Game Review: Alien Frontiers

One of my great finds at Bayou Wars this year is a game called Alien Frontiers by Clever Mojo Games. I really feel it is the crown jewel of my convention swag. Jeremy over at +1 Gaming mentioned it to me a while back, saying that he knew I would like it. At the convention, +1 Gaming ran demos of several of the games they were selling, and I just happened to walk by when they were demoing Alien Frontiers. Seeing the game all ready to go Henry, Seth and I jumped in. Twenty minutes later, the game was bought!

In Alien Frontiers, you control a fleet of rocket ships used to manage resources and acquire alien technology in order to colonize a planet. You score points by controlling certain areas on the planet, such as Herbert Valley or Asimov Crater, and once a player's last colony is placed, you tally up who has the most points at that time by using the handy dandy point tracker with cool 1950's sci-fi style rocket markers. The person with the most points is the winner!

Henry surveys the Alien Artifacts!

Now the cool part is the fleet of ships you control are actually six sided dice. You begin the game with three. You essentially are rolling for your resources each turn. Resources come in the form of Ore mined from a moon or Fuel converted from solar energy. After you roll the dice, you consult the different docking stations and place the die/dice at the stations to generate an effect. For example, you may place a 5 on the Solar Converter to generate three Fuel, a 4 on the Lunar Mine to generate one Ore, and place a 2 on the colonist hub to begin the building up for colonists. When you are done rolling dice and generating effects, it is the next player's turn. And this is the key, addictive mechanic of the game: rolling dice and deciding where to place them on the board. Do I go to the Alien Artifact and purchase one of the dynamic, game changing Alien cards? Or, if I rolled three consecutive numbers, place the die on the Raider's Outpost to go pirating other player's resources or cards? Should I build more ships (which generate more options in subsequent turns) or should I add more colonists to the planet? Each territory on the planet correlates to a docking station, and thereby grants some bonus or effect to the station to whomever controls the corresponding territory, such as generating one extra fuel or reducing the price of building new ships. The trick with the dice placement is there are only so many spaces for ships to dock at any one docking station. So if someone else has taken an area you may need, you are out of luck!

When we played, the common strategy was to acquire Ore and Fuel quickly and then build additional ships. Whomever controls the Burroughs Desert territory can access the mysterious Relic Ship and add this colorless die to your fleet of ships. Once your fleet is up and running, we then began going after the Alien Artifact cards, colonizing the planet as quickly as possible, and sometimes working together to slow the leader down, then just as quickly, going off on your own in order to surge ahead.

Another appealing aspect of the game is the theme. Alien Frontiers definitely has a 1950's "Retro Ray Gun" sci-fi type theme going on. The graphics are excellent, with glass bubble helmeted space men and long silver, rocket ships adorning the game board. The docking stations are glass dome looking cities reminiscent of something out of The Jetsons. To me, this theme and the rolling resource mechanic really fit well together. It gave me the feeling of exploring and colonizing space as some sort of Space Tycoon. The game components are excellent quality and easily surpass the standard of many games on the market

Alien Frontiers is a must have game for those who enjoy resource management style Euro games and rolling lots of dice! Kind of like Yahtzee meets Puerto Rico. I really enjoyed playing this game. Jason pointed out that it my not have some of the direct "mess with your opponent" actions such as he enjoyed with Lords of Waterdeep, Alien Frontiers does cause you to make decisions quickly that may effect your opponent. For me, I can see reaching for this game a lot more when we get together for board game night.

Two thumbs way up for Alien Frontiers!

Alien Frontiers MSRP $49.95

Strength and honor,

-Wicked