Amazing Space Venture

Amazing Space Venture!! This was one of the games I voted for back when Jim put out the call in August to board members for their top 3 games to be added! I only discovered Amazing Space Venture last year when a friend of mine won a copy at his local comic shop. We sat down, and played based on how my friend thought the game was supposed to be played. It wasn’t a very pretty sight, we left the table with a “meh” feeling and just may have left it at that. Thankfully, another friend and I decided to take the rules out and read them for the heck of it. Discovering we were playing completely wrong, we ran the game back and it’s been a staple at our gaming table ever since!

Amazing Space Venture is a game for 2 to 4 players (4 being optimal), each player starts the game in their quadrant of space on their own home world with their little Star-T spaceship that looks like the lunar lander. The object of the game is to score the most points by the time the space tile deck runs out of tiles. You then start to explore the galaxy and it’s various planets and star systems by playing space tiles onto the game board grid. This mechanic makes for a completely new and random board design every time, which increases replay value tremendously. In an effort to score points, you can deploy space probes into star clusters, construct space stations to help you traverse deep space, build new star ships, discover new worlds and screw your neighbor over royally! The game lends itself nicely to politicking outside the game, which if you’ve read my reviews (and thank you for reading) you know is a favorite of mine. Feel free to open up a time warp to save your neighbor from impending doom or decide to have a black hole open up right on top of their home world ala Nero in the new Star Trek! When you really, really want to screw someone over with long term ill effects long after the game board is back in the closet… feel free to drop the Electromagnetic Net… 😉 Guaranteed to hold starships and grudges indefinitely!

The game mechanics allow for everyone to get in on the action during each players turn by playing life form and environment cards on the worlds they wish to discover which can add or subtract to the total amount of points they can score for that discovery. Outside of the life form and environment cards you can play, there’s the meat and potatoes of the game, the red special action cards. There’s all sorts of cards that let you tackle the situations you face in the game and choosing when to play them is as important as discovering worlds for points. Case in point, if you’re ever playing the game at my house and my wife is playing, try not to destroy her worlds or ships… she tends to dabble in her own quadrant minding her own business, but when you cross her, holy sleeping dragon! 🙂

From a production stand point the game has a very 50s sci-fi look and feel to it, which I feel adds to it’s appeal. The components are well crafted with high quality cards that can take the wear and tear of being shuffled and played with frequently. The game board is on a thicker heavy set card stock and can take a beating. The card clarifications in the rules are helpful but even then it leaves some things up to debate, so it’s best to come to a consensus and move on. The card names and flavor text are very funny as well.

The game’s flaws are minor, one which isn’t really a “flaw” per se, is the limit to 4 players. I would love to include more people into the game somehow so we can actually play this at family gatherings without excluding most of the people there. The other, which is why I gave the game 3 stars for “Easy to Learn”, is the sometimes confusing timing on card plays. A little logic can take care of most of that and when you’re not sure, again, just come to a consensus at the table, make a small note of it in your rule book and move on.

This is one of my absolute favorite games and is always one of the first options when the question “So what do you want to play?” comes up at my house. I highly recommend it!