Babylon 5 CCG: Getting Started

Looking around the old interwebz, so many think that the B5 CCG sounds fun (or they have fond memories) but that its just too difficult or cost prohibitive to get into the game now.  I've put together this little post to show you that its surprisingly easy and truthfully fairly affordable to get back into this game even 15 years down the road.

This assumes that you get a group of four together and split boosters from boxes (easiest way to make it affordable).  How you divide up boosters is, of course, up to you. All hyperlinks following will take you to presorted and filtered eBay searches.  Besides these, I'd recommend occasionally checking generic Babylon 5 eBay auctions and looking for entire collections or sets being auctioned off.  I usually see one or two still trickle by a month, and usually one of them is a ripoff and the other a steal.  If you think you've found something good, feel free to ask here and I'll give you my honest opinion on the auction.

Launching the Ship:

First thing you need is a starter set for each player (I'd just go Minbari, Narn, Centauri, Human at this point).  Here are some Starter sets on eBay.  As you can see they go for around $10 apiece and are 60 card decks that are more or less ready to go.  I'd then recommend going to Vorlon Space and grabbing the final ruleset.  Play a game or two with your palls for fun.  Get the mechanics down, and have and idea of where you'd like to go from there.

Improving the Game:

After you've had a little experience with the starter decks, next you need some boosters.  If buying by the box (and you should) I'd highly encourage you to get at least a couple Deluxe booster boxes on eBay and if your feeling up to it, I'd then look at Great War booster boxes on eBay.  Each box runs about $25 if you're patient.  If you get two, that's another $13 a person.  With two boxes of boosters, starter decks, and a good group of friends, your final cost (per person) would be $23.  I dunno about you, but in my gamer circles, that's a steal.  If you're a patient and wily eBay buyer, you could even cut that in half!

If you find that you want to explore the Shadow War mechanic, Shadows booster boxes on eBay are extremely cheap.  This expansion was overproduced and really a little shallow in its selection.  However, if going the Shadow War route, its a must.

Expanding and optional factions:

If you get more than 4 players interested, and everyone wants to play unique factions, have additional players either grab a Non-aligned starter deck on eBay (a later, fifth faction) or a Psi Corps starter deck on eBay (alternate Human sub-faction) or another one of the core factions and then a Home Faction (Opposition) starter deck on eBay (this allows two of each faction in the game at the same time).  It is possible to have three Human players, and two of each of the others... but I'd not recommend it, unless you've all played before and are freeing up an entire day to play this mega game out.

After this, hunt for individual cards or look at the more rare and more expensive later expansions (Wheel of Fire and Crusade are a blast... but hardly needed to win the game, and probably not worth it if you game on a budget.  Severed Dreams is really only worth it for all the alternative variants of the ambassadors... and I'd just get them as single auctions, that'll save you frustrations and money).

ENJOY!

Babylon 5 CCG Game #2: End of the Lunch Game... new game coming

So yeah, I "won" a game... the two new players did well, but I think this game really shouldn't count.  I might need to go back and hone that Human deck some more (or maybe just rebuild it from scratch).  Feels like its can't ever be more than a strong supporting cast member.  I let the game go until the end of lunch and then played two planets and a contingency to close at a standard victory with 21 influence.  Londo's annoyed for sure (he wasn't playing a learning deck), but techno-mages did just fine keeping Refa, the Emperor, and Londo off my Inner Circle,

In other news, I'm only needing to log about 500 more Shadow cards from having all of my cards documented and organized... here's the system so far:

Also in trying to hunt down any other current B5 CCG players, if found this  Old RPG forum discussion on B5 CCG.  Pretty interesting, even if it was 7 years ago. 

Looks like we've got a game for Saturday for sure.  Non-aligned, Centauri, and myself.   I'll let them pick between Narn Power Politics, Techno-mage G'Kar, and Neroon Ranger deck... doesn't matter to me, the G'Kar deck is probably the weakest (just too slow), but I think they'll probably direct me toward the Ranger deck unless we have someone running the Minbari/Vorlon deck (and I hope we do) and maybe even someone running the Sheridan deck (I've already tweaked it to have a shot at putting President Sheridan in).

I'll get that AAR up as soon as the match happens... a few more games under our belts and I'll start posting deck builds for your viewing pleasure.

Babylon 5 CCG AWOLs

Only 187 cards missing now:

Premier: 8
Shadows: 15
Great War: 22
Deluxe: 2
Psi Corps: 53
Severed Dreams: 26
Wheel of Fire: 32
Crusade: 29

I finally have every Narn card and every techno-mage (fleet or character), so that's fun.  It just amazes me that Psi Corp is the expansion that one cannot find any boosters for anywhere.  I've also got the sneaky feeling that I probably have 10 of the missing cards, I just haven't counted/filed them correctly.

Argh! the Psi Corps cards, so tough to get at any reasonable cost. Anyone wanting to sell an Emperor Mollari, let me know about it.  Here's some B5 mod action:

Narn deck won't narn... and hello old friend

Yeah, no Narns in my Narn faction, just 5 Techno-mages and a Banker... so weird

A few more turns (3 or 4?) on the lunch game.  Predictably Londo the Gambler and G'kar the Techno-mage are going head to head.  Its kinda broke down into two games, Narn vs Centauri (the two veteran players) and Minbari vs Narn (learning player and veteran).  Unfortunately for the Human player (also learning) his cards just aren't coming up.

Londo: Got some of his heavy hitters in, Refa's up into the Inner Circle, and Emperor Turhan with his Imperial Telepaths are up and firing.  I tried to block his Hunter, Prey (which gives him an auto Intrigue 2 on all future conflicts), but stuff got real.  Galen and Genius Loci jumped in with both feet... Refa attacked them and Londo supported the conflict along with Turhan (thus all the damage tokens).  Arthur has been a big help to him getting cards.  With two cards that can generate intrigue conflicts as an action, this deck is always doing something every turn.

Delenn: Now with 11 power and 10 influence (benefited from a Narn Legacy Conflict), He's got a solid Inner Circle and good supporting cards, Vorlon influence is at 11 (I actually want the Shadow War, so I'm kinda helping subtly, much to Londo's dismay).

Sheridan:  Now an Extra Conflict John Sheridan (just need conflicts now), and with a captain and a won conflict successfully pushed through (at 11 influence), he's just sitting on every great late game, 12 cost, card you could want.  Hopefully the low cost quantity over quality cards that are everywhere in this deck start coming up soon.  He's got no more conflicts in his hand... just waiting on the right cards to come up!

G'Kar: Well what a weird set of 3/4 turns.  Played Faces in Stone on the first of the turns and was able to get Blaylock, Isabella (who got demoted last turn), and Genius Loci all in (and Genius Loci into the Inner Circle).  I pushed through two Well of Forevers (cheap, I know) and an Isabella's Quest to gain 2 more influence, along with another pair of conflicts, I was able to get up to 15 influence and spending 18.  I'll drop one planet next turn and then focus on guiding the Humans up to 15 influence too (its a learning game after all, and I'm in a spot to just sit back and build supporting cast and let the others fight it out).  G'Kar will just play power broker for now.  I did look at Londo's deck and discard Prime Minister Mollari (evil, I know), but what good G'Kar can pass on keeping Londo in his place?

Things learned:  When it happens, Legacy decks can get OP... I've got 5 Techno-mages in play (G'Kar is one now).  My Narn deck is too thick, I can't get any good non-Legacy cards in my hand (even with Isabella giving me extra draws)...  I need to make hard choices and cut it down to 70 cards (which I'm not good at doing).  Luckily the Legacy deck is keeping me in the game... I've also got two Portraits of the Past in my deck somewhere... at this rate I might use them both if they come up (lets me recycle my Crusade Pile... hello more Wells of Forever). Also, as said before, I really need to emphasize shuffling decks well to new players.

In other news... I'm still cataloging my 4k extra cards I just acquired (see a couple posts below), but I also got a little something for me.  I don't know how rare this is, but I'm thrilled to have it.

So, while thinking of this, here's a vid in memory of Andreas Katsulas

and this epic tribute too

Upcoming: going to try and get a veterans only game together this Saturday.  I'm going to try my 60-ish card Neroon-Ranger One military deck.  Sounds like a Centauri war deck and a Psi Corps deck will be waiting for me... maybe a Non-Aligned worlds deck and a Shadow deck too

50 Credits and a Week... worth of cards

  I had a pretty good week of acquisitions.  While I haven't had the chance to put them all in yet, I acquired almost 4000 cards for under 50 USD.  2 Shadows Booster Boxes, 1 Great War Booster Box, and over 3000 fixed, commons, and uncommons (complete sets each) from Wheel of Fire, Severed Dreams, Deluxe, and Shadows (which apparently is the easiest set to acquire cards from in the current market).  So for the price of a couple Crusade characters I pulled off this... and no card is represented more than x2... I was very happy with this all.  I still haven't put it all into Card Vault yet, but as I was mostly missing uncommons, this should really help... and I still have 2 Shadows booster boxes on the way (which is included in my total 50 USD).

  The white packets are complete common and uncommon sets.  I'll unwrap them as needed for our playgroup (which is mostly highschool/college kids), but for now I think I'll keep them as is...  I did unwrap at least one of each, couple of the few.  I'm toying with the idea of using them as give aways on the blog (say on random comment per month gets a complete common set, or the like... that'd require comments, of course).

  Besides the incredible quality of the repackaged commons, I've now finished off my Sheridans, Zathrasi (lol), and complete a second set of squadrons 1-3 (finally).

  Its still Wheel of Fire and Crusade rares and basically anything Psi Corps (which is more difficult than Crusade cards to find, for me) that elude me.  Once I get my new rundown of missing cards figured out, I'll post that.

  So for now its waiting until Tuesday's lunch game and figuring out how to hand the influx of 4k cards into my filing system (which was dealing with a total of 3.5k cards up to this point).  Ufta.

  My parting thought: my first Great War 2 booster packets were home runs for me: 

  While hardly the best draws for someone looking at resale, for me this was great: 4 uncommons and 2 rares that I didn't have... plus a couple commons that I was looking for a third in.  I've forgotten the thrill of hit great finds in a booster packet.  Ah the memories.  Have a great week all.

Acquisitions

  Well I found Claudia Christian's (Susan Ivanova) website, interestingly enough she never watched Babylon 5 on network TV.  Apparently she started slowly watching them for the first time... pretty interesting to see her take on things (and inside information) all these years later.  She's taken a break on the screenings, but hopefully will be back to them soon.

  After what I thought were shrew acquisitions, and my wife thinks are a waste of funds (she's probably right), I've already cut my missing cards down to 221.

31 Crusade
35 Wheel of Fire
28 Severed Dreams
54 Psi Corps
17 Shadows
45 Great War
9 Premier
2 Deluxe

I've also got 3 booster boxes (shadows and great war) coming in, so hopefully I can drop below the 200 mark from those (and flesh out some missing cards).  There are certainly some big rares (Emperor Mollari) that I'm missing, but its the uncommons that are becoming the real trick.  No one sells those, or puts them up for trades.  Its always rares.  Oh well.  I can't find Psi Corps booster boxes anywhere.  At least Crusade, Wheel of Fire, and Severed Dreams are out there to be bought... Psi Corp just looks like a dead end for now.

We finished a few more rounds of our current teaching game (play during lunch 2 days a week).  Almost everyone's right at 10, so soon the game really starts.  I've always wondered, if for speed and moving the game forward, it would make sense just to given everyone 5 free draws, +3 influence, ambassador assistant in play, and start the game there.  I get that for tournaments and stuff that would not go well, but for friendly play, I really am beginning to think that I might consider some sort of advanced start like that... it would get the game going much more quickly

Post any thoughts you may have on fudging the start of the game... I'm curious

Of 2136, I'm missing "only" 320.  Of these, I'd thought they'd be mostly Psi Corps, Wheel of Fire, and Crusade (of course)... but of course, I was a little off, here's the run down.

Missing
18 from Premier
21 from Shadows
66 from Great War
5 from Deluxe
85 from Psi Corps
45 from Severed Dreams
44 from Wheel of Fire
36 from Crusade

So my estimate of 75% was off a bit... I've got 85%  of the B5 cards.

How close are some of you guys?  Any one got any sources?

BTW: just noticed this today... that's Tony Almeida from 24... hilarious