Reviews written by Gary Sax

My partner and I found very little in this game besides an extremely pleasant theme and a basic, kind of boring, engine builder. Very happy this game is out in the mainstream for people to enjoy though, I think it's a nice light experience for people looking for something to do after dinner or something.

I completely see why this is so popular, but it is kind of a dud for me, more of an activity. It's more is more is more tableau builder. Huge numbers of cards that give you incremental advantages. I find the milestones and goals to be a particularly clumsy and unwelcome design kludge.

I wanted to like this more than I did, but I struggle with the choose your own adventure stuff because replaying content isn't at the top of my list. I guess I prefer games that generate content procedurally or in a partially planned fashion, feels like they leverage the medium better.

Seemed fine when I played it.

This is fighty enough that maybe it's not completely thematic to the original series or whatever, but what a cool thing it is. Old school, though, maybe too old school and long. It expects a lot of the players and doesn't slot super easily into a short evening unless players are light speed snappy.

This is a gonzo version of the later, more manageable (and maybe better) Forbidden Stars. The order system creates all kinds of good moments and strategy, but I don't know that it's quite... thematic?

Poor expansion.

Far better than the first expansion for this game, though, you really do have to play this game as a random thing to do between to people in an evening type thing. Not the most strategic game of all time.