Boardgame review — SpaceCorp

Reach for the $tars

Designer: John Butterfield

Player count: 1 to 4

Publisher: GMT Games

When Neil Armstrong took that fated giant leap for mankind, it was but the first in a series of mind-bending steps that would hurtle humans beyond the asteroid belt, to the very edge of our solar system, and into the mesmerizing darkness beyond.

At least, that’s how John Butterfield envisions it.

In SpaceCorp 2025-2300 AD, the renowned designer of solo classics proposes quite the package: a complete solo experience, together with all the equipment (event a separate rulebook!) required to turn SpaceCorp into a 2- to 4-player race where everyone does their best to leave their opponents in the moon dust.

SpaceCorp is as much an economy game as a spatial exploration one: the ultimate goal is to cross the finish line with more trillions in your coffers than anybody else. But the road to such financial ecstasy is peppered with bouts of deep exploration, intense space-rock exploitation, harrowing episodes of radiation poisoning, and the occasional alien encounter.

Humanity’s flight to the stars unfolds across three eras, on three different boards: Mariners (where humble launches land explorers as far as Mars), Planeteers (where ambitious missions take colonists to the outer regions of our solar system), and Starfarers (where epic voyages transport pioneers to neighboring star systems—see you in Tau Ceti!).

Each era runs on its own deck of cards, which provides the actions available to players and doubles as a game timer: when the deck runs out, the era is over.

On his turn, a player executes one of 10 different actions: Research provides more cards, Move allows a team to relocate, Explore reveals a discovery tile at a site occupied by a team, Build constructs a base (out of nine different ones, all with various effects) on a discovery tile occupied by a team, Produce exploits a lucrative site for profit, Genetics furthers scientific discoveries (eventually yielding special abilities called Adaptations), Revelation advances technology (eventually producing stunning results known as Breakthroughs), Upgrade improves a player’s basic capabilities, Special unleashes a card’s special effect, and Establish Colony, well, establishes a colony.

Many cards can be used for two different actions (the agony…) and sometimes in two different ways: either spent to fuel an immediate action, or deployed to your HQ, where the card can be used over and over again. Very nice. Ah, but that deployment is an action in itself—so Upgrade if you want, but that’s all you’re doing this turn. (Blue just stole the site you discovered and built a nasty industrial base there? Better luck next star.)

Doing the right thing at the right time is not always easy, but each and every action is extremely straightforward. To Move, for example, a player only needs to play cards that will provide enough move points to take his team where it wants to go. (And yes, the further, the more expensive.) Interested in building a base? Just play (and/or use from your HQ) cards that’ll cough up enough build points to satisfy the requirements of the site your selected. Of course, not all bases can be built on just any random site…

The whole thing is very much a race: if you don’t discover what lies hidden on Deimos, someone else will get to it, and reap the benefits. To make matter worse—or better, depending on your tolerance to anxiety—each era proposes seven different contracts for extra profit. Be the first to build 4 Lagrange bases, or to earn 2 progress cards, or to establish the first colony! Of course, the array of contracts also doubles as a game timer. Want to take it easy on the milestones? Time’s up. Get your ass in gear for Alpha Centauri.

Some of what players manage to accomplish in one era carries over to the second one, and then to the third one, for a final showdown of profit levels, once the game reaches its conclusion. Each era requires its own setup with dedicated components, enhancing the ever-expanding scope of the whole endeavor. For instance, Move 1 (good ol’ Chemical Drive) is a typical card in the Mariners era, and your first 4-point Move (taking you as far as the moons of Mars!) will feel like quite the accomplishment. But by the time you reach the Starfarers era, cards like Move 5 and Move x3 (hello there, Fusion Booster) will routinely hurl your teams across 70-point voids.

What a difference three centuries of evolution can make.

The solo game brings into play an AI that activates special instructions at the bottom of each card. During the first era, the AI uses the deck from the second era; for the second era, the AI uses the deck from the third era; and throughout the third era, the AI loops back and uses the deck from the first era.

Turns alternate between player and AI—and let me tell you that the AI is a fearsome opponent. It’ll use every trick in the book to steal your sites, beat you to the next discovery, evolve faster than you can, and wipe your options from the board.

PRODUCTION

Two double-sided mounted boards, three tall decks of cards, wooden cubes in all manner of colors, thick player boards and bases galore—what more do you need? The whole package is presented in a deep box with an attractive cover, and comes flanked by two rulebooks: one for solo play, the other for multi-player action.

Each rulebook is about 25 pages long, but written and laid out in such an effective manner that you can pretty much break out the game and go through the rules as you and your friends get ready for your first playthrough. No surprises here: after all, the rules were penned by none other than Chad Jensen, of Combat Commander fame. Not to mention the generous player aids (including one for that damned AI) that render the rulebooks all but useless once the initial learning curve has been tamed.

You’ll be up and zipping around in no time.

This is where it all begins

FUN FACTOR

There’s no denying that a new Butterfield design is always cause for celebration—and ever more so when the game is built to work either as a solo experience or a competitive engagement.

In this case, however, the solo aspect overshadows the multi-player game so much that throwing in components for three additional players almost feels like an afterthought.

And I write this with great affection for the overall design: SpaceCorp sits at the top of my pile of solo games to play these days.

Since the deck of cards acts as the game’s timer, there’s a reason why you’d want to reuse resources deployed to your HQ as often as possible and go easy on the whole drawing-new-cards thing in the solo game. The AI will whittle your options fast enough without you making a bad situation worse. The more you skimp on card spending, the more you’ll (probably) be able to accomplish.

In the multiplayer game, on the other hand, the card deck becomes a common timer for the entire cohort of players. And that timer can get seriously abused, especially when competitors start digging in the hopes of landing those crucial Genetics and Revelation cards. You can try to be frugal and burn through fewer cards—which more or less saves you the trouble of spending every other action drawing new cards—but as soon as the deck runs out, everyone is sent packing. You sort of get extra actions because you weren’t wasteful but let’s face it: Adaptations and Breakthroughs are so powerful that you’ll want to make sure you get at least a few of them. And the simplest way to get there is to dig through the deck with the rest of the hyenas.

Another annoyance with the multi-player experience is that some discovery tiles are negative, taking resources away from the player whose only mistake was a stroke of bad luck. A “lose 2 trillion credits” tile would make things interesting if it came with instructions to draw two additional tiles and choose one. (You would lose some money, but in the process you’d end up having a say in whatever you discover next.)

Alas, that is not the case.

When you encounter one such dud during a solo game, it’s just the AI giving you a hard time; after all, you’re trying to solve whatever puzzle the system throws at you as best as you can. But in a multiplayer brawl, it’s like a kick in the teeth for no good reason—especially when your neighbor, one site over, hits the jackpot with a friendly alien encounter.

In the end, the multiplayer game left me unsatisfied. But the solo experience? A fantastic thing of brilliance, beauty, and interstellar greed.

PARTING SHOTS

Since my favorite operating mode for SpaceCorp is the solo game, it somewhat irks me that the special text found on some action cards is not compatible with playing alone. Instead, you have to look up the title of that card on a related table and read what it actually does in the solo game—either for the player or the for the AI (in which case the effect if different). It does make for cool interactions with the AI, almost as if that other player employed a completely alien (ahem) strategy, but it’s a bit of a bummer to have to look up the table every single time one of those cards pops up… until you eventually learn them all by heart. Trust me, it will happen.

I love how SpaceCorp feels like playing three games from the same epic family, each one more grandiose than the next—it’s a great space odyssey in three acts. It also conjures some of the historical flavor I enjoy so much in wargames: there’s a feeling of being told “a true story” here, even though 90% of the game takes place within the realm of humanity’s uncertain future.

Once the vastness of space no longer holds any mystery or excitement (what’s wrong with you?), feel free to use one of the game’s optional Era Situations. Something like Brain Drain prevents you from drawing a card at the end of your turn, while, say, Fuel Shortage will further hinder you with an additional gravity penalty when navigating specific spots on the map.

There are 12 Era Situations in the box, and you only get to experience three random selections on each go. They add some spectacular spice to an already exciting game.

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