Let me ruin all the suspense of this review right now with one statement: I can’t believe how good this game is.

Let me start off with a story. I remember back in 2005 I ran into Jason Siadek at the Gorilla Games booth at GenCon selling this game. I stopped and picked it up and he did a good job of describing the game but I just couldn’t get by the $60 price tag for a game that came with cardboard stands instead of plastic miniatures. So I passed on it and looked back ever since wondering if I made a mistake not buying it.

So when a few months ago Thoughthammer had a copy in the ding and dent section of the webstore I had to buy it and boy am I glad I did.

Components: After looking at what you get in the box I feel silly that I once thought it wasn’t a good deal. The rulebook is a healthy 112 pages and is nicely indexed. Don't get threatened by the size; half of it is dedicatd to missions, ship layouts, a nice adventure section ad and a helpful appendix. The rulebook seems oddly organized but once you realize how to find things, it became easy to reference rules. The artwork is a little cheesy; but it is well done and I think it fits the pulp sci-fi feel of the game.

The ship’s modules are of nice quality and are printed on both sides so you will always have enough tiles to make the ships you need. I have yet to cut out the cardboard stand-ups for use as character and NPC markers, so I don’t know how well those work; but any 15mm sci-fi minis will work. The ship control cards are two to a sheet and should have been cut in half; but that is easy enough to do yourself. The dice are average. For a hybrid board/RPG game just getting dice is a bonus.

Gameplay: This is where this game shines. The role playing parts show themselves right away with players choosing heroes between four professions: (Pilot, Scientist, Engineer, & Marine) and six species. The species have different numbers of legs and arms and each has a racial bonus. Then the heroes build a ship (or the GM could build it for them). The heroes put their character markers on the board and away we go!

One of the coolest things is not only do the heroes run around in the ship, the ship is also represented as a ship flying around a hex spacemap where ship to ship combat occurs. As the GM introduced the scenario and adds another ship to the spacemap, the characters run around the ship preparing the cannon, boosting the engines, accelerating and turning the ship, scanning the enemy vessel and any number of things. As the battle heats up the heroes are running around frantically running the ship to peek efficiency; but then there is always a boarding action of some sort. (Anything on star Trek , Buck Rodgers, Firefly can happen here; like teleporting, boarding missiles, tractor beam, docking, etc.) Once this happens, the finely tuned crew becomes a barely functional skeleton as half the crew gets tied up in boarding the enemy ship or fending off boarders. I can’t believe how well this game creates situations that have all the players on the edged of their seats.

I have to say, I’ve read a few reviews and posts in which people just can’t get through the rules. I have to say that I felt overwhelmed as well. I took one look at the rulebook and put the game on the shelf to wait for a rainy day. I didn’t attempt to play until after I played in an event at GenCon. But six hours after the first time playing I was in my hotel room drinking a vodka/tonic running a game with all my buddies. I didn’t even know the rules and I ran a game that everyone enjoyed. They liked it so much I ended up running it again the next night until 2:30am. This isn’t a game for rules lawyers, it is meant to be light and thematic. The gamemaster can do as much or as little role playing as the players want; the game really suits either way.

Conclusion: I am giddy just thinking about playing this game again. I give it a 9.6/10 and highly recommend it to any gaming group who thinks they’d enjoy the theme and a boardgame with role playing elements.