Sky Galleons of Mars / Cloudships & Gunboats (Space 1889)

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm.........
Review: ...This is a pretty entertaining book and the art by Tim Bradstreet is very nice. He is truly one of the best artists working today. This book is definitely worth a look for the artwork alone.

Rating:
Summary: Flying ships on Victorian Mars!
Review: There are two ways of looking at this book, as a miniature based war-game, or a role-playing supplement for the Victorian era space-faring Space 1889 Game. The text-portions only of the original boxed games are put together well with rules errata between the two sections, little repetition and all of the record sheets together at the back. As a miniature based war-game, it has some obvious failings: no ship counters or miniatures and no playing map. While thirty odd deck-plans in Cloudships and Gunboats are very nicely reproduced, the scale is too small for the original intention of miniature 25mm deck battles and boarding actions (but there was only six plans reproduced in the original games large enough for this anyway). There are many miniature war-game rules which don't have pieces provided so this is not really a problem; go buy some. Lack of the game board can be overcome with a ruler/tape measure and perhaps a home-made turning circle. As all the diagrams and ship plans are to scale, you can make counters easily enough using the "silhouettes" (someone has done this on the web). Not ideal, but there you go. The greatest loss is of the two large colour hex maps, but tiny versions are visible on the back of the book for reference. As a Space 1889 campaign guide it is very useful; Cloudships and Gunboats in particular contains detailed descriptions of all major power's assets on Mars and Earth. Political details, history, where built, and where posted are all included. While the original Sky Galleons of Mars contains very useful maps of the Syrtis Major area and useful scenarios and campaign rules that could be the basis of a role-playing session, or a distraction within an existing one. In all day good overall view of what is the most interesting part of the Space 1889 world: flying ships.