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Victory by Any Means (3E)

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Victory by Any Means Games

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A NEW AGE DAWNS IN THE GALAXY

Two hundred years ago, a coalition of alien civilizations known as the OLD EMPIRE banded together to fight back against a relentless machine intelligence known only as the HARBINGERS. These mechanical monstrosities had erupted out of the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, burning every colony they encountered and threatening to end all life in the galaxy. The Harbinger’s superior technology outmatched anything the Old Empire had in its own arsenal and they found themselves losing ground, their colonies burnt to cinders as the Harbinger fleets advanced across the stars.

In a final desperate, climactic battle, the alliance narrowly succeeded in destroying the Harbinger “brainworld” using a PRECURSOR planeteering bomb. However, the detonation of this ancient superweapon triggered a hyperspace shockwave that began to systematically shutdown the galactic jump lane network until interstellar travel was impossible. The GREAT HYPERSPACE COLLAPSE had begun.

It has been two centuries since the jump lanes disappeared, but your empire’s long range monitoring stations are showing that the jump lanes have returned. It’s now time for you to lead your empire back to the stars.

VICTORY BY ANY MEANS is the strategic game of interstellar exploration, diplomacy, and conquest where each player takes control of an alien empire to help it rebuild after the end of the Great Hyperspace Collapse. Choose from any of ten different alien species, each with their own unique abilities and force lists. Explore strange alien worlds, establish new colonies, expand your fleets and armies, develop new technologies, perform covert operations, and engage in diplomacy and warfare with the other major and minor alien civilizations you encounter along the way.

This book includes all of the rules you need to run a strategic science fiction campaign in the VICTORY BY ANY MEANS Harbinger Wars universe, but you can easily adapt the rules to run a campaign in your favorite science fiction setting. The modular nature of the game rules makes it easy to customize your campaign experience using the selection of optional rules that are included with this book.

These are the core rules for the Third Edition of VICTORY BY ANY MEANS, celebrating over 20 years of space exploration and conquest.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Sequence of Play

Sample Alien Empire

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Reviews (1)

Discussions (5)

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Alexis H April 13, 2025 8:57 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Does the new edition include rules like from the 2E "With a Purpose" to run planetary governor smaller scale campaigns? And how difficult is to use campaigns from older editions with the new one?

Tyrel L April 13, 2025 9:29 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

The "With a Purpose" rules still have to be updated for the new edition, but you could use the existing 2E versions with the new rules with some slight alterations. The biggest changes you'd have to reconcile are to system attributes, as Census and Productivity are now combined into a single Population value, Intel has been turned into a system attribute rather than discrete points you purchase and use, and most orbital defenses (satellites, minefields) are now abstractly represented by a Fortification value.

I would expect an updated "With a Purpose" to be ready for playtesting later this year, but we're focusing on getting the rules for creating your own empires ("Uncharted Territories") and solo campaigns ("Alone in the Stars") released first, then we'll look at tackling "With a Purpose" as the next major rules supplement.

Morgan G April 13, 2025 1:24 am UTC

PURCHASER

Is there a VBAM discord server? I'd love to play this but finding opponents might be a challenge.

Tyrel L April 13, 2025 1:52 am UTC

PUBLISHER

Yeah, the Discord server should have been included in the DTRPG purchase email, but here's the link: https://discord.gg/4kncZnjV8W

Adam D April 11, 2025 7:18 pm UTC

The listing/description for this should be required reading for anyone who sells product on wargamevault.

Tyrel L April 11, 2025 7:52 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Hopefully that means it's a good example of what to do and not what NOT to do! :D

I wanted to present as much background information about the game as I could up front, which is why we included the Table of Contents, Introduction, Sequence of Play, and a sample Alien Empire along with the first two chapter preview of the book to give a better context of what the game is to help make an informed purchasing decision.

Adam D April 24, 2025 11:48 pm UTC

Sorry if I wasn't clear. This is a tremendously helpful listing.

Lance G April 11, 2025 12:57 am UTC

What are the changes from 2nd ed?

Tyrel L April 11, 2025 1:23 am UTC

PUBLISHER

3E is a fairly comprehensive rewrite of the rules. Here's an overview of the major changes:

1) Shifted to using d10 dice for everything (instead of a mix of d6, d10, d20, etc.)
2) This book includes 10 empires (instead of the 8 from 2E) and all empires now have traits (2 advantages, 1 disadvantage), with similar effects to the 1E Menagerie
3) Census and Productivity have been merged into a single Population attribute that is now treated largely like Productivity was in previous editions. This removes the ambiguity of "Productivity vs. Utilized Productivity" from previous editions and gives you more control over where your empire expands.
4) Intel has been completely overhauled, and all systems now have an Intel attribute that determines the range a system can perform covert missions (and provides defense against enemy covert missions is it's high enough)
5) Most of the smaller base types and minefields have been removed and replaced with a Fortification system attribute...See more which is used to protect a system against orbital bombardment and planetary invasions.
6) Trade income has been been buffed to make it more useful
7) A few more movement action options were added (Long Range Scouting and Convoy Raids)
8) Diplomacy was completely overhauled and the system changed so that signing treaties is now more difficult while declaring war is easier (a flip from previous editions). The diplomacy rules now work something similar to a mix of 1E Non-Player Empires and 2E Neutral Systems, and some empires have traits that make them better or worse at diplomacy.
9) Space combat has been overhauled and largely simplified, with three space combat scenarios and a cleaner workflow for how to set up and resolve the battles. Squadrons have been eliminated, as have fixed scenario lengths (with the latter being replaced with a contested retreat system). All these changes make space combat run faster.
10) Changes were made to Bombardment to encourage more ground combat (versus using ships to bomb off enemy troops).
11) Ground combat was also streamlined and is now more like a single-round version of space combat.
12) Out of Supply Levels were removed and replaced with a new resupply system, local supply, and supply attrition -- which basically means you no longer have to worry about tracking OSL for individual ships, just whether they are in or out of supply.
13) Tech was overhauled so that now when you earn a tech advancement you get the choice of either unlocking a new unit or upgrading an existing unit. Historical/linear tech progression is now an optional rule.
14) The unit design rules from 2E were pulled from the 3E core rules to that they can be assembled into a single package in the UNCHARTED TERRITORIES expansion, to prevent you from having to flip back and forth through a lot of books hunting those rules down.
15) A lot of new and improved optional rules, including rules for Independent Systems, Hostile Galaxy (raiders in random systems), Ravagers (fleets of Raiders coming out of deep space to attack you), etc. to add some extra variety to games.

That should be a fairly complete overview of the changes. Most of the rules were rewritten from the ground up. Some basic rules stayed the same, and it is going to be familiar to those who played the old editions, but it's integrating a lot of lessons learned from the last decade of working on the rules.

Two additional expansions (UNCHARTED TERRITORIES which includes custom empire design; and ALONE IN THE STARS, which focuses on special encounters and solo campaigns) are currently being finished up and should be released later this summer, and there are a number of other books that are in various stages of development that will follow it, along with updates to some of our older 1E and 2E books (including STL miniature support for those settings, for those that want to print their own starships).

Lance G April 12, 2025 1:35 am UTC

Sounds really good as far as simplifying a game with such depth. Hope you put this sort of information in the description going forward. Thank you.

Laimonas P April 09, 2025 8:00 pm UTC

Is that a new edition? Revised? A stand alone supplement? I'm confused.

Tyrel L April 09, 2025 8:28 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

This is the Third Edition of VICTORY BY ANY MEANS, but I see how that was not made clear anywhere in the description. I've added a note to that effect at the end of the description.

This will act as the foundation for future content for the series, and we should have the next two major supplements out later this summer (UNCHARTED TERRITORIES, including rules for custom empires; and ALONE IN THE STARS, featuring rules for system terrain, special encounters, outstanding leaders, and solo campaigns).

Laimonas P April 10, 2025 7:09 pm UTC

Thanks for clearing that out.

Tyrel L April 10, 2025 7:13 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

No problem! Once you commented about it I noticed that we overlooked labeling the new products, and also that some of the old 2E books were still in the new VBAM category instead of in Legacy Products.

Morgan G April 13, 2025 1:24 am UTC

PURCHASER

Hi, I've been reading this and I can confirm that it's a new edition. It's clearly descended from both 1e and 2e, but tightened up a lot of stuff.

Tyrel L April 13, 2025 1:55 am UTC

PUBLISHER

The design process was to strip the game back to its very basic elements (at one point that meant just basic movement, construction, and combat!) and then reintroduced rules once we felt the preceding components were all working together. 3E ended up as a combination of rules from 1E, 2E, and a few other unpublished projects. This core rule book includes everything we felt was essential for the basic rules, with other more advanced rules getting moved to various supplements built around a specific theme (alien empires, exploration, carrier warfare, etc.).

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Victory by Any Means (3E)

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