BattleFleet Mars, subtitled Space Combat in the Twenty-First Century, is a two-player science fiction board wargame designed by Brad Hessel and Redmond A. Simonsen and published by Simulations Publications Inc in March 1977. It simulates conflict across the inner Solar System between corporate spaceships from Earth that profit from asteroid mining and the ships of Martian and asteroid-belt miners fighting for independence from Earth's control. The included twenty-two by thirty-four inch map shows the planets and asteroids shifting position as they orbit the sun, so the distance a fleet must travel changes over the course of a game. Victory is measured in morale rather than territory: a side wins by taking geographic objectives, winning battles, and using agents and propaganda to break the other side's will to keep fighting. The boxed game shipped with four hundred counters, a tactical display, a rules booklet and two dice, and stayed on SPI's bestseller list for half a year.
Facts
Sport
Game Type (category) Classification
Player Count Sources
1. BattleFleet Mars (Wikipedia)
lead paragraph, game-type-category
BattleFleet Mars, subtitled "Space Combat in the 21st Century", is a science fiction board wargame published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1977 that simulates combat in the inner Solar System.
Lead or gameplay section
BattleFleet Mars is a two-player game in which one player controls spaceships owned by rich Earth corporations that have made vast amounts of money from mining in the asteroid belt, and the other player controls spaceships used by miners on Mars and on asteroids who are seeking independence from Terran control.
Article text
SPI published in it March 1977, and the game stayed on SPI's Top Ten Bestseller list for six months.
View the SourceReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.