Well that escalated quickly

I'm not one to post many tales of Chippenham board gaming adventure but Saturday saw 6 gamers descend to my (Chris) place in search of Twilight Imperium 4 escapades. Although TI4 is a fairly engaging endeavour I did manage to take a number of photos to record the day.

Unfortunately I do not possess the literary ease at which a Sam or Andrew can kick out a report so this will kinda be more like a photo diary.... Apologies if its a little dull..

Kick off time was 2pm. I figured that should give us enough time to finish, something I hadn't achieved yet. Ken turned up at 1.30 as I was setting up to get a run through. He was the only person not to have played it before. Predictably he was to spend a lot of the game bamboozled, but he took the basics on board very well.

At 2pm a rush of knocks at the door brought us up to our full compliment of 6 (Lee, Aiden, Stuart, Paul, Ken and myself). After the briefest of introductions to those that hadn't met before it was down to choosing races and playing piece colour. (Naturally I demanded yellow - nobody cared). I'd decided to divide the races into groups of three and one of two. In each group there was a 4 and 3 commodity race to make it fair. The group of 2 was made up of strong races.

They were resolved as such...

Stuart was Xxcha Kingdom - Good at expansion - Green Player

Ken the Sardak Norr - Good combat race with plus 1 to rolls - Red Player (Red Ken lolz)

Chris the Federation of Sol - Basically humans who have a fascination with ground troops - Yellow player

Lee was the Barony of Letnev - Good at creating menacing fleets - Black player

Aiden was the Yin Brotherhood - Really good blowing everything up including themselves - Purple player

Paul was the Ghosts of Cruess who get their own tile off the board and the ability to place worm holes everywhere - Not sure Paul got to grips with it. - Blue player

So at the earlyish time of 2.30pm we were up and running on turn one.

The first two public agenda's looked tricky to achieve as they required real estate (2 hexes next to the centre with ships in and 6 non home systems with ships in). Out of my two secret objectives I opted for the one which required me to have three systems with ships next to an anomaly and since I had a supernova between myself and Stuart I thought this would be achievable. The rest of the table inched speculatively out, all showing interest in parts of the board but feigning any real intent. In terms of strategy I hadn't much to cling to further than "Lets see how it goes". Worryingly Aiden and Lee seemed to have plans and were questioning our moves in excellent displays of table talk...

At this point nobody was close enough to make any deals or transactions and nobody was playing the trader race Hakan, so the round ended without incident. Round 2 continued to see the inevitable land grab of available planets. The next public objective was spend 5 trade goods. Not too tricky. One by one races started to make deals swapping promissory notes and commodities. I had Ken and Stuart either side of me and each made a different kind offer. One was a ceasefire, meaning I would have to spend a precious tactical command token to break it, the other Support for the throne, which gave you a VP as long as you didn't attack the owner of it. I realised later that this probably wasn't a sound tactic to gain non aggression pacts with both my neighbours as it somewhat funnelled me in.

By round 3, with spend 8 resources as the next public agenda revealed several fleets were circling the centre hex Mecatol Rex without anyone wanting to help themselves to the bonus point an potential to score points.

Paul had made a slow start due to not realising a fundamental rule concerning his faction. He was in fact able to move off his world without wasting a turn. 

Finally I decided to break the deadlock and moved into Mecatol Rex collecting the bonus point for spending 6 influence, much to the groups collective raising of eyebrows since I only moved a single carrier and infantry. I hadn't been raising my forces as others had done and felt it wasn't going to be possible to defend it and sure enough in a few turns Lee's Barony arrived and the galaxies shortest reign was over. With the imperial strategy card in his hand it was a foregone conclusion. It was a position he managed to keep for the rest of the game remaining strangely unchallenged...

It was at this point I realised I hadn't been playing one of my factions benefits of an extra command token each round. It coincided with me being a few beers to the good and chose not to worry about it! At this stage I was in an improbable lead with 5 points. It wasn't to last as I wasn't planning for the future but rather relying on any cheap point grabs I could.

Now that Mecatol Rex had been taken the first of the two laws were voted on. I forget what the first one was but it never got as far as the vote because it was ruled out by an action card. The second law, which was passed, was to limit all fleet pools to a maximum of 4. The other side was to each lose a fleet pool token. A couple of people had riders on this not passing so Aiden decided that he wasn't having any of it and voted it out of existence with his copious influence.

Round 4 - Public objective - Control three planets that have technology specialities. 

In this round Aiden suddenly appeared out of a wormhole to offer me an exchange of promissory notes. I wavered and then the chance was gone along with his ships as I sent a little fleet to demand he returned back to his side of the board. He never returned. Things were also starting to hot up in the combat stakes with Aiden (Purple) and Ken (Red) having a battle and Paul and I moving into Lee's territories with single ships, promising that they were just sight seeing. Lee was not convinced and since being left out of a free trade was starting to feel a little unloved...

Midway through round 4 we broke for cremated Pizzas courtesy of my cooking and to watch the inevitable capitulation of the England rugby team. 

The mid game score looked like this, with me on 6, Lee on 4, Aiden and Stuart on 3, Paul on 2 and Ken on 1

After all the edible food was consumed we were back in to it 

At the end of this round Lee managed to score two objectives to draw level - I was starting to stagnate as Lee was picking up speed.

In the agenda phase the first law was hotly contested between Stuart and myself. We were to collectively elect a player to gain a privilege of extra trade goods. Several rider cards appeared with players betting on the outcome. I thought I'd secured it by spending nearly all my influence and adding an action card which gave me 5 extra only to see Stuart sabotage it with a card of his own.

Round 5 - Public Objective - Spend 10 trade goods.

The game was starting to loosen up now with factions coming out of their protective portions of the galaxy to try and eke out some vital victory points but nobody was really paying proper attention to Lee, each of us allowing him to take the Imperial Strategy card again with him sitting in Mecatol Rex. The card allows you to score 1 point for being in the centre but also you can score a public objective right away which he was able to. Suddenly he was 2 points away from the win and nobody was even close. Even a concerted effort to attack him probably would have been futile. Sure enough at the end of the round he was able to score one more objective to bring himself within one point of victory. 

I tried and failed miserably to score another point as I needed to bombard someone's infantry off a planet and failed my roll of 5 (50/50 chance). Then I noticed my I didn't have ships in a hex that I needed when I went to score another. Ken and Aiden continued their very destructive battles and Stuart had decided he'd had enough of being Mr nice guy and was gearing up to attack my poorly defended flank. Luckily for me we ran out of time because....

The next round Lee quickly scored another secret objective and it was all over in a little under 5 hours plus tea break.

The final scores were;
Lee 10
Chris 6
Aiden and Paul 5
Stuart 4
Ken 3

Final board state

I was pleased to finally get to play a 6 player game and also to finish it but we were all amazed at how quickly the end came about. I think our inexperience at considering the game state and Lee's position of strength prevented us from trying to put the breaks on his charge. Especially when it came to scoring the Imperial strategy card - Which I took once to gain an additional secret objective but no one else did.

Anyway my next session is next month but I don't think I'll do another one of these...It takes me forever!!!

To round the evening off we had a game of Concordia, (Ken left) and then Take it Easy, and finished off with Decrypto. What a great day!!

Waldorf Bamboo

This Tuesday found four gamers pitched up around Martin's table for their weekly helping of convivial fun. Joining Martin were Ian, Joe and myself: the four Time Of Crisists. But there'd be no Roman intrigue today, instead we began with Montage. Had this game been designed in Japan it would have been called something like Let's Build A Crossword Puzzle! since that is, by and large what you're doing. Each coloured counter represents five letters and clues have to be devised that your partner can guess before both of your opponents can (being ready to guess is signified by knocking on the table).

It was Ian's first game and I'm not sure what he made of it as a lot of the clues revolved around dogs. "Not a dog," was used twice: once for "cat" and once by Ian himself for "feline" (although Joe's guess of "gerbil" also fitted the letters on the board and was funnier). And, Martin's dog-clue trilogy ran like so: A dog with a point. (Spike) Round a dog's neck. (Bandana) And then, just too late for the game but he shared it anyway: A dog's skintight disguise. (Catsuit)

As for the scores, Joe and Martin ran into a swift 3-0 lead before consolidating with a 4-0 victory.

Next up was Blue Lagoon, Knizia's feisty game of area control in a Pacific paradise. In both rounds, Martin managed to build around a piece of bamboo in the corner, effectively allowing him to choose when a round ended. This Walled-Off Bamboo strategy soon morphed into Waldorf Bamboo - a panda's favourite salad, apparently. Hence the blog title.

During the game, Martin sped into an early lead but at the end of round one had only three villages, all in corners. I had four villages, mostly quite central so although I was in third behind Ian, I felt pretty good about my situation. Ian, like Martin, scored big for items while Joe struggled to get started and trailed a distant last.

In round two Martin found it impossible to get anywhere. Being in the corners and having three opponents actively trying to stop him made life very difficult. He did try to sneak inconspicuously along the edge of the board to reach a distant item and Ian was happy to let him do it until he blocked Martin off at the very last minute. Both cruel and funny.

I went for area control and a smattering of items, but this paid off as I bossed the four of the largest islands for big points. Joe picked up four of a kind and a set to give his score some respectability while Ian chained islands together, stopping me from doing so in the process. It was close, but I was very pleased to get my first win on Blue Lagoon.

Andrew 149
Martin 143
Ian 140
Joe 117

Next up was Krass Kariert, a trick taker where the value of the tricks don't matter, just whether or not you can play a legal hand. Also, there are no winners, just one loser and in this game Ian was first to lose all his lives.

Martin and Andrew, both lives intact
Joe, one life lost
Ian no lives left

After that we played a game of Potato Man, the four player only trick-taker based around potatoes of all kinds: evil, super and sexy. In the first low scoring round we sneered at anyone winning a trick with the red suit, deriding their crusty red sacks. In round three, though, suddenly Ian won two gold sacks in a row in a display of masterly control. He had the last super potato man in his hand and so was able to use his evil potato men without fear. His lead after this was so great that we decided to forfeit the fourth round, giving Ian a comfortable win.

Ian 28
Martin 17
Joe 11
Andrew 11

Then we finished with the old favourite, The Mind. Is there another game which so regularly serves up more close shaves and agonising missed opportunities as this one?

Round one was tough (27 was the lowest card, followed by 31, 88 and 90) but we got through to round four before we lost our first life. Martin and I were at cross purposes over 35 and 36. Surprisingly, we got those numbers again in the next round, but this time got them down in the right order.

Joe became curiously fascinated by the way a bottle opener rested perfectly across a bowl. We respectfully listened to his theory that this might be a major breakthrough in bridge building and we tried to not worry.

He was still rock solid in the game, though, and we reached the Dark Mind with no shurikens but two lives. We lasted until round three before luck finally clipped our wings. But none of the mistakes had been huge and we felt pretty good about our achievement.

A fine way to end the evening. We set off home having all won a game and then joined our forces together for a rousing co op finale. Delightful.

To Orion in 2 Hours 55 Minutes

Andrew had missed last Friday's venture into SpaceCorp so we'd speedily planned a two-player expedition last night at my place. He arrived with everything and set up and ready to go, and for the sake of completeness I made sure I knew the rules as well (almost: Andrew spotted Spaceports change slightly on the Planeteers board). I explained them and off we went.

The early moves were mostly a lot of research, as if scientists knew the existence of fuel but couldn't yet calculate how much they needed. Then: Andrew flew to the moon, and I made my way to Mars. We were off! Stars of the Lid were playing on the stereo. The atmosphere was thin. Not even Little Joe coming in to pilfer crisps could break the spell.

As on Friday I surged into a reasonably substantial lead early on, reassuring Andrew - even as I inwardly swore victory - that I was catchable. I hit several business contracts whilst Andrew prepared his infra for the times ahead, and the Mariners board ended at the astonishingly early hour of 8.15, with children still roaming the house.

The second board (Planeteers) saw Andrew fall foul of the dreaded radiation, something my Radiation Resistant status helped me avoid. All his transiting and building kept hitting him with penalties for being unshielded and costing him cash - punishment perhaps for a high staff turnover and insurance payouts. We raced to discover water and life and Andrew won that battle. But I still took more Business Contract rewards as Andrew's income focused more on production.

Little over an hour had passed when Planeteers came to a close and Andrew was keen to continue, at least until he saw the (final) Starfarers board - it's a bit like playing Ludo and flipping it over to reveal Hansa Teutonica. Rules change, colonies can be built, more options abound. For the first time Andrew havered, but his havering was swiftly overcome by his sense of adventure - Let's go! he cried.

With the correct rules (see Friday for the wrong ones) Starfarers now played at a reassuringly logical pace, the sense of points-collection still present but not overwhelming the theme this time. Exploring my first destination only to find grumpy aliens there (the Introvs) I focused on a couple of contracts but also decided to get all my teams out to Orion before Andrew did - and I succeeded, scoring 15 points in the process. I also built more Colonies than Andrew, snaffling me five points during play and 8 at the end.

But my decision to basically remove teams from play (once in Orion, they can't return to the board) backfired, as Andrew made his way around the stars exploring for lots of little juicy rewards, beat me to a business contract I thought I was nailed-on for, and produced with his last turn to churn out six points - enough for a debut win!

Andrew 83 - Explorer Supreme
Sam 80 - Explorer's Curse

A lovely game, and done and dusted in under three hours. It wasn't even half past ten, and we'd conquered the planets (apart from the Introvs Aliens, who remained resolutely independent)

Safe Potatoes

This week, the familiar five of Joe, Sam, Martin, Ian and me rocked up around Joe's kitchen table for our regular dose of quality entertainment and pretentious crisps.

First up was Gold Fever, the game of randomly pulling things from your hessian bag. Gold is good, gravel is bad. It was my first go and I was told the few rules while we were playing.

It was nice. Sam's bag seemed to be moulting and, as the early leader, perhaps because it was full of other people's gravel. Joe won it when a ruby came out of someone's bag, signifying an undignified rush to be the first to pull out a nugget of gold. You could say he literally pulled it out of the bag at the last minute.

Joe 4
Sam 3
Martin 3
Ian 2 or 3
Andrew 2

After this light fare, we dug out Santiago. An old game but one that is perfect for five. It's a game that mixes bidding with bribery, and tile placement with hopes of some short term co-operation from the very bribeable Canal Master. He decides where the irrigation channel goes and whose fields get watered.

Santiago's remarkably bland board

It's a game, like many others, that prompts the kind of sentences that could be misconstrued by anyone listening in, and not just the phrase currently adorning the heading of this particular blog post. "No damp patches," sighed Ian, looking at a board where all the irrigation channels were surrounded. "If there'd been a banana out there, things would have been very different," mused Martin as he looked over the crops on offer. Such is the arcane language used by the finest gamers. Or desperate luck-junkies. However you care to look at us.

Martin, much like last week, had a final turn where it felt like he'd either win or lose by his own hand. He made the right choice, but it was closer than anyone suspected.

Martin 98
Sam 97
Ian 69
Joe 64
Andrew 43

The third game of the evening was good old Decrypto. Sam and Martin buddied up into their usual duo, while Ian, Joe and I faced them from across the table.

Sam and Martin started in fine style, putting forward six clues in the first two rounds that bordered on raunchy. "Red, hole, hot" was followed by "Tits, arse, nuts." They were definitely thematic but also good clues. "Tits", especially, baffled us, becoming a real weight around our necks.

Joe initially used a "military grade" torch to try and indicate which word he thought went with which clue, but it needed five or six clicks to turn off while it cycled through its various lighting options. "It's still on!" we had to tell him, once he'd put it down. Before long he gave up on it as being impractical.

Both teams worked out at least one word early on (we got squirrel from Red and Nuts, they got pencil from Scribe and Lead) but any kind of certainty alluded us. Indeed, after some "high brow" clues from Sam, I was convinced we didn't have any of them right. In the end, they got two interceptions to our one and it was over in round seven.

Martin and Sam, Spies Like Us
Ian, Andrew and Joe, Spies dislike us.

Despite Decrypto's length, there was still enough time for one more game: Tag City. I managed a remarkable achievement by filling in a coloured area in only three moves. But that was the end of my dominance. While I was mucking about with the low scoring yellows, everyone else had made a claim for the larger and more rewarding areas which they proceeded to complete long before I could challenge for them.

Perhaps five players is too many for this game, since it's impossible to keep track of what people want and how to avoid giving it to them. As such, it's a bit of a luckfest. Right?

Joe 36
Ian 29
Martin 23
Andrew 8
Sam 7

And once that was done, we could no longer ignore the distant call of our beds. Mine even had a hot water bottle in it I'd put there before I'd gone out.

Thanks to all for another fun evening.

2025 - A Space Odyssey

Friday night, and four of us slipped into our cosmonaut suits and saddled up (space parlance) to hit the stars - Joe, Matt, Ian, and myself (Sam).

The game in question was SpaceCorp, GMT's light (on the rules, not the playtime) undertaking. The board shows your illustrious paths through the universe, but everything is driven by cards - to move a 'team', you need a Move card. To explore, you need an Explore card - and so on. Once you've built bases you can also exploit them by running production - again, cards.

This leads to a Quest For El Dorado-style dilemma in each turn, get some more lovely cards, or use them up? The potential saving grace is your infrastructure - cards you build in order to have them at your disposal on every single turn. But the twist with that is anybody can use your infrastructure for their business too - a kind of reticent co-op-in-space - although you do at least get a precious reward when they do - one card, off the top of the deck.

Joe improved his infrastructure early and found himself the recipient of a steady drip of cards as we all borrowed from him. Ian was first to the Moon, I was first to Mars (finding life!). Building a base there got me the first reward of a Business Contract - these are the goals of the game, simple objectives in the main that first-player-to-do gets a cash reward for. And as we told onlooking Stan when he said the scoring (cash) was a bit underwhelming compared to the theme (the universe) - that's reality, baby.

A small problem - identified by Joe about three hours later - was that I'd laid out the Business Contracts for 1-2 players, not four. That kind of oversight would have got me fired from NASA, but it was too late now - we were out there and picking up speed. I sailed into a strong early lead and Matt was lagging behind when we finished the first board (Mariners), and began the second of the game (Planeteers) where we aim for the outer reaches of our solar system.

Now things change slightly, with Advancements and Breakthroughs available to power-up: use an infrastructure without gifting the owner a card, for instance, or have Move or Build values at your disposal. The planets and moons become harder to reach and, once there, exploit.

I rushed ahead again, looking to get rewards for improved infrastructure. Joe and Ian went for contracts around the outer planets, and Matt did a neat one-two combo of building bases on the nearby asteroids, before hyperspacing himself out to Pluto.

Then the third board arrived, where things get a bit more intersting/less interesting (we couldn't decide) as we hurtle across massive voids to reach distant stars, and employ a great new breakthrough in space-travel: multiplication, as we can now multiply one movement card by others. This is vital, because whereas Earth to the Moon is a movement value of four, traversing galaxies can cost up to 200 points or more.

We also access a new action - colony building. This was where the games' state changed slightly from exploratory to Euro-y, as the final board seemed more of an exercise in point-scoring than the others. For me, I didn't mind the colony-building and majority-scoring per se, but the individual abilities of a colony (score when another player builds a colony, for instance, even though that was the one that kept me competitive) somewhat broke the thematic immersion.

That said, discoveries are still there to be discovered, and Joe stumbled on one that explained the protracted nature of the third board - in my now slightly-wine-fuelled state, I'd put out far too many colony tiles, including some of those for a two-player or solo game.

I'd surged ahead on the scoring but there was a triple twist in the tale: first, Joe ran production at three bases and caught me up, and overtook me on the last few turns. Then Matt spent his last turn building a colony, scoring me a point in the process, and putting me level with Joe: a tie! But then, checking the rules, we saw in a tie the most valuable colonies determine the winner, and that was Joe. I didn't note down the scores but it was something along the lines of:

Joe 64 (wins on tie)
Sam 64
Matt 52
Ian 51

Despite our confusion over the final board (sorry again guys!) we'd all enjoyed it, and everyone (apart from me - I could see the clock) was surprised to see it was half-past midnight! SpaceCorp had taken us five hours to complete, which was probably more than anyone was anticipating. But I think a second play - with familiarity and without my set-up errors - would speed it up considerably and I'd expect it to play in three.

Thanks all, a lot of fun and some great spacey soundtrack suggestions from Ian (S U R V I V E) and Joe (Stars of the Lid).

Silent Witness

Well, almost silent. There was quite a lot of whispering.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Tonight we began as an eight piece band of gamers: Sam (the host), Joe and Stanley (his sons), Martin, Ian, Matt, Joe and me. We began with Bring Your Own Book, the fun game of appropriate sentence finding. The game suggests a topic (an email signature) and you have to find a witty example in your book (Ian had Fermat's Last Theorem and his email signature was pi to the thousandth digit). Martin had high hopes for his choice of book (Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants), but somehow it never quite worked. Until, that is, it was passed to Ian at which point it became a hotbed of witty replies. Kudos to Matt for his Name For A Fantasy City. His choice of "Furthermore" was so good I can't believe it hasn't been used before.

Ian 3 points
Everyone else got one, I think.

Then Joe the younger went to bed and we split into two groups. Sam, Stanley, Joe and Martin played Witness in which you have to whisper clues to each other in a game that rewards memory and clear diction. I was too concerned with my game of Cosmic Run, so all I gleaned was sentences like "half a beetle" before they counted up their final score which was seven. Pretty good, according to Martin.

On Cosmic Run, the three of us were busy proving that a one in six chance was effectively impossible, as one hopeful roll after another ended in disappointment. I got lots of aliens and a fair view of those mining chits to take a comfortable win.

Andrew 49
Matt 36
Ian 33

While we were deep in Cosmic Run, Witness had ended, Stanley had gone upstairs, and the three of them had started on Menara. It's a tower building game where you have to obey the commands on cards that are split into piles of easy, medium and difficult. Their first attempt was over so quickly that they tried again. "Feels more positive already," said Sam at what I thought to be a very early stage, but he was right. They got to the fourth or fifth level when it collapsed. Joe said as they packed away, "it's one of those games where you either win or it's really disappointing."

Now we shuffled our places around the table and began fresh games in new groups. Joe, Martin and I played Mini Rails. This game was new to me, but Martin thought I'd played it before so I only got a rules refresher type introduction before we began. Although that was fine because there's not much to it in terms of rules. Quite a lot in terms of strategy, though, with Martin taking long enough on his turn for me to get up and sort out my drinks for the rest of the evening. At the end, Martin had to juggle some numbers as his final move would either help him and me or him and Joe. In the end he was annoyed that he'd miscalculated when it ended

Joe 11 (wins on tiebreaker)
Martin 11
Andrew 9

If he'd played it differently, he would have had fewer points but won, with me in second. He cursed his unMartinlike mathematical error for some minutes. Joe looked delighted.

Sam, Ian and Matt played The Quest For El Dorado, with it also ending on a tie breaker. Ian just pipped it, though. Matt ended up in a distant last with lots of money but no machetes.

Ian
Sam
Matt

By now, we had begun a game of Sticheln, the trick taking game that is anything but fast and furious. How we agonised over its counter intuitive strategy. As Martin so wisely noted, it is a game where "difficult things happen."

Martin 25
Joe 20
Andrew 13

On the other half of the table, they had knocked off a quick game of Gold Rush which Ian won. The general consensus was that it wasn't as good with just three.

Then they played the devilish but delightful Avene. During this game, after an evening of victories, Ian returned to form and uttered those immortal words "that's me fucked, then". The moment when he does so will, it seems, now be referred to as "Ian o'clock".

Sam 63
Ian 24
Matt 20

Then, after a brief cameo from The Table Is Lava, we all joined together for a game of Just One. In this game we all give one word clues to a word-guesser with the proviso that any duplicate clues are eliminated. We started well, and Martin got the first right despite Joe giving a clue to the wrong word. Before long we were in the zone, avoiding duplicate clues round after round. In the final round, I was the guesser. We were on the cusp of getting "awesome" on the score track, but two clues were eliminated and I had Dre, Drake and Grandmaster to guess from. It was 50-50 and I chose Hip-hop as the word. But it was Rap and that mistake meant our score dropped from "Awesome" to a clearly sarcastic "Wow. Not bad."

And then we were done. Thanks all for another evening of sparkling entertainment. I hope to meet you all the next time the clock strikes Ian o'clock.

Corp Reactor

I have now twice played through SpaceCorp, GMT's new surprisingly-light game about galactic exploration. Once, I even got to the end.

the end of SpaceCorp

In the game you head out into the firmament to explore, build bases, and make money. Really, that is the nub of it, as on some planets what you find there can be rinsed for cash (they have a production value) and others can't. But you still want to build bases there, for reasons that will hopefully become clear.

the start of SpaceCorp

Despite SpaceCorp enormous scope thematically and otherwise (big distances; lots of boards) the mechanics of it are simple: on your turn, take a single action. The actions are largely self-explanatory: move your ship, explore a planet, build a base, run production on bases (for cash), research for more cards. More cards is always good, because everything you want to do is facilitated by them. Cards played are gone forever, but there's a way to make sure you have some kind of feeble permanent economy in place by using infrastructure: these cards are face-up in front of you and can always be used, without being used-up. The minor catch is that any cards in your infrastructure can also be accessed by any other player as well.

Infrastructure: 2 Research; 5 Move

Also on your infrastructure are two evolving sciences - of sorts - in genetics and revelations. Your culture's progress on these front is represented by cubes travelling in circles - every revolution rewards you with a genetic advancement, or revolutionary breakthrough. These combine with, and improve, your infrastructure. Again, despite the big words, they're all pretty straightforward.

And actually, as we leave Earth, these juicy advancements are unavailable anyway, as they are hidden in an alternate dimension (the other side of the board). Mysterious...

Early doors

But what's the point of it all?

As much as the exploring and producing can get you cash, the bigger goal is the contracts: these are on a separate 'business' board, and are basically objectives: first to build a certain amount of bases, first to produce, first to upgrade three advanced cards, and so on. If the tactics of SpaceCorp is the turn-by-turn move/explore/build, the strategy is making sure they align with at least one of the contracts. And that's where the interaction in the game lies, as much as the borrowing of each other's infrastructure: nobody can be sure who has what cards in their hands, and so there's a hidden-knowledge element as to how close anyone is to completing a contract: once complete, it's done, and that reward can't be claimed any more.

contracts

But wait! We've only just started. We've left Earth and made it - possibly - as far as Mars, and discovered maybe some water and a volcano or two. We've built research bases (get cards!) refineries (more production) and spaceports (travel faster!) amongst other things, but greater things lie ahead. When six of seven contracts are completed (or the cards run out) this age comes to an end, and the 'Mariners' board flips over revealing those lovely breakthroughs and advancements. And we now move onto another board - Planeteers.

Look what we found

This plays out in much the same way, albeit with those additional tools being added to your armoury, there's a sense of momentum building into how much you can do with a single action. And momentum is needed, as the distances travelled are beginning to get much greater, and building (which has a cost) isn't quite so simple either. Once you get beyond Jupiter there's radiation to consider - ignoring it can be expensive -  and there's a sense that this game is turning from an explore and build experience into something more akin to a race. Hang around the asteroid belt and ignore the irradiated Ganymede if you like, but some of the juicier contracts encourage you further afield, until you're all the way out at the Oort Cloud, and on the verge of leaving our solar system entirely...

Which you do, because when this age ends (contracts done/cards run out, as before) there's a third board - Starfarers - which takes us out into the great beyond.

Starfarers

Here the basic tenets of the previous boards change a little, and a new action becomes available: building colonies. Movement values, as you might expect, become huge out here - but the cards for this age bring in new sciences that allow speed of light travel, or in card terms, multiplication. Arriving at a star system doesn't instantly allow exploration or building either, you have to kind of skid to a halt first. And you may find Aliens out here too: not warring types exactly, but scary enough to send your crew scuttling back home with their space nappies full.

It's the colony action though that completes the metamorphosis from gentle cosmos-discovery into bunfight: some colonies score points off other players, and all colonies score points at the game's end, which comes up faster than you think considering the huge deck of cards Starfarers has. In my play-through Green led the scoring pretty much throughout, and built three colonies to Blue's two for a whopping eight profit. But Blue won anyway courtesy of hitting the right contracts and spending their last three turns simply running production, as Green realized they couldn't get their second ship to the next great beyond (which is so far away it has no board, just 5T profit).

final scores - probably fairly abysmal ones

Last night I was in two minds about SpaceCorp. I really enjoyed playing it but when it finished there was a slight feeling that something was missing - it's a '3X' game, and without the 'exterminate' I wasn't totally sure there was enough there to make up for it. But I don't think it ever set out to be anything other that what it is - a story of travelling out into the cosmos and seeing what you find. And for the games I'd compare it to, it's more accessible than High Frontier, less brutally mathematical than Leaving Earth and just more fun than the bone-dry Kepler 3042. Although the board-flipping could be viewed as gimmicky, it does help give the sense you are moving further and further afield: the second and third boards introducing new elements prevent the feeling that you're just playing the same game three times.

And I love a game that tells a story, and especially so when it moves so fast - and SpaceCorp definitely ticks both those boxes. (Side note: there are rules to play just two or even a single board, but I think it would lose something in the process).