Space Explorers

15th June 2019.

Saturday is upon us, this means gaming night at Matakishi's.

We played 'Space Explorers' and engine building card game about the early days of the space race.
The goal of the game is to recruit scientists and specialists. They then enable you to complete available missions.

The game bears some similarities to 'Splendor', but also some tweaks to differentiate it. 

What's in a game?

Physically there's not much to Space Explorers. There are some tokens, tiles, player aids and a deck of cards.

• The tokens represent the 5 different types of resources in the game are the currency used to acquire the mission cards.
• The deck of cards depict the staff that you will be looking to recruit.
• It's worth noting that the art on the components 'feels' suitability like it's from the 50's and is well done.
• The player aid shows players the 5 column 'tableau' into which they must put their personnel cards, (More is explained about this below.). 

How's it play?

Like Splendor? Only joking! Well it plays a little bit like Splendor!

At the start of the game some personnel cards and mission tiles are laid out.
Research tokens are dealt to players as are some cards.

• When a player takes their turn, they can use their research currency to recruit personnel.
• Interestingly; there is no 'bank' in the game. When a player spends the research currency, they pass it along to the left. I guess scientists like to share research with their community!
• When someone is recruited they will have a specialisation in one or more areas of research. They must be placed into one of the respective research columns. Personnel in your 'tableau' grant you additional research currency in their area of specialisation due to their expertise. Furthermore personnel grant you opportunities to earn more points.
• Personnel can be recruited from your hand or the playing area.
• One area where Space Explorers differs significantly from Splendor is when laying a card on top of another card. In Space Explorers when playing a card in the column with the same currency, the card below is replaced! The research currency for a column does not accumulate. This means the benefits of cards played into tableau earlier will be lost. Abilities that grant points are not 'lost'.
• A mission tile can be claimed by a player when they have enough 'points' in 2 or 3 different catergories.
• Play continues until all the mission tiles have been claimed or someone has recruited 12 or more people.

Points are tallied, highest score wins!

There are other factors to consider, but that's a very basic outline of the rules and game flow.

Overall

I don't want to spend this blog comparing Space Explorers to Splendor, but in this case I think it'll be a useful comparison.


In Splendor, there are essentially no bad decisions you can make, only sub-optimal decisions. Everything you do works to your benefit in one way or another, it's just a matter of how quickly or efficiently you accumulate those benefits

However, in Space Explorers, decisions can have a negative consequence. For example;  spending the game's currency means giving it to other players - and thus helping them out.  Recruiting and placing personnel cards in the tableau can be risky. Covering up the wrong card can seriously screw you up. 

Splendor is a elegant simpler game to play and there's a pleasure in such simplicity of game play.

But Space Explorers is trickier beast. There's more you need to think about. 

Which game is better? Neither. It sounds like a cop out, but both games are good in their own different ways. And I'd be happy to play either one.