Review of High Frontier and Colonization

A few turns into a game of High Frontier: Colonization

Phil Eklund's High Frontier has made regular appearances on this blog since I first got it back in mid 2012 but, although I wrote a couple of meaty play reports (here and here), I have yet to actually review it. With the release of the new Colonization expansion that I have now hade the pleasure of playing twice I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and review both the base game and the expansion.

However... that's not really accurate. The base game is a bit of a misnomer as it's more of a tutorial game to get you to understand the fundamentals, but it's not the way High Frontier is meant to be played in the long run. In fact, unless I was teaching the game fresh to someone I really couldn't see myself going back to that version of the game after having experience the full glory of a complete game of High Frontier! Even so, let's take a look at what High Frontier is and how it's played.

The game is written by Phil Eklund of Sierra Madre Games who is famous in the board gaming world for his very particular approach to board gaming and rulebook writing. High Frontier is the spiritual successor of his earlier space flight game Rocket Flight from 1999. Phil is a bonafida rocket scientist and judging from Bios: Megafauna and Bios: Genesis (fingers crossed!) he seems to be well versed in biology/zoology as well. In short, a man of science! This is something that certainly shows in all his games - both in the integration of theme and game mechanics as well as how often a large part of the rulebook is given to explain the science and/or history underlying the game.

At first glance High Frontier might look like a game about spaceship design and spaceflight. But while those are two of the elements of the game it is really more about exo-globalization - the industrialization of the solar system and (in Colonization) the future of mankind. How you go about this is very much up to you as there are many ways to succeed within the framework of the game. In other terms, this is a sandbox game that gives you access to a bunch of rocket parts and then lets you loose in the solar system!

The Tutorial Game

As I said above what is called the base game is really only a tutorial to make you into a steely-eyed missile man ready for the full glorious potential of High Frontier Colonization! Still, it's a good starting point in talking about how the game works and what you do while playing. But first, let's talk a little bit about the beautiful map of the solar system that forms the game board.

PRC are using a solar sail and make several quick, cheap trips to get all the needed equipment to its destination. As you can see on the playmat the rocket's tanks are empty. Solar sails don't need propellant!

There are no squares to put your rockets and cubes in. Not even hexagons! Instead we have many intersecting lines that all represent... well, let me quote Phil:

The High Frontier map divides space into two topographies: circumplanetary burns (steep gravity wells around planets), and interplanetary Hohmanns (shallow heliocentric gravity fields). It scales to energy, not distance! Note that each spot represents a stable orbit, so rockets do not "drift". To change orbits, you must achieve a "velocity increment" that costs mass and energy. 

-High Frontier rulebook, page 1. 

So basically you move along the lines of the map and whenever you enter a pink circle you need to do a Burn which uses propellant. The number of Burns you can make and how much propellant is used each time is dependent on the thruster you are using and the mass of the rocket. More mass=more energy required to move=more propellant used. It all comes together on the player mat where you track your rocket's mass and how much propellant is in its tanks. There are other kinds of circles as well, sometimes containing different hazards, that are risky to enter. Where two lines intersect is also a space where your rocket can thrust into a new trajectory at a cost of either more propellant or more time. Alright, so with that out of the way let's continue with the rest of the game.

There are five different playable factions in the game; NASA, ESA, UN, PRC and the Shimizu Corporation. They have some different abilities like the UN getting money when anyone prospects or industrializes a site or ESA who can boost a rockets thrust by one, thanks to their laser powersats. Each also have a crew card that can be used for prospecting and some other stuff. What you first need to do when the game starts is get a rocket going as that is the main way of getting around the solar system. The game ends when there's a set number of factories built (usually two per player) at which time you calculate victory points that you get from how much you've been able to industrialize, from glory missions (like being the first to get your crew to Mars and back) and from "Space Ventures". At it's very core this is a (space) racing game.

In the base game there are only three kinds of parts, or patents, available through research. Thrusters, robonauts and refineries. You need thrusters to go anywhere (although some robonauts also have thrusters), you need robonauts for serious prospecting (they're much better than your crew) and you need a refinery to turn your prospected claim into an industrialized site (a site being anything from a small asteroid to the majestic plains of Mars). Researching in the game takes the form of an auction for the different patent cards and the one who bids the highest gets the card in question. Of course, currency in this game takes the form of Water Tanks that are used both in auctions as well as for refuelling your rocket and boosting stuff into orbit. Anyway, just slapping everything together and heading for the stars is usually not a good idea as that creates a rocket with very high mass that takes lots of propellant to get moving. If you have managed to find a thruster with very low fuel consumption, like the Metastable Helium thruster pictured right you might be able to do it, but even then you'll have to plan your expedition well.

ESA is running a more traditional rocket using the VASIMR thruster.
Don't worry about the generator and reactor... we'll get to those later.

Most of the time you start by going out just with a thruster and a robonaut to prospect some promising sites that you've had your eye on. This is not an automatic process and depending on the robonaut you are using there are many sites you simply can't try to prospect, and others that might be too small to chance it. Once you've got an interesting prospect or two claimed you leave your robonaut there, and start working on getting a refinery to the site in question as both are required for industrialization. If you have enough propellant left, or if refuelling in situ is an option you could go back and pick up the refinery. You could also decommission your thruster and simply boost a new one together with your refinery. Costly perhaps, but you might save time in the long run and don't forget that this is a race!

You also need to keep in mind the spectral type of the site as this decides which of your patents you can upgrade and make better versions of in your space factory. If you've industrialized a stony (S) site you can do a production action and flip one of your S cards over to its black side, which will give you a more powerful/effective thruster, a better robonaut or a refinery with some special benefits. So as you prospect more sites and build more space factories you can slowly upgrade your rocket with black cards that allow you to reach further and accomplish more!

As you industrialize a site you can also construct a simple "tea kettle" freighter that can hold one card in its hold and move one burn per turn, freeing up your rocket to do the heroic stuff instead of simply shipping parts around. This helps with logistics as you need to move one black part from a factory to where you're rocket is going, or back to Earth to sell.

More sites are being prospected and industralized.

Then as the fourth or sixth or seventh factory is built the game ends and you tally up your points. This might seem a little anti-climactic but remember that this is the tutorial game only, and all the really great stuff is coming later. Still the first few times you play this is more than enough to boggle your mind. Player interaction in the base game is usually limited to indirect action like buying patent cards your opponent dearly crave, prospect a site before your opponent get there or brokering deals for patents or assistance during the game. There is no direct confrontation possible, although the PCR can "claim jump" and steal other players prospect claims!

It's worth mentioning that the play reports I linked to above were played only using the tutorial rules. Now let's have a look at the full game.

The Full Game

Actually, it's called the advanced game, but that sounds misleading. This is simply the full version of the game and how it is meant to be played. Now we're getting into expansion territory, so let's talk a little bit about that first. At the same time the basic game was released in 2010 an expansion containing the parts needed to play the full game was released - some more cards and a second game board that extended the play area to include Jupiter and Saturn, as well as containing information about events and space politics. This is the original "Advanced Game".

However, it has been out of print for quite a while now and the new Colonization expansion contains everything from the original expansion plus some additional stuff that makes it even cooler, so this is the version I will be covering. For all intents and purposes I will continue writing the review as if the original expansion didn't exist in the first place. Just for simplicity's sake.

The eight different patent and colonists cards as well as the VP board, Sunspot cycle and Polity tracker. 

In the full game quite a few new concepts are introduced. Some of them core to the entire experience and some in a modular format that allows you to pick and choose which you want to play with (although, I personally wouldn't play without all of them). The core elements are the addition of three more patent support cards: reactors, generators and radiators. In the full game many of the thrusters, robonauts and refineries require support cards to run. A thruster might require an electric generator or a burst plasma reactor with two therms of cooling provided by radiators! So instead of just picking your favourite thruster and robonaut and get going you need to make sure they are powered and have enough cooling.

This is an entire game in itself as you want to build as efficiantly as possible. Having a thruster that needs a pulsed generator while your robonaut needs an electric generator might not be a good combination for example. If they both use the same generator you just need to bring one along to power both parts. So you'll spend a lot more time cajiggering with your rocket than in the base game. On one hand it's trickier, on the other you have a lot more options for making cool combinations and making thrusters that rarely get used in the base game actually workable thanks to efficient support cards. Getting a half-decent rocket together is one of my favourite parts of High Frontier and it's a great feeling when you manage to get something together that will actually get you where you need to go!

PRC has constructed a better solar sail, a nanobot robonaut and a lighter refinery using his space factories. For further exploitation of the Solar system! His promoted Bernal is still in its start orbit at Earth-Luna L3 with the Botany Bay convicts on board.

You will also need to keep an eye on the rad-hardness of your parts. Flying through radiation belts (like the one surrounding Earth!) can be risky if your parts aren't well shielded or if you're going slowly. And even if you pass through all right there's the ever present risk of a freak Solar flare or coronal mass-ejection which can fry your electronics. So keep the rad-hardness in mind. Especially if flying during the Red Sector.

Red Sector?! What the hell is that! Yepp, another core element of the full game is the Sunspot Cycle. It consists of twelve spots in a ring and every time the first player takes his turn you move a marker to the next spot in the ring. It is divided into three different cycles which can have different effects (red=solar flares, blue=election year, yellow=budget cuts) and every other spot comes with an event that you need to roll for. An event affects all players and can be anything from glitches in your rocket to pad explosions to government elections. There are ways to protect yourself from many of these things but you need to plan for them nevertheless.

During an election all the players make a bid and the highest player gets to move the polity marker one space. This can have different effects depending on where it moves and if it moves into the spot of a certain faction, say PRC's Press Gangs, it will be worth VPs at the end of the game. The marker can also be moved into anarchy and war. And yes, during war you can attack other players rockets and factories, using your robonauts and thrusters (as missiles)! I have yet to actually see any combat in the game, but it's a very real danger.

Besides these core concepts Colonization also introduces four new card modules: Freighters, Bernals, Colonists and Gigawatt Thrusters, and a new endgame module. So let's take a quick look at each of these.

• Freighters. Using this module you don't automatically build a freighter when industrializing. Instead it is patent card that you need to research and then build at one of your factories. There are five different freighters with different capabilities. They have different movement and different sized hold. They can also be promoted to their purple side, making them more effective and providing a Future (more on this later). 

• Bernals. A Bernal Sphere is gigantic space habitat in the vein of the O'neill Cylinder or the Stanford Torus and if you play with this module each player has a Bernal in a starting orbit near Earth. It functions kind of like a second rocket, except it's very heavy and slow to move around. If you promote it, by giving it a generator, it flips to its purple side and it can then move by itself as well as provide some special abilities. If it's placed adjacent to one or more of your industrialized sites it's said to have these sites as dirtsides, meaning you can produce directly to the Bernal. Basically it becomes your base away from low Earth orbit.

• Colonists. There's a deck of colonist cards that you can recruit. Each of them functions pretty much like your original crew card, except they all have special abilities and some of them have built in reactors or generators. Bust most importantly, the provide you with extra actions during your turn! They also provide votes that are added to the players bids during an election (voting for the faction they areactually loyal to, which may or may not be the faction you're playing) and all of them can be promoted to their purple side, with some of them providing Futures. There are also some Robot Colonists that need to be built at a factory. They work a little differently and can't vote unless someone has performed the Suffrage Operation to give basic human rights to them, in which case they always vote for their Emancipator (awesome, right?!).

• Gigawatt Thrusters. These are similar to your regular megawatt thrusters from the base game except they need to be built at a factory and they are stingy with their propellant - if it's an S GW Thruster it can only refuel at an S site. However they are very powerful and with one of these babies you can seriously start considering going beyond Saturn towards Uranus and Nepune. They can also be upgraded to their purple, Terawatt Thruster, side which is even more powerul and which also provides a Future.

• Endgame Module. I've talked a lot about promoting and Futures. What is that? Well, all these four card modules really come together in the Endgame Module and this is why I feel it would be weird only playing with Bernals or only Colonists. You can promote a card by building a Lab and taking the card there. A Lab is any industrialized site at a trans-Neptunian science site... and they are pretty hard to get to. Your Bernal also becomes a Lab if it has a dirtside at any science site, which is normally easier to achieve. 

Many promoted cards provide Futures, and this is the new endgame condition of the game. In a two player game the game ends after the first Future is achieved or attempted. In a three player game it's after the second Future, and so on. So wha tis a Future? It is basically some neat sci-fi idea that you need to accomplish to show that humanity is carving its mark on the universe. Perhaps you need to build aerostat factories on both Saturn and Uranus, or maybe you need to try and create a mini black hole with one of your scientists, or it could be that you want to strap a Gigawatt Thruster to a comet and crash it into the Earth (ending the game with a bang!). If you succeed at a Future you get some VPs and the game is one step closer to ending.

And... that's about it. Sorry for getting a bit rules heavy there at the end, but I felt it was needed to get the scope across. Right now it might seem like all these things would be impossible to remember and keep separated in your head during play, but if you start out with the tutorial game and wrap your head around rocket flight 101 you shouldn't have any problem graduating to the full game!

Both ESA and PRC have managed to create labs at their Bernals as their dirtsides (at comet Elst-Pizarro and the subsurface ocean of Callisto, respectively) are Science sites. Some cards have been promoted already, like ESA's Frankenstein Navigators at bottom right. Now it's time to start looking at available Futures!

It's might be worth mentioning here that Phil has also constructed High Frontier: Interstellar which is a print-and-play sequal to Colonization where you use the resources you created there to move around the stars in generation ships. You could also start from the beginning with Bios: Megafauna, use the creatures you create there as the basis for your culture in Origins: How We Became Human, use the end of that game as the starting foundation to High Frontier and finally play Interstallar. Pretty neat!

My Thoughts

So with the workings of the game figured out what do I actually think of it. Short answer: High Frontier is my favourite board game. Full stop.

Long answer: High Frontier was a real eye-opener for me as a board gamer, or gamer in general. I've always been a fan of a strong theme in games and in the past that is why used to found myself oogling the stuff FFG et al with all the mountains of plastic and bright shiny cards. The word theme gets bandied about a lot and for many, including myself a few years ago, theme means just that - nice components. I've played most of FFG's games at one time or another, and I do like some nice components but a true thematic experience comes through the integration between theme and mechanics and there is often a disconnect there. That doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily. Lords of Waterdeep is still a good game, even though the theme is just a thin veneer. And no matter how great looking the room tiles and miniatures are for Mansions of Madness it's a long way from actually sneaking through a haunted house.

ESA succeed in moving the Polity marker to the left, away from war and anarchy.

So where am I going with this? I think I said it in my firt impressions-article on Bios: Megafauna, and that is that when Phil makes a game he does it with the approach of a simulationist - as in 'how could I realistically portray function X in board game terms? Like, how do I simulate realistic rocket flight on a game board?'. In a game like Firefly, that has no aspirations to scientific realism, you simply move a number of spaces and draw some cards. In High Frontier all the trajectories, burn circles and Hohmann intersections are calculated correctly as well as thrust, fuel consumption, radiation strength etc and then the game is extrapolated from that. Again, let me quote from the Game Scale section of the rulebook:

• A thrust of one is 0.75 kN (750 newtons, or 169lbs, the weight of the game designer on Earth!). Each additional point doubles this.

• An acceleration of one is 0.38 milligees or 0.38 cm/sec², and each step more doubles this.

• A size one world has a surface gravity of 0.75 milligees, and each additional step doubles this. Size 1 worlds have the following diameters based on density: comet nucleus 52 km (only Centaur comets approach this size), S-type asteroid 22 km, M-type asteroid 14 km.

• Beamed power emits a 60 MW laser beam. Generators produce 60 MWe of electricity. Reactors produce from 650-2000 MWth of thermal energy, either in neutrons, pions, or plasma jets. Each therm radiates 120 MWth of heat. (Subscript e = electricity, th = thermal).

• Each burn requires a delta-v (velocity change) of 2.5 km/sec. Each brachistochrone is 5.0 km/sec.

• A solar flare die roll of 1 is an M1 flare with an X-ray power density of 10^-5 Watts/m². Each point more is 4 times this. Thus, a die roll of 6 is a X95 (Carrington-class) flare with a power density of 10^-2 Watts/m².

-High Frontier rulebook, page 13.

This might look scary to the casual observer, but remember that this is all under the hood calculations that have been wrested into a (relatively) easy to understand board game. It's just a great feeling to play the game and know that all the underpinnings are not simply numbers crunched to fit the game, but actual "real" numbers that the game has been wrapped around. And this design principle goes through the entire game, and all the other Sierra-Madre games I've played!

What this means is that the theme and mechanics of the game are so deeply integrated with eachother as to be virtually unseparable. For example, there is simply no way of re-theming High Frontier into anything other than a game about rocket flight and space industrialization, and the same thing goes for Bios: Megafauna. You might change the map around and give the parts different names perhaps, but you wouldn't be able to turn it from a game about rockets to a game about cooking food (something which can't be said of Lords of Waterdeep for example).

To win (or at least end the game) PRC need to create some antimatter! They can do this by using a promoted engineer at a factory on a science site and succeed with an "Epic Hazard Op" - meaning they need to roll anything but a 1 on a die.

Ok, so I've taken a long time to say that the theme is a core part of the game and not simply an afterthought. Great. But what about the game? Is it fun? That is the other thing. Not only is the theme well executed but the mechanics work not only as a simulation but as an actual competetive board game. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that I was a bit daunted when I first started reading the rulebook, but that is more about me not being familiar with this style of writing rather than it being a bad rulebook. The first time you go through it nothing will seem to make sense at the start, but by the time you finish it it has all become clear. Then read it again with your new eyes and you will discover how clever the design is. 

While FFG might make rulebooks that are better at introducing the game they are rubbish as reference tools. Sierra-Madre rulebooks on the other hand can be tricky to read the first time through, but then work great while you are actually playing and need to look up a particular rule or two. Especially with the new Alive and Complete version of the rulebook available for download.

I'm a big space exploration and rocket enthusiast so naturally High Frontier would appeal to me. The game might be a hard sell to players who are not as interested, but the actual game is meaty enough to get anyone hooked if they can just get past the inital learning hump. Most people will struggle with basic rocket movement for their first few turns, or their first game, but once it clicks you start looking at that map with whole different eyes!

At the same time ESA is racing to get their scientist to their Bernal where they would be able to score a Future! They're currently in low Earth orbit though. Will they make it?!

The tutorial game is a sandbox and this too can be daunting because there is no hand-holding involved. Nothing telling you exactly what to do or where to go. You need to decide what mission to undertake yourself, based on the patent cards in your hand. It requires planning and patience and going off half-cocked is usually a good way of stranding your crew. Still, the base game is limited in time. Usually, by the time you start getting to the really good stuff, like factory produced thrusters and robonauts the game is about to end. You rarely get to play with your new toys more than a dozen turns or so.

The full game changes all of this. If the tutorial game is a sandbox this is a desert! The sunspot cycle with its events and the polity tracker plays a large role in how the game will evolve and using the support cards means that you will see a lot more different rockets being used. These core concepts alone takes the game to the next level, but then adding Colonists and Bernals etc really helps making the game epic! These modules also help to make the game world feel more alive and as you play you can't help but make little stories in your head. While the tutorial game can be a little clinical in its execution the full expansion experience is gritty reality! You can really feel those Attican Secessionists who want to declare independance from Earth or your Bernal hauling new technology from its dirtside factories. It makes not only for a great gaming experience, but for a great storytelling experience as well!

PRC is quicker to get their Future and the game end shortly after. Counting the victory points it's a close race, but the PRC come out the winner, thanks to the 12 points for completing the firt Future!

The politics and deal-making of the game is also something to be mentioned. The first few times you play you'll usually be too busy making sure your rocket isn't exploding to really pay detailed attention to what the other factions are up to. But as you progress in the game and learn more about the different patents and good paths through the Solar system political and economical maneuverings will start taking place. Buying and withholding  a patent card critical to an opponent suddenly becomes an effective tactic (especially if you play the Shimizu corp.). You can make all kinds of deal throughout the game, like paying for an extra boost from ESA or trade patents.

The Political tracker might seem like a quaint detail mostly centred on theme at first, but getting the Polity disc into one of the spots providing special rules, like only allowing NASA to initiatie research, or banning any and all reactors can have quite an impact on the game. Not to mention anarchy and war - whenever the political climate turn into anarchy every player starts to eye the board for chances of stealing other factions claims!

The game usually starts out slowly with everyone getting their bearings and start working out plans on where to go and how to get there. During the mid-phase there might be some struggle for patent cards and sites to prospect and during the last phase it's all about getting your lab up and running to be able to promote cards to get some Futures available. It's more of a marathon than a sprint, but High Frontier is certainly a race!

I mentioned it at the start: this is my favourite board game, and I've tried to convey why in this article. It is tough to get into, the rulebook and the graphical design of the game might look odd to you the first time you encounter it, but if you persevere and actually learn the game you will be richly rewarded both in regards to a thematic, immersive experience as well as a tight racing game focusing on resources and maneuvers.

I really can't recommend the game enough, and it only gets better with Colonization. Get it!

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Quick TAG work in progress

Gūijiă TAG for the Yu Jing faction.

Last month I felt it was finally time to get working on my Gūijiă TAG. It had been lying in its box since I got it back in 2011 and I felt a little bad for that. The Gūijiă is an older Infinity model and one of the oldest TAGs around. When I first saw it I wasn't really sold, even with the close resemblance to Shirow Masamune's landmates. But as I started seeing it from new angles and, especially, seeing it with different paintjobs than the official one I started to soften.

While some of the old models show their age, many of them still hold up very well. Just take the old (right side) Gŭiláng I painted last year - it's an awesome model!

Gŭiláng - Ghost Wolves.

And so is the Gūijiă. However, the official paintjob is bad and only serves into making it into an orange blob. After seeing some very different looks for the TAG I decided it was time to try my hand at it.

The idea is to go with a blue/grey/white theme that I hve running through most of my Yu Jing models but combine it with a kind of police/SWAT look to bring out the badass landmate feel of the Gūijiă. I was actually considering replacing the head with something more Guges as that would fit sooo well, but in the end decided against it. Another idea I had was to replace the barrel assembly of the Multi HMG with a brass 1/35 minigun kit from RB Models. Unfortunately it was a bit too delicate to go well with the look of the rest of the model. I might try assembling to try it out anyway, but as it looks now we have a stock Gūijiă to look forward to.

And here is where it's at right now:

Gūijiă TAG work in progress.

As you can see it's sans head at the moment, don't mind that. The base is also just quickly block painted to get get away from the black undercoat and get a better look at the overall colour of the miniature. I'm quite happy with the colour scheme, but I think the dark blue-grey need to come up a little bit in terms of lightness to make the model pop more. On the other hand it is often the final details that tie everything together, so perhaps a darker base colour like this is the right way to do it.

While in Japan I bought a sheet of Gundam decals that I'm planning to use on my Yu Jing TAGs and remotes as well as perhaps some 15mm stuff further down the line. It's a pretty good mix of warning texts and more general symbols that should work well. A few of those on this guy will also help to make it unique.

I'm glad I got started on this as I want a similar colour theme to run through all the TAGs and remotes and now that I have it nailed down it should be easier to continue with the two baggage remotes I magnetized earlier:

Magnetized Pangguling remote for Infinity.

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October Releases for Infinity!

"Er... October releases? That was two weeks ago, dude!" Yes, yes... I went to Japan for a bit and it took a while for me to get back up to speed. I was thinking better late than never, so here we are with the October releases for Infinity.

Oh, if you actually come visit my little corner of the interwebs you might have noticed things are looking a little different around here. I thought it was time to do a bit of a clean up, as I tend to do every other year or so. Going to try a light background this time around which feels fresher, but at the same it's quite far from the darkness of space that I've always had in mind for this blog. Also, I'm still hammering things out so expect details to keep changing for a while.

Anyway... Infinity! October saw the release of the Dire Foes boxed sets. Each containing alternative Spec-Ops models for two different factions plus a civilian for use in scenarios. This time around the special operatives are named characters and come with their own little backstory which is kind of cool. In the box we also get a scenario featuring the operatives in question as well as their respective stat lines. Overall I think it's a cool little iniatitive, and I might pick up one or two of the boxes, but it's certainly not anything critical to the game.

So let's look at the Dark Mist box first. In it we get the Yu Jing Keisotsu Gui Feng Yuriko Oda, the Ariadnan Volunteer Intel Isobel Macgregor and a civilian Comm-Tech. Three good looking models! Yuriko has a nice look that combines the look of the regular Gui Feng with the baggy pants (tobi trousers!) of the Japanese Keisotsu. To me her legs look a little long, but perhaps that's only because of the combat high heels. Hehe! Isobel is dressed more like a punk rocker from the seventies which is all kinds of awesome in itself! Her pose is very similar to Uxia McNeal's but it looks good so I'll let it slide (ba-dum-tish!). Finally we have the Comm-Tech who look fairly unassuming, which I actually think is a really good thing as it's fairly rare in Infinity. Besides the "I need to go pee"-pose she looks like a cool tech worker. If I was more into JSA I would pick this up for sure. Right now it's a maybe.

 Next up is Train Rescue featuring Treitak Anyat of the Combined Army, Fusilier Indigo Bipandra of PanO and the civilian(?!) Fusilier Angus. I was a little surprised that the CA model was not a Shasvaasti as we already have a Morat spec-op. This time it's a female though and although it's technically a great sculpt I'm not really a fan of the model overall. I'm not sure if it's the catwalk pose or something else, but it's not my style. Bipandra suffers from the same problem the first PanO spec-of suffers from, namely that they're both too similar to a plain old Fusilier. It's a good looking model with a very Infinity-esque pose (blowing a kiss?) but to me it needs to stand out more from the normal rank and file. Finally there's Fusilier Angus who's been an inside joke among Corvus Belli and the Infinity Community for years and I would have expected something different for him. Mike over at Project: Toth suggested a big shit-eating grin and yes, that would have gone a long way! :)

 The third box is called Fleeting Alliance and contains the Nomad Alguacil Vortex Lupe Balboa, Chandra Sergeant Thrasymedes of ALEPH and a civilian Marine Engineering Officer. This is hands down my favourite of the three sets. Lupe is miles ahead of the very boring looking Vortex Spec-Ops and in fact looks kick-ass with the sword and that dragon perched on her shoulder (say... who does that remind me of?). Thrasymedes is also a clear improvement of the regular Chandra Spec-Ops who felt a bid bland. This guy looks the business and the pose has the feeling of the opening stance in a duel. Very cool! Finally we have the civvie and her I quite like! She looks like a flight attendant or something and I think she is the only one of the civilians who really look the part. The other two could easily be mistaken for some kind of light infantry.

 Another box! This time there are no dire foes in it, but instead an old school TAG! The Mercenary(?) Anaconda! This model was released as a limited edition during Gencon but now it's here for all of us. As the story goes it's of Nomad origins but have done works all across the sphere for different contractors (although seemingly with Nomad backing). It's not quite clear who will be able to field this beast, but Nomads and Merovingians look like safe bets. Anyway, it's big and brutish and certainly looks to be of an earlier generation than the modern PanO TAGs we see today. It has no visible ranged weapon, but a damn big sword and a head that looks like a crusader helm. Considering the pilot carries what looks like an HMG I'm guessing that the TAG will carry one as well. Speaking of the pilot she looks like quite a determined woman. For some reason I really dig her hairstyle. Weird I know. So yeah, another big, great looking, stonking mecha to add to your army! I really like how different it is from what we've got so far (although with some similarites to the Iguana).

Finally we get to the only non-boxed release this month, the Tohaa Gao-Tarsos Unit with an HMG. To make up for the smaller package this Gao-Tarsos consists of pure awesomeness! You might remember me going on about the first Gao-Tarsos when it was first released back in January, but this guy has him beat. The armour, the pose, the Gundam-esque flight pack. I love it all! If I didn't already have other plans for a second faction I would get a bunch of these guys together. In game (yay, we have stats!) he's a solid AD trooper that, thanks to the symbiont armour, almost works like heavy infantry. Dropping two Gao-Tarsos behind enemy lines could cause a lot of havoc!

A little late, but there we are. My favourite single model in this release is the Gao-Tarsos, followed by the Anaconda and the Nomad and ALEPH spec-ops. Although I'm eager to see this months releases that won't be full of Dire Foes, I'm still glad we got them. Especially as Thrasymedes have given me an idea of how to paint my Steel Phalanx, if I decide to go down that road. Which is looking more and more likely... hehe!

Until next time!

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Firefly the Game - First Impressions

Making work in the 'verse!

Hello world! Back from Japan and when I came home I had a number of parcels waiting for me - my Torchbearer rulebook had arrived (beautiful!), The Heart of the Wild for The One Ring, a 1/35 scale brass minigun(!) and, last but not least, Firefly the Game!

I've always been a fan of the scrappy crew flying their tramp steamer in space idea. When watching Star Wars as a kid I didn't dream of being a Jedi, but of being a smuggler like Han or a bounty hunter like Boba since they had they had their own ships, lived their own lives and were simply... cooler! Han Solo being the kind of archetypal space smuggler didn't prevent Cowboy Bebop from bringing its own style and themes to the genre and then Firefly came along (well, before that there was Outlaw Star, but as I haven't seen that yet I'll leave it).

At first I turned my nose up at the fusion of western and sci-fi but by the end of the pilot I was sold! Loved the show and was very sad when it was cancelled - there was just SO much potential left untapped. Sure some of it appeared in the movie Serenity, but that was really just a pale shadow of what could have been.

Anyway, here we are years later and the show has spawned its first proper board game iteration. The theme of the game is something I've been looking for for ages! I remember being really excited for Smugglers of the Galaxy back in 2004 and although that game had a lot of the stuff I was looking for it stumbled at several points and failed to live up to my standards. More recently Merchants & Marauders seem to be scratching a similar itch, even though the setting is different (which is the only reason I haven't picked it up yet). There are also The Phantom League, but that seems to be more of a euro game, and Merchant of venus, which seems mostly focused on trading.

This new Firefly game from Gale Force 9 does seem to have all the bits I've been looking for though - a crew, a ship, trading and smuggling and heists, space hazards and general misbehaviour. All of it in card form though which means randomness. I won't go much into how the game plays or what's in the box as that is easy to find out anyway. The rulebook is free to download from the games official website.

The game setup. This was when I played solo to learn the rules, but you get the idea.

I played a solo game just to try it out and then I played a full four player game yesterday. First off I'd like to say that the cards and components look great! I'm normally not a fan of movie stills in games (FFG made a great decision in using 100% art in their Star Wars card game) but here it's been been handled pretty well and the stills actually takes the backseat to the rest of the graphic design which is done in a very thematic retro style that I really dig! At first it looks like a bit of a mish-mash but as you set the game up it all comes together nicely.

Mal flying the Serenity with a motley crew, a Cry Baby and with a warrant issued. 

Each player starts with one of the seven available captains, 3000 credits and an identical Firefly ship of their own. The first few turns are usually spent getting some crew and equipment for them before you start taking jobs from the five different contacts available. Buying crew/equipment and taking job offers are the least random aspects of the game as you can a) take any cards in the discard pile as well as draw blindly and b) always "consider three, take two". This means that you have a fair amount of control of what crew you're getting for your ship and what you're getting your ship and crew into!

Most jobs involve flying some cargo from one location to another, while others have a specific target planet where you need to "Misbehave" - the game term for causing a ruckus and testing the mettle of your crew. Legal jobs that don't require any Misbehaving are pretty straightforward and the only randomness you need to worry about are the movement cards (more on those later), however the Misbehave cards can really take you for a ride if you're unlucky. They allow you to choose between two skill tests to roll and some of them also have an "Ace in the Hole" - meaning you can bypass the entire card if you have a specific item/crew profession with you. It's actually a really cool way of getting lots of variety and theme into the game but it also makes it fairly random. If you don't have an extremely well-rounded crew you could draw a card that you simply can't get past. In fact there's one card called Alliance Operative that is impossible to get by unless you have River Tam in your crew... which is seriously awesome from a thematic standpoint, but can be a bit frustrating from a general gaming standpoint.

Allaince cruiser. Oh yes... painted.

When you move your ship you can choose to mosey along a single sector, without burning any fuel or accruing any risk. You can also do a full burn wich allows you to move five sectors but for each sector you move you have to draw a card from one of the two movement decks. There's one for Border Space, where Reavers prowl, and one for Alliance space, where there's always the risk of a customs inspection. Then there's the ever present risk of the ship breaking down or some other calamity occuring (or boon for that matter!). This is also a pretty neat idea, but again... very random. If you're unlucky enough to get hit by the Reaver Cutter and you don't have the right crew you can get seriously crippled! Again, very thematic but possibly frustrating.

So randomness is definitely a factor. I don't really mind this all that much as this is a game you play more for the experience and storytelling aspects rather than to optimize the gameplay and win. Don't get me wrong, you can definitely put a killer crew together that can handle anything, but play it with the theme front and center!

Literally five minute paint jobs! It's a board game after all. Well, except for the cruiser 

where I spent another five minutes doing the "windows".

What I do mind is the social solo play aspects of the game. Yes, you are playing with three friends but for the most part that experience and simply playing by yourself won't be very different. There are a few of ways ot interact with other players but, besides sending the Cruiser and Cutter in the direction of the competition, none of those came up when we played. As this is a racing game rather than a direct conflict game this is perhaps not all that surprising, but I still think more interaction would make the game a lot better. There are already loads of different house rules floating around for things like cooperating during a job as well as boarding each others ships to steal cargo or equipment and I would be surprised if similar rules don't turn up in one of the upcoming expansions.

I think the four of us liked the game well enough, mainly thanks to its strong theme and sense of story building, but we were all in agreement over the low player interaction problem. The game also starts off kind of slow as everyone simply tries to get their ships into shape. Inspired by the "Idea Turns" of High Frontier I wonder if this couldn't be sped up a lot by having a kind of auction for crew and items during setup. Or perhaps simply hand out some basic crew randomly and give out less credits.

During the second half of the game when we all had a decent crew things picked up considerably though. All of a sudden the race aspect became very apparent and who would win was all up in the air. By this time we had the card drawing down pat as well, but even so Firefly is a game that will most likely run longer than the 120 minutes written on the box. In fact, I think four players is borderline one too many. I have a feeling that three players will be the sweet spot.

Hmmm.... I guess I sound kind of negative in this here First Impressions article. Well, the game does have a couple of issues, but even so I had a great time playing and the Firefly theme is so well integrated that you can't help but feel the story of your ship unfold as you play. Is it the perfect space smuggler game that I've always wished for? No, but it's the best I've come across so far. GF9 simply getting some more player interaction into the game through expansions would alleviate the main problem with the game as it stands right now.

Still, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Firefly to any fan of the show. Especially if you are in it for the experience rather than to work out the perfect strategy. And with some patience (and money) I'm sure the gaming experience will keep improving with the expansions.

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