About the game
The theme of the game could have been devised by the creators of The Simpsons episode “police cops”. What do boys like? Space, Pirates, Spacepirates.
Skydock is an ancient space platform above the planet Verces. Home to the Verthani, 8-foot-tall humanoids with protruding mouse like black eyes and skin colour that can be shifted at will to display complexity patterns. Your task is to go against fellow Starfinder adventures to size a new vessel.
To do this you have to complete several tasks to earn glory and crew support whilst also trying to complete the objects and the goal of your secret backer. There can only be one captain of this ship but get too much attention from the guards and the ship goes in to lock down the no one will win.
We’ve been waiting on you corsair.
Who are these pirates trying to take control of the ship. What I like is each character gives you a different advantage on the game.
Firstly we have Quig, a rodent mechanic from the plant Akiton. A chance meeting with the bounty hunter Dhareen the Vise filled him with an adrenaline rush like never before. Leaving his engineering past behind and following the training from Dhareen he is making a name for himself with his continuously upgraded drone companion. His advantage is looting.
Obozaya is a lizard like soldier from Vesk Prime. Her determination and ferocity advanced her through the ranks. Now her enlistment has ended she has become a mercenary with a showboating style. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find her, maybe you can hire, wait no that’s something completely different. Her advantage is when attacking.
Keskodai is a mystic insect like creature and is the only pirate from the local plant Verces. He joined the priests of Pharasma after a great plague burned through his home city. After wanderlust lead him for the need to explore he uses his goddess-granted magic for healing. He gains glory when healing.
Iseph is an android that awoke in an abandoned storage facility on their home plant of Aballon with a note reading “Run. Hide. Retaliate. Beware the mark.” Since then they learnt to fly combat-oriented craft and now hires with crews as an elite pilot. There advantage is when resolving encounters.
Raia is an Lashunta from Castrovel. She has great ability in technology and spellcasting leading her to the ability of techonomic. Shen then exchanged this skill for berth on ships to the undiscovered regions. Her advantage is when moving about the ship.
The human know as Navasi is the Robin hood of the Pact world system. Being disgusted by the disparity of wealth, she left her sky villa at 18 to start a life of piracy, stopping those who thrive on exploitation and believes in freedom for all, spreading the wealth and taking the plutocrats down a peg. Her advantage is when interacting for challenges.
Finally we have Altronus, a solarian from Idari has an enormous capacity for knowledge and seen as an eccentric professor. But don’t be fooled about his usefulness in a fight, he will quite happily slice through hordes of enemies with a terrifying calm. His advantage is when scheming.
Game play
This is split into 3 phases
Planning phase – This is where players draw additional cards upgrade and gain abilities and place energy markers to decide what moves they can take in the next phase.
Action phase – There are 7 actions you can take. You can play loot or 1 scheme card. Move – move to adjacent rooms, doing this may trigger an encounter which will be resolved by dice role. Loot – gain loot cards but get caught you’ll spawn another guard. Interact- use the rooms ability or complete an objectives. Scheme – draw scheme cards. Attack – attack a guard in your room. Heal – remove a neutralisation token from a character.
Upkeep phase – where you discard cards, move the launch counter, guards patrol and characters recover.
By doing these actions you gain glory and crew support tokens, by the time the ship launches whoever has the most wins but if you’ve not completed at least 1 objectives, then you fail. You are also up against the alert level and as it rises challenges become harder if it goes into lockdown that’s game over for everyone. This brings an interesting dynamic to the game and the group of players your are with will have a dramatic effect to the game. With my board gaming group, for me its about time spent with them over winning so we were trying to delay the launch so everyone stood a chance. Now I’m not competitive but winning by lucking out and having the cards to complete an objective early the increasing the launch before anyone has a chance isn’t how I want to win the game.
My review
Artwork 4/5 - The 7 unique characters are well designed even if there might of been some inspiration from a certain superhero movies.
Complexity 4/5 - There a lot you need to know for this game and it’s a hard one to learn together, you really need at least 1 person who read the instructions fully before the game. It took us about 4 or 5 rounds to get into the game .
Replayability 3/5 – Each character gives you a different starting board and bonus so gives you different game plays. But it isn’t the sort of game where you would play a couple of games in one sitting.
Player interaction 5/5 – What the others players do will constantly effect your game from spawning or defeating guards, rising or lowering the alert, increasing or delaying the alert it can be a game of working together or a game of sticking people up.
Component quality 3/5 – There’s a lot of cardboard pieces in this game and even though it not flimsy and I don’t mind them for resources, it would be nice if the player pieces were more solid and unique
Comebackability 4/5 – With secret backer cards and support tokens being hidden you don’t know who is leading keeping everyone in the game.
Board gamer group 4/5 – With our close knit group we all wanted to extend the game which helps, with the wrong group it could be quite anticlimactic. It was a game that took some time to get into but as the alert level rose so did our passion for the game. It was also my first experience of a 20 sided dice and I enjoyed it
Family 2/5 – I struggle seeing this working for a younger age group maybe if they were all in on the theme but has a lot of things to think about.
