I’m a little tired today. Still recovering from our marathon game session on Saturday which went until 1:30 in the morning (I didn’t get to sleep until 3). What did we play? Well, it’s in the title but read on!
If you’ve been a faithful Monday Blog reader, you may have gleaned that I’m a big board game fan. If you haven’t, then let me state clearly: I am a big board game fan. I could easily play board games several days a week if not for the fact that board games usually require a) time and b) other players. When these two factors allow for it, I’m, if you’ll pardon the expression, game.
When compared to your average Joe, I’d say I’ve tried a considerable number of board games. (Compared to your average hardcore gamer, the number would be somewhat more modest.) There have been hits (Quarriors, Mice and Mystics, Krosmaster) and there have been misses (Android, The Agents, City of Thieves). There have been games that I liked but which didn’t go over well with the other players I was with (Munchkin Quest) and games which the other players liked but I could live without seeing ever again (A Touch of Evil). Today, I’m here to talk about a game that was a hit with both me and the players I introduced it to: Firefly: The Game.
Firefly: The Game is based on Firefly: The Series (imagine that), which has been featured in mash-ups on this very site. At its core it’s a space-western. The crew of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity go from job to job trying to make their way through life as best they can. In the game, each player is captain of his or her own Firefly-class ship. They have to navigate through the ‘verse to meet up with contacts who’ll give them jobs to do and use what money they can scrape together to hire crew members who will help them complete these jobs, all the while trying to stay in the Alliance’s good books (or at least not get caught while in their bad books) and just plain staying away from the Reavers. In this, the game does a really good job of capturing the feel of the TV show.
There are a number of scenarios in the base game which will define the victory conditions as well as the special rules in place during the scenario. The scenario we chose (at random) was the most straightforward: Anyone with $15,000 can declare final turn. Whoever has the most money at the end of the final turn wins. Illegal jobs pay a $1000 extras and nobody can take jobs from the Alliance (where most of the legal jobs come from).
There are different factors involved in choosing which jobs to take on. Do they pay well? Can’t keep crew on if you can’t pay them or buy upgrades. Are they illegal? You might end up with a Warrant put out on your ship. Are they immoral? You risk upsetting certain members of your crew. If you’re looking to make a lot of cash in a hurry, that usually means illegal and/or immoral jobs so plan accordingly. Don’t hire moral crew if you’re going to do immoral jobs. In my case, the captain I chose was moral, so regardless of which crew I hired, I was going to avoid taking on immoral jobs so bring on moral crew members! For the record, the game does feature immoral legal jobs as well as illegal jobs that aren’t tagged as being immoral. This fits with the show. Mal would take on illegal jobs so long as he could justify them. He walked off a job stealing Alliance supplies when he realized the cargo was medicine destined for a town in the middle of an epidemic.
There’s a variety of upgrades and gear you can purchase. Some gear is very situational in its use (like Fancy Duds) but you’ll be sorry you don’t have them when you need to go to a Fancy Shindig to pick up your cargo. Other things are no-brainers. What? On top of being required equipment for certain jobs, this Fake ID gives me a bonus on all Negotiating rolls? Yes please!
When picking your crew, you’ll be looking at what skill set they bring to the table versus what cut they’ll be looking for when you complete a job. A special ability is never a bad thing either. You can only have six crew members (including the captain) unless you buy the appropriate ship upgrade so a good mix of skills can be critical. Stocking up on hired guns won’t be very helpful in a job that requires negotiating. Some crew members are moral which can be a factor when making certain decisions and some have a warrant out on them which will make your ship an outlaw vessel, more likely to attract the attention of the Alliance.
If I had one concern about the game it’s that I felt there was a lack of player interaction. The base game includes few ways that a player can directly affect another player’s success. You can: steal disgruntled crew members away from them if you’re in the same sector or move the Alliance and Reaver ships when directed to do so by Nav cards. You can also trade with other players, but generally both sides are looking to get ahead so you’re unlikely to hinder the other player’s success. In the case of the Reaver ship, it starts in a corner of the map that has no mission-related destinations and therefore can be easily avoided unless the players agree to move it somewhere where it’ll be relevant. But since doing so means that you’re just as likely to fall prey to the Reavers yourself, in our game the Reaver ship just stayed in the uninhabited corners of the map for almost the entire game.
The game turns play out fairly quickly so a lack of player interaction isn’t a deal-breaker. One of the things that takes the longest to do is consider the available jobs, gear and crew and players can do that while waiting for their next turn. Once we’d gotten the hang of things, there were times when Wash’s Dinosaur (the active player token) passed from one person to the next in less than 10 seconds.
The game can be brutal but there’s still hope to recover. I was in the running to win the game until I rolled a one that killed my entire crew (if only I’d had a Transport!) requiring me to go on a spending spree to replace them. Even then I ended up finishing third thanks to some late well-paying contracts.
On the subject of Wash’s Dinosaur, I think this is the first time I played a game with an active player token where the token was actually passed on from player to player. Usually, the token is forgotten by the third player’s turn and never brought up again. But in this case, players would actually ask to be handed the dinosaur on their turn just because it’s a dinosaur and dinosaurs are cool.
The game’s second expansion (out now) looks to add more player interaction and the upcoming third expansion promises a change for the Reavers, which addresses my concerns with the game. I’m not a fan of needing an expansion to fix fundamental problems with a game (Order of the Stick: The Quickening, I’m looking at you). But in this case, it’s a case of adding more options to a game I already think is pretty solid, so I’m in.
Firefly: The Game is a board game for four people and my main gaming group has five players. I had to wait until there was a session where one of us couldn’t make it to bring the game. We all loved it and look forward to playing it again. Fortunately, expansions and promo pieces can bring the number of players up to seven so we won’t have to wait for another missing player to do so. Two enthusiastic paws up (out of two)!
In closing, thanks go to Fab for giving me such an awesome Christmas present.
Questions about the game? Ask away in the comments!
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