Space Base Board Game Review, Board of Honours. Our brief overview of game mechanics, then our review based on theme, gameplay, mechanics, components, replayability, comparison with other similar games, and other factors

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Transcript for this video:

Stella:                    Oh hello there graduates. Welcome to Meeple University. Today's lecture is for Space Base Board Game. Games about collecting ships and rolling dice to engine build your way to victory. We're going to take you brief overview first, then we'll give you our initial thought on the game coming up.

Stella:                    I'm Stella here, at Meeple University we do a variety of quality board game videos such as how to play, overview, review, play through, and vlog. So I'm glad you've found us here. If you're new here please consider subscribing our channel and hit the bell button to be notified when we post new videos. Now let's get to the brief overview.

Tarrant:                In the Space Base, players play as competing commodores attempting to assemble the great fleet of spaceships. Each player commands a fleet of ships numbered from one to 12. On each turn, a player rolls two dice and then activates the blue ability either on the one ship corresponding to the sum of the dice or on the two ships corresponding to the individual die rolls. This could result in the player gaining money, income, victory points, or some other text effect.

Tarrant:                Then the player can spend any money gain a new and more powerful ship which replaces the old ship in it's numbered slot. All money is spent at once regardless of the ships price which makes a player's income a critical feature in his or her starting financial position for each round. Ships that a player has replaced are not discarded but are rotated around and then slipped and stacked under the player's player board to provide new red colored abilities.

Tarrant:                On every other player's turn, a player may again activate either one or two of the columns on his or her player board activating all of the red powers above. This means that as the game wears on players will be gaining more and more passive benefits on other player's turns and enacting more and more powerful abilities on their own turns.

Tarrant:                The game will escalate quickly as the more powerful level two and three ships enter the game. The game is ultimately a race and when one player reaches 40, whoever has the highest score at the end of that round wins the game.

Stella:                    We hope that the brief overview gives you some overall idea on how Space Base plays. Now onto our review. The theme of the game Space Base is that you are commodores or fleet of ships. Collecting ships to try to get more income on your turn and your partner's turn.

Stella:                    I won't talk about the team a lot here because when I actually play Space Base the mechanics are so interesting that I kind of forget about the theme. I do like the components and the art of the cartoon type artwork of the spaceship. I think it reminds me a little bit like an old cartoon series called Roger Ramjet and a game called Space Cadets.

Stella:                    Artwork is pretty good, serves its purpose. What I like about it is that the slim size card. Although it might cause a little problem for sleeving your cards, the building games like this could use these types of cards because a lot of them would probably need big table space as you build your engine. But in Space Base the way the cards lay out on the table is nicely stacked, cards are small, and when you turn the cards around to the passive income side it doesn't require a lot of space. It might be a little fiddly, but it definitely is resolve the issue of needing a lot of table space.

Stella:                    I'm going to talk about Space Base's mechanics and gameplay now. It is an elegant, top bloc building, engine building game. Every turn, whether your own or opponents, you just basically, at least I am anyway, just excited to expect what free stuff I can possibly get this turn. There's almost always something for everyone as long as you have built your passive income section, which is the top part of the board. Try to spread your income towards all dice rolls as well.

Stella:                    It is Machi Koro game version two I think, where it eliminates the mechanics that I don't really enjoy in Machi Koro like attacking the opponents. Although there is a card that does this in Space Base, but it's not as mainly as in Machi Koro.

Stella:                    Space Base is quite well balanced and not too heavily relying on certain dice roll either. For example, with the arrow cards that pointing to the left and right gives you better selection of certain actions. You can build this slowly and then escalate towards the end of the game where you have built your income or combinations of income and something else, and you can start buying the end of game spaceship that gives you straight victory points. This element is also nice because it gives you a reliable way of turning your income and money into victory points where other cards level one and two and three don't have that.

Stella:                    Game length's pretty quick. Every turn's pretty quick, with exception of small amounts of cards that have controls and not too icon friendly. But in general, the game's pretty quick. Starts with rolling the dice every turn and see how you go afterwards. Game length is really, it depends on the play of the people you play as well. Two to five players, probably a little bit longer and I feel like probably three to four players is a good amount. So you have three to four, well two to three income per round rather than back and forth for two players.

Stella:                    I find Space Base is highly replayable. There's so many combination that you can do in this game. Just make you want to play the game again after you finish regardless whether you win or lose. It's one of those games, I guess it's most top bloc building makes you want to try different combinations each time.

Stella:                    The designer of Space Base is John Clair which is the designer of Mystic Vale, one of my favorite tech building game. The similarities that when you build your engine in Mystic Vale there's also a bit of luck based on the cards that you draw. Mystic Vale is more solitaire though, while Space Base, well technically solitaire on your turn. But you're responding not on other players doing, you just responding to what other players rolls.

Stella:                    Another game by the same designer is Edge of Darkness. That was on Kickstarter and at the time this video's filming it is yet to be fulfilled. Other games that are I think similar to this as I mentioned earlier it is pretty much like Machi Koro but taking less table space and more balanced and less relying on the dice roll. Maybe Machi Koro plays better if you don't use all of the expansions at once which that was what we did and resolving the stealing action on Machi Koro could also take a little bit of time and little bit more tedious and trying to resolve your action and buy the cards before other steals it, where you don't have that in Space Base.

Stella:                    If you like or sort of like Machi Koro then I will recommend Space Base. I still like Machi Koro by the way, just that this one is quicker and it has more certain and quicker and game trigger which triggers the game ends when's somebody hits 40 victory points.

Stella:                    Another game is Gizmos where you can build your engine and trying to chain your actions together. Although Gizmos does not have activations on other players turn. The type of gamers that you play Space Base with, I would think are casual gamers, family, even heavier strategy gamers would enjoy this. It is light enough but has some strategies and dice manipulation that have your strategy gamers may enjoy this as filler games as well.

Stella:                    When we play Space Base we really like. We all want to play a games after we just finish it. Just want to see what else we can do, what combination we can put together. It has that good feeling after playing it. Hopefully that makes sense because this is engine building so you know every turn seems to be a little bit efficient or hopefully, you're hoping that will be efficient. So it has that sort of feeling when we playing it.

Stella:                    And that's our assessment of Space Base. We hope that you find this lecture useful. If you enjoyed this video please let us know by clicking the like button. Read your questions of feedback in the comment sections below. You can also join our Facebook group Meeple University Unity to share your love of board games. And if you want to be one of the first one to be notified or our new video please subscribe to us if you haven't already done so and hit the bell button so you get notifications when we post new videos.

Stella:                    Space Base board game, passed with honours.