[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
Having played this game by myself (to test out the rules), with 2, 3, and 5 players, I figured I've played enough to give a decent review. And I have to say that this is probably my favorite board game I have played up to this point. I also can't wait for the Brood War expansion, since every time I play this my friends always ask if there's an expansion pack to use. I just hope it ends up being less than $50 (but it's not, since according to amazon.com it's $59.99). Oh well, on to the review.
DOGS OF WAR
When you first open up the box, aside from the wow factor of the amount of pieces, it's recommended you get a partner to help punch out the cardboard pieces. There are a lot. For example:
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
This is just 1 of 9 (I believe) of the punchout sheets. And this is just the ones with the big planets (12 planets total) on them. There are a few with just a crapload of little workers, transports, buildings, and modules, to name a few. Then, of course, there are the soldier boys, too good for the 2D treatment:
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
And the flying ships are too good to have their rubber hitting the floor, so they come with stands...
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
...which could turn into a bad thing if you don't have some really good glue. They break easily in shipping. 10 or 11 of my pieces were broke upon opening!
[not my pieces; thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
That is only 1 of 3 or 4 downsides to the game, depending on whether or not you consider 4 to be seperate from 3, more on that later. Just get some good glue (not the cheap stuff like Elmer's), and you'll be fine with repairs. Who doesn't want to act as one of the workers in Starcraft? There's a good start. On your feet soldier!
That counts to 180 plastic figures total. Now for the faction sheets. There are 3 races (Protoss, Terran, Zerg), and 2 leaders per race, which means there are 6 to choose from total. Each race leader has a faction sheet. On the front it has a place to put workers you own and start out with, buildings/modules, tech. deck, home planet resources (always 4 minerals and 2 gas), and the list of the leader's/race's special victory condition and abilities. On the back is a brief biography of the leader, and what units you start out with.
[thanks to Zorko at http://zergone.blogspot.com/2008/07/starcraft-something-diff...]
YOUR LUCK'S RUN OUT
No dice! No dice in this game. It's too good for dice. You're only going to be playing with cards, pieces, order tokens...
[thanks to boardgamegeek]
...and brains (keep a hold of yourself zombies, I'll try a Last Night on Earth review some other time). Each race gets their own card deck, with the symbol of the leader on each deck. Each deck has combat cards...
[thanks to boardgamegeek]
...support cards, which, most of the time, don't have those attack and defense numbers you see on the upper left and right sides of the card, but have a plus sign in the middle; and technology cards, which have a green symbol at the bottom, which could act as either support cards or combat cards, and are kept as a seperate deck placed on the indicated spot on the faction sheet (or character sheet, leader sheet, whatever). It adds up to 234 cards per race. Then there's the event cards.
[thanks to Zorko at http://zergone.blogspot.com/2008/07/starcraft-something-diff...]
On one side is the planet representing the stage of the game (1-3 planets for 1-3 stages). On the other side is an event that the player may play, depending on what it is. You'll get 25 stage 1 + 25 stage 2 + 20 stage 3 = 70 event cards.
Lastly, resource cards. Well, first I should mention that a planet has a resource or 2, depending on the planet. Each planet has a resource card for each territoy that has a resource.
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
Abaddon has 1 conquest point territory, and 1 mineral territory. Since it only has 1 resource territory, it only gets 1 resource card. As for the planet token on the upper right of the above picture, remember it, I'll get to it in a second.
ORDERS SIR!?
The game starts out by placing the 'planet tokens' face down, and mixing them up. Each player takes 2 tokens, without looking at the face up side. Then the first player flips over 1 token and places the planet on the table, or carpet, mother's basement floor, wherever you end up playing. The player decides whether or not he wants to set his base in a territory on that planet, then establish his starting defenses wherever on the planet. If he decides not to establish it on that planet, he, or she, will have to establish the base on the second planet. But the 2nd planet isn't revealed yet. Instead, the 2nd player follows the same step, but the planet needs to be attached to the first one. This continues on until it gets to the last player (which may be player 2). After the last player does the first planet step, he reveals the second planet and sets it wherever, like he/she would with the first planet. The the counting process goes backwards, front last player to first, with each setting the 2nd planet down. By the end of it, the board could look something like this:
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
Then, each player sets down 1 z-axis route for the galaxy they've set up.
[thanks to me]
In other words, player 1 sets down the first part of z-axis route 1 on 1 planet, and the second part of z-axis route 1 on a different planet. The routes can never be on the same planet. The z-axis routes act just like the navigation routes (normal piece connectors connecting the planets) only instead warp your units from the planet with one end of the z-axis to the other planet with the other end of the z-axis. It's supposed to give the impression of a 3D space galaxy to travel in, but you just can't help but think of it as a warp gate.
And there's your galaxy. But the part I like about this is that the galaxy can be shaped different every time. It may turn out like this instead:
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
You will notice that some planets have different amounts of points to set a connector for connecting to another planet. This also helps with the randomness. Also, you might be wondering what the gold circles in each territory represent. Those represent the number of soldiers you can keep in that territory. The exception is if you are attacking that territory, in which case you can bring the amount of soldiers equal to the number of gold circles, plus 2, giving the attacker a bit of an edge in battle.
Anyway, the board is set up, and you're ready to play. The game starts by having the first player lay down 1 order token (see one of the photos above) on that hexagonal grey spot on the planet he/she wants the order carried out on. The reference sheet serves as a good reminder as to what each order does.
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
The back of the sheet shows all the combat units in the game, and what their average (more or less, not a definitive number) attack and defenses are, letting the player know what to expect from his troops and his enemy, assuming they both have the right combat cards.
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
More on combat later. The best way to gain combat cards is to do a research order (that holy sanctuary looking thing [research for Auir!]). The build order must be done in the proper numerical phase as shown above on the reference sheet. Build units first, then 1 building and/or 1 module. A base is only built on a planet that has no base (friendly or enemy) and has at least 1 friendly unit on the planet. In which case, the base is the only thing built on that build order. To build a unit, you pay what it costs with workers. A technology card will have a cost on the bottom left/right part of the card, and buildings/modules will also have a cost at the bottom of their token (on one side). If something has a 2 on the mineral part, you move 2 workers to either the mneral spot on your character sheet, or on one of the planet territory cards you have that contain at least 2 minerals. Same thing with gas. As for the mobilize phase (the one with the target/+ sign looking thing), that means you move units to the planet where the order is at, or reorganize the units on that planet. And I can't stress this enough, the mobilize phase means to the planet, not from the planet.
That's what the orders do, and the first player lays down his order first, then the second, third, and so on, going in whatever player order until it's back to the first player (it doesn't work the way the planet setup order does, just go circular). The process repeats until each player has laid down 4 orders. These orders can also be stacked upon one another.
EXECUTE PLAN KICK@$
Then comes the execution phase. The first player flips over one of his orders and executes it. The player has to flip over the order on top of a stack. If the player can't execute an order when he/she still has order token(s) on the board, he/she draws an event card from the top of the event deck, which is set up at the beginning of the game. If the player flips over an order he/she doesn't want to execute, it is removed from the board and an event card is drawn instead.
Combat occurs when units are mobilized into a territory with enemy units. Unless the race has a special ability for the ocassion, the defender draws 1 combat card, and the attacker draws 3 combat cards at the start of battle. Battle is set up like so...
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
The units have to be divided up as evenly as possible for skirmishes. 1 attacker to 1 defender. If one side has more units than the other, the extra unit(s) act as support unit(s) for the frontline unit of the player's choice. Then each player takes a combat card in their hand and places one face down behind/under each frontline unit. This card will show their attack and defense. If the attacker's attack power is equal to or higher than the defender's defense power, then the defender dies. It's possible for both units to be killed in the same skirmish. Support units are never killed from the frontline units unless the frontline enemy has a special ability such as ground splash. If the player doesn't have a card that applies to a unit in the skirmish (such as a card with a marine on it being applied to a frontline marine unit), the player can use a combat card that doesn't apply to the frontline unit, thus making the unit's attack and defense power equal to the smaller numbers on the card (yeah, that's what those are for, see one of the above pictures for combat card). Or the player can take a chance, draw the top card from the combat deck and, without looking, place it to the unit he/she wishes it to apply to. Each skirmish is resolved individually, getting one done before moving on to the other. At the end of battle, if 1 defender unit stays alive, the defender keeps the territory. If the defender has no units left after battle, the attacker takes the territory, unless the attacker was also whiped out.
ANY CASUALTIES?
After all orders have been executed, the regrouping phase takes place. This can be found on the back of the 48 page rulebook. I won't go into much detail (this is long enough as it is), but bases are destroyed if an enemy holds them, resources are lost and gained, workers may be destroyed, conquest points are gained (if you hold a territory that has any), event cards are played (each player only gets to choose and play 1, any others are discarded), and either someone has won, everyone else is a loser, or the game keeps going with another round of orders and executions before going back to the regroup phase.
IT'S NOT OVER 'TILL IT'S OVER
To win, either someone gets 15 conquest points.
or
Someone achieved a special victory condition (see reference sheet). This victory condition is only in effect during stage 3 of the game (indicated by the number of planets shown on the top card on the event card deck).
or
2 out of 3 cards from the phase 3 cards of the event deck titled 'The End Draws Near' have been put into play during the regroup phase.
or, by some miracle of a chance
One player is left standing and every other enemy on the board, base or unit, has been destroyed. Good luck getting that, especially in any game with more than 2 players.
There's you're summary. Now, here are the other downsides I told you about.
#2. Long game. Long setup, long play. Without counting how long it takes to put everything away, we're talking about a 3 hour game, more if there's 4 players or higher.
#3. Learning the rules. It took me a day and a half to read the whole rulebook and comprehend everything I was seeing, which made it necessary to playtest the game by myself.
Overall, if you can get enough time to play the game, and play it knowing the rules well enough (which will require 1 or 2 practice games), the payoff will be worth it. This game is fun. I have heard of 2 others that are like it, but I haven't played either of them, yet they're supposedly just as fun. Twighlight Imperium (heard that takes 8 frikkin hours), and Nexus Ops (heard it's shorter but more or less just as good as Starcraft).
Components: All are good except for those ships. Chances are, they're going to come in more than 54 pieces (the number of ship units grand total in the game). But they're easily fixable, and so far everything has stayed intact. Plus, the game as a whole looks cool. Just wish the box cover didn't make the Protoss stand out as much. I mean come on, the Zerg and Terrans need some spotlight too! 9/10
On another note about components, the packaging. You might notice it's a bit tricky trying to fit everything back in the box again when it looks like this:
[thanks to boardgamegeek.com]
Here's the solution, throw away that bluish ship design piece of cardboard, put the plastic pieces (except for the ships) inside those little white boxes, and organize the rest however you want, preferably keeping the ship units on one side while keeping everything else on the other side, like so:
[thanks to me]
Yes, this will probably jumble up the ship pieces, but so far I haven't had any casualties or collateral damages, and I've transported this game from my house at least 5 times. So long as you're not transporting it in a racecar that comes to a sudden crashing halt, the pieces should be fine.
One more thing, I would put the smaller building/module/worker/etc. pieces in some plastic bags, seperate for each race.
Gameplay: The game is long, but after you play it, you'll wish it was longer, which in my opinion is a good thing. I'm not going to downgrade the gameplay score for length if it's a blast to play the whole way through. Little luck, plenty of strategy. Don't be turned off by the low luck factor, the strategy isn't hard to learn. Get 3-4 players if you can, 4 is the best just because the size of the galaxy feels right with 8 planets. Like I said, a blast the whole way through. 10/10
Learning Curve: Talk about a bitch! This game takes a long time to learn unless you have someone explaining the rules (like me, heheh). Trust me, you'll want an experienced player teaching you the game before you want to read the rules. Learn how to play online, use the rulebook for reference, especially for the regroup phase. Day and a half to learn is not a good thing. But once you know the rules, making up your own strategies is a piece of cake. 6/10
Final Score: 9.5/10.
ANY LAST WORDS?
I'm not giving it a 10/10 for a number of reasons. There is always room for improvement, and I haven't played enough non-mainstream boardgames to be considered fit enough to say if a game is truly a 10/10. But I have never played a game this fun before, it's just a matter of getting the right crowd to play with (easier than Twighlight Imperium). Any game that I see as a 9.0/10 or higher is a game that has to be in a boardgamers library. If you don't have this game, then either the only kind of sci-fi/fantasy games you like are games like D&D, or you just don't like these types of games at all. Aside from those people, everyone needs to try this one out.
Can't wait to get the Brood Wars expansion. But since the retail is over $50, I'll be waiting on ebay or the BGG marketplace for that one.
[thanks to Erik David Even on http://kunochan.com/?p=156]
[thanks to Michael Klappenbach on http://compactiongames.about.com/od/starcraft2/ig/Starcraft-...]
[thanks to http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2007/08/04/first-starcraft-...]
Edit 1: Added on the Z-axis. Added advice on how to repackage the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment