Perform a repair action, move or gain a medal can all be gained if players can place cards in the right slot. Of course these spaces are limited and some may need to be repaired first to be used. After using your crew to activate a room or complete a mission, they slide around the path and form a queue. When a new round begins you slide everyone towards the ready area and leave 3 again at the starting positions. 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. Replayability is limited so manage expectations accordingly. I had much more fun with my first two plays than my last two plays.

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’s a good design choice where if a player moves to a planet with a mission, they get to reserve it until they leave. This is great as missions can require specific colours of ensigns to gain huge bonuses. It’s even a great strategy to pass while you have a good mission card reserved so you gain your full crew to use. It’s one of my favorite moments from my favorite Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Kirk (William Shatner) is baring his teeth and yelling from the bridge of the Enterprise at his longtime nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban, shamefully not nominated for an Oscar for his work here). Despite some minor design issues it’s an incredibly pleasant experience. A game of endless possibilities and combinations that doesn’t overcomplicate itself or outstay its welcome. In this 2-4 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.Researching tech will provide you with a plethora of bonuses, as well as new abilities that let you take otherwise-impossible actions and open up new tactics and strategies. Technology like Stealth Paint, Universal Translators, and Wormhole Generators provide unique advantages to the players who develop them, so every captain will be looking for the technological edge on the competition.

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

Awards

On a player’s turn, they can take one of three actions: Activate a room, Complete a mission, or Pass. 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. 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.