15 at the UNO Park Community Center for an evening of SPACE games.

Welcome back Kelsey and Lauren!

Our March 5 session will be a request night. Kindly include games you want to lead and/or play on the RSVP form. March 12 will be a Food, Drink and Hospitality themed session. Our March 26 session will honor the Board Game Geek Hall of Fame games.

IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean & Wendy, Tony & Rachel, Tim, Armando, Nicole, Reimi, Julie, Lauren, Kelsey, Rob, Danny

MLEM: Space Agency (led by Tim) Reiner Knizia’s 2023 push your luck family exploration board game featuring CATS in space. Players step into the shoes of fearless captains of cosmic expeditions. These intrepid felines have long conquered the Earth with their unmatched bravery, and now they’ve set their sights on conquering the entire cosmos. Players take the helm of a cosmic rocket, reach for the stars, and trust their cat instincts to decide when to bail out before things go up in flames. Fame and admiration from the entire meowing world await the most exceptional leader of the feline space agency. The board is a huge playmat with feline decorations.

Powerships (led by K-ban) 2018 revision of 2008’s Corne van Moorsel’s Powerboats, where players are spaceship pilots trying to maneuver their powership quickly, while rounding three space buoys and finally landing on the finish planet. As with Powerboats, players are trying to find and navigate that perfect path using 3-sided dice to control speed and inertia. Obstacles like planets, space dust and special spaces add some challenges and spice.

Wormholes (led by Sean) 2022 Peter McPherson design where players collect passengers from planets, each of whom have specific destinations they aim to reach. However, this pick-up-and-deliver process can be quite different once you establish wormholes between different points of the galaxy — and like any good business, your service can be used by other players…at the cost of a few points. This is a pickup and delivery game set in space, combined with a logistics puzzle. 

Cosmic Encounter (led by K-ban) my all-time favorite game dating back to1977 when taught to me at the first session I ever played with Herb & Lynn Levy. Players represent alien races that are seeking to colonize onto five foreign worlds. To accomplish this, they make challenges against other players and enlist the aid of interested parties. But alien powers, which are unique to each race, give players ways to bend or outright break some rule in the game. The game continues until one player occupies five planets in other systems to win. Shared victories are possible and a player need not occupy one’s own system to win. We had a four-way shared victory among The Loser (can declare upsets), The Glutton (gets extra cards) the Clone (can keep discard) and Hoarder (has an extra hand of 1-time use cards) over the Rebirth (rewards with cards for ships going to the warp) and the Zombie (doesn’t lose ships to the warp and can make deals). I love teaching this timeless classic game and made 2 new converts in the process.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15/cosmic-encounter

GPS (led by Tony) 2020 fifteen-minute filler where players are launching GPS satellites into space. They need to orbit the earth in the correct order, but player’s launch windows are limited. Players can only launch satellites where the spinner points each turn. It is their job to pick the best satellite for each launch to get their birds in order before their opponents. This is a re-theming of ‘Finito’ from Schmidt Spiel’s Easy Play series.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/305984/gps

Tiny Epic Galaxies (led by Tim) 2015 Scott Almes design acclaimed to be the best of the ‘Tiny Little” series with dice rolling, card drafting and a push your luck aspect.  Each player controls a galactic empire, aiming to expand their influence by acquiring highly contested planets and increasing their cosmic armada. The game revolves around an innovative dice-rolling combo mechanic. The number of dice you roll is determined by the strength of your galaxy. Each die is engraved with symbols representing the various actions players can take, such as moving a spaceship, increasing one’s culture or energy resources, or advancing political or economic influence over newly discovered planets. Through careful planning, players must make the most out of their turn, taking the available actions in whichever order they consider most beneficial. But be careful, as each opponent can choose to follow each action you take by expending valuable resources. This means that it can always be one’s turn, even when it is someone else’s turn! Players will colonize new planets throughout the game, thereby earning victory points and accumulating special abilities which they can activate for their galactic empire. Careful spending of resources will ensure the fastest growth of one’s empire, while allowing players to receive the biggest possible pay‐off from the actions taken.

Steve