Space Empires x4
Last month, Jeffro returned to playing and reported on one of my favorite boardgames not named Dune - Space Empires 4x. With Disaster on Athos-V he takes up a solitaire game and loses soundly to the aliens. Taking a second shot, he also takes a look at the ground combat rules added for the Close Encounters expansion. Finally, in the Best Gaming Season of All Time he talks about another session, this time with a friend, and recapturing the wonder of playing a good game against a friend.
In the event that Jeffro’s enthusiasm doesn’t convince you to play it, let me give it a shot.
As games goes, this is one of the fiddlier ones I consider playable. There can be a lot of chits on the board, there’s nearly an entire separate game in the resource management and production queuing, and the total number of chits really needs compartmentalized trays to keep everything sorted between games. Nevertheless, like many of GMT’s better games, it is a marvel of simple and consistent applied mechanics so that each stage is clear-cut and straightforward to execute. It is also flexible enough to offer near-endless replay possibilities.
In short, it edges up to the border of “complex enough it needs a computer to keep track of things / play general staff” and laughs, gracefully showing off how good game design enables what would require endless tedious paperwork or a full computer program to handle. And if you like the idea of an explore/exploit/exterminate style space game that you can play sitting while around shooting the breeze with your friends, it is one hell of a ride.
Finally - as the first two posts I linked make clear - it is designed with solo play in mind. This means you can take the time to learn the rules without knowing in advance everything the “enemy” will do, and simply enjoy the game when you don’t have anyone to play against.
It’s a testament that it is fun to play in both modes - though of course friends make everything better.
Which is why I’ll be kicking off a series going through some playthroughs of this game, along with looking at Heavy Gear Blitz.
In the meantime, have fun.
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