This is a bit of an odd creature in the world of gaming products.
I found it to be interesting, worthwhile, but not without its issues.
I highly recommend it, with a few caveats. But allow me to expand upon that.

Let me tell you before you read further that I bought this game with several predispositions:

1. I really like spaceship-to-spaceship combat games;

2. I really like the Babylon 5 television series;

3. I like inexpensive starter sets to expensive game systems;

4. I have a bit of an instinctive distrust of miniature games; and

5. I have a bit of an instinctive distrust of games based on science-fiction TV shows or movies.

None of these predispositions are deal-makers or deal-killers, but they do figure into my reactions to this game.

There are negatives AND positives about this game, so don't be fooled by skimming.
Please read the review to its end to see what I REALLY think about this game.

The Babylon 5: A Call to Arms Starter Set (Should I call it B5:ACtASS? Nah, I'll just call it the Starter Set) is a slick-paper, 24-page, light cardstock-covered rulebook. More detail on that in a minute, but that's really all it is.

The idea behind the "Babylon 5: A Call to Arms" miniatures game (as I see it) was to present an easy-to-learn, expandable, customizable, fast-playing tabletop game of individual-ship fleet combat. Obviously, the end purpose was to sell a bunch of miniatures, but the game is designed so you can easily play it with cardboard counters.

The idea behind the stripped-down version, the "Starter Set," (again, as I see it) was to present the bare bones of the game system at one-fifth the price of the boxed set. The boxed set sounded very interesting to me, but at half a C-note, it was a bit more than I was willing to spend on an unfamiliar game system, so when the Starter Set came out, I scratched my chin and went, "Hmmm." I laid down ten bucks and went home with the Starter Set.

What do you get for ten bucks? I'm going to take you through, page by page.

The cover is slick lightweight cardstock. The front and back are just the usual descriptive photos, logos and description to let you know--more or less--what you're being offered. The inside of the front cover is a full-page ad for "A Sky Full of Stars," an expansion of advanced rules for the B5 Call to Arms system. This may be putting the cart before the horse, as someone getting the Starter Kit has usually not even gotten the base set yet.

The inside of the back cover is a full-color page of twenty top-down ship counters. All the ships needed to play all the scenarios in the Starter Set are included, and the illustrations are nicely done. However, I found that there are two problems with this:

1. The cardstock is not really thick enough to make very good counters. They can be difficult to pick up from the tabletop, and they bend easily.

2. If you cut out the ship counters, you will have destroyed the back cover of your book. This was one of the problems with the last version of Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars; Firefly Games' Monster Island solved the problem by including a center counter page that was meant to be removed without destroying the rulebook.

I color-copied the ship counters and mounted the color copy to heavier cardstock to make better counters; they made me much happier than if I'd destroyed my back cover for substandard counters.

If you decide to get the boxed set later, Mongoose does provide sheets of slightly heavier cardstock counters; still not really adequate, in my opinion, but a bit better, and you don't have to destroy your rulebook to use them. They also have a set of counters that are sold by themselves for use with the advanced rules. Much cheaper to use than miniatures, if you're cheap like me.

Okay, the next issue I have is with page 1 and page 24. Photographic starfields with a single quote on each page: one from Eldridge Cleaver, and one from Admiral Farragut. A total waste of two pages that makes me wonder what the heck the layout designers were thinking.

And while we're talking about waste, the center two pages (12 and 13) are essentially catalog pages of miniatures for two of the combatant races, the Centauri and the Narn. They really have nothing to do with the rules; we are being forced to pay for advertisement.

The rest of the Starter Set has:

1. A full-page table of contents;

2. A full-page introduction;

3. Four pages of rules;

4. A page giving the backstory of the two combatant races featured in the Starter Set;

5. Eight pages of four scenarios of gradually increasing complexity;

6. A page telling how to "expand the game" and build your own scenarios, now that you know how to play the Basic Game; and

7. Two pages of photographs of games in progress using several hundred dollars of miniatures (I consider this more wasted space, but this is arguable, as they are illustrative of larger combats). Again, this is pretty much just more advertising for the miniatures line.

If I sound really cheap about this, it's because I am. What you really end up with is eighteen pages of game (and the pages aren't packed), and six wasted pages. I'd rather have paid three-quarters the price, gotten the "good" three quarters of the book, and left out the "wasted" space. You can argue that I didn't have to buy it if I didn't like the wasted space, but it was shrink-wrapped, and there was no way to tell what was inside until it was opened.

Once I got over the physical disappointment of the rulebook, and stopped whining for a moment, I discovered good things. I found out that you really can get the basic rules to this game in four pages. The game engine is designed to be a fast-playing, easy-to-learn game of maneuver and combat. You could be playing this game in a matter of minutes, although it might take several plays before some of the interesting features really begin to show themselves. Unlike many space combat games, maneuver is significant to success in this game, as ships have arcs of fire, like many Earth-based aviation and naval combat games. There is an interesting variety of weapons with different qualities and benefits. The ships each degrade incrementally, so that there is a gradual loss of capabilities as damage is taken, until the ship is destroyed. Much like naval wargames, damage can be applied to crew, structural integrity, weapons systems, or other ships systems for very interesting effects. It’s got a great theme, and really does give you the feeling of combat from the television series.

The first scenario only uses one ship for one player, and two for the other; by the time you're up to the fourth scenario, the first player fields seven ships, and the second player field eight ships. All of the scenarios are interesting and fast-playing, and offer pretty good replayability, although building your own scenario is really where it will shine after playing through the scenarios a few times. You can get a good amount of play from this product without buying anything else.

This version of the B5 game is not a huge game of space combat; it really is essentially a microgame. Back in the heyday of microgames, this game would have cost between three and five bucks (and the counters would have been printed on heavier cardstock, and the rulebook in black and white with line drawings), so I guess the price isn't really way out of line, but I think the real value of this to the player and to Mongoose is to get new players to see how fun and easy this game is to play. I would suggest this would make a great free PDF for download from Mongoose's website; it would be better free advertisement for the miniatures and boxed sets of the first edition (which are still out in stores) and the new hardback second edition (just out) than as a standalone product.

If you are wondering if "A Call to Arms" is for you, give this a try. If it isn't your cup of tea, you're not out much. If you like it, this will be a great way to bring new players into the game without overwhelming them with all the special rules and expansion materials.

Is is worth it for the price? Kinda sorta. You'll have to judge, based on what I have told you.

Is it worth playing? Definitely.

Thanks for the review and you're pretty much dead on when you talk about what the starter book was meant to be-a cheap entry into the game. $10 for what would have been a $3 microgame in 1981 . That's what we pay for printed games like this one today (man, I wish I could still go buy complete printed games for $3). And you're right that it should have been a free or very cheap download. There's enough in the starter to keep someone playing for a little while and introduce people to the game.It wasn't meant to be more than that.

BTW the core boxed set you mentioned is a thing of the past, second edition was just released. It's been one supplement a year since 2006, and 1 supplement a year from now on.

Nice review. ACTA is in the rotation of space games I play. I have the first edition boxed set and the Sky Full of Star Supplement. I will probably pick up the second edition books. The system is fast and quite fun. My main knocks against the game are the lack of ship record forms (there are fan made sheets) and the expense of the minatures (my friend has a large set of the old Fleet Action minis from Agents of Gaming).