Note: This is not going to be a full-on review of every
mechanic, but my thoughts on the game.
Credit where credit is due and that is to Dave from
Garagehammer. His praise of the game is
what finally pushed me over the edge to purchase. Well, that and the Miniature Market sale
where it was over 50% off on sale making the game only $45 instead of $90/100.
The game is billed sort of as a quicker paced 4 EX game
which in the board game community defines a game that is an empire building
game which uses the 4 EX’s of doing that.
Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. The base game comes with 3 empires from the
Star Trek universe, those being the Klingons, Romulans and of course the
Federation. The pieces are impressive
and the overall quality of the game and pieces is top notch. The game is published by Gale Force 9 and it
is in print which means available for purchase.
The rulebooks are all available for download on their website.
The game is an interesting take on board gaming as the map
is created while you play so the gameboard is essentially (assuming you do what
the rulebook says) a 3x3 foot space. You
draw the planets from a deck as your little ships explore the galaxy
discovering new planets, civilizations and phenomena. You colonize new planets or take control of
them via diplomacy and construct facilities to increase your production of
resources. You use these resources to
build more ships, research more technology, take over more planets or buy Ascendancy tokens. If you have five
tokens at the end of a turn you win and if there is a tie, the tie-breaker is
the player who controls the most planets.
The game can be lengthy, but I’ve found them to be quick
when compared to other much more structured or complicated 4 EX games like
Twilight Imperium which means I like it more as it doesn’t take an entire day
to complete. Each of the races plays
quite differently. The Federation can
expand quite quickly via its diplomacy while the Klingons are more centered on
combat and the Romulans tend to rely on their more advanced technology on securing
their way to victory. As of this writing
I’ve played probably 9/10 games and each race has won roughly an equal number
of times with the Federation pulling out just ahead I think of the Romulans and
Klingons.
Each planet you explore has a random card drawn with it to
trigger an event and if the Federation bumbles their way into many Warp-Capable
civilizations with resource structures already on the planets they can rocket
ahead quite quickly, while on the same token a bad draw for any player on the
planetary exploration can nearly ruin them.
This situation can lead to a runaway leader which will then require the
other two players to essentially ally to knock that runaway person down a peg
or to draw them back into the game but this doesn’t always work.
Another part that will drive some players crazy is that your
technology deck is random draw as well which means that you may never see that
tasty tech you really want (assuming you know what all your tech cards are) and
if that was what you really wanted to concentrate on it can make you feel a
little bitter.
The game already has a couple of expansions out. The Cardasians who are another very war-like
race and the Ferengi who produce lots of resources and use the money to buy
their way to Ascendency instead of the normal way. Finally, there is an expansion for the
Borg. This one differs entirely from the
others in that the Borg is an AI threat that all the players must deal with or
avoid while attempting to win. They are
very difficult to kill and if you let them get out of hand early they will
become extremely difficult if not impossible to stop and if they ever managed
to take over 6 planets all players lose the game. If they manage to take over a players home
planet then that player is now part of the Borg and while they don’t actively
play as the Borg they get to assist them by picking one of two actions every
turn which is a big deal towards steering them to galactic domination.
I’ve found the game to be a lot of fun. My oldest son who doesn’t really care
anything about Star Trek has really enjoyed it as well because of the immersive
and interesting buildup. It’s fun to
construct an empire and watch it go to war with others and even if you think
you’re going to do one thing, drawing your technology randomly may see your
taking a race down a different path from their obvious goals. Being a Star Trek fan, I feel the Trek in
this. The races feel a lot like they
should and the technology reinforces that.
The events are just as wild and off the wall as in the TV shows and
definitely pulls you into the genre if your even mildly aware of the shows.
In short, I really like it and recommend it highly, so I
hope if Star Trek or empire building board games are your thing then you should
check it out.
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