Post by Gilvan Blight on Feb 12, 2007 10:56:54 GMT -5
Quickly: one of the most detailed and involved games I have played. Great fun but takes a lot of time and thinking.
[glow=red,2,300]Summary: [/glow]
A board game that tries to re-create the feel of a galactic conquest strategy game. It attempts to have the amount of depth of PC games like Master's of Orion, or Galactic Civilizations.
Each player controls one of 10 races. Each race starts with a set home system with 1-3 planets. They also get a starting fleet and a set of starting technologies. The board is created by the players who are each dealt a hand of hexes. The board contains empty systems, plants and special hexes (Asteroid fields that can't be moved through without the right tech, Supernovas that are impassable, wormholes etc).
Each game round is played in three steps. The first is the strategy step where each player picks a strategy ala Puerto Rico (going as far as putting bonus counters on non-picked strategies).
Next is the Action phase. On this phase each player in turn gets to pick between using their strategy card, doing a tactical action (moving between systems and resolving any conflicts that arise), doing a Transfer action (moving ships between two adjacent sectors), playing an Action Card or Passing. This phase will go around the table multiple times until each player has passed. This is the meat of the game and would take pages to explain in detail. With each Strategic action the player playing it gets to do something usually really powerful. Each other player then gets the option to do a secondary action based on that strategy (again like Puerto Rico). Strategies include Technology (you get a free Tech, other players can pay 8 to buy a Tech), Logistics (you get command counters that give you more actions or a bigger fleet, others can buy counters with influence), Initiative (you go first next turn and don't have to pay to do secondary actions), etc. There are 8 strategies in all.
The action phases is where all combats occur. Combat is a matter of rolling D10s. Both players roll D10s for each of their ships in the combat. Each ship has a target number. For every die that beats that target number an enemy ship is damaged (usually destroyed). Each type of ship has it's own advantages. For example fighters are not strong but are great at Soaking Damage, dreadnoughts are powerful, can take 2 hits and can do orbital bombardment but cost a lot more then other ships, etc.
Technology is also worth mentioning here. Every player has an identical technology deck to work from. Only when the technology strategy is activated can players add new tech. The tech is universal applying to all units and planets under the players control. There are 4 types of techs and each individual tech may or may not have multiple pre-requisites, making for a rather complex Tech Tree. Technologies are some of the most expensive items in the game (except for the player who actually played the Tech. strategy card) but costs can be reduced by owning planets that have tech. specialties.
The last important step of a Tactical Action is the build phase. Here players build new units. Building can only be done at space ports. Each unit has a set cost (that is the same for all races) with more powerful and faster ships costing more. Fighters and ground units are the cheapest (1 resource = 2 units). To build players 'tap' planets they own. Each planet provides a different amount of resources.
A quick note on Politics: one of the Strategies is the Political Strategy. This strategy has the active player take the top card from a political deck. This will contain an agenda that all players will vote on. Votes are either elections or Yea/Nay. Players get a number of votes equal to the total influence of their non-tapped planets. These votes will totally change the basic rules of the games, by voting more power to elected player or enacting laws that apply to all players.
The final Phase is the Status Phase.
Most of this phase is upkeep. Players repair ships, get action cards and command counters. Players also 'score' victory points for public and secret objectives.
Action cards come from a huge stack of cards and let players do things that are not covered by the main rules. These include sabotage, building free fleets, technological bonuses and tons more. There is a huge variety. Most are played as actions in the action phase but there are others that are playable at other times.
Command counters: each turn you have to decide how to allocate your command counters. These are used for 3 things. 1 is the fleet, you can only have as many ships in a system as the number of counters in your fleet. 2 are strategy counters. These are used to do the secondary actions of strategy cards, with no counters you cannot do most (all but 1) secondary ability. Last are the command counters these are required to do any tactical actions (which include moving units, fighting, and building). The balance of command counters is quite a bit of the strategy of the game.
Victory points and objectives. There is a deck of public objectives created at the start of the game. No one starts knowing what these are. In addition each player gets one Secret Objective that they alone know about. Through the game the public objectives are turned over and each Status Phase players can attempt to complete the for victory points. The public objectives are things like "I have 5 technological advances", "I own 3 planets with tech specialties", "I spend 6 trade goods", etc. The secret objectives are more complex "I have conquered another players home world", "I own Mecatol Rex (the center of the board) and have build a spaceport and have 5 dreadnoughts in orbit." These victory points determine who wins. The first player to 10 points (or 14 for a longer game) wins. In addition there is one special victory card (that won't come out until at least the 7th turn) that ends the game immediately (with the highest player winning).
Okay that's pretty much it, I skipped a ton of stuff. Seems like a lot? Well it is. But it's worth it.
[glow=red,2,300]The Good: [/glow]
Fun. That was the best part. It was a ton of fun. Last night was one of the most fun board game nights I have been part of in quite some time.
So many options! I have never seen a game with that many options for every player every turn. You have so many potential strategies that it can actually be overwhelming, but in a good way. The amount of work Fantasy Flight put into making it so every game is different is amazing. You get 10 races but only 6 people play, that adds a ton of variety all ready. You get more then twice as many objectives as you use each game, adding even more variety. You remove a set number of sector tiles each game, making the map more varied. Each player is dealt a hand of sectors to build the map, pretty much assuring no two maps will ever be the same. The deck of action cards rivals the Talisman Adventure deck (with the expansions). The deck of political cards rivals the Spell deck from the same game. I would think you could probably play this a million times and no two games would ever be the same. That's impressive.
As mentioned above, this feels like a Master's of Orion. You control planets, you move out and conquer others, you eventually meet alien races. You develop technologies. You can forge trade agreements. You can make alliances. You build space docks, ships, transports, marines, even orbital guns. You even get to vote on the galactic council. There really isn't an aspect of the space strategy that was missed by this game.
[glow=red,2,300]The Bad: [/glow]
Tons of little bits. There are so many components to this game that you may want to invest in zip lock. Everything is pretty much just loose in the box, besides the cards. Even the cards are just mixed in on giant deck. I understand the need for all these counters and such, but man there are so many. Also they give you just enough of everything, so gods forbid you loose a piece.
The rules for this one are quite a bit overwhelming. Especially before you have played and have an idea what the various objectives are, what the actual technologies do and what the action cards are like. The rules are written almost like a set of guidelines. Here's are the rules for moving and taking actions, but nothing about why you would do this or that, or when they would come up. It makes it hard to read and even harder to learn.
More play aids would have been nice. There's a tech tree in the rulebook and a summary of play in the rulebook. There's even a summary of what all the different strategy cards are. But these are all in the rulebook. All of this would have made great information for some form of player handout. Or included on each players race board (yeah there's already a lot on there, but this would help). I personally hit Boardgamegeek and downloaded a nice summary of play. I grabbed a tech tree too but it didn't work too well. That works, but I would have preferred it was included in the game.
Have a lot of time. This isn't a bad thing for all players, quite a few prefer games that last all day. Unfortunately many of us have way too many real life obligations now a days to devote an evening longer to a game. This isn't a quick one. It definitely gets faster with experience, but then it can get slower once people learn how to block certain strategies. I couldn't tell you exactly how much time you need to play at this point having only played once. I know our game went from about 6:45 to just after Midnight.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly: [/glow]
Lots of little rules. Above I noted the difficulty in learning the rules. One extreme case of this is the sheer amount of little, easy to miss and easy to forget rules intermixed in the main rules. For example in the middle of the description of the PDS unit you will find a small note that states you can only have 2 per planet. This isn't noted where you would expect it, like in the ground invasion combat section, the actual phase where you place PDS units on planets. This is just one example there are all kinds of these 'little' rules hidden here and there. They are way too easy to miss.
Teaching this game. Thankfully while playing this last night over half the players playing had some familiarity with the rules. I think this one would be near impossible to explain to a group with no knowledge of the game beforehand. The one player who came to the table cold definitely had the hardest time figuring out, not only how the game worked but what they should be doing. I have to admit though, once learned, it's really not that complex. It just takes a bit to grasp all the separate concepts.
[glow=red,2,300]Overall: [/glow]
If you have the time and are into complex games with tons of different strategies and possibilities, you will probably love this. It's like playing MOO or Galactic Civilizations with a group of friends, with the advantage of actually being face to face. The rules will take some time to learn and are very hard to explain, but it's worth it.
[glow=red,2,300]Summary: [/glow]
A board game that tries to re-create the feel of a galactic conquest strategy game. It attempts to have the amount of depth of PC games like Master's of Orion, or Galactic Civilizations.
Each player controls one of 10 races. Each race starts with a set home system with 1-3 planets. They also get a starting fleet and a set of starting technologies. The board is created by the players who are each dealt a hand of hexes. The board contains empty systems, plants and special hexes (Asteroid fields that can't be moved through without the right tech, Supernovas that are impassable, wormholes etc).
Each game round is played in three steps. The first is the strategy step where each player picks a strategy ala Puerto Rico (going as far as putting bonus counters on non-picked strategies).
Next is the Action phase. On this phase each player in turn gets to pick between using their strategy card, doing a tactical action (moving between systems and resolving any conflicts that arise), doing a Transfer action (moving ships between two adjacent sectors), playing an Action Card or Passing. This phase will go around the table multiple times until each player has passed. This is the meat of the game and would take pages to explain in detail. With each Strategic action the player playing it gets to do something usually really powerful. Each other player then gets the option to do a secondary action based on that strategy (again like Puerto Rico). Strategies include Technology (you get a free Tech, other players can pay 8 to buy a Tech), Logistics (you get command counters that give you more actions or a bigger fleet, others can buy counters with influence), Initiative (you go first next turn and don't have to pay to do secondary actions), etc. There are 8 strategies in all.
The action phases is where all combats occur. Combat is a matter of rolling D10s. Both players roll D10s for each of their ships in the combat. Each ship has a target number. For every die that beats that target number an enemy ship is damaged (usually destroyed). Each type of ship has it's own advantages. For example fighters are not strong but are great at Soaking Damage, dreadnoughts are powerful, can take 2 hits and can do orbital bombardment but cost a lot more then other ships, etc.
Technology is also worth mentioning here. Every player has an identical technology deck to work from. Only when the technology strategy is activated can players add new tech. The tech is universal applying to all units and planets under the players control. There are 4 types of techs and each individual tech may or may not have multiple pre-requisites, making for a rather complex Tech Tree. Technologies are some of the most expensive items in the game (except for the player who actually played the Tech. strategy card) but costs can be reduced by owning planets that have tech. specialties.
The last important step of a Tactical Action is the build phase. Here players build new units. Building can only be done at space ports. Each unit has a set cost (that is the same for all races) with more powerful and faster ships costing more. Fighters and ground units are the cheapest (1 resource = 2 units). To build players 'tap' planets they own. Each planet provides a different amount of resources.
A quick note on Politics: one of the Strategies is the Political Strategy. This strategy has the active player take the top card from a political deck. This will contain an agenda that all players will vote on. Votes are either elections or Yea/Nay. Players get a number of votes equal to the total influence of their non-tapped planets. These votes will totally change the basic rules of the games, by voting more power to elected player or enacting laws that apply to all players.
The final Phase is the Status Phase.
Most of this phase is upkeep. Players repair ships, get action cards and command counters. Players also 'score' victory points for public and secret objectives.
Action cards come from a huge stack of cards and let players do things that are not covered by the main rules. These include sabotage, building free fleets, technological bonuses and tons more. There is a huge variety. Most are played as actions in the action phase but there are others that are playable at other times.
Command counters: each turn you have to decide how to allocate your command counters. These are used for 3 things. 1 is the fleet, you can only have as many ships in a system as the number of counters in your fleet. 2 are strategy counters. These are used to do the secondary actions of strategy cards, with no counters you cannot do most (all but 1) secondary ability. Last are the command counters these are required to do any tactical actions (which include moving units, fighting, and building). The balance of command counters is quite a bit of the strategy of the game.
Victory points and objectives. There is a deck of public objectives created at the start of the game. No one starts knowing what these are. In addition each player gets one Secret Objective that they alone know about. Through the game the public objectives are turned over and each Status Phase players can attempt to complete the for victory points. The public objectives are things like "I have 5 technological advances", "I own 3 planets with tech specialties", "I spend 6 trade goods", etc. The secret objectives are more complex "I have conquered another players home world", "I own Mecatol Rex (the center of the board) and have build a spaceport and have 5 dreadnoughts in orbit." These victory points determine who wins. The first player to 10 points (or 14 for a longer game) wins. In addition there is one special victory card (that won't come out until at least the 7th turn) that ends the game immediately (with the highest player winning).
Okay that's pretty much it, I skipped a ton of stuff. Seems like a lot? Well it is. But it's worth it.
[glow=red,2,300]The Good: [/glow]
Fun. That was the best part. It was a ton of fun. Last night was one of the most fun board game nights I have been part of in quite some time.
So many options! I have never seen a game with that many options for every player every turn. You have so many potential strategies that it can actually be overwhelming, but in a good way. The amount of work Fantasy Flight put into making it so every game is different is amazing. You get 10 races but only 6 people play, that adds a ton of variety all ready. You get more then twice as many objectives as you use each game, adding even more variety. You remove a set number of sector tiles each game, making the map more varied. Each player is dealt a hand of sectors to build the map, pretty much assuring no two maps will ever be the same. The deck of action cards rivals the Talisman Adventure deck (with the expansions). The deck of political cards rivals the Spell deck from the same game. I would think you could probably play this a million times and no two games would ever be the same. That's impressive.
As mentioned above, this feels like a Master's of Orion. You control planets, you move out and conquer others, you eventually meet alien races. You develop technologies. You can forge trade agreements. You can make alliances. You build space docks, ships, transports, marines, even orbital guns. You even get to vote on the galactic council. There really isn't an aspect of the space strategy that was missed by this game.
[glow=red,2,300]The Bad: [/glow]
Tons of little bits. There are so many components to this game that you may want to invest in zip lock. Everything is pretty much just loose in the box, besides the cards. Even the cards are just mixed in on giant deck. I understand the need for all these counters and such, but man there are so many. Also they give you just enough of everything, so gods forbid you loose a piece.
The rules for this one are quite a bit overwhelming. Especially before you have played and have an idea what the various objectives are, what the actual technologies do and what the action cards are like. The rules are written almost like a set of guidelines. Here's are the rules for moving and taking actions, but nothing about why you would do this or that, or when they would come up. It makes it hard to read and even harder to learn.
More play aids would have been nice. There's a tech tree in the rulebook and a summary of play in the rulebook. There's even a summary of what all the different strategy cards are. But these are all in the rulebook. All of this would have made great information for some form of player handout. Or included on each players race board (yeah there's already a lot on there, but this would help). I personally hit Boardgamegeek and downloaded a nice summary of play. I grabbed a tech tree too but it didn't work too well. That works, but I would have preferred it was included in the game.
Have a lot of time. This isn't a bad thing for all players, quite a few prefer games that last all day. Unfortunately many of us have way too many real life obligations now a days to devote an evening longer to a game. This isn't a quick one. It definitely gets faster with experience, but then it can get slower once people learn how to block certain strategies. I couldn't tell you exactly how much time you need to play at this point having only played once. I know our game went from about 6:45 to just after Midnight.
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly: [/glow]
Lots of little rules. Above I noted the difficulty in learning the rules. One extreme case of this is the sheer amount of little, easy to miss and easy to forget rules intermixed in the main rules. For example in the middle of the description of the PDS unit you will find a small note that states you can only have 2 per planet. This isn't noted where you would expect it, like in the ground invasion combat section, the actual phase where you place PDS units on planets. This is just one example there are all kinds of these 'little' rules hidden here and there. They are way too easy to miss.
Teaching this game. Thankfully while playing this last night over half the players playing had some familiarity with the rules. I think this one would be near impossible to explain to a group with no knowledge of the game beforehand. The one player who came to the table cold definitely had the hardest time figuring out, not only how the game worked but what they should be doing. I have to admit though, once learned, it's really not that complex. It just takes a bit to grasp all the separate concepts.
[glow=red,2,300]Overall: [/glow]
If you have the time and are into complex games with tons of different strategies and possibilities, you will probably love this. It's like playing MOO or Galactic Civilizations with a group of friends, with the advantage of actually being face to face. The rules will take some time to learn and are very hard to explain, but it's worth it.