Brian Train - 09:16am Mar 28, 2001 PST (#2307 of 2315) "He was wont so to speak plain and to the purpose, as an honest man and a soldier." Yes, it is basically a port of Empires of the Middle ages. I wrote a short review of it for the game collecting zine Simulacrum (bits on components and counter manifest deleted): THE SWORD AND THE STARS: EMPIRES OF THE MIDDLE AGES IN SPACE -- by Brian R. Train -- Introduction Lastish in his article on SPI's Empires of the Middle Ages (EOTMA or Empires for short), editor Kula included a sidebar quote from Redmond Simonsen to the effect that "a good number of people...would really enjoy the game if they'd just imagine that it's a science fictional or fantastic continent instead of Europe." Well, in 1981, the year after EOTMA was released, SPI produced another game using the same system and the missing science fiction premise entitled The Sword and the Stars (SATS). The introductory paragraph to the rules states that the game system is derived from EOTMA but "many subtle changes have been made in the original system." What's the Same Let's first look at what didn't change, or has been given a simple gloss to conform with the premise of empire building in space. Most of the basic concepts have simply been renamed: Empires SATS Language = Race Religion = Ideology Social State = Tech Level Gold = Resource Points Magnates = Outworlders and so on.... The sequence of play is identical to Empires, except that the Theological Politics Segment and Crusade Phases are omitted. Instead, a phase for maintaining Stargates and another for players to vote to end the game early have been added at the end of the Game-Turn. The flow of play is therefore almost identical to Empires: in his turn, a player will pick and Event Chit (instead of an Event Card), play it or not (half of the chits are "Holding" chits that may be kept for later), and undertake one to five Operations [Endeavors]. Again, most of these have simply been renamed: Empires SATS Defense = Intercept Ruling = Govern Fortification = GuardianWeb (no equivalent) = StarGate Conquest = Conquest Pillage = Raid Diplomacy = Communications All Operations are conducted much as in Empires. Victory is judged at the end of the scenario (there are ten of these, including the "Galactic Cycle" [Grand Scenario] campaign game) by the same parameters as Empires: 3 VP plus the current Tech Level [Social State] of each system controlled, 3 VP for each Treaty [Claim] held, and 5 VP for each successful Conversion or Colonization. Players may vote to end the scenario early, after a set number of turns. What's Different Perhaps Eric Smith, the designer (or translator) of SATS, saw the large time investment and perceived lack of player interest in the Dark Ages period to the be two main problems with Empires. Therefore, in SATS he sought to present a more popular game by changing the premise from medieval Europe to a quarter of an imaginary spiral galaxy, and reducing the physical parameters of the game. As you can see from the component manifest, SATS is considerably smaller than Empires. There are fewer counters (400), a smaller map (a total of 42 star systems on a 17 x 22" map as opposed to the considerably larger number on the 22 x 34" Empires map) and fewer players (5 instead of 6). Aside from that, the greatest change to the mechanics of play is the StarGate, the only new type of Operation [Endeavor]. This operation allows you to undertake operations without regard to the distance of the target system from the base system. Otherwise, as in the earlier game, there are range limits on your interstellar operations, depending on the base system's Tech Level. Stargates are expensive to build, have a high Tech Level pre-requisite (2 when the maximum possible is 3) and must be maintained each turn - but the ability to ignore distances is an important change from Empires. There are several other minor changes to the game. A "Special Session of the Confederation of Worlds" replaces the Diplomatic Parley; players violate the space of the system Atjay (seat of the Confederation, and the most advanced system on the board, sort of like Byzantium) at their peril (but the rewards are great, too); and there are some catastrophic random events such as epidemics, a quadrant-wide anarchist revolt, and a genocidal jihad to erase all intelligent life by an Outworlder people called the Draka. Conclusion SATS seems, in the end, not to have materially increased the appeal of the Empires game system. Probably its best customer were those who already owned or were familiar with the earlier game. On the whole, this game is a solid adaptation of a good system to a new milieu: however, it never got the posthumous popularity that Empires did. There have been loud and long calls to update and re-issue Empires (reportedly, Decision Games, which now holds the copyright, will have both board and PC versions of the game out in the next two years) but none to re-do SATS.