I’d like to invite you to join the open beta for A Billion Suns: Second Edition!
A Billion Suns was my “difficult second album”. Released in 2021 in the depths of the pandemic, it was too beautiful and too weird to live. Still, it sold well enough that Osprey were happy to let me write a second edition. I’m SUPER EXCITED about this second edition. I want to make the game much more approachable, as well as offer a much broader toolkit for playing all kinds of spaceship games.
The second edition obvious cleans up a bunch of core rules, but most importantly in offers four game modes, styled as Eras of Play (in a move I’m titled: “Fuck It, We Doing A Battletech”).
Eras of Play
Each Era is both a chapter in humanity’s epic arc and a unique game mode. They are each sandboxes to tell four very different, but iconic, types of sci-fi story: whether corporate greed and reckless expansion; desperate rebellion against a galaxy-choking regime; total interstellar war; or skirmishes for survival in ruins of civilisation’s collapse. Each provides rules, factions and missions tailored to the stories of that Era.
To get started with A Billion Suns, you’ll read the Core Rules, gather some miniatures to represent the Training Fleets then play the two Basic Training missions: Combat Simulator and Management Training.
Once you have the basics down, you’ll pick a Era of Play:
- Armageddon is the simplest game mode. You build fleets from the provided factions and fight free-for-all space battles. (Low complexity.)
- The Age of Unity is a time of heroic resistance and rebellion in the face of galaxy-spanning fascism and religious dogma. It combines list-building and narrative missions to let you play out operatic sci-fi tales of heroism, betrayal and daring rebellion. (Medium complexity.)
- Hypergrowth is the most complex game mode, for only the most cocksure executives. You command a ruthless corporation bent on profits at any cost. You have an entire shipyard’s worth of interstellar vessels at your beck and call, but the shareholders are always watching. (High complexity.)
- Junkspace is a skirmish-style game mode that offers both solo and co-op play as well as free-for-all. It zooms in on the rarely legal activities of pirates, privateers and independent traders on the lawless fringes of human-controlled space. Smaller fleets of small ships try to complete jobs while automated adversaries frustrate them. (Medium complexity.)
If this sounds interesting to you, I’d love for you to have a read of the beta rules and throw peanuts at me in my discord.
In space, no one can hear you scheme.
Cheers!
Mike