Space Base

The recurring thing I kept hearing about Space Base is that it's basically Machi Koro but better. A part of me had some bais since Machi Koro was one of my early board game experiences and I played through an entire campaign of Machi Koro Legacy with friends. Just how much do I need a "Machi Koro"-like game? You would think that because I tend to enjoy John D. Clair's games that I'd be interested but I guess it never really got past the threshold for me to get. What ended up being a factor was my husband enjoying dice-based games and that I knew it should be simple and easy to play, so I ended up getting this on a whim.

In Space Base, players take turns rolling dice and activating ships. The nice thing is that on every turn, players are potentially getting their ships activated, so even if its not your turn you could be earning money or points for when it does come back to you. There's also flexibility with the dice results, where you can use the dice separately for their single value or you can sum up the dice and use the resulting higher number.

The biggest issue we found was with certain complexities of the game. Particularly with the whole charge mehcanic and some of the other odd abilities. It was a lot to try and take in for what we expected to be a light and straightfoward game. I'm also not the biggest fan of the card shape being so thin and rectagular, but it makes sense in order to keep table space down since the player boards are so long. Also, the cubes are pretty easy to shift around, we had some instances where knocking a board meant the cubes tracking resources went askew.

Importantly, my husband is willing to try this game again, so we'll see if it has staying power. I can see the potential for it and will also reserve final keep or cull judgement till we get some more plays.