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

Product Information

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.

This allows everyone to gain an extra cadet, redistribute any bonus planet tokens and refresh their crew members. To begin play, four of the six slots on this tech board are unavailable because they are damaged (your promotion to Captain only provided you with a “newly refurbished” ship, per the manual), so you’ll have to spend some of your actions removing damage from both this board and the ship’s cargo area. The cargo area is used to hold pirate tokens you’ve defeated on earlier turns (maybe they are prisoners being returned to the Cooperative’s headquarters?) as well as artifact tokens, which can be used to activate rooms without a crew member.Another unique mechanic with these cards are the matching bonus symbols. At the sides of the tech cards are small icons. When placing a card down on the board, if an icon matches one next to it you can claim an instant reward. Using your crew figures, players can perform actions on rooms such as move, fight, gain tech or repair. Rooms have a required colour so the right crew member is required. Tech cards can even let players have access to new rooms and grant extra abilities. 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 Choice

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

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. 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. 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. It’s one of my favorite moments from my favorite Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Kirk (William Shatner) is baring his teeth and yelling from the bridge of the Enterprise at his longtime nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban, shamefully not nominated for an Oscar for his work here).