Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
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This had been a day of playing games by Vlaada Chvatil – both Galaxy Trucker and Through the Ages had been played, but now we got to Randy’s brand new copy of Space Alert. How new? Well, the pieces hadn’t been punched from their holders yet! You could regard Space Alert as the co-operative version of Galaxy Trucker. Reading the rulebook, Vlaada’s sense of humour just came through. Yes, we were unlikely to survive in our Sitting Duck class spaceship, but that wouldn’t stop us new recruits from trying!
I took on the role of the training instructor and went through the rules with everyone. This probably took us about 40 minutes or so. It probably would have been a lot quicker if any of us had played before, but when you’ve got the training instructor learning at the same time as everyone else, what do you expect? One of our first tasks was to elect a captain – this was Pat, who basically elected himself as everyone else tried to muster objections he wouldn’t brush aside – and a communications officer, who everyone else nominated to be me. Okay, I like talking and writing, so do you think that makes me a good communications officer? Apparently so. Why is Pat captain again?
The introductory game is fairly simple: you get a handful of action cards, each of which can be played either to move (left, right or take the elevator to change levels) or to press one of the big brightly coloured buttons. Only two of the four action buttons are used in the introductory games: A (weapons) and B (power). If you pressed the big red A button, the weapons of the part of the ship you were in fired at whatever threat may or may not be lurking outside. If you pressed the big B button, then either your shields recharged, or you transferred energy from the reactor, or you refueled the reactor (creating more energy) depending on which part of the ship you were in. This all made a lot of sense.
My job as communications officer was to listen very carefully to the Mission CD – yes, the game uses a CD – and place threats on the oncoming track when they were announced. Or tell people to exchange cards, or draw new action cards. Pat’s job, as captain, was to co-ordinate our actions. Oh, boy!
There were seven action rounds and a track that showed you when to resolve the actions. Pat, as the captain, would be the starting player each round. After him, it would revolve clockwise around the table or, as was pointed out to me on more than one occasion, downwards through the ranks. So that meant that we had Pat, the captain, then Rich, chief weapons officer, Randy, chief engineer and finally me, the communications officer. It’s good to know where you stand, I think.
With the rules finally described, we were ready to start. So, in went the Introductory CD, track 1, and I pressed the play button.
We jumped into the system, and immediately had an “interior threat”. Huh? What was an interior threat? That wasn’t in the training notes!
Yes, as you possibly already knew from being a Space Alert fan and paying more attention to the BGG boards than I did, the CDs are mislabeled. This didn’t take me long at all to work out, although my other crewmembers wanted to continue on the current CD, and swapping the CDs gave us the proper mission alerts. Threats came at us and soon we were falling into what were our natural roles: Rich, Randy and Pat went after the weapon systems, I was banished down to the bowels of the ship to see that my crewmembers had enough power to fire their weapons. Ah, the life of a communications officer! At least Randy did actually go down and help me before he went back to the nearest weapon.
End of Training Mission 1
I’m very pleased to say that we managed to survive the training simulator with flying colours: our ship only took a couple of points of damage. Excellent!
Feeling that we now had this game worked out, we moved back into the training manual and continued to a more advanced simulation. Oh, dear. We didn’t understand Space Alert at all!
You see, our ship is controlled by an extremely powerful computer. It has to be, as all we need to do is press these big buttons to fire weapons, activate shields or the like. Unfortunately, the corporation has installed a screensaver on it to save power… why we need to save power on a ten minute trip I have no idea, but there you have it. If it reverts to screensaver mode, then everyone gets delayed as it powers back up. That would be bad with threats coming down on us and all, so we have to press this big button “C” in the bridge every so often to stop it from shutting down…
We also have a missile system. That’s nice, but getting to it would take a couple of turns, and the missiles take a couple of turns to reach their targets. Well, target. The nearest enemy. As far as I know, there’s no possibility of them hitting our ship. None at all. Ahem.
And those turbolifts? They’re one man only. So, if two crewmembers want to change levels using the same lift, the second (determined by rank) has to climb down and is delayed. Practically, being delayed means moving all your actions one click later.
Unlike the introductory scenario, this game would be 10 minutes (12 actions) long. More time for threats to come against us, hooray!
So, back into the simulator, where we took our Sitting Duck class starship “out” again. This time it was with the 3rd track on the introductory CD. In no time at all, the computer was announcing an unconfirmed sighting. Hooray! Nothing to worry about, as we had fewer than five players. However, it wasn’t that long before we were being threatened for real, and then the real fun began.
Our Captain (left) and Chief Weapons Officer (right). Why am I worried?
Our roles changed slightly. Pat remained captain and weapon firer. Rich gained the additional role of Computer Technician in addition to being the Chief Weapons Officer. Randy was the Chief Engineer and Special Weapons Officer, and I remained the poor Communications Officer and Assistant Technician. In no time at all, I found myself back in the bowels of the ship, throwing rods of fuel into the nuclear generator. Well, Randy did so first, but then assigned the task to me as he went to fire some missiles.
Astonishingly, we made it through okay. Everything just clicked… mostly. Rich and Pat fought over the big red weapons button on the bridge at one point (Pat won!) and I planned to shovel in another fuel rod when we were out… but our biggest problem was the Maelstrom Storm approaching from starboard. I was firing my pulse cannons at it furiously, expending energy and having no effect whatsoever despite it being particularly vulnerable to pulse cannons. The stupid thing was out of range! Argh! We hit it a couple of times with missiles and conventional lasers, but it was getting too close for comfort. Rich diverted energy into our starboard shields…
…and I pointed out that the storm wasn’t actually hitting us on starboard. It was hitting us on bridge and port! Argh!
End of Training Mission 2
Just in time, the third missile hit it, along with Pat’s starboard lasers and my final throw of the dice with the pulse lasers. With it about to destroy us, we destroyed it and emerged from the simulator shaken but triumphant.
Oh dear. The game still has more elements in it? Internal threats? Really, really dangerous external threats?
Unfortunately, the investigation of those elements will have to wait until a later time. Randy needed to leave for some real-life problem that he had to solve, and we packed away Space Alert for another day.
Yes, it’s a really good game. I’m very much looking forward to playing it again, whenever that may be.
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David Jackman
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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Great report! Please let us know how your first full mission goes. *cackles gleefully.*
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Michael J
United States
Folsom
California
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Excellent session report. This is a must play for me! If any of my game group buddies are seeing this, expect to be recruited for the Sitting Duck soon!
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Randy Dreger
Australia
Ballarat
Victoria
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Hopefully we can break it out on Sept 5th at our next BGD. I think the four of us will all be there.
I think we all had a hoot yelling and shouting, at least until the communications broke down. 
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Gordon Adams
United Kingdom
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Enjoyed your review/session,Merric.
When I first played SA solo, I felt like shouting "Spock, use your logic" !  Then, "Beam me up, Scotty " ! Just felt like I was in command of the Enterprise and I had to face the Glingons ! 
The game works very well now as a solo, I am happy to say.
Regards.
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Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
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Thank you. I'm delighted - sort of - to know that it plays well solo. The sort of part is that I probably have to get it now!
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Matt Smith
United States
Orion
Michigan
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A very fun read. I just had a similar session (with a full mission), where we destroyed the final threat on turn 12 with just enough damage, and only because I had used my heroic card to overcharge the lower blue cannon by one. That threat (the name escapes me now) would have destroyed the ship on that turn. The other players thought we had lost, but then I pointed out the heroic card and there was much rejoicing and high fives around the table.
With the right players, Space Alert provides the most intensely fun boardgame experience I've ever had.
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