Gale Force Nine GFN225084US Firefly The Game

Product Information

You’ll go on missions given to you by contacts such as Patience and Niska, use the money to upgrade your ship and your crew and complete the objective set up at the start of the game. I love the risk/reward balance at times, especially as a Nav Deck gets low and thus players start taking long detours to avoid flying in Alliance space or mosey along one space at a time so they don’t draw that card. Firefly is one of these games, which you can easily overlook, but once you have played it, you don’t want to miss it anymore. There are no catch-up mechanisms and all of the varying win conditions (picked at the beginning of the game) are more or less races. Having recently played Star Wars: Outer Rim (Fantasy Flight Games, 2019) it is inevitable to make comparisons between these “space western” games.

The board itself is 3x2ft, plus there’s the 13 decks of cards (each needs double the space) that must be placed around it along with each player’s ship card, captain, crew, gear, jobs and money, making this one hell of a space hog, something which anyone living in a relatively small house or flat may wish to keep in mind.

This, however, does leave at something of an impasse in considering how those unfamiliar with the license will feel about the game. With more players, they begin in the discard pile, so a two-player game could potentially see a very early, and devastating, Reaver or Alliance draw that could set a player back. When you arrive at the contact’s planet you may “consider” up to three jobs from the discard pile, and for every one of those three you don’t take from the pile you may draw one from the corresponding contact’s deck. Yet for those who are willing to take some risks, there is still a chance you can pull off the miracle even if you need the impossible roll of a 6 plus a second roll to make up the deficit.

Gaining an understanding of where you can expect to find certain equipment and crew, of exactly what kinds of jobs contacts offer and the ins and outs of the two different nav decks, increases your enjoyment of the game considerably as you can began to formulate slightly more complex plans, although obviously luck will still play an important part. Strong play involves choosing your routes to optimise your Jobs and watching the Nav Deck discard piles to anticipate what's coming.

Preset crew issues: First off, there's a limited number of Scrapper Pilots, but that probably won't be an issue unless you have a huge number of players.