A variation on the Settlers theme as you set off into space to colonise planets and trade with the alien races. You start at one end of the board with colonies and a port around numbered planets. The usual mechanisms apply of rolling dice, collecting resource cards (no space sheep, sorry), trading and building, developing your colonies and earning Victory Points (VPs). The variation in this edition is when you send your little ships out across the final frontier.
Each player has a huge mother ship to which they attach their bits. You can buy, earn, and win more engines, to go faster; cargo bays, to enable trading with aliens; guns, to fight off pirates; and little discs to show your reputation.
Where the flames for the rocket would be is a small clear bubble. Shake your mother ship and put it down and two colored balls fall into the bubble. If the are red, yellow or blue, your little ships move across the board. But if one is black, you face an adventure card. (A similar mechanism is used in Ab Die Post).
Another player draws and reads you the adventure, and you must make simple yes/no choices. A flowchart on each card reveals the consequences, some good, some bad, and often you shake your ships to see what happens. Roughly though, pirates try to rob resources and if you win a fight you keep your cards and gain reputation (worth VPs). Or traders welcome resources and give you good stuff and reputation in return. But if you flee the pirates or stiff the traders, you lose stuff and lose reputation. There are also wormholes and wandering folk.
If you land a trading ship at an alien planet, you befriend the aliens and gain VPs, and cards which enhance your game. If you land a colony, you increase your chances of collecting resources and gain 1 VP. If you turn a colony into a port, you can start your ships from there instead and gain an extra VP for it. Reputation converts into VPs too. The first player to reach 15 VPs wins (you start on 4 VPs).
There are various ways to secure a win. Getting a spaceport in the centre of the board is crucial to success though.
Two cautions. If you have only passing German, don't bother with the German edition. While the adventure cards follow familiar patterns, there are enough subtle variations in the text to make this game impossible to play without a dictionary.
Secondly, if your box does not contain 4 grey plastic rings to fit over the mother ships, do not attach the engines onto the ships. The mother ships are made of a hard, brittle plastic, and when you put the engines on, or pull them off, the teeth break, no matter how careful you are. The makers learned this and now provide the 4 rings upon request.
Expanded by
Belongs to the Catan Series.
Record a Play
