Redshirts
In Redshirts – which is based on a television franchise never to be named for legal reasons – players take on the role of Starship Captains, with a random assortment of Redshirts, which are junior level crewmen. The goal of the game is to be the first player to eliminate all of his own Redshirts.
Each player has a hand of cards that allows him to assign missions, issue equipment, travel to exotic locations, or use temporary abilities. Players frequently wind up with more cards than they can hold, which forces them to make strategic decisions about how to proceed.
Each Redshirt has its own combination of abilities and powers, and the players must find a way to match their crew up against missions where they cannot succeed. Other players "help" by offering the doomed Redshirt additional aid in an attempt to keep it alive.
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In Redshirts, two or more players compete to kill off crewmembers by sending them on away missions that they cannot complete. The game is a snarky take on the Star Trek trope, and fans of any Sci-Fi shows will get a laugh out of it.
The game is played by setting out some crew members, who each have skills, like “science” or “diplomacy”, etc. In addition, you can give them tools/weapons/etc that give them additional skills. Players take turns playing cards, that represent events, equipment, or other things that can happen. The primary play of the game is to play missions onto the board, and then have one of your crew members attempt the mission. The mission will have a set of skills required to attempt the mission, and also a set of skills to complete the mission successfully. The idea is to attempt a mission, but fail it. If you fail, your crewmember dies, if you succeed, you generally get another crew member. The winner is the person who eliminates his entire crew first.
At first, you will have a blast with this game. The cards are hysterical. The references are clever, and well done. The artwork and style is phenominal, and the idea of killing off crewmembers is just a ton of fun.
Then you play a few rounds, and that is when it hits you that the game will never end. Well played, you can just continuously hose the other players, so they constantly have a full crew. Everyone will play round after round killing someone, and then just getting them back the next round. After a few rounds you tire of the jokes, and just want the game to end. I’ve played a number of times, and over half of them, we just all gave up.
I really wanted to love this game. The artwork is great, the theme is great, it had everything except a workable mechanic.
Pros
Amazing artwork
Hysterical cards, flavor text
Great theme, great idea (kill the redshirts!)
Cons
Game never ends
Rulebook is horrible and confusing. The first time we played we got it completely backwards. (that game ended actually…)
Some of the cards were cut wrong. (many actually)
The box has no dividers or anything. It’s just a big deck of cards poured into a giant box to mix around. (there are separate decks you then have to sort out into piles)
With two players, the game is completely broken. With more, it’s at least playable.
I wanted to love it, but I don’t. I assumed I was doing something wrong, so I checked out various forums, and everyone else said the same thing. If you follow the rules, it never ends. Maybe house rules could fix it, but nobody I know is willing to play again to find out.