such as Amazon and in Kindle from Amazon. The printed book is the version reviewed. The book has 64 pages with two being the front matter and one the Contents; inside the covers are some About details and ads for other games.
The Introduction gives some brief details on the setting; the game is about corporate fleets warring over valuable things.
What is This Book? gives some even briefer details on what the game is and what else is needed.
Basic Training has a series of tutorials showing how to play the game.
What You Need to Play covers what is needed in addition to the book. The book just contains rules; as this is a miniatures game, more is needed. These are one or more flat surfaces, miniatures to represent spaceships – anything could be used – d6, d8, d10 and d12 dice, one pack of playing cards, tokens, measuring tape and a command helm. The game is designed for multiple “table” – they do not have to be different tables; a surface can be divided up – play, with the ability to jump between the tables.
Spaceships covers the ships, of which there are different types, and battlegroups and CEOs don’t start with a fleet list before battle, instead summoning ships as needed. This costs money, and money is how victory is truly determined.
Core Concepts covers the core concepts, naturally, such as rolling dice, measurement – this is measurement-based, not grid-based – and credits.
Playing the Game outlines the various game phases and how to determine victory. Which is simply the CEO with the most money; hopefully, a positive figure.
Jumping, using jump points, is how ships arrive on the initially empty playing field
Activations are how battlegroups are brought into play and used once in play.
Combat covers the rules for combat.
Additional Rules has optional rules for adding extra detail, any of which can be used.
Space covers this, and the occasional dangers found in it.
Contracts explains these. This is a fundamental part of the game; the CEOs battle to complete a contract faster and better to earn more money. Contracts are built using the card deck.
Setting up a Game is the basics for doing this.
Core System Contracts has a table for determining the contract. Different cards create different contracts each of which has different setup rules, revenue and other specific rules. There are 12, one for each face card.
Designing Your Own Corporation briefly explains this.
Competitive Advantages are choices that CEOs can make to improve the technology of their ships.
Campaigns covers how to run these.
Afterthoughts incudes notes from the designer.
The final two pages have a Quick Reference and the Command Helm Card.
A Billion Suns: Interstellar Fleet Battles in Review
The Contents is to a decent level of depth; navigation is fine for the printed book. The text maintains a single column with sidebar colour format and appeared to be free of errors. The sidebar, when used, contains tips for playing. There are many colour illustrations, up to full page in size. The largest illustrations are rendered spaceship, whilst the majority are photos of painted models.
It should be noted that the printed book is more often than not cheaper new than the PDF version, and the Kindle ebook is cheaper than either. Frankly, the PDF looks extremely overpriced, and you are likely better off buying the physical version.
This is not a game that can be played by itself, as it needs other things to use, in particular dice, spaceship tokens and other tokens. However, it doesn’t require any specific in these lines, which means pretty much anything can be repurposed. It will probably be easiest to use for those who already have appropriate miniatures, but miniatures that are not technically appropriate or even printed out will all work fine. It does require rather more measuring than a grid-based system. The overall concept of the game, that of CEOs battling to make money, is perhaps a bit different to the more standard ones of battling to gain control of planets and systems. The game looks to be flexible enough that it could be repurposed to other concepts comparatively easily. A Billion Suns: Interstellar Fleet Battles can be found on Amazon and on DriveThruRPG.
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