I took this morning to do a test drive of Gale Force Nine’s 2016 4X space opera generator Star Trek Ascendancy and I have some initial thoughts. This playthrough made use of my Cardassian expansion which I set against the Klingons and Romulans. I’ll try again with the Federation on my next away mission but I got a decent feel with these three.
The core mechanic of the game is building and sending out ships to discover planets and either colonize them, charm them, or blast them into submission in order to harvest the three core resources of Production (abstracted money, material, labor) Research, and Culture. Production is used to churn out ships as well as develop planets so they can produce more resources. Research helps you improve your ships or unlock cards with hopefully useful powers. Culture is spent colonizing or diplomatically adding planets your collection as well as buying the Ascendance tokens that are one of the two main paths to victory as well as essentially leveling up your faction.
At the start of the game there are only the starting planets of each player with a lot of blank space between them. As ships are sent out blindly to explore they’ll build the space lanes and map out the quadrant by plonking down the paths and planets, occasionally connecting them up with other newly discovered worlds until by the end of the game you wind up with the galactic molecule pictured above. Every time you head out into the black you have no idea whether you’re going to find a pristine world, deadly nebulae, valuable artifacts, well armed inhabitants, Crystalline Entities or some charming combination. You also don’t know just how far away anything will be as the dice determine the length of the lanes and whether they might intersect with previously placed planets. There’s room for creative cartography and just how these lines and circles are placed can have huge strategic and logistical implications for the rest of the game.
Before First Contact with other players there will be plenty of dangers facing early star pioneers as various stellar phenomena and deadly planets take pot shots at poorly shielded vessels that dare blunder into them. The rewards for doing so are often quite generous although you can find yourself in my frequent position as well where your plucky craft dodges one initial crisis only to smash immediately into the next. As in life the real dangers are your friends and once you create a pathway that connects your home worlds you are now vulnerable to the other path to victory: galactic conquest. Players can also win by controlling three home worlds including their own and you can’t win at all if your people’s historic lands are occupied by alien invaders so it pays to keep your home well guarded.
In the game I played the Klingons took an early lead by running around gobbling up defenseless planets while the Romulans kept running into cosmic hurdles and occasional Qs and the Cardassians prowled for easy conquests to little avail. Over the rounds, luck changed and an initial trade agreement between Klingons and Cardassians that filled their coffers led to unexpected land swaps and inevitable betrayals while the Romulans quietly used the stellar phenomena in their region to fuel a scientific Renaissance. At the very end the Cardassians’ almost secured victory was snatched away by a coordinated offensive first by the Klingons smashing most of the defenses out of Cardassia Prime followed by the arrogant arrival of Romulan fleets that annihilated the once proud planet to rubble.
This game feels like a helpful second option after your friends turn down your excitable suggestion to play Twilight Imperium. It hits a lot of the same beats but faster and in a familiar setting that can make for an easier sell. It’s still quite the time sink and there are a number of fiddly rules that are not always clear and instinctive. Movement is particularly funky as the game allows you to both move around slowly via impulse engines or warp around the board with stunning speed. Combat can be clunky as you compare the effect of upgraded weapons and shields and try to juggle your various tech upgrades to see if they are applicable. The various environmental dangers give the exploration angle edge but also blow up your small selection of ships with frustrating regularity that it makes one question the survivability of the Enterprise and turns what should be a regular fun bout of discovery into a constant game of Russian roulette or its Gorn equivalent.
The real moments when this game shines is when its theme manages to break through. Playing as the Romulans involves scheming and lurking, Klingons spoil for a fight just because, and Cardassians reward your every worst instinct to subjugate and tyrannize. Every faction has a printed advantage and disadvantage and in some ways the disadvantages are more fun as they give you a real sense of character and purpose as you make your way across the galaxy.
All in all I’d like to get it back on my table and in front of friends but imagine that if they have the willingness for Twilight Imperium I’d rather get that out and if they ask for streamlined space opera business I’ll more likely recommend ARCS. Still, for the folks who want their blood wine not too hot and not too cold, I am glad I have something to offer.