Star Trek: Attack Wing

I feel like we need to get back to more posts about miniatures. Although this post is not 100% about miniatures it is a step in the right direction. Lately at our games night we have been playing through a D&D campaign and interchanging with boardgames. Last night we played Eclipse, which was pretty darn awesome! So lets look into Star Trek: Attack Wing, WizKids new game using Fantasy Flight Games 'flight path' game mechanic from Star Wars X-Wing.

Star Trek: Attack Wing

I have known about this game for a little while however only just recently looked up the progress. It looks as if they will be able to release this game soon! However is it worth it? I am thinking maybe not. Attack Wing uses the 'Flight Path' game system which was created for Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, which is awesome! However now that I have a decent range of X-Wing models I am not sure spending more to get a game which is similar is a good idea.

Lets have a look at some of the ships!

The ships come pre-painted.

By looking at the bases they seem almost identical to the X-Wing ship design, at a guess I would say they are a similar size to. The Stats seem to be, well, attack, evade, hull and shields. Notice anything familiar to X-Wing?  

A giant pilot card,
over a giant ship!

Some of the symbols seem similar to X-Wing. Perhaps from left to right, evade or bost, target lock, not sure about this one, focus. 

Looks like you attach the captain to your ship

Jean-Luc Picard was an awesome character! 

As I said before, although this game looks pretty cool, I feel it won't have much more to offer than X-Wing. Although I do prefer Star Trek. It seems pretty similar so far. I also feel the other disadvantage is that Star Trek was more about Exploring New Worlds, rather than in space combat, although this does feature a little bit. Where as X-Wing uses specific fighter ships, the theme seems more appropriate. 

I think if I was to get a Star Trek game Star Trek: Fleet Captains (also by WizKids who have the Star Trek license) looks pretty sweet! 

A promo game in progress

It comes with a lot of ships! 

This game by the look of things has more of a Star Trek feel with specific agendas to match the different fleets. It also has a lot of space ships! Where the base set of Attack Wing comes with 3 ships then there are I believe 8 separate ship expansions worth about 20NZD each. 

However on the whole I am excited about trying out Attack Wing some time and maybe if I did not have X-Wing I would buy Attack Wing instead. I will leave you with some pictures of an Attack Wing game in action with a very large set... and my favorite Star Trek intro scene quote...

"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Feel free to check out some of our X-Wing Miniatures game posts which uses the same 'flight path' game mechanic here. 

Eclipse: A New Dawn for the Galaxy iPad Review

It has been a great couple of weeks for sci-fi. The release of Star Trek Into Darkness; the announcement of Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game wave 3; Alien Frontiers 4th edition kick-starter campaign; and of course, Eclipse being released on the iPad! Eclipse is an epic 4X board game designed by Touko Tahkokallio. The premis of a 4X game, for those who don't know is eXplore, eXpand eXploit and eXterminate. Eclipse is a highly rated game and has made its way to 5th on Board Game Geek. 

Eclipse and it's very large box

This game was transferred from cardboard to the iPad by Big Daddy Creations... and they did a great job! Such a great job that I got myself a copy of the board game after a few days of playing the app, as you can see above. So lets look at more depth into the game on the iPad.

Design

Eclipse on the iPad has a well made user interface, one of the best I have seen (admittedly I haven't seen allot). It utilises a 'tray' system allowing you to open trays with relevant information that a player needs to know. As you can see from the photo below the game has allot on information on every player's board so compacting that into a 10inch display in no easy task.

The player board fro the Eridani Empire

The 'tray' system.
Trays for the ships and diplomacy functions are pulled out

The tray system defiantly sets a gold standard for board game apps in the future. Another useful aspect of this is that you can always see the world map. The world map functions well and looks great. They have changed some of the planet colours and the hex layout slightly from the board game. This I believe is a good thing as Bid Daddy Creations has taken liberty to change things in order for it to work better on the iPad.

The world map zoomed in.
There is allot going on.

The only issue I can find with the user interface is sometimes the world map can be hard to distinguish what is going on as there is allot but you can quickly get your head around this. Another way to make the world map easier to read is by turning off the starry background and going with plain blue, however that is a bit boring. All in all they have done a great job with this, so much that if you didn't know it was a board game, you may not even realise.

Gameplay 

The gameplay is great, after all there is a reason it made it to the top 5 on Board Game Geek. At first it seems a little overwhelming, but the primary concept is actually quite simple. In order to take actions you use influence, but this comes at a cost, the more influence you use the higher the cost in money (one of the three resources) you have to pay at the end of the turn. So in order to take more money you need to colonise orange planets. The more colonists you have spread out over the galaxy on orange planets the more money you get. Simple huh. The same applies to the other resources  science which lets you research technologies and materials which lets you build ships, orbitals and monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

When you take actions, spending influence you can only take one action at a time (except free actions like trading resources), then every other player has a turn (up to 6) till its your turn again. When it is your turn again you can take another action or pass. This carries on till everyone has passed. The key actions you can take is; explore another hex connected to a wormhole, then you can place an influence on this hex/sector to control it then claim its resources; change influence of your sectors; research new technology such as ship upgrades; upgrade your ships; build ships; or move your ships around the board. Once everyone has passed ships in the same sectors fight it out!

Combat

In combat you simply roll the dice (well pressing a button) corresponding to the weapons equipped to your ships and you hit on a 6. However you can equip your ships with computers which add bonuses to your ship. For example if you have a +2 computer you will now be hitting on 4/5/6 not just 6. The game has a cool effect when shooting rather than just some dice rolling effect. The space ships are highly upgradeable, better weapons  better computers and shields, better movement rates (drives) and energy. Energy is important because you may have researched allot of neat stuff, but you need the energy to power some of the better weapons, computers, drives etc.

After combat you can take over hexes of those you defeated (assuming you also destroyed their colonies. Then if you can't afford to pay for all the influence you spent that turn you have to declare bankruptcy and remove influence off hexes you can't afford to pay for. This however can sometimes be to your advantage as it doesn't use up a turn like the action 'change influence'. This all lasts for 9 rounds then the game is done.

Simple huh. OK maybe to so much, there is allot going on in this game. I imagine my description did not do it justice but once you get the hang of it, it's allot of fun and plenty of variation to each game to keep you coming back for more. But this all raises one big problem, how do you learn to play it? For me it was simple, I have already played the game so only really needed to learn the user interface which the in built tutorial helped with immensely. However I have heard that this tutorial does not do a great job in teaching you how to play UI aside. There is a inbuilt manual which is reletively logical, but still people seem to complain. So if this is a problem I recommend just downloading the PDF manual. I do recognise this as being a problem with complex games as I downloaded Le Havre, a complex game, on sale a while back and still don't have any clue how to play.

Species 

You have a choice to play with seven different species in this game. They all offer different advantages and disadvantages. This follows some story line of the seven different species forming a galactic council after some war. However the peace is soon to be shattered as you play eclipse. Yep that's the premis of the game, it's alright and there is a pretty cool opening sequence explaining this. Terran (humans) are the most common and everyone can play Terran however the 6 different aliens can only have one player each. Terran are pretty standard offering no special benefits however they have no real disadvantage either, middle of the road. Peoples favorite seem to be the Hydran Progress who have special researching powers and Orion Hegemony who are pretty good in combat. Others are; the Descendants of Draco who are friends with the ancients (ships which occupy some hexes to make occupying them harder); Planta who rock at exploring and are more peaceful than the rest; and Mechanema who are robots who can build stuff on the cheap. However a race that I am enjoying are the Eridani Empire who I describe below. All these races provide a good amount of variation and add to the challenge!

A description shot of one of the races.

AI games vs Online Play vs Pass and Play

First off, I have never played pass and play and probably never will so, no comment. Playing against the AI is fun, there are 3 difficulties, easy, medium and hard and they all presset their challenges  I recommend playing with 3-4 players rather than 5-6 as it can take a while to get round to your turn, despite the AI having relatively fast turns. I find the bigest challenge is trying to play with the Eridani Empire, they start off with allot of money and some good starting research however 2 less initiative than the other races! This is quite challenging and the great starting resources don't seem to make up for it. None the less it makes the Eridani a good challenge!

I am not much of a computer gamer so online play is a bit foreign to me. However I decided I would give it a shot. The online play is pretty good, it has an in-game chat function and there seems to be a few different games to choose between. However my two main concerns are; firstly it can be a bit buggy, however I am sure Bid Daddy Creations is working on this; secondly, people pulling out before the game is finished, which is frustrating as I have never managed to finish a game. My first game I wasn't doing great but I managed to beat this one guy in combat with a bit of luck and he "rage quit", not very sportsman like. So I don't really rate online play to hightly but maybe if I had a better experience I would have preferred it.

Conclusion 

I can honestly say this is a great buy. It is a well made app, it looks great, the user interface is good, the gameplay is superb and it is allot of fun. Watch out however, if your like me you may end up buying the board game as well. Unless of course you already own it in which case you probably know it will be an awesome app. However if you were contemplating one or the other I would recommend geting the cardboard option. There is nothing quite like playing someone across a table (a very large table is needed for eclipse).

All in all it is a great app. Bid Daddy Creation's is working on some of the bugs as you can see here. I am also looking forward to them making the expansion Rise of the Ancients for it, I am tempted to get the cardboard version of this also. So what would I give it?

Overall: 9/10

For more on board games click here. Photos taken with a 50mm f1.4 lens or taken from the Bid Daddy Creations Website.

Play-testing A Study in Emerald

Monday night saw four of us gather for our weekly games night, including Chris who was keen to join us again after two weeks on honeymoon.  This time the game was Study in Emerald a currently prototype boardgame by Martin Wallace that is in its Kickstarter project phase.  The prototype is available for play testing before the board, rules and design are finalised.

Proposed box art

The game picks up where the wonderful short story by Neil Gaimon ends: with the sun setting on the Victorian Empire, Sherlock and Watson take what seems to be another assignment - a murder, a word written onto the wall beside the body and no apparent clue as to the culprit.  But as they investigate further, the assignment becomes stranger than any other: the body is not, well, human; its blood is green and although there is little that is left of it one can tell that it is not of this world...

For those who want to read the story I won't give too much away, but the story ends with the uncovering of a movement of people in Europe against the established royal families and other elite.  Known as the Restorationists, they strive to restore the natural order of things by removing the rather unnatural aristocracy.

Anyway, back to the game.  The game play is based on the accumulation of victory points.  One accumulates such points by taking control of cities, by killing agents, or by assassinating the named royalist in that city.  The board is set out with a number of cities on it, linked by movement tracts, and cards immediately above them with the top card turned over:

The board and it's groundbreaking artwork 

Each player has a deck of ten cards, of which (s)he draws six.  Each player has their agent on the board.  The game has an "influence" mechanic whereby a player bids either on a city or on a card deck by playing influence tokens on them.  If at the start of their next turn they have the most influences on the city they can take control of that city (and get the city card as well as the victory points) and similarly if they have the most influences on a card they get that card which enables them to do different things during their turn.

Bidding far a card
(Mrs Peacock is the white player with the sheep from Agricola)

A highly contested city

A turn consists of two actions: if you are to take a city or a card, that has to be your first action and you can only do that once per turn.  A basic action requires the playing of cards, which have symbols on them - block to enable you to place an influence block and a coin to move places or buy more influences.  A normal action involves placing influences on one card or one city.

There are more actions than that involved that I won't go into: blowing up agents / royalists, turning yourself or others into vampires, bringing on zombies, accumulating more agents, having double agents (which is cool) and the like.  There is a lot of variety to the game play and I could not get my head around tactics for most of the game.  You are also either a Royalist or a Restorationist.  Whichever you are appointed to at the start affects the way you play as there are only royalists on the city squares to blow up so the Restorationists have more ways to accumulate victory points.  The Royalists are, if you like, defending more - trying to kill agents before the agents kill the royals.

The restoration and war tracks 

Without the board game bling, we were never going to be "wowed" by the game.  I can see, however that the game would be fun and could be played a number of times with different tactics depending on which side you are on and how the game unfolds.  So my lasting impression is quite favorable and I am keen for Steve to buy it so I can play it more often.

I think with some cool pieces and an attractive game board that it could be a real winner.  The rules do need a bit of clarifying though - there were some "rules moments" which us gamers all know about: particularly around free actions but also whether you are playing with your fellow Royalists / Restorationists or whether it is every (wo)man for themselves.  Zac and I as the Royalists came out on top with a bit of rules bending and Steve and Chris in true anarchist fashion fought each other and came last and second to last.

Stephens restorationist card,
looks a little bit like a spy from the Resistance

Allocating points is always random so I say 7.24926 / 10.

Zac dedicates his victory to Nadar

X-Wing Preystalker mission thoughts

A few weeks back Matt, my regular X-Wing gamer, and I tried out our first X-Wing mission, Preystalker. This mission came with the Slave 1 and I thought it looked pretty cool. The basics, the imperials have a bounty on one of the rebel ships and they have to take it down. To make things more complicated the imperials only have 90 points to spend but the rebels 150, although the ship with the bounty costs double points! I will briefly go over our game and then some thoughts.

Set Up

As you can see the rebels have to set up backwards, a major disadvantage. The imperials can set up within range 1-3 and the rebels range 3 from their side of the table. Oh and did I mention the rebels also all have stress... Oh Dear.

I opted for Boba Fett, I mean how could you not use him in a bounty hunting scenario! I also added in a tie and an interceptor. Matt used a 4 X-Wing build, putting the bounty on Luke and using Bigs to defend him. When choosing the character with the bounty you have to double their ship points, but as a bonus they get 10 free points worth of upgrades.

The Game

The game was a swift victory for me, I think starting facing the wrong way can be pretty hard and needs some quick and cleaver manoeuvring while protecting the bounty.

Keeping Boba at Heavy Laser Cannon distance

Interceptor in some trouble

X-Wing down!

So I may not have got these photos in the right order. Also, I did some pretty bad manoeuvring this game, but managed to load the damage quickly onto Luke and took away the victory. 

Thoughts

We played another game after this which ended similar thought Matt lasted a bit longer. I don't think the sides were uneven just needed some pretty swish manoeuvring from the rebels to survive. However did I think it was a good mission? Not really. I thought it was still for both sides just a shoot out, pretty similar to the base game. I think the other missions may be better as they add new gaming mechanics and interesting objectives. With that in mind...

4.5 out of 10

Though it's advantage is it is quicker than a standard 100 point game. I am keen to try out some more missions however, but this one can collect dust. 

See more on X-Wing? Click here. More boardgame reviews? Click here. Photos taken with a Canon 600d.

Plethora boardgame review - fun and long.

I thought I would take some time to review a smalltime board game designers game, Plethora. It is designed by Shem Phillips, which is especially cool because he is a New Zealander (which we are also). This neat little game has many great aspects, all except the length as other reviews have noted.

Box art, a guy with the different gemstones you can get in the game.

Looks and Design

Plethora looks great, it was funded by a Kickstarter like campaign. The board is composed of multiple tiles, all depicting a picture of a different building which work together to compose a city. The artwork on these tiles is fantastic, although it can be a little hard working out which tile you need to get to next as some only differ slightly. Another downfall is the cards and board bits are slightly glossy, I prefer a matt finnish.

The meeples are wooden and good quality, though I am not sure why the yellow pieces (nobels) are so spiky! All in all I give the looks a 8/10 and the quality is superb.

The yellow, spiky nobels

Gameplay

Plethora has a pretty simple yet fun feel to it when playing. The aim is to get the most nobility/victory points. To do this you buy cards off a nobel by being in the same square with gold. You can purchase any of the cards as long as you have the right gold to do so. The cost is determined by the yellow number on the tower above the card. There is also a possibility on each card to get more points by trading resources at the end of the game. 

However to get gold you must follow the path of a noble. Which works like this.

1. Get a rendezvous from a square a nobel is in. This is simply a card with a location to get to.

Rendezvous

2. Once you are at the rendezvous point exchange the card for a commission, this depicts a certain amount of gemstones you need to buy (with silver) to complete the commission

The commission cards sit above the gemstones,
which sit above the rendezvous

3. Once you have the gemstones you can trade the compleated commission and return the gemstones for the depicted gold and silver, which you can then use to buy nobility points and convert to silver to buy more gemstones. 

You can have up to two rendezvous and three commissions at a time. To get the gemstones, as I call them, white, blue and orange (actually perl, sapphire and ruby or something like that) you need to get to the location where they are sold then buy them for the silver depicted, so the more that have been purchased the greater the cost. This is a neat little mechanic which is used a other games, but fun none the less. 

In order for all of this to happen you have to start your turn by rolling three dice, which depict what actions you can do on your turn. For the most part this is fun and can lead to some pretty awesome turns. However sometimes you get a bad roll and you end up going in circles.

Thoughts

For the most part I enjoy this game, I like following the noble path, keeping gemstones to keep the price high for other players and purchasing the right nobility/victory point cards. It is simple enough for most people to pick up and learn their first time around yet enough strategy to keep you asking for more. However it does end up being about 90 minutes which is long considering the simplicity of the game. It can also get repetitive repeating the noble path.

I would definitely play this game again and it is a good game to play with newer gamers. Also I got this game at an op shop for $4 so no complaints there!

I give it a 7/10

It's not essential to play this game on a cat tablecloth

See more board game reviews here. Photos taken with my 600d and a 50mm f1.4 Sigma lens.

The Settlers of Catan, is there too much luck?

Settlers of Catan is the boardgame where most modern gamers start, and some would say started the whole modern boardgaming movement! A pretty awesome claim to fame for designer Klaus Teuber. However, is it a good game? Well it does make its way into the top 100 on boardgame geek, well its at rating 100 now so it may not stay there for much longer.

Gameplay

I am not sure how much to go into this as I am sure most people have played Settlers. It seems to be almost as prolific as Monopoly or Risk so skip this section if you must. The basics are, you roll for resources which you get by having a settlement or city next to a resource, which you can then use to build roads to get to new locations for more resources and numbers, settlements, cities and development cards which help you get more resources and attack other players. The aim is to get to 10 points to gain the title 'lord of catan' (only in the old version) and win the game. If you want a better definition get the rules from here.


Luck and frustration

This is the most frustrating aspect of Settlers. What you do requires the luck of the dice. There are ways to minimise this, for example putting your settlement on a 8 is better than a 12 as there is only 1 way to roll a 12 and 5 to roll a 8 (at-least I think its 5 of the top of my head). Also don't forget to get a diversity of number. However even if you have really great numbers they never seem to roll for you! It is sooooo frustrating! 

What makes it worse, is when your luck evens out as the game goes on it is often hard to come back as your opponents have build around you minimizing your opportunities! To make it worse when I play with my wife's family my mother in law always puts the robber on me despite the fact that I am losing miserably she has some weird reason for finding it better to place the robber on the loser rather than the winner! Grrr.

A great entry level game

Settlers is a relatively easy game for new gamers to learn. As I mentioned above my in-laws enjoy playing settlers when we visit. It is easy enough to learn and enjoyable while you try and master it. However I find because of this, many of my non-gamer friends want to play settlers, which renders it an overplayed game growing dull quickly.

Fun

Settlers is fun. The game play is interesting, and when luck doesn't draw you a foul card it gets even better! Like most people I know it was one of the first modern games I played so it has a soft spot in my heart. Also, you can make towers with your pieces while you play.

Verdict: 6.5/10

I guess in the end settlers is a good enough game and a good game to play with new gamers. However every so often luck can get you down (and bad robber placements!).

See more reviews? Check out our Alien Frontiers review here.

Boardgames by the Bay

Last weekend I managed to find myself in Tauranga at Boardgames by the Bay a board game convention organised by Seriously Board. I managed to play a plethora of games over the weekend, most I have never played before. Martin Wallace was there play testing some games he is designing at the moment including a follow up to Discworld Anch-Morpork, the Witches. However the upcoming game I am most excited about is A Study in Emerald, which is based on a short story by Neil Gaiman. You can read the story here. Sadly I missed out on the play testing

So here are the games I played and what I thought in played order:

Yggdrasil

Note: click on the titles to view the game in board game geek. 
The unpronounceable game Yggdrasil started of my weekend. It is a co-op game where you are all gods trying to stop evil gods such as Loki infiltrate some sort of tree, which is important. I must admit I wasn't particularly flattered by this game, but its not really a theme I would normally be excited about. Verdict? 5/10.

The Speicherstadt

The Speicherstadt is a bidding game where you bid for cards which allow you to preform certain actions, such as convert resources to victory points or silver which you use to bid with. It is a neat little game which puts you on edge as you bid against the other players to try and get the required resources and cards to get the most victory points. Verdict? 7/10.

Alien Frontiers

Managed to get in a game of Alien Frontiers a game which I love. See my detailed review here. Verdict? 8.5/10.

Formula D

This game was amazing. Racing tiny cars around a race track sounds boring but Formula D takes a simple concept and makes a pretty fun game. It works by rolling dice based on what gear your in, the lower your gear the slower you go. Each turn you can either go up, down or stay in the same gear which you need to do in order to take the corners because if you go to fast you will wear down your car and eventually it will be destroyed. A fun sociable game which anyone can pick up. I am definately adding this to my collection. Verdict? 7/10.

Discworld: Anch-Morpork

A game by Martin Wallace. This game is a fantasy game where each player gets a randomly assigned character with a different victory condition. It is set in the town Anch-Morpork created by Terry Pratchett. It works by drawing cards which you can then play to do certain actions. The aim is to get control of territories by placing meeples and building towers. This game looks great and has good artwork. However I did find though the game play was interesting it was not particularly complex. A good game for new gamers. Verdict? 7.5/10.

Star Wars: X-wing Miniatures Game

A mouthful of a title. I really like X-Wing, easy enough to learn, a healthy amount of strategy, and plenty of variability. Plus who doesn't like flying little spaceships around a table. See some of my session reports here and here. Verdict? 9/10.

Spartacus

Spartacus is a fun game based on the TV show which I have never watched. The game works by trying to bring your opposition down by playing nasty cards, bidding in the market and then fighting your gladiators against each other. You can also place bets on the gladiators. I liked the game but it suddenly ends, which I have been led to believe is normal. You feel like you are winning but then someone suddenly plays a few cards and wins the game. I am afraid that put me off the game a bit. Verdict?6.5/10.

I managed to get another game of Formula D in here. 

RoboRally

A classic game and a goody. Similar to Formula D except you are robots, with lasers and coincidentally you shoot each other as well as trying to make it to the finish line first. The catch is you have to plan 5 moves before each round starts with randomly assigned cards. This can leave you spinning in circles, driving into holes which can become quite frustrating. Overall this game is allot of fun and I would recommend giving it a shot. Verdict? 7.5/10.



Overall it was a good weekend and will probably go again sometime.

Alien Frontiers - 50mm review.

Alien Frontiers is a 2-4 player game designed by Tory Niemann made by small time publisher Clever Mojo Games. It is set in a retro sci-fi universe, even the names of the territories are taken from clasic science fiction authors. 

Looks and theme.

I have to admit, even if this makes me a shallow board gamer, that I love a great looking game. Alien Frontiers definitely fits into this bracket, which is great considering it is made by such a small company which would make you think it would struggle to do this. Not only does it look great but the quality of the board and components is high. 

The game portraits the retro sci-fi theme well, except maybe the fact that the dice are suposed to be spaceships. 

A real bonus about this game is that the set up time is about 2 minutes! 

Game Play

AF is a worker placement game like one of the best games of all time Agricola. It works by rolling dice/spaceships then depending on what you roll placing the dice in orbital facilities on the board, each having a different purpose. Some gather resources which are required to use other orbital facilities, others give you cards or more ships (dice) to use and most importantly others let you colonise the planet. Once you have placed your ships they remain in the orbital facility which also serves as a way to block other players. 

The aim is to place colonists (m&m like wooden tokens) on the planet to gain victory points, one VP for each colonist and one for each territory you control. To control a territory you need to have the most number of pebbles, m&ms or colonists on the territory. Not only do you get VP when you control a territory but you can claim the territories bonus! 

Alien Artefact cards are what make the game interesting, offering ways to manipulate your luck such as re-rolling or re-using dice. 

To get a better description of the rules read get the rules here

Down Time

Sadly this is my least favorite part of this game. AF can have some very long turns! Once my friend was clocked at a 10min turn! As you can't easily pre-plan a turn it is easy for people to spend allot of time trying to make the best move possible! Its a nightmare, I think I will have to invest in an egg timer. If you can't stand this and like me your gamer buddies can't seem to manage quick turns then maybe this game isn't for you.

Overal.

I love this game. The worker placement mechanic works well, despite it being dice based there is enough different locations to increase the strategy in placing dice reducing luck. The Alien Artefact cards also provide a means to manipulate your luck. The theme is great, the components a well made and its published by a small time company, all positives in my book. 

Another great thing about this game is everything you do stands on other players toes. Each dice you place prevents your opponents from placing their dice in that spot. The Alien Artefact cards a fantastic for moving your opponents colonists to ruin their territorial bonuses. The raiders outpost orbital facility allows you to steal from other players. 

AF unlike some games doesn't have a clear winner from the beginning. It may look like someone is winning but with a couple of well played Alien Artifact cards the tables can really change. 

BUT! The down time really makes this game a drag at times.

Rating?

8.5 out of 10

Rating? I would have given it 9.5 out of 10 but the amount of down time really sucks.

Review by Steveisatree. 

50mm Reviews photographs are taken with a Canon 600D and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens.