The mission to Mars was on track. There was just enough fuel to arrive at the planet. The mission would be able to de orbit and descend with some dangerous aerobrakeing and would still need to avoid potentially catastrophic sandstorms. Those hazards seemed a lot more reasonable than the powered descent that would have required more water, the primary reaction mass in use (fuel). Once landed the robonaut would begin its survey of the landing site for sources of water. Later a refinery would arrive on a separate mission and a nano factory could begin producing advanced materials and potentially advanced designs. It wouldn’t be long before I’d have the capability to send missions to the belt and beyond establishing further extra terrestrial factories. I would finally have the victory points needed to win the game!
It turns out I was really bad at math what I thought was a relatively safe margin of risk was higher than I thought. how probable is rolling a 1 on one of two six sided dice, I could survive that right? Turns out that’s close to 1/3 of the time. I found that out as my mission crashed hopelessly into the red planet.
This is one of my experiences with Phil Eklund’s High Frontier. A game that’s found a special place in my heart after playing games like Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space and growing up in a time when Astronaut was a noble goal for children to aspire to. The game is intimidating, not because of the number of pieces, its not really all that fiddly, but because of the apparent complexity. But in the scary as hell map and messy rules there is something magical.
The players are the directors of a government space agency or perhaps a corporation. Turns are spent researching via an auction of available technologies or conducting exploration, prospecting or manufacturing operations. The game ends when a certain number of extra terrestrial factories have been built. Points are tallied for the number and type of factories the players have plus some bonus points for science or ‘glory’ objectives.
While not as focused on modeling physics as some games have attempted High Frontier is a little difficult to wrap your head around. Rather than move planets around the map the map shows routes with the relative energy cost to travel between planets. This of course is gamefied and abstracted out to make it playable so real sticklers will find something to grouse about. I like that I can make quirkier sense of fuel costs using fairly rudimentary arithmetic rather than bringing trigonometry into it. The rockets move on and you get great stories about crashing into Mars and beyond.
I don’t want to fully commit to saying its my favorite game but it’s one I keep admiring time and time again.
I have to be careful here. Sometimes kids are amazing with thier ability to poor over some Avalon Hill box game, something that might give me conniptions today. I’ll be optimistic and say yes a twelve year old could grasp it. The math isn’t really complex it’s really just addition and it’s just a question of knowing when to apply certain things.
The rules are available online so they can be read without purchasing the game. Unfortunately the rules are less than friendly and you will want the pieces and board in front of you for reference, Vassal or game pics might help. When you get down to actual play its not as complicated as it may seem at first and referencing rules isn’t too bad it’s just getting through them in the first place.
Yeah, I have played this game a lot, and I really like it. Assembling your rocket, then planning and executing the missions is a blast. The way the economy and auctions works… is in service of everything else.
I think a 12-year old could play it, if they were taught by an experienced player (and good teacher) and if they were the kind of 12-year old who was predisposed to like a board game about commercial space exploration in the first place. You absolutely MUST begin with the basic game, because assembling rockets in the advanced game is quite complicated; even experienced players make mistakes. It’s unfortunate, though, because the basic game is much less interesting.
Furthermore, in my group we always ignore the “Space politics” and “War” rules. It’s a lot of extra overhead for not much extra gameplay value. Oh, and we also house-rule Deimos to be a “C” site instead of a “D”. Otherwise a lucky player can build a factory there and produce Salt-Water Zubrin thrusters very early, which breaks the heck out of the game (especially in the basic game).
My personal experience with High Frontier was not good. This was a game designed by a rocket scientist for rocket scientists. If that’s your thing, you’ll love it , otherwise steer very clear.
Yea it’s scary at first. Those paths create a lot of visual ‘noise’ but you can figure it out pretty quick and the colored paths are there as a sort of precalculated path telling you how many burns you will be travelling through and from there you can make decisions about your own routes to the various sites. That’s only part of the board though. there is another side that extends beyond the belt to Jupiter and Saturn. That board comes with the now out of print expansion. There is a poster board that pretty much crams in the entire solar system and nearby interstellar space.
There is also a ‘true’ interstellar expansion to the game but that wanders away from the realm of what could potentially be right around the corner for space exploration and I’m fine with the base game and the first expansion board that includes the gas giants. There are lots of interesting destinations by Jupiter and Saturn; Europa, Titan, etc.
The equipment cards are a lot more to handle with the expansion rules and I agree that the politics and war track don’t really add a whole lot. But, things like radiation belts and random events add something to space exploration. You can cherry pick what you like pretty easily.
There is just so much to the game it’s amazing. It can be daunting because you can get lost and not really know what to do next. Coming up with a broad strategic goal and working out the details from that is probably best. For instance, “I’m going to get my first factory in that cluster of asteroids and use it as a fuel depot on my way to the Jovian system.” The game is very sandboxy but there are victory conditions to worry about. It will seem like there is no progress going on but once the first factories are out they beget the others pretty quickly if positioned right.
Hey I didn’t know what an Apoapsis was until Kerbal so it couldn’t have been too rocket scientisty! ;) However, I can easily see an experience going horribly wrong though it’s not as complicated as its made out to be. The problem is no one has really made it out to be any better. The designer really was a rocket scientist and makes these incredibly intricate games (If I ever talk about BIOS: Megafuana you’ll see there as well) that can come off as more sim than game. If you can muddle through the rulebook it can be a rewarding experience that’s been abstracted enough to be playable but captures the spirit of the subject in a comprehensive manner. It really is best learned by another player, though that can depend on how good of a teacher they are.
That map compelled me to buy it. And one of the top results on youtube is from a pipe-smokin’ Europa Universilas playin’ guy. If he owns it I definitely want it. And a German commenter on that video has made 38 tutorial videos.
I can’t find the expansion for sale in the UK, though.
The expansion is a big sore spot right now. It’s out of print and although the base has been reprinted the expansion never was. The intention is that the new product will include the old expansion stuff. I’m not sure when or how that is all working out. Buying the poster can get you a complete map, the rules for expanded play are in the main game but the equipment cards will be missing. That’s the rub and it is a problem. You can just use the basic equipment set for the whole map but when you start to fold in advanced rules such as Rad belts I’m not sure how much that will make a difference in play. I never stopped to look at that.
The basic equipment version of the Thruster, Robonaut, and Refinery cards assumed the existence of other equipment and hence has a higher mass rating when using it as a basic card. I don’t know if you can fudge Rad Ratings as realistically. Other expansion rules involve the political track and combat rules. Both of those seem to be easily chucked in the spirit of a space exploration focus. If you get really desperate maybe you can print out your own expansion cards until they’re available commercially. I was very sure to buy the expansion with the base game and it seems ludicrous to me that they were separated in the first place.
The expansion is really half the game - I don’t think the base game is really complete without the other half of the map.
The main problem with the game isn’t that it’s complicated, it’s that the rules are terribly written. A while back I put together a simplied Euro-like rulebook for the game. I’ve meant to upload it to Board Game Geek but never got around to it.
I had no idea. Any suggestions as to where else I could host a fairly large (1.61 MB) PDF? I only chose 4shared because I’ve used it a few times in the past.
If I’m reading that right that is the colonization expansion which has more gameplay stuffed in than what was in the original expansion. The good news is that it is a replacement for the original out of print expansion plus there are more rules to use if you decide to keep going.
I would start at a really basic game. There is a lot to absorb and I’ve not messed around with the Colonization specific stuff so I don’t know how much it really ramps up. You will want the complete map and equipment cards that were in that first expansion at the least so Colonization looks good even if you decide to hold off adding all the bits for a while.
I was going to download this and re-upload it to my dropbox for you, but I either had to download a random .exe or log in with facebook/g+/twitter. No thanks!
Just get a free dropbox account and stick it on there.
Oh, I already use DropBox. I didn’t know you could do public links with it.
Here’s the same file. I have a Word version (which is larger), but PDF seemed more friendly for distribution since everyone has some version of a PDF reader.
I am familiar with the base and first expansion rules but I tend to downplay politics and combat. Now I have colonization arriving soon and I notice some of the new rules are packed as ‘modules’. I was curious if there was any comment or opinion on how those have worked out. They seem interesting, Bernal Space Habitats, advanced freighters adding a factory ship, colonist for extra actions and that endgame module I don’t yet understand.
