CGE Czech Games Edition Starship Captains - Family Friendly Board Game, Space Adventure Strategy Game, Great for Kids, Adults & Families, Girls & Boys Ages 12+ Who Enjoy Board Games

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At times it can feel like you are a restricted and you can run out of options but I found this approach not only keeps the game time down but forces players to carefully manage their actions. Managing Your Crew & Your Ship

Ensigns can be promoted to commanders by spending 3 medals. These upgraded units can be used to activate a room twice or bring across a matching coloured ensign from the queue into the ready room, allowing for more actions on future turns. After using your crew to activate a room or complete a mission, they slide around the path and form a queue. When a new round begins you slide everyone towards the ready area and leave 3 again at the starting positions. In this 1-4 player Eurostyle game, which mixes action selection and engine building, you'll manage a diverse crew of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers — each with different special roles and capabilities. By earning medals, you can promote and train your crew for even greater effectiveness. Similarly, you can upgrade your ship with powerful engine building technology for maximum synergy. The tech board and large number of tech cards help give Starship Captains high replay value. Combining this with the mission and event cards and you’ve got a game that you can keep playing without the fear of it growing stale. Overwhelming ChoiceTurns go by in this manner until everyone passes. At the end of the round, you slide all but 3 figures forward in your queue to the ready room. At the start of rounds 2-4, players will earn a new crew member or a free medal (medals are used to upgrade cadets to crewmen, and crewmen to commanders). These specialists are your workers, and you will place them in different departments of your ship and your tech board to take actions. (I won’t call this a worker placement game though, because these spaces are available to all players on their various ships, then the spaces clear at the end of each turn.) The basic blue action is to research technology, and the variability of the tech market is the game’s best feature. Taking a technology from the market of eight cards doesn’t cost a thing, and the tech is added to a tech board with six available slots. Over the course of play, adding technologies gives you three different options:

Missions are the heart of the game’s scoring. If you aren’t taking actions on a turn, you are completing missions—there are always at least five missions scattered across the universe to choose from. Flying to a planet before anyone else arrives ensures that the player will have first dibs on completing that mission. As a turn’s main action, you will have to assign crew members to the mission (never more than one of each of the game’s three ensign colors) and try to complete them. Finishing missions will enable players to then upgrade their respective ships with powerful alien technology, thereby allowing them to take on more ambitious tasks. Players will also be able to earn medals they can use to promote and train their crew – thus making them even better at their jobs. As their reputation for success spreads throughout the galaxy, players will gain connections with three separate factions and acquire even more benefits. Whichever player becomes the most celebrated starship captain wins the game. Grey: Repair damage from your ship. This is the only room that a Cadet can use and also can be activated by any color crew member.The publisher behind Codenames, Czech Games Edition, has announced its next upcoming board game, Starship Captains. Each player in Starship Captains gets their own ship and crew to command. Each crewman will be focused in one of three areas (movement, shooting, or research) or be a lowly cadet who’s only good at repairing your ship. You can load up your ship with a variety of tech. This allows everyone to gain an extra cadet, redistribute any bonus planet tokens and refresh their crew members. A space-themed board game with thematic similarities to the beloved sci-fi television series Star Trek – particularly its focus upon the wonders of space exploration – Starship Captains will support two to four players in a tabletop title about adventures in the galaxy.

Perform a repair action, move or gain a medal can all be gained if players can place cards in the right slot. Of course these spaces are limited and some may need to be repaired first to be used. Starship Captains is a worker placement(ish) and resource management(ish) board game that will have you trying to earn points over the game’s four rounds. This light euro game plays from 1-4 players and takes about an hour or so to play. Gameplay Overview: Starship Captains is an engaging and exciting euro game with a fun, accessible theme. It combines some of the best elements of the genre with an innovative crew management system. I would contend that games like Starship Captains, similar to First Rat and other very approachable recent designs, are fantastic ways to introduce gamers to the hobby. The concepts in Starship Captains are easy to grasp, yet for experienced gamers there is still a lot to initially enjoy when trying to min/max each turn. But that would be a miracle. Why are there so many rings slotted on each player board for a miracle scenario like this?

Finally, I did like the variety in the tech cards. There are a lot of ways to gain bonuses and break the rules with them. However, I think that some are just better than others. It’s hard to take a situational card like being able to upgrade your cadets to yellow for free (which you could use, at most, 3 times during the game), vs. a card that lets you jump to any planet when you move. Also, there are only 3 end-game scoring tech cards, which don’t scale at player counts. So in a 3-4p game, it’s possible they will all be claimed by 2 (or even 1 if players aren’t paying attention) players. Final Thoughts: Each player starts the game with their own ship which contains spaces for medals, upgrade rings, mission cards and a queue path to push your crew after use. On a player’s turn, they can take one of three actions: Activate a room, Complete a mission, or Pass. PUBLISHERS: please, please, please, you’ve got to include player aids with your games if the iconography is even a minor challenge! Why are we still talking about this on the eve of 2023?????