For #Blogmas 2020 day 27.
Space Base from AEG is a competitive 2-5 player game and takes about an hour to play.
Each player is given a board with 12 spaces and a deck of 12 narrow cards numbered 1-12 which go in the respective spaces on the board. 18 extra cards are placed in the center of the table which can be purchased by players and added to their board during the game. The first act of the game is for each player to take a random card from the deck and adding it to their board. Each added card replaces the existing card in that space and that replaced card is turned upside down and under the top of the board with only the red section in view.
A player’s turn comprises of rolling two dice and can either take the reward from the corresponding blue section of the card that matches the total of the two dice, or the two cards matching the two individual dice.
The main rewards can be gold which can be used to buy extra cards, income which increases the minimum gold a player can be left with and Victory Points. There are also some other rewards that do other things too.
While the main player is gaining the rewards for themselves, the other players may also gain rewards from red sections of their deployed cards. There can be multiple deployed cards for any space.
There are also some special Base cards, one for each of the twelve spaces that give instant points, but blocks that space for any further cards for that space.
Play continues until a player reaches 40 VPs.
The components themselves are very nicely made, the cubes that keep track of the scores are particularly nice looking, though a dual-layered board would help to keep the cubes in place. Thin narrow cards are a little tricky to handle but makes sense in order to fit twelve across a player’s playing area. Placing the cards under the board is a neat idea, but it’s easy to lose already deployed cards by pushing them all the way under the board. Towards the end of the game when there are many deployed cards, it does get a little fiddly getting those cards in place without knocking everything out of place.
The artwork and theme is nice to look at, but pretty generic and could be themed on anything to be honest. Why there needs to be a complete list of all the ships and their classifications in the back of the rule book when none of that has any relevance to the game, I don’t know. Many of the ships all look the same anyway.
The game play is very easy to pick up, though it does take a little while to remember to use the blue rewards on your turn and the red rewards when it’s not.
A fun game with a relatively short play time meaning that a few games can be played in a gaming session.
Final score: Buy it!
Wyrmberg Games 