-
M.J.E. Hendriks
Netherlands
Velp
Gelderland
-
Space Alert
Game Weight: 2.8
Playing Time: 30 min
Players: Sietse, Tanya, Michiel
Location: Michiel
Date: 29-06-2011
Alert: Only Three Crew Members
In the beginning, the crew consisted of five. There was much excitement regarding the enterprise we were about to embark on, and much planning was done to find the perfect location and time. Everything arranged, a tropical heat caused a malfunction in one of the crew members' brain, leading to possible headaches and even migraine. The heat had gotten to one of us.
And thus there were four.
Four eager crew members, but one of these had not reacted to any of us for weeks, and with all the planning and arranging, this was considered strange. On the day itself, the time to begin came and passed and only three had shown up. The time arranged if we had been five came and went and still only three had shown up. Then, finally, after another immeasurable length of time, the three space cadets decided to embark on their space mission by themselves, just the three of them, lonesome out in deep space.
And thus the story began.
To begin with a simulation was thought to be a good idea, and thus the three space cadets embarked on the illusive space mission entitled Simulation 2. Easy peasy you'd think, but not so true. Mistakes in communication and simple errors led to the usual misunderstandings, problems and eventually death. Both the white and blue sections were destroyed. This simulation thing turned out to be a whole lot tougher than we had thought.
Game 1
Mission: Simulation 2
LOSS
White and blue destroyed
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For their second mission the three space cadets figured, why not try out another simulation, but now with better communication. It might also have been that there were only three of us that it was so difficult. Right? Right? Right! And so we convinced ourselves that it hadn't been our fault at all that we lost so miserably that first game.
Simulation 3, however, turned out to be as easy as we had expected nr 2 to be. Communication worked out now and everything seemed to be in place to be able to go on a nice long successful run.
Game 2
Mission: Simulation 3
WIN
White 1 damage
20-2=18 points
Killed everything
---------------------------------------------------------------------
And so we moved on to an advanced simulation to test out those infernal internal threats. There were two of them, so that was good practice. The communication and planning seemed to be doing alright as well, so this was a big success, though space cadet Sietse was disappointed we didn't rack up more points than in the previous mission.
The only enemy that got away was the saboteur - he was just too fast - only half points for him. 
Game 3
Mission: Advanced Simulation 1
WIN
2 damage on red
1 damage on blue
18-5=13
Didn't kill saboteur
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Having advanced successfully through the simulations, we felt it was time to try out the missions, though we were not sure how well we'd cope with only three space members (and no, we were not using robots or whatever).
The first mission with excellent planning and perfect communication went beautifully. There were still problems - especially with cards - boy could we have used another space cadet with more options, but hey, it worked! Sietse was already checking out how to do a longer mission over several individual missions, but Tanya and Michiel managed to convince him that that was for some time when we were four or five. How true this turned out to be in the following two missions.
Game 4
Mission: Mission 1
WIN
28-6=22
2 damage on blue and 2 damage on red
Killed everything!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The next mission was one where literally everything went wrong. The space cadets were clearly getting tired - or something... Tanya miscalculated and thought she had killed an enemy while she hadn't. Sietse pressed C for the computer a row too early - he had forgotten this rule. And Michiel mixed up the two enemies on his track and figured he had killed his second enemy whilst he was actually looking at his first enemy in that section. This led to a total kill - the space ship was destroyed.
Game 5
Mission: Mission 2
LOSS
Died
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Before the final mission of the day we made some additional arrangements with regard to how to position the enemies along the tracks so no mix-ups would occur, and set off into space feeling we could deal with this problem. Things took a rather unlucky turn for us from the get go, however.
We had to destroy two internal threats with Bs on both sides of the ship, which was hard enough for the first three moves, but we also found none of us had the option to press C for the computer. Incoming data didn't solve this problem, and so we had to leave action 3 open, and this probably cost us the mission right then and there. I'm sure a fourth player would've had a C (6 more cards with the incoming data counted!).
Of course we managed to kill off the internal threats, but in the meantime the enemies had piled up and we basically all had to be in several places at the same time. Movement was too restrictive and even our super power cards couldn't help us out in time. It didn't help that Tanya then moved to red instead of blue (oh, indeed, that led to the second internal threat not being killed - forgot that), and then not doing anything worthwhile anymore for the rest of the mission, but still, none of us were sure we could have successfully made this mission with just the three crew members.
Game 6
Mission: Mission 3
LOSS
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion: it's very hard with three - a lot of movement required and if things go a little wrong, they really do go wrong big time! No saving yourself from a little mistake with only three.
|
|
