I played the game at Gen Con, and both me and my brother (and everyone at the table) really liked it even though we all saw some negative aspects to the game. We had first demoed it when the doors opened on Thursday morning, and worked hard to reserve a copy in the library later on.
First the positives:
It is dripping with theme. The awful reality that this show only lasted 12 episodes and 1 movie means that everyone has probably seen each episode 2-3 times, and we are very familiar with them. Compare that to another popular <PERSON> show like Buffy, where there are about 150 episodes, and it is hard to keep all of the characters and villains straight. But with only 12 episodes, they can pull lots of minutia from the TV show, put it in the game, and we will all recognize it.
The mechanics are relatively simple: “I do the job, and then I get paid.” It is easy to teach and quick to pick up. The rule book could have more specific examples in it as we came upon a few questions that the book couldn’t answer. For example, one of the space events that happens is “Salvage Opps.” It is written in a blue bubble text that makes it look like it is something special that has specific rules. Eventually we found a crew member that gives you a bonus when performing Slavage Opps, but we couldn’t find anything in the rules that explained what was special about it.
However, it is all the little things like this that make the game good. They have encounters in space and during Misbehave actions that act as little mini side quests that add a lot of flavor and fun to the game.
Negatives:
Most, if not all of the negatives in this game boil down to personal preference or inexperienced players, which we all are.
Having to pay your crew.
Yes, if you have 6 crew, you will be spending a lot of money to pay them for each mission. I feel this is very thematic and accurate to the show. But it is also very easy to avoid. Don’t start the game with six crew. There are 2 Alliance contacts that will give you very simple missions that don’t require much (if any) crew and they hold very little risk. Most people compare this to Merchants and Marauders, and in that game most people I have seen start as a merchant to earn a bunch of money before switching to a pirate. That makes a lot of sense in this game too. To complete the plot quests, you will need a lot of specific crew, but you don’t need them on your ship to start the game. 304
Once you complete a few Alliance jobs, you can get a couple crew and move up to Patience and Badger. Once you do a few of those, you can get a few more crew and do some Niska jobs. Most of the risky jobs have payouts around $3,500. So even if you have to pay your crew $1,200 you are still making more money than the $900 to $1500 Alliance jobs. Each of the three plot missions requires a different skill set, so it looks like you need 6-8 people to complete everything. But you don’t. You only need 2-3 people to complete each of the individual goals. So instead of carrying around a crew that can do everything, specialize and swap crews between completed goals.
Movement and Event cards
Yes, I do find this annoying, but after a few plays, you learn what each card does, and you don’t need to read them to know you will ignore it or you just have to pay a part or fuel to avoid it. Still, a variant you might try is to replace the cards with dice. I have no idea what the ratio of blank cards is to event cards, but you can tweak it to what you like. If you want to move 5 spaces in Alliance space, then roll 5 six sided die. For each 6 you get, draw an event card from a deck where the blank cards have been removed. Do the same thing for the red spaces, but maybe pull events on all 5’s and 6’s. If you have to come to a full stop, then move half the distance you intended rounded up and stop. There are also several engine upgrades that allow you to Mosey 2 spaces. I found this extremely effective and planned my movement to take advantage of this, as many planets are 2 from each other and you can choose your missions to accommodate this.
The Reavers
Yes, a garauntee that one of your crew will die is not cool, but if they didn’t give the Reavers teeth, then they wouldn’t be Reavers. 403