Galaxy Trucker

Smokey and the Bandit in SPAAAAACEE

Happy New Years to you all!

Galaxy Trucker is an amazing game from well known designer Vlaada Chvatil.  Vlaada has brought to the table such games as Mage Knight, Star Trek Frontiers, Codenames, Through the Ages, and of course this game.

In Galaxy Trucker, each player receives a tableau board in order to build a space ship.

In the middle of the table within reach of all the players a very large pile of tokens all face down is created.  Reminds me a bit like Mah Jong without the clackity clack clack.

Once ready, a sand timer is started and with only one hand and one tile at a time everyone makes a mad dash to flip over tiles.  You then decide if you want to keep that tile and connect it to your base module.  If not, you return the tile back into the common area face up this time and it becomes free grabs for any of the other players to use.  Connectors must match on both sides of the tile once set and you reach for a new piece it becomes permanent and cannot be moved.   This first part of the game reminds me of playing Pipedream when I was younger.

There are a few different tile types: Engines, Cargo Holds, Lasers, Batteries, Life Support Systems for Aliens, Crew pods, Connectors,  and Shield Generators.

A mighty fine crew we've assembled

How you build your ship matters greatly as well.  If you have exposed connectors to the outside of the ship it can be affected by space dust or small meteors.   It seems like there are a lot of rules but the game is really easy to pick up after a play through.

After some time when you are done building your ships players gather in their turn order (in order of completion of building) to form a convoy.  A series of adventures in the form of a deck of cards is placed on front of the group and off you go.

Queue up your CB Radio Lingo and Handles!

1 card is drawn per turn and then the effects are applied to all players.  They range from picking up Cargo, Pirates/Slavers, Combat Zones, Epidemics, Sabotage, Meteor Showers, Open Space among other things.

Basically it boils down to...Can you survive the deck of adventures with your Ship, Crew, and Cargo intact?

It's great fun to see your opponents lose half their ships in a meteor storm with pieces getting blown off their ship or not making your journey because you didn't bring enough crew pods and you just ran into a series of Slaver cards...doh!

didn't bring enough firepower!

Can't wait to get this to the table with friends again soon!

iPad Version

Over the Holidays in between bouts of delirium due to fever, I sick/drunk downloaded the Galaxy Trucker app and have been playing the shit out of it.  It is a great digital conversion of  the board game with hilarious writing in the campaign mode.   The campaign mode is highly recommended for new players as it slowly feeds you game features and gives you a chance to really test out theories on ship building.   I highly recommend picking it up the next time it goes on sale!

Painting

The game comes with many little tiny Astronauts who will be riding along with you on your Space Truck.  I will be giving them the makeover treatment as part of my year of painting!  Stay Tuned for that!