F#¢& Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker

Plot:  You pilot the Millennium Falcon trying to make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs!  Ok not really, but you are playing a space freighter.

Goal:  It is not a game about Victory Points, you are trying to earn CASH!  You do that in 3 ways:  Event Cards, Winning/Finishing the Race, and having a well constructed ship.  You lose money by having parts of your ship break off.

Mechanics:  The game has 3 turns with 2 phases.  Phase 1 is building your ship and phase 2 is the race.

Building the Ship:  This is really a race.  Every player, with one hand only, examines a face down tile and either places it on the Spaceship frame or face up in the center of the table.  The tiles have connectors, a one pronged, a two pronged or a three pronged connector.  The three Pronger is considered universal, or in other words can take the single or double pronged connections.  There are lots of things to add on your ships:  Guns, engines, shields, crew compartments, alien crew compartments, batteries, cargo holds, and hazardous cargo holds.  I am probably missing something, deal with it.



This part of the game is a scramble as people build there ships.  The first person done building gets the pole position for the event phase.  There is also a timer people can flip to speed this process along and make people panic.  FUN!

After you have placed one piece onto the ship frame you can take time to peek at the upcoming event cards and plan ahead.

The phase ends with the last person declares himself done, then each ship undergoes peer review.  Badly connected pieces will happen, and they break off in the space dock, and count for your broken pieces total.

Event Phase:  A card is flipped, and it may effect everyone or it may depend on turn order.  Some cards let you pick up loot, and these cost position on the time track (you had to slow down to land the prize crew or whatever).

Some examples

Defeat Cards :  You need a crew minimum or a certain amount of guns or whatever to defeat the card.  First person to defeat the card may choose the reward listed (spending time as usual).  If the lead dog can't beat the card, there might be a penalty incurred and then the next guy in line gets his shot.  IF the victorious freighter doesn't want the reward, the guy behind him can take it.  Only one pass, so anyone who was unable to defeat the card won't get the reward.

Meteor Shower:  Roll some dice and look on the ship frame.  The meteors might miss but will probably hit.  A well constructed ship has nothing to fear from small meteors (well constructed:  no connectors open to space.), but a small meteor hitting the wrong spot will break off a piece of the ship.  After part of your ship falls off, recheck the connections, anything no longer legally connected also floats off.  These go into the pile of shame to cost you money at the end of the turn.  A shield can also stop a small meteor strike.  Big meteors can only be shot down with guns, and will automatically break off pieces of your ship if they hit.  I think nearly all big meteors come from the front arc, so chasers > broadsides.



Planets:  Go get cargo!  Lead player gets first choice then on down the line.

Open Safe.  I mean Open Space.  Fire your engines and race ahead by that amount.  Pretty boring but will probably change the order.


 Round ends when the last event card is played.  

Then money is awarded for finishing the race.  Winner gets moar, but finishing gets you some no matter what.

Money is also awarded for prettiest ship, or the ship with the least amount of connectors pointing to open space.

Finally, you owe money for the parts of your ship that broke off.  This is capped round by round, so its important but not crippling.  Frankly if you had most of your ship fall apart around you, you had bigger problems that round then having to pay that penalty.

Tactics:  Building a good ship is everything in this game.  I have only completed one game of Galaxy Trucker, but I think I caught on by turn 3 by heeding Ryan's advice.  He builds his ships, which always looked awesome (in the one game I played), from the outside in.  He searches for guns and engines first, then fills in with whatever connectors he finds.  Maybe when its close to completion he starts looking for particular internal parts.  The logic is that engines and guns are easily the most versatile pieces, so the most important to claim first.  The internal items are important, but in a rock-paper-scissors way.  Either you have the right combination or you don't.  Aliens are particularly hard to play, they require a specific placement on the frame to utilize.  It seems like you have to be a really experienced player to make good use of aliens.  The other thing experienced players might do is peek at the upcoming cards.  I don't recommend that for novices, just getting a ship that doesn't self destruct is challenge enough.  Anyways, my 3rd round ship scored 40+ space bucks, and like $35 of that from cargo.  If I had any kind of skill in the first two rounds I would of been in the thick of it with Mike and Ryan for the win instead of $20 behind.

Review:  This is definitely another it is what it is game.  It will be amusing once in a while, but I wouldn't want to spend the entire night playing this or play it several weeks in a row.  But as an every other week change of pace game its pretty good, so long as everyone can take a joke.  Ships will break apart and playing with someone easily and demonstratively frustrated will make this game suck.
7 out of 10.