Game 1: Base game + Matter Extractor
Game 2: Base game + Matter Extractor + Factions (all) + Outer Belt + Expansion Packs (all) + Promo Pack 2017
Enthusiasm: ❤️❤️🖤🖤
- Alien Frontiers has the distinction of being the game to really start the trend of crowdfunding board games.
- The base game is a fairly standard dice placement game with direct player interaction. Nothing too complicated there.
- Adding the extra expansions adds a fair amount of complexity and options stemming from both the agenda cards and the asteroid cards (similar but different to the alien tech cards). The factions adding asymmetric player powers is a very nice touch as well (although . One catch is that several of the agenda cards refer to specific alien tech cards, and with the much larger deck, it can be very difficult to try and fulfill those.
- As can happen with players who suffer from analysis paralysis, the additional options for what should be a simple game can make what should be quick turns considerably longer.
- I don’t know if this is considered normal, but the Outer Belt board in our game was mined really, really heavily for cards.
- Not surprisingly, Alien Frontiers doesn’t work great at two players, although it was still much better than I expected.
- As expected for a game with direct player interaction, players who really prefer pacifist gameplay will either be in for disappointment (if other players aren’t) or be walled in due to the limited number of dice spaces.