2010-20: Galaxy Trucker (new)
Galaxy Trucker is a very unique game. It plays in 2 parts. In the first half, which is a speed/puzzle challenge, you race to build a spaceship out of a common pool of parts (engines, cargo, life support, guns, etc.). In the second half, you fly your ships across the galaxy, collecting and delivering cargo. Or, as more often happens, your ship falls apart and you die in a space pirate attack. Which is hilarious.
Galaxy Trucker, by Vlaada Chvatil, was published by Czech Games Edition in 2007, and picked up state-side by Rio Grande Games in 2008. It plays 2-4 players (best with 4) in about an hour.
Chavatil is, to my mind, the most interesting board game designer working today. He comes up with very interesting and unique mechanics (e.g. Space Alert, a co-op game run by soundtrack), enjoys turning video games into board games (e.g. the PC game Dungeon Keeper into Dungeon Lords), knows how to design really complex brain-burners (e.g. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization), but is also quite capable of tossing off party games (e.g. Bunny Bunny Moose Moose). And they all play really well - every game I just mentioned (including Galaxy Trucker, but excluding Bunny Bunny, which is brand new) in is the Boardgamegeek top 50.
The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up Galaxy Trucker is that the rulebook is fabulous. It is, simply put, the funniest rulebook I’ve ever read. Reading through the rules of a game is usually a chore, but this was a pleasure.
The second thing you will notice is the components. They’re fantastic. Everyone gets 2 double-sided boards which give diagrams of 4 potential spaceships. Then there are 140 “spaceship component” tiles placed in the middle of the table, face-down. Off to the side, there are piles of things to put in your spaceship: astronauts and 2 types of aliens (cute pink and brown dudes), tiny green tic-tac looking things that indicate battery power (did I mention that your spaceship is made of sewer pipes and powered by batteries?), a racing board for the center of the table, some money tiles, wooden “trade goods” cubes, some dice, several decks of encounter cards, and a sand timer. It’s a lot of stuff, and it all looks good. Cartoon-y art, to go along with the playful theme and rulebook.
Gameplay is quite simple. Each player has a “spaceship schematic” board in front of them, with a bunch of tile-sized squares on it. (How many squares? Well, the game is played in 3 rounds, and it depends on which round it is. Round one has 16 spaces to fill, but round three ramps you up to 40 tile spaces). The tiles are all face-down in the middle of the table. When the timer is flipped, everyone dives for the center of the board and starts putting their spaceship together as fast as they can. The most important rule here is that once you place a tile, you can’t move it. There are also some pretty obvious tile placement restrictions (e.g. guns and engines must be facing out, not towards the middle of the ship, and the engines must additionally be facing out the back).
More importantly, every spaceship component tile has connectors. We’ll call them A, B, and Universal. As only connect to As, Bs to Bs, and Universals to As, Bs, or other Universals. As you construct your ship, you must be careful to match these types up, because the first thing that happens on launch is that incorrectly-connected parts fall off the ship. I’ve had entire ships split in half on takeoff.
There are various types of component tiles, each of which is important. You want to have as many of each type as possible. They are: engines, guns, energy shields, batteries, life support (human, engine alien, or gun alien), cargo hold, or “useless lump of connectors.” To be operational at all, a ship must have least 1 engine and 1 human life support. However, since the game often punishes the player who has the least in each of the categories, you would be well advised to try to be as well rounded as possible.
Once the ships take off, the players will be drawing from the encounter deck (8, 12, or 16 cards, depending on whether it is round 1, 2, or 3). Or, should I say, encounter decks because there are different decks for each round (we’ll call them Mean, Meaner, and You Must be Kidding).
There are several types of cards in the encounter deck. The most basic is the “open space” card, in which all the spaceships move ahead as many spaces as they have engines. The game is a race, and you will make money by being in the lead when the deck is emptied.
The second type of the card is the “good stuff” card. You can collect money and/or trade goods to load onto your ship, for the price of taking people off of your ship (if the card is a discovered derelict ship that you are sending back to port) or days (if it is goods that you are loading up). The player in the lead gets first crack at these items, with each player in turn getting the change to collect the item or pass.
The third, and most fun, type of card is the “bad stuff” card. There are meteor swarms, which will hit your ship and knock off parts of it (unless you have shields, no exposed connectors, and/or guns pointed in exactly the right spot). Pirates or slavers will also happen by and prey on the weak, unless they can be outrun/outgunned. These will pick on the people with the slowest engines or least crew, and will shoot at (and blow off parts of the ships of) the under-gunned.
Assuming you survive every encounter in the deck, there are rewards to be had. Money is awarded in descending amounts to the people who crossed the finish line fastest. Cargo is exchanged for even more money. And then you must pay back to the bank $1 for each tile that got blown off of your ship. Now you toss the tiles back into the center of the table, mix them up, move on to the next, harder, board and start again.
What do I think of Galaxy Trucker? Well, it is a fantastic game for certain audiences. It is, for example, my wife’s favorite game. Yet her mother almost had a nervous breakdown during the speed/puzzle section. You must approach the game for what it is: fast, chaotic fun. It’s not high strategy, but it certainly does reward experience, quick reflexes, and a “puzzler’s eye.” The goal is to build the best mousetrap, and the second half of the game is mostly laughing about how badly you did. In this way, it reminds of one of the first games I reviewed on this blog: Dungeonquest. In both games, the goal is not necessarily to do well, but rather to survive slightly longer than your friends, and laugh at them (and yourself) as horrible things happen to everyone. Given that a lot of the outcome is luck-based, you will either find this hilarious or exceedingly obnoxious.
There are other vaguely similar games that avoid some of these elements, if they are bothersome. Factory Fun has you connecting pipes in a puzzle-y manner under time pressure, but without the luck element. Dungeon Lords is far more strategic, but is also a “wind up the mousetrap and see how well it works” game with similar humor, but without the puzzle aspect. Want a pure puzzle? Try the Ubongo series. Or if you like the theme and nothing else, there are several games that have similar ones (Space Dealer, Merchant of Venus, etc.). But, personally, I’m going to stick with Galaxy Trucker. It’s fast, silly, has great components and a great theme, and is beloved by my gaming group. A worthy addition to my top 20.
Galaxy Trucker, by Vlaada Chvatil, was published by Czech Games Edition in 2007, and picked up state-side by Rio Grande Games in 2008. It plays 2-4 players (best with 4) in about an hour.
Chavatil is, to my mind, the most interesting board game designer working today. He comes up with very interesting and unique mechanics (e.g. Space Alert, a co-op game run by soundtrack), enjoys turning video games into board games (e.g. the PC game Dungeon Keeper into Dungeon Lords), knows how to design really complex brain-burners (e.g. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization), but is also quite capable of tossing off party games (e.g. Bunny Bunny Moose Moose). And they all play really well - every game I just mentioned (including Galaxy Trucker, but excluding Bunny Bunny, which is brand new) in is the Boardgamegeek top 50.
The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up Galaxy Trucker is that the rulebook is fabulous. It is, simply put, the funniest rulebook I’ve ever read. Reading through the rules of a game is usually a chore, but this was a pleasure.
The second thing you will notice is the components. They’re fantastic. Everyone gets 2 double-sided boards which give diagrams of 4 potential spaceships. Then there are 140 “spaceship component” tiles placed in the middle of the table, face-down. Off to the side, there are piles of things to put in your spaceship: astronauts and 2 types of aliens (cute pink and brown dudes), tiny green tic-tac looking things that indicate battery power (did I mention that your spaceship is made of sewer pipes and powered by batteries?), a racing board for the center of the table, some money tiles, wooden “trade goods” cubes, some dice, several decks of encounter cards, and a sand timer. It’s a lot of stuff, and it all looks good. Cartoon-y art, to go along with the playful theme and rulebook.
Gameplay is quite simple. Each player has a “spaceship schematic” board in front of them, with a bunch of tile-sized squares on it. (How many squares? Well, the game is played in 3 rounds, and it depends on which round it is. Round one has 16 spaces to fill, but round three ramps you up to 40 tile spaces). The tiles are all face-down in the middle of the table. When the timer is flipped, everyone dives for the center of the board and starts putting their spaceship together as fast as they can. The most important rule here is that once you place a tile, you can’t move it. There are also some pretty obvious tile placement restrictions (e.g. guns and engines must be facing out, not towards the middle of the ship, and the engines must additionally be facing out the back).
More importantly, every spaceship component tile has connectors. We’ll call them A, B, and Universal. As only connect to As, Bs to Bs, and Universals to As, Bs, or other Universals. As you construct your ship, you must be careful to match these types up, because the first thing that happens on launch is that incorrectly-connected parts fall off the ship. I’ve had entire ships split in half on takeoff.
There are various types of component tiles, each of which is important. You want to have as many of each type as possible. They are: engines, guns, energy shields, batteries, life support (human, engine alien, or gun alien), cargo hold, or “useless lump of connectors.” To be operational at all, a ship must have least 1 engine and 1 human life support. However, since the game often punishes the player who has the least in each of the categories, you would be well advised to try to be as well rounded as possible.
Once the ships take off, the players will be drawing from the encounter deck (8, 12, or 16 cards, depending on whether it is round 1, 2, or 3). Or, should I say, encounter decks because there are different decks for each round (we’ll call them Mean, Meaner, and You Must be Kidding).
There are several types of cards in the encounter deck. The most basic is the “open space” card, in which all the spaceships move ahead as many spaces as they have engines. The game is a race, and you will make money by being in the lead when the deck is emptied.
The second type of the card is the “good stuff” card. You can collect money and/or trade goods to load onto your ship, for the price of taking people off of your ship (if the card is a discovered derelict ship that you are sending back to port) or days (if it is goods that you are loading up). The player in the lead gets first crack at these items, with each player in turn getting the change to collect the item or pass.
The third, and most fun, type of card is the “bad stuff” card. There are meteor swarms, which will hit your ship and knock off parts of it (unless you have shields, no exposed connectors, and/or guns pointed in exactly the right spot). Pirates or slavers will also happen by and prey on the weak, unless they can be outrun/outgunned. These will pick on the people with the slowest engines or least crew, and will shoot at (and blow off parts of the ships of) the under-gunned.
Assuming you survive every encounter in the deck, there are rewards to be had. Money is awarded in descending amounts to the people who crossed the finish line fastest. Cargo is exchanged for even more money. And then you must pay back to the bank $1 for each tile that got blown off of your ship. Now you toss the tiles back into the center of the table, mix them up, move on to the next, harder, board and start again.
What do I think of Galaxy Trucker? Well, it is a fantastic game for certain audiences. It is, for example, my wife’s favorite game. Yet her mother almost had a nervous breakdown during the speed/puzzle section. You must approach the game for what it is: fast, chaotic fun. It’s not high strategy, but it certainly does reward experience, quick reflexes, and a “puzzler’s eye.” The goal is to build the best mousetrap, and the second half of the game is mostly laughing about how badly you did. In this way, it reminds of one of the first games I reviewed on this blog: Dungeonquest. In both games, the goal is not necessarily to do well, but rather to survive slightly longer than your friends, and laugh at them (and yourself) as horrible things happen to everyone. Given that a lot of the outcome is luck-based, you will either find this hilarious or exceedingly obnoxious.
There are other vaguely similar games that avoid some of these elements, if they are bothersome. Factory Fun has you connecting pipes in a puzzle-y manner under time pressure, but without the luck element. Dungeon Lords is far more strategic, but is also a “wind up the mousetrap and see how well it works” game with similar humor, but without the puzzle aspect. Want a pure puzzle? Try the Ubongo series. Or if you like the theme and nothing else, there are several games that have similar ones (Space Dealer, Merchant of Venus, etc.). But, personally, I’m going to stick with Galaxy Trucker. It’s fast, silly, has great components and a great theme, and is beloved by my gaming group. A worthy addition to my top 20.