Game Title : War against White Comet
Game Designer : Uncredited
Game Components
2 game map ( actually you can use any hex-map, because they are all black hex map )
240 counters
10 pages rulebook
Introduction
“Space Cruiser Ymato” was cast when I was elementary school boy. It was totally different animation from their predecessor in which every time one monster is killed by the hero.
Rust-coloured Earth poluted by radiation due to asteroid bomb. From that ruined Earth, the Yamato started her long voyage as an last hope of all the people on the Earth. It was really shocking story for a child, but was a real “sense of wonder”.
The second trip of Yamato was against the white comet empire.
This game covers mainly this second trip and also covers some of the first trip.
The Ymato stories was published as wargames by Bandai. But, Bandai decided to withdraw this area in very early days. Thus, those Yamato games became an very expensive auction items for years.
This game was a real rescue for the wargamers who don’t have a chance to get Bandai’s legendary two games. And fortunately this game uses an advanced game mechanics after the Bandai’s games.
Game mechanics
This game uses an chit-pull activation system which become popular during 1990s’.
Each player has command points determined by scenario special rule. This CP is a number of activation chit for each player to put his chits in the cup during preparation phase of each turn.
There is an E-value which means energy of each ship. You must cout the number of activation phases every time you draw an chit from the cup. Even if you draw your chit, if the number of phase is larger than the E-value of your ship, the ship cannot act due to energy shortage.
As a result of these 2 rules, only the excellent ships with excellent leader can act many phases.
During each activation, the owner of the drawn chit can activate his ships which has lowaer or equal E-value as the order of the phase. First, he can attack with those ships, then he can move those ships.
If you have any carrier, in other words you have fighters or bombers, you have an option to put aircraft activation chit. If this chit is drawn, the aircraft of both player can act.
In combat system, there are many parameters for each ship and aircraft.
The first one is a number of attack which is really a number of attack. If you attack, you can roll a number of dice equals this value.
The second one is range which is used in very normal way. If you attack within half of the range, you need 4 or higher to get a hit. If you attack within the range but more than half, you need 5 or higher. If you attack within double of the range but more than the range, you need 6 or higher.
Once you get hits, you must then decide how the hit is critical. You must roll 1 die for each hit and add all the die result together. Then, you must divide the total by the target’s armor. The result is the damages. There are 3 types of damage, weapon damage ( reduce the enemy’s attacking capacity), body damage ( will destroy the ship when the hit accumulates ), and supecial damage ( very special type of hit which result in special effect ).
The above are applied to the regular beam cannon.
In addition, there are missile attacks. Some ships and aircrafts have missile attack capacities. These can fire the missiles during their activation but the effect is resolved during the missile phase which is after the regular activation phases. This sequence reflects the fact that missile goes slower than the beam. But, once they reach the target the effect is more serious.
Of course, there is a special rule for Yamato’s wavecannon and similar critical weapons. In addition, the rule covers the ramming attack and boarding attack. There are special character chits.
I really love the Domel’s warp transporter which can move aircrafts directly next to the enemy ships.
I also like the Goland’s heavy missile fleets which have giant missiles.
All of these special weapons are covered by some special rules.
As you can imagine from the above, the rule is not short.
But, please don’t worry too much though. Once you become familiar with the rule, you don’t have to check the rulebook, and you can proceed almost all action with no chart.
One of the most attractive thing of this game is that there are very attractive 11 scenarios in the game.
The designer would not like to have scenarios which are basically same but only the order of battle are different. Due to this philosophy, every scenario has different order of battle, setup restriction, and / or victory condition.
Honestly speaking, many this type of game have many scenarios, but usually they can be categorized only few types. But, in this game, you will have wider variety of situations.
For this purpose, some scenario don’t have the Yamato. Instead they have the old Earth fleets, or Andromeda ( the new ship of Earth fleet after the Yamato ). This looks somewhat unpleasant for Yamato-fan. But please try these scenario, you will understand these are the attractive new situation as a game.
My favorite scenario is “ the battle of seven-colored nebula ” where the most talented Gamilas’s general Domel challenged the Yamato with his secret weapon warp-transporter.
There was an rumor that this game would have an expansion for Dark Nebula Empire. But, even after 10 years from this parent game, I cannot see any concrete evidence of the expansion.
On the other hand, we have an new Yamato movie this year. And this might be a bad thing for the expansion, because this means that copyright of Yamato is still valuable and probably too valuable for small wargame maker.
Conclusion
Unfortunately even for Japanese wargamers, this game become an rare item as Bandai’s predecessors.
But, if you have a chance to see this game, please try to play it at any price if you are a enthusiastic fan of the Yamato. I strongly believe that it will pay the effort.
