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Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
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I am not sure if this makes me unusual on BGG but I have played every game I own at least once. However, I don't have every play logged (as many were before I was doing that) so I have this little project currently ongoing to get every game with at least one logged play. We've made some progress on the list and checked another one off it last night with Starship Catan.
Obviously it had been a while, but my memory of the game was of some neat mechanics but ultimately a little bit long. Sporadic plays that require some initial re-learning don't help that impression, but I think it holds true.
Early game (especially with the re-acquaintance) was slow-going. Minor upgrades occurred, my wife was able to put some bigger guns on the front and bigger engines on the back, while I added some useful modules in the middle. I had trouble getting fuel which didn't help. The exploring mechanic (where you pick a sector - a pile of 10 cards - and fly into it one card at a time, doing actions or passing or fighting pirates until you have flown as far as you can or are out of actions) is neat but especially early in the game where you can't fly very far is quite unpredictable. So even if you know there is a planet in there where you can buy fuel for 1 Astro a pop, you end up spending a long time looking for it. That would be a problem if we actually needed the fuel for the exploring.
Eventually the fuel was acquired and both of us looked for more colony ships to increase our holdings and score the actual points you need to win. My wife took care of some pirates, getting the Hero point, and with her lead in that, I thought the trade ships might be useful to get the Friend point. I did get it and used the scanning module to (try and) avoid pirates, but my wife had some momentum now, hitting the pirates on Hades (one of 4 'adventure worlds' you can find to do special missions and get stuff in return). Her return trip to Hades got her a point for that mission and with her colonies and level II modules, she powered to the finish line. Final score was 10-6.
I was glad to play it again, but it did reinforce my impression, with a slow build-up in the first part of the game, but then it added a sense of rather a sudden ending - she got her last 3 points in quick succession after a rather longer haul to 7. My wife expects this game to disappear back onto the shelf now for a few more years, but maybe I will give it another shot if she is willing. She thought it a bit long too though. Not quite enough fun for the investment.
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