This is the enginebuilder that goes from “putputput” to “Wroom” to “BRAAAAAPP”.
In Space base you start with a player board with 12 slots for cards. Each slot holds a ship from the starter deck. They do anything from 1-3 currency to increasing your starting capital each round by one. The game basically consists of you and your opponent rolling dice and doing what the card says.
To decide who starts you each draw a random card from the level 1 cardpile. The one with the highest card start. First you place that card on the right slot of your player board and turn the card that was there upside down and place it under your player board at that spot, so that only the red part shows. This is what this game is about.
Every time you roll dice, you can chose to do 2 things. Either you use the dice separetely, i.e. you roll a 2 and a 4 then you activatre ship 2 and four, OR you combine the numbers to make it a higher number. Generally the higher you go on your board the better things happen. What you can do on your round is marked either blue or green depending on what it is. BUT, when your opponent(s) roll, If you haver a card that is flipped over showing under the player board, you get to do what is in the red marked area. This is very important. In the beginning of the game I bought cards just to fill up on red cards so I got atleast something every time someone else rolled. And the more cards I bought the more things I got. I got cards that gave me money, energy cubes, and even points. I was extremely lucky with where that card was. I generally got atleast 2 points every time it wasn’t my turn and anything from 5-15 points on my turn. It was beautiful…
You can also buy outposts. These stops you from buying more ships to the spot where you bought the outpost and only give you points. But alot of them. These cards are very expensive and are great for buying late game.
Then we have the charge cubes. Every time you roll the correct number to charge a cube you get to do it. Then depending on the skill on the card and the color you get to play it when the game lets you. Some cards have skille that only needs one charge cube and others need more. There is even a card that needs 5 chargecubes to activate. But that card is on number 12, which means you need to roll double sixes 5 times, or have cards that bring you closer to it. then again. If you manage to charge that card up fully, you win the game. So there is always that.
Either way. This game was actually exactly what I was looking for. A pure Engine builder that escalated beautifully. I will play it more to have something more to say, later on, but I really, really like this game. Easy to teach, easy to play, and after a game of this, if the people you played it with doesn’t know what an engine builder game is… I… I just don’t know what to do.
What is your favorite engine builder game?
Play more games!!!
Boardgames and such 