Star Trek Expeditions
Designed by award winning game designer Reiner Knizia, Star Trek Expeditions is a cooperative mission game for 1-4 players.
You take on the roles of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura responding to an invitation from the Nibian government to open discussions about the planet joining the United Federation of Planets. However, now that the Enterprise has arrived, you find the President of Nibia less happy to see you than the invitation suggested, and Mr. Spock has detected evidence that another starship may have recently been in orbit.
Lead your away teams made up of crew and resources from the Enterprise to solve the major story arcs plus key side missions before the Klingon Fleet arrives or the lone cloaked Klingon Battle cruiser in orbit destroys the Enterprise and her crew. Three difficulty levels, random side missions, player strategies and a unique branching mission tree ensure every game will be a unique memorable experience.
User Reviews (4)
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In mid-2010, WizKids acquired a license to publish games in the Star Trek universe. One year later, Star Trek: Expeditions was unleashed upon the Origins hordes. For fans of Star Trek – in particular the 2009 J.J. Abrams effort – there is a lot to like here. For gamers there is a serviceable co-op which, like many Knizia games, kind of boils down to a math exercise.
The player(s) can pick up one of four characters – Kirk, Spock, McCoy or Uhura – and move them around to different areas of the game board planet, or beam them up and down from the Enterprise. The planet has missions to challenge the player and artifacts to collect. Aboard the Enterprise, characters can heal or take the ship into combat against a Klingon vessel in orbit. The object is to move through three branching phases of three different storyline tracks and rack up as many points as possible, before the ship is destroyed or the game timer runs out.
As a WizKids game, one would probably expect Clix to be involved somehow, and sure enough, the box has miniatures for each of the characters, the Enterprise, and the Klingon ship. The Clix for the ships note their firepower and shield strength, and for the characters their strength in the three different types of missions they have to solve: command, science and operations, I believe. A lot of the pieces on the board are thick cardboard and the regular cards for the crew seem sturdy enough; this game will endure regular wear and tear pretty well.
This game has a lot of qualities that hit my soft spots: co-operative gameplay, Trek theme, good bits. But I’m also reminded a bit of the Fantasy Flight game Marvel Heroes. I broke that game out for my small gaming group one night, spent an hour stumbling through the rules and another hour through the first round. Typical Fantasy Flight. But the thing I remember was one player in particular going, when do we get to punch stuff? Well, you don’t, really; you just put your pretty miniature on the board, we play some cards and you roll those dice to punch. He was deferential but didn’t seem overly impressed.
Expeditions doesn’t suffer from the intricate rules or extended gameplay of Marvel Heroes; if anything, it’s exactly the opposite: quick to learn and easy to play. But some hardcore Trekkies may be wondering, well, when do we get to do Trek stuff? Well, if you’re role-playing this game heavily, you’re looking at it. Technically the cards say you’re trying to prevent civil war and the Klingons are trying to sabotage their entry into the Federation and all this, but in reality, when you sit down to the game, you’re going: okay, this is 19 in science, Spock adds 10 to his die roll, +2 bonus for Analysis, I have these blue crew cards for 4 more, and if I need it, I can go down Clix to add 1 more. Let’s try this!
This is more of a gentle warning to some that playing an adding game may not feel as dramatically thematic as other games, and that most of the Trek is in the pieces. For me, that didn’t take much away from the game: I still like it, and I am still ready to play it whenever someone wants to sit down with it.
I was lucky enough to pick this game up for 25 bucks at a recent Barnes and Noble clearance event, and for the price I paid I’m not too disappointed. After reading elsewhere a bunch of negative reviews, and not really being much of a fan of euro “point maxing” gameplay with tacked on themes, I didn’t expect to really enjoy this one. However, I did. I played my first few games on Easy, and while I never really felt like I was struggling to win, it was enjoyable and told a nice story while playing.
You have 4 characters, modeled after the recent movie/reboot. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Uhura. While these clix figures are “Beaming down” to the planet’s surface to tackle objectives and side missions, a klingon warship is closing in and attacking the enterprise.
It makes for a nice balancing act, who to take on away team missions, and who to leave behind on the enterprise to push back at the Klingons.
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the “math” in the game, and to be honest it really isn’t bad at all. It all comes down to just remembering a few RULES, and then adding +1, +2, or +3 modifiers to dice rolls and base clix stats to get your totals when attacking or taking on challenges. It’s really no harder than that. It’s more than obvious who is best suited for which challenges, so it’s more of lightweight planning and positioning type of game.
I enjoyed it for the theme, more than anything. The gameplay was simple, but not too much, but was breezy and on medium to hard difficulty, really will challenge you to not only plan and manage your team with the utmost efficiency, but also to have extreme luck on the dice rolls.
The one major negative I have, though, is that the content just isn’t there. Had I spent the full 50 dollars, I would have been quite dissappointed. Mage Knight, this is not. I saw pretty much everything there was to see in Star Trek: Expeditions after just 2 plays. TWO. Sure, I can repeat it and go for a higher score, but that is where it will start to bore me. There is no mix-up to the story after 3-4 plays TOPS. You’ve literally seen it all then, it’s just all about squeezing out those extra few points. That aspect of gameplay holds no medium or long-term interest for me.
HOWEVER – an expansion could EASILY rectify this problem, which is why I still give it a 6. It’s nothing spectacularly groundbreaking, it’s not going to burn anyone’s brain trying to figure out the moves/best course of action, but it WAS simple, enjoyable fun. For fans of Star Trek, the actual missions have a nice enough flavor and “Choose your own adventure” branching to them (Based on how well you scored, determines how the 3 main missions branch off, although it’s still limited to allow for any long-term replayability).
I reshuffled the Stardate deck I believe 3 times during my last game as well, which also bugged me. Seemed like those cards could have had more flavor and variety to them, and that would have REALLY helped the game to have more replayability and theme.
The current expansion only offers 3 characters and their cards. Hopefully future expansions will add Captains Log cards, supplementals, and stardate cards with different outcomes.
I’m a Star Trek fan, which caused me to pick this game up without having played it. I was worried when I received it that it may not be a “game” as much as it was trying to cash in on the Star Treak franchise.
I was quite pleased to find I was wrong. There is a game here, and if anything, it doesn’t need the Star Trek theme (which means there’s little surprise it’s a Knizia game). It’s a co-op where you really need to work together, and there are definite benefits to sticking together. Having the starships battling while exploring the planet while being under a time crunch was fun.
It may be the groups I’ve played with, but one thing I really enjoyed was this game had much more conversation between the players, trying to figure out what we should do, and where to go. Many co-ops I’ve played (Shadows over Camelot and Pandemic especially) seem to suffer a bit more (in my experience) from one person running the show. Expeditions seemed to have more discussion. Whether it was deciding how many “clix” to sacrifice from your character, or if it makes sense to run away from an Event, and lose some points, people were engaged.
When first playing, we had a few people that were very familiar with the Star Trek universe, and one who knew almost nothing about it. Everyone wanted to play a second game immediately, with the non-Trek person leading the charge.
I don’t know that it’s my favorite co-op game (I really enjoy Pandemic and Defenders of the Realm, among others), but I’m glad I have this one, and looking forward go playing with it more!
I was a bit worried that STE would be a bit dry. The board is basically a grid of locations in which you lay out cards and move from location to location (Rocketville anyone?)
I was very wrong. The quests and cooperative nature made the game very interesting. You have to “gang up” to resolve most of the challenges and that requires a good amount of discussion and planning among the players.
The one concern I’ve had is replayability: the game comes with one set of main challenges. Once you have played through a few times, I’m not sure how interesting the game will be. Getting a higher ending score can only motivate players so much.