Firefly: The Game - First Play!

26th September 2022

It's a Monday and we're round Simon's for Firefly: The Game.
It 'aint' the time to misbehave, it's actually time to play a Sandbox board game in the world of the cult short lived sci-fi show, Firefly.
Now with the requisite joke quote out of the way, it's time to get down to business.

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What's in a game?

• Board: The game board depicts a star map of the game's setting which includes what looks like several star systems along with their respective planets and associated moons. There are various hubs on the map which is divided into large 'sectors' which 'radiate' out from stars before being further divided into blue 'Alliance Space' and yellow 'Border Space'.

The game board.

• Ship board: Each player in Firefly: The Game controls their own Firefly class ship, if you're lucky, you'll get the Serenity or instead, you might get something different like the Bonnie Mae​.
  All ships have a hold to carry cargo and passengers and a stash to smuggle contraband and fugitives. There are also slots for the ship's 'main drive' and upgrades as well as a spot to place 'active jobs'.

The Bonnie Mae - ready to fly... almost.

• Cards: Firefly: The Game uses cards to power the game play and a lot of them too, about 400 cards in fact! Mostly in 13 decks at my counting!
  • Story cards: Objectives and winning criteria will vary from game to game and the story card selected at the game start will determine the objectives.
  • Starter Cards: There are 2 types of starter card and each player will have one of each
    Leader cards: These are captains that each player will be given. Leader cards are illustrated and are also similar to crew cards, they have professions, skills and special abilities.
    Drive Core cards: Each player will also have one of these which are placed in the respective slot on their ship board. The drive core determines how far a ship can move.
  • Supply cards: There are 5 decks of supply cards, 1 deck corresponds to a specific sector on the maps. Supply cards are broken down into 3 types.
    Crew: These are characters that can be hired by players. Crew have various stats, including profession, skills and special abilities. Crew can be 'moral' (Or not.), they also have a hiring cost.
    Gear: These can be weapons or other items which can be assigned to crew.
    Upgrades: These cards can be assigned to the player's ship to improve it's capabilities or add new ones.
  • Contract cards: There are another 5 decks of contract cards, again 1 each for each of a specific sector. Contracts represent 'jobs' or 'missions' that players can undertake. Usually this is a delivery of some sort or committing a criminal enterprise.
  • Nav cards: There's a mere 2 decks of nav cards! One deck for Alliance space and the other for border space.
    When player's move their ships through space, they will draw a card from the relevant deck and resolve it. Mostly these have no effect but sometimes they will be an encounter or problem to overcome. Sometimes it'll move the Alliance ship (Bad news.) or the Reaver ship (Really bad news!).
  • Misbehave cards: This is the final deck! Players be frequently directed to 'misbehave', this involves drawing and resolving these cards. They represent crimes or capers that players will need to successfully complete. Usually players will be presented to 2 different capers which will present a different task each to achieve.
• Tokens: Firefly: The Game also makes use of a lot of tokens.
  • Cargo/Contraband: These square cardboard tokens each fit on to 1 space in the ship's hold and can be shipped or smuggled.
  • Passenger/fugitive: Again these are square tokens that fill 1 space on a ship board.
  • Fuel: These card tokens are oblong and half the size of square tokens, thus 2 can fit in 1 space in a hold. Fuel is spent to power a ship's drive core.
  • Parts: These are also oblong tokens and are spent to fix problem with a ship.
  • Disgruntled tokens: These round card tokens feature a unhappy face and are used to track crew when they become unhappy.
  • Goal tokens: These are also round tokens. Story cards will have multiple goals that must be completed. Whenever a player completes one of the goals, they acquire a goal token.
  • Warrant tokens: When a player commits crime or misbehaves badly, they may acquire one of these round tokens. It means that the authorities have noticed the player and may make life hard for the ship or crew.
• Models: There are no meeples here, instead there are little plastic models to represent space ships.
  • Firefly ships: There's 4 firefly ship models on stands, 1 in each of the player colours.
  • Reaver ship: Used to represent Reavers who prowl Border Space, these models are also on stands.
  • Alliance ship: This model is relatively and suitably huge compared to the others and represents an Alliance cruiser.
• Money: Firefly: The Game uses paper money! That's both unusual for a modern game and also pretty cool.
• Dice: There are 2 dice that come with the game. They are normal six-siders except the '6' has been replaced with a firefly ship logo, although it still counts as a '6'.

I don't usually talk about this because it has no impact on the game itself but Firefly: The game has a huge footprint, i.e., it takes up a lot of table space.

This is on a 6'x2' table and apparently, expansions add extra boards!

Firefly: The Game has a lot of components and I mean a lot, generally they're are all good quality. Tokens, cards and boards are what you'd expect from a modern. Yes, the Dice are plastic but also with well rounded corners so that's good. I like the paper money too.
The models are cool, it's a bit bland that all the player ships are the same firefly class models but otherwise they're good quality, the Alliance cruiser is definitely the standout components.

A mixture of photos and illustrations are used throughout the game which is a wise move. Often, games that use a lot of stock photos in place of art look quite cheap. Here though, photos are mostly reserved for portraits of characters from the show so it works well enough in this context.

Despite the game's level of detail, the iconography is kept to a minimum and isn't overwhelming. Most game information is relayed through text. Even so, the amount of events, tasks and the like that occur in the game will keep players referring to the rulebook.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the game board and complete the following steps.
  • Ships: Put the Alliance and Reaver ships in their respective starting spots.
  • Supply cards: Sort the supply cards into their 5 types and shuffle each into a face-down deck. Finally draw 3 cards from each deck to form a discard pile for each supply deck.
  • Contract cards: Also sort contract cards by type and shuffle them into 5 face-down decks. Again draw and discard 3 cards from each deck for create their  respective discard piles.
  • Nav decks: Sort the nav decks by type, then shuffle the remaining cards into face-down decks.
  • Misbehave deck: Shuffle the misbehave cards into a face-down deck.
  • Story card: Shuffle all the story cards into a face-down deck and draw one. This will be this game's objective.
    Alternatively, players may collectively decide on a story card to use.
• Players: Put out the starter cards and shipboards. Players then roll off with a die to determine the order in which they choose their starter cards and ship boards.
  Then in reverse player order, players choose where to place their ships on the game board.​
  The player to last put their firefly model on the board starts the game as the first player.
  Next, give each player 3,000 credits, 6 fuel tokens and 2 parts tokens. The tokens should all be placed on cargo spaces on each player's ship board.
  Finally, all players draw 1 contract card from each contract deck, giving them 5 contract cards. Players are allowed to keep up to 3 contract cards in hand and may have up to 3 active contracts at a time.

On to play
Firefly: The Game doesn't have set objective, instead it has differing story cards, one of which will be used during a game. Each story card will have a series of goals that must be completed and whoever does them all first, wins!

A starting story card.

Firefly: The Game follows the usual turn structure with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.

• Actions: During the active player's turn, they can perform 2 actions as described below. They may perform 2 different actions or repeat the same action twice.
  • ​Move: There are 2 types of movement a player can chose when moving their ship.
    Mosey: The player can move their ship 1 sector, this is slow but safe movement. If a player is adjacent to their destination, they'll probably mosey there.
    Full burn: Now this is more like it. This requires the player to spend a fuel but allows them to move their ship a number of sectors equal to the range of their drive core.
    There's a consequence for doing this though...
    Every time their ship enters a sector, they must draw a card from the nav deck for the region of space they entered.
    Nav cards mostly have no effect and allow the active player to continue moving but some will give them encounters to resolve or problems to address, usually in the form of a skill roll (More on skill rolls below.) or may force them to full stop which means their movement for that action ends. Sometimes it will allow the active player - or another player move the Alliance or Reaver ship a space and sometimes it will pull the ship directly on to the players sector, in which case they must deal with it.
    The Alliance ship will search the player's ship but won't do much to a player unless they're carrying contraband/fugitives or there's a warrant on the ship or crew. In this they'll lose the contraband/fugitives and may lose outlaw crew, they'll also have to bribe the Alliance to get rid of warrants.
    Encountering Reavers is much simpler, if deadlier. They Reavers will kill all passengers/fugitives and kill some of the crew too! However, if the player has the right crew and fuel, they can evade the Reavers.
  • Buy: If the player's ship is in a sector with a supply deck, they may buy stuff!
    Players may look through the pertinent supply deck discard pile for cards they want or draw from the deck until they have 3 cards, then they may buy up to 2 of them. returning any unbought cards to the discard pile.
    Additionally, the buy action also allows the active player to purchase fuel or parts.
    ​If for any reason, any of the crew has disgruntled tokens, the active player may spend credits to remove them with shore leave.
  • Deal: When the active player is in sector with a contract deck, they may use an action to look at 3 cards from either the discard pile or drawn from the deck and keep 2 of them to complete at a later stage of the game.
    Players can also buy or sell contraband if they have a 'solid' reputation i.e., good reputation in that sector.
  • Work: The active player may spend an action to work, there are several types of work that can be undertaken.
    Cash: If they active player is in a sector with a planet, they may spend an action to earn some credits.
    Job: Each active job a player has will require several steps that need completing in order to finish that contract. An action may be spent to complete a step, sometimes this requires a skill roll.
• End turn: Once the active player has completed their 2 actions, player progresses to the player on their left.
• Other rules: There are a whole bunch of situational rules, some of which are touched upon below.
  • Skill rolls: Many tasks and actions will require a skill roll to complete. Some tasks will offer a choice in how to resolve it with differing difficulties and outcomes. Some tasks may also require certain prerequisites before rolling.
    Difficulty: A skill roll's difficulty is determined by a number, the higher the number, the harder it is to successfully complete.
    Bonuses: A player may gain bonuses from various sources, predominantly, this will come from characters. Every point a character has in the relevant skill will be added to the roll. Gear cards may also add to a skill roll.
    ​​​​​Roll the dice: When a skill roll is attempted, the active player rolls a single die. If the result (Plus any applicable bonus.) is equal or higher than the difficulty, they succeed. If the active player rolls the firefly icon icon it counts as a 6, then they get to roll the die again and add it to the result of the first roll (Which will be a 6.), thus, no matter the difficulty, there's always the possibility of succeeding at the roll.

Corbin adds +2 to Tech skill rolls and +1 Negotiate skill rolls.

• Jobs: Jobs form a big part of Firefly: The Game. Jobs will tend to have a start and end location and will frequently require players to make skill rolls
  Prep: Before beginning a job, the player must decide who will be part of the job and what gear they will use.
  This can be very important, matching the right skills to the right task is key to succeeding easily and quickly. Additionally, some characters have the 'moral' tag which means they become 'disgruntled' when put on a criminal job.
  Payout: Upon completing a job, the player will be paid as a reward. Some of this cash will need to be paid to the crew (Who are paid an amount equal to their initial hiring cost.). If a crewmate isn't paid, they become disgruntled.

Kaylee is a very moral individual!

• Trading: If 2 or players are in the same sector, they may trade goods, gear and so freely between them.
  Disgruntled crew: As well as trading, a player poach disgruntled crew from other players!
• Disgruntled: Speaking of being disgruntled. If a crewmate would receive a 2nd disgruntled token, they instead leave the ship.
  If a leader would receive a 2nd disgruntled token, they instead sack all their crew!
• Misbehave: When a misbehave is drawn, the player will be given more than 1 option on how to misbehave, usually it works a bit like a job and will involve skill rolls.
  However, there's a fairly big draw back to misbehaving, failing the roll earns the player a immediate warrant!

There's probably quite a few more situational rules I could write about, this is the gist of what happens without going into excessive detail.

Endgame
Whichever player completes the final goal on the story card first... wins the game!

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Endgame
Firefly: The game works hard to replicate the feel of the show and to a certain extent, it does this very well. It successfully captures the feel of hustling round a system, wheeling and dealing, dodging authorities and making profit.
All of this though, is only half of what the TV show was, the show was also about the family you make and the stories they collectively create, stuff that's quite hard to replicate in a game and is missing here since players are each playing separate crews. Having said that, there's definitely a bit of emergent gameplay and some elements of storytelling going on here but his brings me to one of my bugbears about the game.

When you're playing it feels a bit like a single-player game that happens to have other players in it. There's a little bit of interaction here and there that comes from sending the Alliance or Reavers after other players or trading and crew poaching but it doesn't feel significant.

Firefly: The Game is sandbox game that appears to offer a lot of choice, is a lot of game with a lot of rules and rules exceptions and also a lot of components which I feel will be off putting to more casual gamers. A fan of the show who isn't a gamer will probably find Firefly: The Game hard going at the start.

Despite the breadth of rules, the game is fairly straightforward in what it asks players to do.

One of my other bugbears is that players will often find themselves delivering something, this might be legal or illegal or performing a crime/misbehaving. All of this will involve travelling around and risking running into the Alliance or Reavers or other obstacles and so on.
The consequence of this is that because the game is so single-player driven that ultimately, it's a race to complete the goals as efficiently as possible and even though it's meant to be have open sandbox gameplay, players are being somewhat funnelled through the game by those goals. I.e., the game-winning goals are all the same, it's how those goals are achieved that will differ between player.

The game also has a fairly long playtime, we played a beginner story card with a low player count and it still took 2 hours. Although, to be fair, that's not really uncommon with this style of play so it comes with the territory but be prepared to commit a few hours to a playthrough.

If you're a fan of the Firefly TV show and are prepared to prepared to invest some effort learning the rules time to play, you'll probably enjoy this.
Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about Firefly: The Game overall, it was a fun experience and my decisions generally felt meaningful, it also fairly involved and having players run around dong their own thing also felt a little unengaging. However, if someone else wanted to play it, I wouldn't object.