E ven as production on the final season of Babylon 5 wraps up, its popularity is growing. Once it's gone, fans yearning for more interstellar intrigue can get a fix from this collectible card game. Each race's deck comes with 50 fixed cards, tailored for that race, and 10 random extras. Two to four people can play at a time. In the game, players build their influence by playing conflict cards.
Conflicts range from bold military strikes to subtle political maneuverings.
Increasing influence enables players to bring more fleets and characters into play, and counts towards power . The first race to achieve a power score of 20 wins the game, establishing itself as the dominant force in the galaxy. Sometimes the game overextends itself to reproduce historic events. While many card games based on media properties tend to be stilted derivatives of the dramas that spawned them, the B5 CCG really feels like watching the show. How the characters affect the game, the nature of the conflicts and their outcomes, are all reminiscent of the program's mood and themes.