Joined in 2023 
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At times it can feel like you are a restricted and you can run out of options but I found this approach not only keeps the game time down but forces players to carefully manage their actions. Managing Your Crew & Your Ship Hailing all Starship Captains! Get ready to boldly embark on a maiden voyage through the cosmos in this euro-style action selection and engine building game for 2-4 players. By obtaining these cards you can create your own action board. The more cards you have the more symbols can pop up. Instead of repairing once on your ship when you activate a room, you might find a card that lets you repair twice, or repair and move in one action. This is large euro game with so many paths to take, ways to gain points and a heavy emphasis on managing your actions efficiently. Players will start to question their actions and think about their turns heavily. Finally, I did like the variety in the tech cards. There are a lot of ways to gain bonuses and break the rules with them. However, I think that some are just better than others. It’s hard to take a situational card like being able to upgrade your cadets to yellow for free (which you could use, at most, 3 times during the game), vs. a card that lets you jump to any planet when you move. Also, there are only 3 end-game scoring tech cards, which don’t scale at player counts. So in a 3-4p game, it’s possible they will all be claimed by 2 (or even 1 if players aren’t paying attention) players. Final Thoughts:
In this 1-4 player Eurostyle game, which mixes action selection and engine building, you'll manage a diverse crew of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers — each with different special roles and capabilities. By earning medals, you can promote and train your crew for even greater effectiveness. Similarly, you can upgrade your ship with powerful engine building technology for maximum synergy. On a player’s turn, they can take one of three actions: Activate a room, Complete a mission, or Pass. Another example: five commander rings are available to each player. These rings signify when you’ve achieved a promotion. The highest total number of commanders I’ve seen promoted by a single player is three. In that game, one player had a tech which allowed them to train a certain color of commander with only two medals, instead of the normal three.Having options for rooms can be key. Some cards break the idea that only red ensigns can fly the ship, so in a game when I added the Jump Drive tech card to my board, this gave me more options for my yellow ensigns. Ability techs boost all the other actions, so combining some of these led to different approaches to taking on missions. A space-themed board game with thematic similarities to the beloved sci-fi television series Star Trek – particularly its focus upon the wonders of space exploration – Starship Captains will support two to four players in a tabletop title about adventures in the galaxy. Turns go by in this manner until everyone passes. At the end of the round, you slide all but 3 figures forward in your queue to the ready room. At the start of rounds 2-4, players will earn a new crew member or a free medal (medals are used to upgrade cadets to crewmen, and crewmen to commanders). Starship Captains puts players in control of Enterprise-like starships working together in the faction known as the Cooperative (in part because I’m guessing “Federation” was taken!). Recently promoted to the rank of Captain, each player has command of a small crew of specialists from across the universe. To complete a mission, you have to be the first player on that planet. You’ll then need to spend a crew member for each line of the mission. If the crew member’s color also matches the color line, you gain the bonus from said line. Afterward, the mission goes into your score pile. You’ll be flying your ship around the map to complete missions.
Settle into the captain’s chair of your very first star cruiser and get ready to embark on an exciting voyage through the depths of space in this euro-style action selection and engine building game for 1-4 players. Do you have what it takes to deftly command your crew and become the best captain in the cosmos? We'll see! Medals allow players to train any of their cadets or ensigns to another color; pay three medals and you can upgrade an ensign to a commander, which allows for the commander to do double actions or command a crew member of the same color to come out of the waiting area onto the ready room of your ship. These specialists are your workers, and you will place them in different departments of your ship and your tech board to take actions. (I won’t call this a worker placement game though, because these spaces are available to all players on their various ships, then the spaces clear at the end of each turn.)One of the weird things about Starship Captains is its playtime. The game plays over 4 rounds, and at first, that felt too short. I felt like I wasn’t getting enough time with my ship. But as I thought about it more, I realized that the playtime is pretty on point. The actions you’ll be doing are pretty much the same each round, so while a 5th round would have given you more time to earn points, you are still doing same thing in round 4 that you were doing in round 1. There isn’t really any kind of engine building here. So I think the game would have gotten repetitive if there were more rounds. At 45-60 minutes, the play time felt about right. Starship Captains was created by Peter B Hoffgaard, with this being the designer’s debut title. Liv and Wheels chat about the board games they're most excited for in 2022. Another unique mechanic with these cards are the matching bonus symbols. At the sides of the tech cards are small icons. When placing a card down on the board, if an icon matches one next to it you can claim an instant reward. PUBLISHERS: please, please, please, you’ve got to include player aids with your games if the iconography is even a minor challenge! Why are we still talking about this on the eve of 2023?????
These cards can grant permanent bonuses, become rooms to activate with ensigns or be the limited omega tech which provide extra reputation at the end of the game if certain conditions are met. The production is mostly a winner. The best tactile part of the game comes when you need to slide your crew members around a small, indented wheel at the top of your player board. Even better: only crew members fit in that wheel. Try to slide an android meeple around this wheel, and it doesn’t fit, a reminder that androids—a wild worker type—have to be discarded when completing missions. Love it! Starship Captains has clearly had a lot of love put into its production. It’s disappointing, then, that the overall experience doesn’t quite hang together. And while our major criticism of Starship Captains (aside from the fact I can’t go live with the androids) is that it’s too short, dragging it out might not serve the overall experience. The puzzle of how best to use your limited crew, and how to do so in a way that will set you up for success on subsequent rounds, only gets more complex as your crew grows, your tech improves, and you get a couple of crew promotions under your belt. As cool as it would be to have a fifth or even a sixth turn to take advantage of your fully-repaired, teched-out ship and highly experienced crew, things might slow down too much, damaging one of the aspects of Starship Captains that makes it a lot of fun to engage.It is these issues that give me pause. I think Starship Captains will land best as a game played with casual players, and played only occasionally. Playing it once every few months is perfect, and lets players who arrive mainly for the theme take part in a medium-light gaming experience that is simple to teach. The tech board and large number of tech cards help give Starship Captains high replay value. Combining this with the mission and event cards and you’ve got a game that you can keep playing without the fear of it growing stale. Overwhelming Choice
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