Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Galactic Knights glance

Terran Formidable-class battlecruiser.
The Galactic Knights rulebook is 106 pages, spiral bound.  However, the rules themselves don't take up that much space.  The first chapter (Preliminaries and Setup; this chapter explains game concepts) is four pages; chapter 2 (Basic Training; moving and shooting) is thirteen pages, chapter 3 (Advanced Training; missiles and fighters) is five pages; chapter 4 (Command Training; an alternative missile and fighter system) is ten pages.  Chapter 5 is ten pages of ship design information for Terran ships.  Chapter 6 covers the Terrans; antagonists, the Avarians, with three pages of combat rules and ten pages of ship design rules.  After that, the book ends with fourty-seven pages blank ship design sheets, ship design sheets for each type of Terran and Avarian ship, and quick reference sheets and markers, and a two-page glossary.
Galactic Knights came out five years ago, but there hasn't been very much posted about it on the 'net. I thought I would remedy that with a few links:
If you run across any more reviews of Galactic Knights--or if you wrote one of your own--let me know.

2 comments:

Y'shayahu Z. said...

Id be interested in reading
(or for that matter: co-writing!!)
a direct head-to-head comparison review of GK's with Spartan's "Firestorm Armada";
playing time, complexity, scalability
(ie small fleet actions vs large fleet battles),
visceral 'fun factor'...

The two games are so close in scale that I'm seriously considering making my existing GK fleets pull double duty... Just to find opponents!

The most obvious parallels:
Terran=Terran
Didrenzi=Carnivorian
Relthoza=Entomolian
Aquan=Aquarian

(The underpinning aesthetic similarities are such that I have to wonder if Spartan didn't use GK ships as prototypes....)

My educated guess is FA plays quicker
(but more Beer&Pretzel),
and GK's adds a bit more complexity and "realism"...

However:
I have no clue which system would more easily handle Larger Fleets (25+ ships, say...)

I say this having played neither game system yet...

Thomas
('Volstagg' on TMP)

Desert Scribe said...

Sounds like a good idea, but I haven't read the FA rules, so I don't know how that game plays.

By the way--you mention your existing GK fleets. Do you have pics up?