 | 2 - 4 Players
60 Minutes
Ages 10+
There is a company that ships plumbing and other building materials to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. For a long time they were struggling to make a profit from shipping such long distances. That is until they decided that instead of building expensive spaceships to transfer the materials, they would simply build the spaceships out of the materials themselves. This is where you come in.
The game takes place over three increasingly difficult rounds. Each player has to build their ship from a pile of overturned ship component tiles by flipping them one at a time, and then either connecting the part to their ship, or placing it back into the pile face-up for anyone else to take. The available parts include: crew quarters, cargo bays, lasers, thrusters & shields among other things, and each is needed to get your ship to its destination. All players are taking ship parts and building simultaneously, so competition for parts can get fierce in larger player games. |
All of the ship parts have connector fittings that have to match up between pieces. There are other placement restrictions as well, such as lasers can't have ship parts in front of them, and thrusters can't have parts behind them. You can have exposed fittings, but this does leave your ship more vulnerable during the trip.
Once all of the ships have been built, a representation of your ship is placed on a track. It isn't a score track, merely an indicator of the players' relative positions in space. This is important because the player in the lead will have an opportunity to resolve any encounters first, thereby gaining the rewards. Claiming the reward costs time however, and moves you back on the track accordingly.
Encounters consist of things like abandoned space stations and ships, space pirates and meteor showers. The ability to complete these encounters successfully is determined by the components on your ship, and like I said, the player in the lead gets first crack.
Once all of the encounters have been resolved for the round, you gain space dollars for things like what position you're in on the track, how "pretty" your ship is (least amount of open connectors) and you can also sell any cargo you've picked up from the encounters along the way. You also lose space dollars for any damage to your ship.
Following rounds bring larger ship configurations and longer, more difficult journeys. At the end of the third round, you add up your space dollars, and the player with the most wins.
It's a very fun game, and I definately want to add it to my collection at some point. It takes about an hour to play, and the simultaneous nature of the ship building helps keep everyone active for a large portion of the game.
