Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I played Galaxy Trucker again on Friday night, asking Sean to add in stuff from the Big Expansion this time around. I ended dead last by a significant margin and had to endure much jeering from both my wife and Sean. This was because two of my own Evil Machination cards ended up hurting me more than them, especially in the last flight where I had to pay for 24 broken components! Shan actually built smaller and simpler ships than me but still did better. I still enjoyed the game and I think I’d like to buy it eventually, but it sure is expensive for not a very complicated game.

Some thoughts:

• Adding all of the stuff from the expansion all at once was probably a bad idea. Both Shan and me had a tough trying to remember what all the new component tiles did while trying to build our ships to take into account the Evil Machination cards and the special rules for some of the ship boards.
• I really like the variety of ship boards in this game. Yeah, you’re still building your ship using the same pile of components but the different ship boards do add lots of interesting and unique challenges to the layout. Stuff like ships that can be turned to face any direction and having two ships flying side by side are fun!
• I’m a bit lukewarm on the Evil Machination cards. As it turns out, not all of them are that evil and I feel that they are far too random and their effects vary so much that having one of them show up feels completely arbitrary. One of the cards Shan played simply gave a payout based on the flight order.
• I like the Rough Road cards. Their effects can be huge as well but at least you get to see them before you start building your ship so you can plan for them. One card we got gave each of us a pool of tiles each that we had to use as much of as possible. That was fun and felt like a unique variant of the original rules, even though I did the worst of us three. One of the cards that we drew seemed like it would be a big deal. It allowed the ships at the back to shoot the ships in front. But it turned out not to matter too much as except during take-off, only the second ship could shoot at the first ship and only when a new ship became first. It would have a bigger effect all the ships at the back could shoot whenever any ship changed position.
• Since the Big Expansion stuff is supposed to make it much harder for the ships to survive the flight at all, it seems to me that engines are less valuable than other stuff like guns and shields. If so, obviously the aliens that boost engines are devalued as well. I remember that in our first game without the expansion, using the engines to jockey for position in order to be the first to arrive at planets with cargo and to arrive at the destination for the cash payout, was quite important. But since even being able to arrive is going to be tough, it makes more sense to make sure that you have enough guns and shields to survive the trip before thinking about putting in engines.
• Playing this with more players would probably be more fun. I understand that a maximum of five players is possible using the expansion. Since building the spaceships is simultaneous, it wouldn’t make the game much longer and having lots of people grabbing stuff from the common pile of components would become more hectic and hence, fun. It would also increase the chances of something truly catastrophic happening, providing entertainment to all.
• Euro-games have a reputation for being non-confrontational and being multi-player solitaire games. Theoretically players should not get too upset when they lose due to the impersonal nature of such games. I’d say Galaxy Trucker counts squarely as a euro-game, but despite fitting both descriptions, it would be a very bad game to play for someone who gets upset about losing games. I can very easily imagine someone crying or throwing a fit of rage if their ship gets blown up. Despite the toy-like aspect of this game, I really don’t think that you should let children play this game unless you really hate the child or something.

When I talk about games, I like to refer to the quote from Sid Meier about games being a series of interesting decisions. Plus Hiew likes the Reiner Knizia quote about games being fun when you play to win. I don’t think either of these quotes is true for Galaxy Trucker. After all, there were times when I could have earned a better score by giving up and selling my goods for half price, but where’s the entertainment value in that? It’s not deep or cerebral, but it manages to hit all sorts of emotional high notes over the course of a session, and that makes it a great game.