Star Trek Star Trek Expeditions **First Game impression** [Archive]

traitorarmor

06/20/2011, 00:15

So I got to try out Star Trek Expeditions for the first time today. I read the rules a couple of times and then gave it a try.

==================================

I went into the game with a few thoughts;

1) Without help right out of the gate, the Klingon ship was going to wreck our Enterprise............so getting the some of the boosts(+1 weapons and +1 shields) back to the ship was priority #1.

But don't take my word for it...........here are the #s;

:d-normal:= Shields, :bolt:= Long Range, :a-fist: =close range

The Klingon Battle Cruiser
:d-normal: 13 13 13 12 12 11 11 10 10 09 09 0
:bolt: 06 06 05 05 05 04 04 04 03 03 02 0
:a-fist: 9* 8* 8* 8* 7* 7*06 06 05 05 05 0
*= Critical Hit: When a close range attack hits by at least 3 deal 2 damage instead of 1.

The Enterprise
:d-normal: 09 09 08 08 08 07 07 06 06 05 05 0
:bolt: 07 07 06 06 06 05 05 05 04 04 03 0
:a-fist: 8* 7* 7* 7* 6* 6*05 05 04 04 04 0
*= Full Power to Phasers: When a close range attack hits by at least 3 move both ships one space to the right on the Orbital Track.

Combat being only one part of the game it isn't complicated and it is done with 1 die rolled for attacking (the Klingons heal 1 on a roll of 1 and do not attack and the Enterprise actually gets a 7-1 on what would normally be a 6..........they get the 7 for the roll but after the action the ship/character takes a click)

2) There are no dial spikes or late dial up swings............#s just go down and as such, are fairly easy to anticipate.

3) Uhura's special action, to Draw a card and then keep it or give it to any other player........seems like gold. The idea of pulling a card and then giving it to the best member of the away team sounds like a winning formula to me.

===========================================

So what happend..................well I think a few things early in the game really decided what way our team was going to go.

-First time playing, we went with the easiest challange level Blue: Acadamy Cadet.

- Kirk was able to get a sizable Command crew(+5) quick (thanks Uhura!) so the initial challanges for him were very managable.

- The +1 Long Range Weapons and +1 Shields (which are face up so you know where they are righ away) were right beside each other..........and the other +1 all weapons fell into our lap on turn 3 (I think).

- Uhura's ablilty was almost as good as we thought it might be.......and she pulled a couple of Ship Combat cards (Heal a click, re-roll, and or +2 to any roll) so most of our initial focus was to make sure we were all set for the challenges on the surface and take it to the Klingons so we could at least feel safe about how the battles could go........(needing to rolls a 3 is not a good idea .............when they can only really hit with a 5 or better a 6....that is better)

- Kirk got a hold of some more battle cards and spent 4 straight actions taking care of the enemy using the special to knock them back in orbit......after that it was really down hill for the space battle.

- Spock, wasn't sure about his special and didn't use it at first....and got stuck at some challanges that would have cost us some Mission points if he left before the team completed it..............turns out that when you don't have any points in a certain catagory you just ignore the penalty. Spock turned out to be the away team member we used the lest effectively.

- After the Space Battle was done..............it was a lot easier to focus on the Location Challenges.

End of the game we scored 16 or higher in each catagory and passed the Acadamy test with flying colors.

We're looking forward to trying it out again on the next leve but it seems like it's a blast.

The only thing that we noticed that was off was the Klingon ship seemed to be missing a small piece (a side gun possibly?).............other than that everything seemed to be just fine.

If you guys want to know anything else just ask.

Looking forward to hearing some other peoples experiences with it.

vlad3theimpaler

06/20/2011, 00:21

Cool. I'm considering buying this game, but having not played it yet, it's good to get info from those that have.

Kevin187

06/20/2011, 03:50

Having played it about 5 times now, Uhura seems to be the MVP every single game. And yeah the Enterprise is p.o.s. compared to the Klingon ship, especially with my rolls.

Entropy

06/20/2011, 12:11

Having played it about 5 times now, Uhura seems to be the MVP every single game. And yeah the Enterprise is p.o.s. compared to the Klingon ship, especially with my rolls.

you know that offended me at first (as a trek fan how dare you make my enterprise so much weaker) until i realized it was done with an eye toward the items and cards the players can play

as for the game, my one play through so far, we spent less time focusing on the ship combat, and instead focused on completing the planet challenges. our enterprise was almost destroyed completely, but we kept it at only -2 and still completed the planet challenges

so it is cool to see how you can approach success in the game in different ways

traitorarmor

06/20/2011, 12:27

you know that offended me at first (as a trek fan how dare you make my enterprise so much weaker) until i realized it was done with an eye toward the items and cards the players can play

Yeah, my take was that you can beat the more powerful ship if you pulled all the tricks and tactics you can...........seems more interesting/more of a challange that way.

so it is cool to see how you can approach success in the game in different ways

That is something I really like about the game so far.

I'm not overly framiliar with the co-op board games in general but this is enjoyable experience.

This has me increasing my interest to see about the Fleet Captain..........I like the competion aspec of games and it sounds interesting.

Suttkus

06/20/2011, 22:12

This has me increasing my interest to see about the Fleet Captain..........I like the competion aspec of games and it sounds interesting.

You know, before I tried playing cooperative games, I thought they would be dull, lacking the competitive element. Turns out I was wrong about that.

The first co-op game I played was Castle Panic. I picked it up despite it being cooperative, in large part because it also promised a competitive element. That is, if the players don't cooperate to some extent, everyone will lose (guaranteed!) but there is still a single winner of the game at the end. This requires to cooperate, somewhat, while trying to cooperate in such a way as to keep yourself on top. Too much trying to be on top and you get trampled by orcs, so look out!

I rapidly learned to enjoy the cooperative aspect of the game, as did most of our gaming group. We continue to play it regularly and it's whetted my appetite for more cooperative games.

ST:E is, thus, the second cooperative game I've picked up and while I've only played it once, I had a ball playing it.

If you tried coop games and didn't care for them, well, that's fine, everyone has their own cup of tea, right? But don't discount them because you think they'll be dull without competition. Give them a shot. You are competing, you're competing with the lay of the cards, and the guy who didn't put nearly enough Repair cards in the Energize deck. GAHH! : - )

incredible

06/20/2011, 22:16

How's the oreo bases???????

traitorarmor

06/20/2011, 22:51

If you tried coop games and didn't care for them, well, that's fine, everyone has their own cup of tea, right? But don't discount them because you think they'll be dull without competition. Give them a shot. You are competing, you're competing with the lay of the cards, and the guy who didn't put nearly enough Repair cards in the Energize deck. GAHH! : - )

Agreed. This has also made me interested in more co-op games as well.........but I would like my fleet of ships to blast the frack out of my opponents as well.....................is it wrong to mix sci-fi terms?:noid:

How's the oreo bases???????

Decent. Of the 6 dials all of them turned easily and no slipping..........and only 1 (the Enterprise) I couldn't take apart.

Suttkus

06/20/2011, 23:13

I will say right here and right now that I love the Champion-style bases (I still don't like calling them "oreo" dials, they don't look like Oreos already!). They are easily the easiest dials to turn in this history of the game, and the sticker alignment in our box was perfect (possibly related to the little nubbin on the edge of the sticker?)

They are quite a bit harder than the previous dials to get apart, or maybe I just haven't mastered the trick of the new dials yet. However, I'm hoping that they give me much less reason to ever need to take them apart!

Fredwood

06/21/2011, 10:13

Had a very Pandemic feel to the game which is another good Co-op game (if you're interested in them now). At first it all seems overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, it goes smoother.

Uhura's power is great, but Spock and Kirks are good as well, I rarely used Bones special power (I usually will play Bones until we get a Scotty so thats a bit disappointing), but because of his double medical, he usually was doing missions all by himself and passing with flying colors.

Biggest problem I found is time management, We tried to boost our shields and such as well at the beginning of the game, while having others go around and scout missions, but most of the "on or before turn X" missions we didn't pass on the preferred track, and doing the Rebel 3D mission is pretty rough. In the end we finished with 16s or more in Energy and politics and only a 15 in Rebels, with 2 days left and the Klingon ship destroyed.

Playing again tomorrow, should be fun.

traitorarmor

06/21/2011, 11:24

Had a very Pandemic feel to the game which is another good Co-op game (if you're interested in them now). At first it all seems overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, it goes smoother.

Thanks for pointing me to another co-op game.......I just might check that out.

We had the same feeling when we started..........it looked like it was going to be alot going on but the turn actions were taken care of after the first turn around the table and with the little card to help you calculate all of the bonuses for challanges the only thing we had to check the rules for was the ship battles........and even that was easy to understand.

Uhura's power is great, but Spock and Kirks are good as well, I rarely used Bones special power (I usually will play Bones until we get a Scotty so thats a bit disappointing), but because of his double medical, he usually was doing missions all by himself and passing with flying colors.

Uhura's special was golden and she also has the best Red # so yeah, she's probably going to be a lock for every single game...........doubtful that she'd be left off our away team when the expansion comes out.

Kirk got silly lucky to start with in our game so I'm not putting much stock in it. His two first cards were +2 crew cards(+4 to start with!). Then he beamed down to the planet to one of the ship upgrades, found a Command challange......beat it, picked up the upgrade. Bones picked up the other ship upgrade and moved into his space so Kirk could take them both up with one trip.......then Uhura pulled a bunch of 'battle bonus' cards and passed them to Kirk.....and he proptly started to show the Klingons what for. That is crazy luck. I need to see him when things are normal. Because of the way cards were drawn(positively) we never really needed to use his special until the very end where we opted to toss all of our crew on Spock to take care of the last couple of challanges.

Bones........he has a 14 for medical challanges. His special was nothing we planned on using but we found we were sharing spaces a lot (we liked the +2 bonus) and when we had a action to spare we used his power........I suppose this kept most of the crew on the planet more often then not.

We freely admit that we missused Spock(by ignoring his special) and that will be one of the things we focus on right from the get go next time.

I'm really interested to see what the expansion crew members do(Scotty able to heal the ship, possibly?)......and thankfully it will allow the away team to be increased to 5 memebers

Biggest problem I found is time management, We tried to boost our shields and such as well at the beginning of the game, while having others go around and scout missions, but most of the "on or before turn X" missions we didn't pass on the preferred track, and doing the Rebel 3D mission is pretty rough. In the end we finished with 16s or more in Energy and politics and only a 15 in Rebels, with 2 days left and the Klingon ship destroyed.

Yup. We got lucky with the cards and we stumbled onto 2 of the 3 locations within 2 stardates..........didn't find the polotics one early and I think we only managed to get the 3C ending........but we got 3As in the other 2 and destroyed the klingons so it's wasn't much of a loss. But that was on easy.......I hear that is rather significant.

We went out of our way to not look to much at the cards before our first play through so we didn't realize that some of the star date limits were as.....um....limiting as thery were. I think Spock will help with this in our next game.

Playing again tomorrow, should be fun.

Good luck, let us know how it goes! :classic:

traitorarmor

06/21/2011, 23:01

So got to play for the second time today..............this time we tried moving up to Lv2 Starship Captain.

We opted for the same character order (Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Bones) as it seemed to work well for us last time.

Things of note that happend this time;

- Moving up the difficulty to Starship Captain and having turns where beaming was not possible was a PAIN! It wasn't so much a monkey wrench as it was a King Kong wrench. As a result the stardate cards would, on occasion, dictate our turns every now and again.........taking out our frustrations on the Klingons, pulling Energize cards, or using sick bay were the stand by actions when we were stranded on the ship. As much as I disliked it.......it did make the game far more challangeing, which I suppose is the goal.:cheeky:

- Got a combination of horrible/great luck right out the gate. The first 4 stardate cards did not have any stardate icons..............but did have 3 Klingon attacks. Lucky for us after 3 long range battles we were both down 2 but we had already pulled a pair of 'repair the Enterprise' cards so we were felling OK about that. That could have been alot worse. :noid: All of that before we could get the +1 shields, +1 Long range, and +1 all weapons installed on the ship.

- After having it confirmed that you do not reshuffle the Energize cards we were more conservative about pulling them in general and using Uhura's special in perticular...............she participated in the challanges(being the active player) much more this time. We still dumped all of the battle applicible cards on one player(Kirk) and when the opening happend vs the Klingons we got rid of them quick..........ending in Kirk spending his full 4 actions for a turn to KO the enemy.

- We only went through about 1/2 the energise cards this time.

- We did run into two battle traps this time....one where we lost the Enterprises shields(no good at all! Took care of that right away before we got attacked.......again, quite lucky) and the other was the Ship could not move(no issue at all.............we left it alone until we had actions to spare.

- Lots more clicks of 'damage' this time around.....a combination of rolling more 7-1s (including a 14-2! :cry:) and Uhura pulling vicious stardate cards.......she actually made it to click #8.

- We finished on Stardate 20(Which I think was faster than last time...but we weren't sure), and had over 16 in all catagories before we added the +7/+7/+7 from the space battle. But we did only manage to get 1 3A completion this time..........and a few of the dated timelimits we challanged on the date on the card.

- We still didn't get much use out of Spocks special..............but he did manage to get to almost every challange we would have wanted him to try and also rolled rediculusly well...............lost of 5s which are better longtern than the 7-1, if you don't need the help.

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So after two games;

- The game is still great.
- Bones (despite being awesome in medical challanges!) seems to be the least useful to our away team......coupled with the fact that Spock's the one with the 11..........looks like Bones might be an early favorite to be replaced by some of the expansion characters when they come out.
- Klingons are still @ss-hats. :p
- Passing tokes (when in the same location) and having one person bring them up the the ship saves lots of time and when possible it the way to go.

Next up is Lv 3 Starfleet Admiral..wish us luck. :classic:

IceHot

06/22/2011, 15:43

I got back from Europe after an extra day Amsterdam layover on Sunday Night and found the game waiting at my doorstep.

Played it last night for the first time and loved it despite not being able to see clearly (eyes still massively tired).

Oreo bases were awesome.

We played 3-Player (random no Kirk) on BLUE. I think we Won, not sure about all the rules yet. Scored near top level, but the game was rather fun.

We did make one play mistake healing Bones with Bones special ability.

Not sure, what do you do with the Stardate cards on Blue when you run out (I presume you just reshuffle them which is what we did)?

Do you do the same wiith the Energize Cards?

We found that Spocks special power was awesome!! Allowing us to chart our strategy while the Enterprise got pounded into near oblivion with our bad rolls.

Also can you use/discard the (shield) discovery tokens after rolling for the Klingons attack to cause it to miss?

traitorarmor

06/22/2011, 16:08

We played 3-Player (random no Kirk) on BLUE. I think we Won, not sure about all the rules yet.

Interesting..............haven't heard of one of the characters sitting out yet.

Not sure, what do you do with the Stardate cards on Blue when you run out (I presume you just reshuffle them which is what we did)?

Yes, re-shuffle them.

Do you do the same wiith the Energize Cards?
Sadly no, no reshuffling the Energize cards.

We found that Spocks special power was awesome!! Allowing us to chart our strategy while the Enterprise got pounded into near oblivion with our bad rolls.

Gah! We need to learn to use him better. :disappointed:

Also can you use/discard the (shield) discovery tokens after rolling for the Klingons attack to cause it to miss?
Yes. In addition when you discarde on of the upgrades for the action you also get the regular bonus.....which hasn't come up for us yet but it suprised me.

Fredwood

06/23/2011, 22:35

Played 2 more today with a friend of mine who has experience with Co-op games, so explaining the rules was much quicker. First round we played Blue, and pretty much obliterated 3A on everything, and between moving and getting the special Enterprise attack we ended up on like +4 and aced everything.

We then moved onto Captain difficulty. While the game was more challenging we ended up hurting ourselves. Our Ship got down to its 10th click, but that was because for like the first 4 battles we rolled 7s while also getting hit, so we kept taking 2 clicks of damage. And if that wasn't enough, we'd often roll 7s on healing and sometimes 2 on challenges. There was an insane amount of 7s rolled it couldn't help but be funny. We dedicated about 3 or 4 turns trying to draw Repair cards (didn't realize you didn't reshuffle, but by the time we went through the deck we had already healed and didn't draw too much anyway), and got lucky when one of the supplemental missions was the one where you heal 2 clicks on your ship. Otherwise the game actually went pretty well for us, we only failed to get to the timed Energy mission, but because our ship was damaged right off the bat we didn't move up the orbital track so only got a 15 on the Rebels score. However we got 3 bonus points in both Politics and Energy to eek out a victory with 3 days left.

Also something else that was humorous was that Bones was the only one to draw the No Beaming this turn cards, felt apropos.

While I love Bones, aside from that first Rebels mission he really doesn't do much. I think Scotty if he has a Repair the enterprise power will be golden (And I imagine Transportation and Engineering Skills), I'm already eagerly anticipating the expansion. I know they'll have more supplemental cards, but I wonder if they'll add more main mission cards.

I'm still surprised you haven't figured out Spock yet. He's probably the most strategic piece (Uhura being the most useful) especially early on when he can uncover 2 or 3 places between looking and landing, he can avoid those trap cards, and find the next location card rather easily. Plus he does like a Third of the missions on his own, I think 2/3rds of 3As.

What are your guesses the new characters in the expansion will have?

I already guessed that Scotty would have Engineering and Transportation skills, with the Repair the ship special ability.

Figure Sulu will have Combat but I don't know what else with the available skills, and perhaps a special action that will allow you to move the ship once without initiating a combat. (probably too powerful)

Chekov is a tough one; maybe Analytics (for his affinity with Math). I have no clue what his special would be, maybe lower the required roll a specific mission.

traitorarmor

06/23/2011, 23:23

I'm still surprised you haven't figured out Spock yet. He's probably the most strategic piece (Uhura being the most useful) especially early on when he can uncover 2 or 3 places between looking and landing, he can avoid those trap cards, and find the next location card rather easily. Plus he does like a Third of the missions on his own, I think 2/3rds of 3As.

Yeah...I think it's just our mindset. We want to try to get the ship upgrades right away and as he's not Uhura he gets to play fetch............now if we pulled a 'no beaming' on his turn I'm sure it would dawn on us to use it but we seem to be playing it a bit more risky than need be. Granted we've only played twice and only really been trapped once in a place that mattered. I think as we continue to play and increase to the Admiral difficulty we'll start to see him shine more. Oh but he does tend to be the one we dump our crew on for challanges near the end................no problems with him and challanges.

Getting good use out of his special is still a work in progress. :p

What are your guesses the new characters in the expansion will have?

I already guessed that Scotty would have Engineering and Transportation skills, with the Repair the ship special ability.

Sounds right to me. His special should definetly have something to do with the ship battle..............repair would be my first guess as well.

Figure Sulu will have Combat but I don't know what else with the available skills, and perhaps a special action that will allow you to move the ship once without initiating a combat. (probably too powerful)
Agreed on Combat..........maybe stealth as his second skill? I was going to say navigation......but I don't think that's actually one of the skills. No idea at all on his special.

Chekov is a tough one; maybe Analytics (for his affinity with Math). I have no clue what his special would be, maybe lower the required roll a specific mission.

I actually have a decent idea for Chekov............from the movie (which the game is) I'd say communication(as funny as that is :p) and transportation.........although I agree that Analytics seems valid as well..................again going off one of his big scene in the movie being his transporting of Kirk and Sulu during free-fall he might have a transport related special. Being able to transport other away team members would be interesting.

Fredwood

06/24/2011, 15:53

The ability to beam other people would be a nice power. I brought up Pandemic before, and theres a role that has a similar design, and he's usually the most pivotal, if you draw him that is. So I like it.

WakandaMan

07/06/2011, 03:58

traitorarmor

07/06/2011, 09:15

I've played the game three times now. Easy was way too easy, but I'm finding Medium to be a good challenge. First time on Medium we lost on time....we were about to complete the final mission when a double stardate card came up which put us over! Ugh! Second time was a 2-player and we won but had to retreat the enterprise twice. It was on it's last click at the end of the game. The missions ended up in the middle section, so I definitely want to do better than that.

We found Medium to be a fun challange game where we actually had to think a bit more about what we were going to do...........especially with the 'no beaming this turn'. We're going to give it at least one more go on medium before we try it on hard.

I find Kirk's ability to be very handy. Being able to move crew with anyone is great. Spock usually does most of the missions with Kirk doing some and sometimes Uhura or McCoy. We haven't really focused on the ship battle but I think we should try that as I didn't think it was possible to win it given how much stronger the Klingons are....will have to try it that way. Obviously the buffs for the Enterprise are vital, but what else do you do to beat the Klingons? Just attack them more? It seems to me that they would just pound you back. I guess it depends on what cards you have.

We've been very lucky when it has come to the ship battles.

Our plan was something along these lines;

-Get both the ship upgrades onto Kirk(during the first turn) so his second turn he can beam up and save actions..........being able to freely give tokens to other players (in the same location) is great. Kirk beams down and picks up 1 of the enhancements.

-Uhura is going to only be using her special to draw cards. We've been lucky and have gotten the roll adjustment/heal ship/shield bonus cards early on...........if the first couple of cards are good we use her last action to beam down to a location to give either Bones or Spock the +2 for being there.

- Btw Bones and Spock, one of the two should be getting the second upgrade to Kirk (last game Spock got a no beaming card first turn :cry: ) with that done they start doing missions.

After that you just play it like you would early clix, as there are no value spikes.

Keeping in mind that if you don't have cards to help your attack from long range that 13:d-normal: the klingons have for the first 3 clicks are only going to be hit with 5 and 7-1s if you have the attack upgrade. Only hitting 34% of the time is a loosing proposition. When you get it to 12(assuming you have been able to keep your 8:bolt:) at least you are going to be hitting 50% of the time without help from cards.

:d-normal:= Shields, :bolt:= Long Range, :a-fist: =close range

The Klingon Battle Cruiser
:d-normal: 13 13 13 12 12 11 11 10 10 09 09 0
:bolt: 06 06 05 05 05 04 04 04 03 03 02 0
:a-fist: 9* 8* 8* 8* 7* 7*06 06 05 05 05 0
*= Critical Hit: When a close range attack hits by at least 3 deal 2 damage instead of 1.

The Enterprise
:d-normal: 09 09 08 08 08 07 07 06 06 05 05 0
:bolt: 07 07 06 06 06 05 05 05 04 04 03 0
:a-fist: 8* 7* 7* 7* 6* 6*05 05 04 04 04 0
*= Full Power to Phasers: When a close range attack hits by at least 3 move both ships one space to the right on the Orbital Track.

That has been working for us..............but we haven't had to deal with the Klingons rolling a lot of healing. I'm fairly sure that if they rolled enough healing nothing would help at all.

traitorarmor

07/06/2011, 18:12

Had a very Pandemic feel to the game which is another good Co-op game (if you're interested in them now). At first it all seems overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, it goes smoother.

Hey Fred,

So I went looking at some reviews about Pandamic as you mentioned it as the co-op game has been a nice change of pace. I'm looking to pick up another one(co-op game) after Fleet Captain.

Mind if I ask you some more about it?

WakandaMan

07/06/2011, 20:16

Keeping in mind that if you don't have cards to help your attack from long range that 13:d-normal: the klingons have for the first 3 clicks are only going to be hit with 5 and 7-1s if you have the attack upgrade. Only hitting 34% of the time is a loosing proposition. When you get it to 12(assuming you have been able to keep your 8:bolt:) at least you are going to be hitting 50% of the time without help from cards.

But the Klingons shoot back whenever you shoot them! How can you keep that 8 attack, unless perhaps you've got lots of Repair cards? I dunno, I can only assume you got really lucky with dice rolls. I find that the Klingons only really miss when they roll a 2 (or Repair obviously, but we don't want them doing that).

traitorarmor

07/06/2011, 20:58

But the Klingons shoot back whenever you shoot them! How can you keep that 8 attack, unless perhaps you've got lots of Repair cards? I dunno, I can only assume you got really lucky with dice rolls. I find that the Klingons only really miss when they roll a 2 (or Repair obviously, but we don't want them doing that).

It's a combination of repair/shield bonus/re-roll command cards and the shield +1. In the second game we played we did get fairly lucky in that the Klingons opened up with a healing roll and we managed to roll the 7-1 required for the hit and we had a repair card on Kirk who was going to be heading back to the ship at the start of turn 2. Not going to lie, that was fortunate.

At long range the Klingons are attacking 6 vs 10 (with the shield upgrade) so 50 % of the time.......which is better but still isn't good. If you can manage to get the Klingons down to click 3 it becoms 34 % and on click 6 it becomes 17% (only on a 6 roll).

So it comes down to being able to hit and avoid being hit/repairing damage for about 3 battles.....if you can do that then it becomes far more managable.

Next time we play (medium again) we're going to try to not focus on the ship battle and see how that goes. :noid: It's a little odd as destroying the Klingons is worth +7/+7/+7 for a total of 21 points which is a very large amount and definetly worth the effort..............but we want to see how the game plays with different stratagies.

As for cards we do tend to use them quite heavily for the first turn or 2..........Uhura spends most of (if not all of her first 2 turns) passing out cards......Ship combat to Kirk and either bones or Spock depending on who could better use the crew.........and most of our players pull at least 1 card each for their first turn or two. When we found out that you don't reshuffle the Energise cards we were alot more sparing about drawing them but still did so more heavily for the first few turns. With the 'no beaming' in play sometimes our turns are dictated a bit more............such as 1st Turn Spock getting 4 actions, no beaming and desiding to take 4 cards.

That's just how we did it.............some of the others might have differnet advice.

WakandaMan

07/06/2011, 21:07

Sounds good. I'm planning to play again tonight so I will suggest to the group that we try and take out the Klingons quick (but it will depend on cards of course). We have always focused on the missions because of the time sensitive ones - but if you can at least get to 2a on each then 3a and 3b give you the same points in each, so getting 3a isn't as important.

WakandaMan

07/08/2011, 02:34

Okay, so I played a 3 player game last night. We used Spock, Uhura and McCoy, which was a mistake in 3-way as there are a lot of missions that Kirk would be best to do, and not a lot for McCoy, but we still managed to do really well for one reason-

WE TOOK OUT THAT DARN KLINGON BATTLECRUISER! It was great. It did take a couple of strategic retreats at times, as the Klingons are much better in close, but with the right cards and getting the boosts as quick as possible we took it down.

What was more of a problem was the Stardate timer, as we had only down one mission on each when the timer was 2/3rds done, so we had to really rush to complete them. We had it so that all three of us were on Enterprise with two days to go on the timer and the one mission left that was very Spock-focused. Spock flipped the stardate card to start his turn and got..... 1 Stardate and No Beaming! So Spock spent his turn giving me all the helpful crew he could (I was Uhura) and on my turn I didn't get a Stardate card (phew!)beamed down and managed to pass the mission. Very close!

Because we took down the Klingons and got the Enterprise up to +5, all the missions were inside the top zone. Nice!

traitorarmor

07/08/2011, 09:45

Because we took down the Klingons and got the Enterprise up to +5, all the missions were inside the top zone. Nice!

Nice one!

I brought the game to our Battle royal night(Thurs) at the LCBS and asked if a few players wanted to give it a try..............they did.

So it was;

Kirk (Marmots)
Uhura (myself, TraitorArmor)
Bones (RevoluSean)
Spock (Canucker21)

With only myself having played before. We rolled for roles and I won so I took Uhura becasue while she might be the MVP of the away party she is not usually doing very much herself.

So while we made an effort to upgrade our ship early, we took more time doing it......add to that all of the repair cards were spread out amoung the players so lots of beaming to help the ship out. Also the Klingons were a major pain.............the other 3 players said if/when they play again fully upgrading the ship was the first thing they wanted to do. :p

Sadly we didn't get a chance to finish as the stor was closing but the game was heading in a very good direction............Spock had +11 crew(as we crew dumped on him), Kirk had a decent collection of Battle cards(and the Klingons were finally off their 13 defence....I think our ship was still in the top 3 clicks........I might have that wrong though) and we had completed both the Yellow(3A) and the Purple(3B) missions and had already completed ......I think the first stage of Green(2A, was next I think) was completed.....one more turn and Spock would have completed it though and we were only at Stardate 17-ish.

Had lots of customers asking and looking in at several points so the game took a little longer............I've been asked to bring the game in again this weekend. So we might get to try it again soon.

Fredwood

07/08/2011, 11:08

Hey Fred,

So I went looking at some reviews about Pandamic as you mentioned it as the co-op game has been a nice change of pace. I'm looking to pick up another one(co-op game) after Fleet Captain.

Mind if I ask you some more about it?

Yeah, it takes a bit to set up. Basically you and your friends are playing as a Disease containment team. There's 4 different viruses, represented by 4 different colors. Blue is for the virus located in NA and Europe, Red for the Asia Virus, Yellow for virus sweeping Africa and South America, and Black for Indochina and Australia. The map is split up into regions much like Risk but the regions are cities. Adjacent cities connect, and over distances of water there is certain cities that connect to others. At the start of the game you draw 9 outbreak cards (a card with a region that indicates where another case has been found) the first 3 get 3 cubes of the corresponding color, the next 3 get 2, and the last 3 get 1. At the start of every players turn, depending where on Pandemic time chart (basically the further into the game the more you draw), you draw a number of outbreak cards and place cubes on those squares. Each city can only have 3 cubes, but once you'd add another cube to the city an outbreak occurs, you move the timer down the track and a cube of the outbreaked virus is placed in every connecting city, signifying the spread of the virus. So if Paris has 3 cases already when Berlin has an outbreak, it would cause an outbreak as well (can't cause an outbreak in a city thats already in an outbreak so you don't get stuck in a loop), setting off a chain reaction. After so many outbreaks the game ends ( I think 8 or 9) and I guess the planet dies.

You and your friends are trying to control the spread of the viruses while trying to cure them, once you cure all 4 viruses you win. In order to cure it there's a second deck that each of the players draw from, most of these cards are a city card with the corresponding color, some of these help you move across the map, but in order to cure the virus one player needs 5 of the same color to turn in at the home office (Atlanta, or any other Home office you decide to build). Once you cure it, the current disease cubes on the board don't go away, but when you draw your outbreak cards you don't add new cubes of that color. However in this deck there's a few epidemic cards, that when you draw it you reshuffle the start of the turn cards and draw a city for an outbreak. So you're always up against it.

There is a number of roles that each have different abilities that aide you in the mission. The thing is that the roles are randomized at the beginning of the game so its not always the optimal choice. For example the Medic can take an action to cure all the cases of the virus in a city (normally you must spend an action to cure one case), and once you cure a virus, the medic can cure the city just by entering it. The Scientist only needs 4 cards of the corresponding color to cure the virus. The Dispatcher can move other players during his turn and build Offices. Theres one that gets 5 actions a turn instead of 4. There is one role with a larger hand size. Theres another one that gets to look at the next outbreak card (so you can plan accordingly) I believe there's a helicopter pilot that makes traveling easier, so there's about 12 or so of them and each game is very different depending on what you draw for your role.

There's also an expansion where one player plays as a Biological Terrorist spreading another virus, I've not played it so I don't know how that works.

traitorarmor

07/08/2011, 11:37

Oh forgot to mention...........Canucker21, who was playing Spock last night made good use of his special last night. Much better than the other group I play with.......we managed to skip a 'ship' trap that would been all kinds of suck. :nervous:

===========================================

Yeah that sounds kind on awesome.............thanks for taking the time to type all that up and for pointing me in that direction. :classic:

Yeah, it takes a bit to set up. Basically you and your friends are playing as a Disease containment team. There's 4 different viruses, represented by 4 different colors. Blue is for the virus located in NA and Europe, Red for the Asia Virus, Yellow for virus sweeping Africa and South America, and Black for Indochina and Australia. The map is split up into regions much like Risk but the regions are cities. Adjacent cities connect, and over distances of water there is certain cities that connect to others. At the start of the game you draw 9 outbreak cards (a card with a region that indicates where another case has been found) the first 3 get 3 cubes of the corresponding color, the next 3 get 2, and the last 3 get 1. At the start of every players turn, depending where on Pandemic time chart (basically the further into the game the more you draw), you draw a number of outbreak cards and place cubes on those squares. Each city can only have 3 cubes, but once you'd add another cube to the city an outbreak occurs, you move the timer down the track and a cube of the outbreaked virus is placed in every connecting city, signifying the spread of the virus. So if Paris has 3 cases already when Berlin has an outbreak, it would cause an outbreak as well (can't cause an outbreak in a city thats already in an outbreak so you don't get stuck in a loop), setting off a chain reaction. After so many outbreaks the game ends ( I think 8 or 9) and I guess the planet dies.

What happens when the colors mix....... 3 at a location still causes an outbreak I guess but is it the color that would have been added that travels to the other locations........is that right?

There is a number of roles that each have different abilities that aide you in the mission. The thing is that the roles are randomized at the beginning of the game so its not always the optimal choice. For example the Medic can take an action to cure all the cases of the virus in a city (normally you must spend an action to cure one case), and once you cure a virus, the medic can cure the city just by entering it. The Scientist only needs 4 cards of the corresponding color to cure the virus. The Dispatcher can move other players during his turn and build Offices. Theres one that gets 5 actions a turn instead of 4. There is one role with a larger hand size. Theres another one that gets to look at the next outbreak card (so you can plan accordingly) I believe there's a helicopter pilot that makes traveling easier, so there's about 12 or so of them and each game is very different depending on what you draw for your role.

That sounds both awesome and cringe worthy. I approve. :laugh:

There's also an expansion where one player plays as a Biological Terrorist spreading another virus, I've not played it so I don't know how that works.

From what I saw it looks like it has some simularities to the bad guy in Scotland Yard (hiding your movements, keeping track on paper.....ect) seems like adding that in would make the game very different................depending on your play group that could be good I suppose. It doesn't sound that appealing compared to the game without him. Options are always nice I suppose. :shrug:

Oh, can you tell me anything about the purple virus (mutant strain....I think)........all the reviews and clips I saw explained most of the game and elements but just mentioned that the purple virus existed and not much else. :confused:

But yeah, thanks again for pointing me in this direction I might have to pick this up soon. Rep incoming.

Fredwood

07/08/2011, 11:51

What happens when the colors mix....... 3 at a location still causes an outbreak I guess but is it the color that would have been added that travels to the other locations........is that right?

I don't quite remember, I know they can bleed into other cities that don't normally have that color. I think what caused the outbreak gets spread, so if a Red virus outbreak spreads into a Yellow city it would cause an outbreak of Red there as well. I could be wrong but yeah it would still cause an outbreak

Oh, can you tell me anything about the purple virus (mutant strain....I think)........all the reviews and clips I saw explained most of the game and elements but just mentioned that the purple virus existed and not much else. :confused:

The purple blocks is the Bio-terrorist strain or the mutated virus, so I'm not sure how it plays out, but that's where the purple comes from.

WakandaMan

07/09/2011, 02:13

Expeditions reminds me a lot of Battlestar Galactica, but without any players secretly being evil Cylons. The secret traitors adds a very different dimension to the game as accusation tend to fly about and a lot of people enjoy that. While I find it fun sometimes, I think I prefer the more straightforward nature of Expeditions.

Shadows over Camelot is another good one that is cooperative, but with one potential traitor in the players. It's a Knights of the Round table themed game. I like Shadows, because sometimes there isn't a traitor and sometimes there is. Battlestar will always have at least one and sometimes 2 or 3!

m0rpheus

07/09/2011, 06:34

I second (or third or whatever) the "Pandemic is an awesome game" theme.

And I'd like to second WakandaMan's Shadows Over Camelot.

Personally my favorite co-op is still Arkham Horror. A co-op based game where you try to stave off the horrors of the HP Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos.

ThorKnigh83

07/14/2011, 10:20

I also really like the LotR board game and it too is cooperative. It is also quite challenging without adding the expansions into it. The first expansion adds in the black riders and some other difficult challenges. Just playing the base game I have found is hard enough to get to mount doom before sauron overtakes you. I suggest it for people that are finding they enjoy Co-Op board games.

WakandaMan

07/14/2011, 20:39

Played another round last night. 4 players, I was Kirk. Played on Medium (still haven't dared to try hard)

We got smashed by the Klingon cruiser. It kept hittings it's attacks early and we kept losing. Also got done by the Saboteur at the worst time once it got into close with us.

We ended up with the Enterprise on it's last clix with a couple of missions still to complete. We quickly squeaked them out but we had to retreat a few times to survive so we got -6 on everything. So we won, but not a good win at all.

I'm convinced the only way to win well is to win the space battle.

Scizorsfury

07/15/2011, 01:34

Played this tonight and our group of 4 lost when the Klingon ship killed us...We were on "Yellow Alert" this game and so close to winning.
Does the Klingon ship get to attack back every time you give an action to shoot it? Also Spock seems very pointless at times..except for scouting out where the "trap" missions are on the board.

WakandaMan

07/15/2011, 02:09

Played this tonight and our group of 4 lost when the Klingon ship killed us...We were on "Yellow Alert" this game and so close to winning.

One thing I've noticed playing on medium is it is usually close one way or the other (either by stardate or the ship almost getting destroyed)

Does the Klingon ship get to attack back every time you give an action to shoot it?

Yes, which makes it seem like it's not worth attacking, however since you attack first you can weaken the klingons for when they retaliate so it can be worth it. Best to attack if you have the Surprise Attack card or the Boost Shields card (or both!).

Also Spock seems very pointless at times..except for scouting out where the "trap" missions are on the board.

I think Spock is the best one for most of the missions, or at least in my experience. I guess it depends how you do on the mission tree, but for most of the high end missions he is the best one (2A,3A and 3B missions). He also has the best stats out of everyone.