Firefly: The Game - Tips & Strategies

These House Rules may raise an eyebrow or two among the players of Firefly, but after several times playing through, including both Solo and Two Player, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions that help my enjoyment of the game in my house:

1)The Solo play rules suggested altering the number of actions each round from the 2 in the multiplayer game to 4 for solo play. With 2 actions per round, players really can’t accomplish much in a round and although rounds go faster that way, it can be a little frustrating to wait and wait just to get 2 things to do.

For example, if you are on a supply planet that also has a contact, you have to spend an entire turn just using a Buy Action to purchase stuff and then a Contract Action to pick up a Job. If the job starts at that same location, you have to wait until your next turn to perform a Work Action to begin the job and then a Fly action to leave this location to go toward your job’s finished location. Adding 2 actions can speed that up a little.

2)When crossing the Verse, a number of possible cards can stop your flying immediately and since you only get 1 Fly action each round, that can make traveling a long, arduous process. Even if you use the above mentioned 2 additional actions, the Fly Action would normally be the last action. The rules even state the two actions you get can’t be the same one twice. To make things easier for everyone, I suggest 4 actions a turn and you can have Up to 2 Flying Actions each turn! These simple changes to the turn structure can speed things up a lot, give flying more flexibility than in the normal rules.

On the other hand, further expansions might warrant going back to the normal turn structure. House rules are only a tool to custom tailor a game to the players. As long as everyone is having fun and the rules are equal and balanced for all players, play the rules the way you want to.

One thing to consider when doing a job is the cost of paying the crew (as mentioned briefly in a previous post). Before taking on a job- you might want to work out the pay-out costs of your crew (if you don’t want to disgruntle them) before you take on the work. Ie. my husband took a job that would have paid originally $900 but by the time he paid his crew he made $100. Hardly worth the effort I think (unless of course your game objective is to become solid with that dealer)…

As we know this game can run loong. The sweet spot for players we’ve found is 3, more than this and will tend to drag a tad.
The key to keeping this game flowing is minimizing your down time, now we’ve played this a few times when its not our turn, we will be browsing the supply decks and preparing for our next actions.
If you can get into the habit of this it really helps to move things along at a decent clip.

The one big criticism you’ll see about this game is how long it can take. To cut back on that just make sure you emphasize what is required to achieve the goals on the story card. Guide players so they’re picking up crew and gear quickly and going for a balanced set of skills, and once they have a decent amount of money get them to attempt the goals rather than drift from job to job for hours. This should help keep the game closer to the two hour mark.

Since there’s little interaction between players anyway, playing the solo campaign is a good way to orient yourself with the game the first time you play.

After a half a dozen games or so we found that the Alliance simply wasn’t a threat. There was little to no reason to be afraid of them. The game results of running into the Cruiser was to pay off your warrants ($1000 per), lose contraband / fugitives, and roll for each wanted crew to see if they are removed (1 in 6 chance). Oh yeah, and they bring you to a full stop. *shrug* In comparison to a single crime job, one of which is worth $6k, the penalties are just not a risk. Add crybabys and there is no reason to fear them at all.

In the show the Reavers and the Alliance were forces beyond the crews ability to do more than run / hide from. The house rules that we are experimenting with are designed to fix this.

First of all we bumped up the Alliances tenacity in collecting their due. If you are caught with a warrant on the ship then the Alliance will take its $1k per. If you don’t have the cash then they take all your money and then cargo, that you can’t show is for a legitimate job, at $300 per. If you still aren’t even then they start in on your equipment until you are even or run out of stuff to seize.

The alliance will also be more tenacious in checking up on the crew. Customs inspection cards result in the roll as if the Cruiser showed up. 1 in 6 removing the wanted crew member. And when the Cruiser shows up any wanted crew are forced to jump ship. You still roll for them and on a 1 they are removed from the game. Otherwise they are returned to the discard piles to be re-hired.

These more strict rules on the Alliance mean that having a warrant and running into the alliance can really hurt as opposed to just being inconvenient.

Next we added that any successful illegal job results in a warrant being issued. This is after the job is done so it doesn’t count against the staying solid with a contact rule. Nor does it trigger Niskas “pound of flesh rule”. This means that doing Illegal jobs starts to pile up the Warrants. There becomes a reason to use the bonus you get for being solid with Badger (getting rid of all warrants for the price on one).

The overall result is that you actually start being cautious of the Alliance, especially if you are doing things that are less than legitimate. The payoff for finishing illegal jobs is still significant enough to make doing them more than enticing.

We have found this to be a significant improvement and thematically solid. If anyone tries these out please let me know what you think.

In my household we felt it silly that if you visit a store after items have been purchased there could be less than 2 face up cards, meaning you’ll get less than 3 items to consider. We houseruled it that there will always be 2 cards face up at each store and for each mission pile.

Also, since you can mosey one space without flipping the encounter deck we thought it was weird that the final movement of your full burn still needs an encounter card flipped. We ruled that the final movement of a full burn is now considered a mosey and an encounter card is not drawn for it.

These 2 fixed the only teeny issues my house had with the game.