WizKidsWZK72050 Star Trek Frontiers

Although some of our group feel the federation players wouldn't resort to blowing up stations or decimating planets this is a great game. The mechanics are similar to Mage Knight as this game was based on Mage Knight.The game generally consists of you puzzling how to use your current hand of cards most effectivley for the current location and situation as well as you trying to level up by destroying romulan ships, attacking then controlling dominion and romulan starbases or beaming down to 3 different classes of planets all of which have varying difficulties and rewards. Once you've progressed and leveled up you should be powerful enough to take on the end game baddy - The Borg.The great thing about the game is that it includes co-operative, competitive and solo scenarios, however please be aware the only 4 player game we played was a full 6 round scenario which took just under 8 hours to complete, However as we become more familiar with the rules I expect that time to decrease. Also there are blitz / quick scenarios which decrease the playing time.

We've only played this through once and even as experienced board games players the rules were a little daunting. As a two player co-op the game lasted about 2 hours but that will speed up as we learn tactics. The build quality is quite high and I think will have lasting appeal and replayability. Some of the rules don't quite fit thematically but personally that didn't bother me and made for a good taking point (I mean Sisko did kinda genocide a planet in DS9 once didn't he?). My only small complaint is that the rules recommend sorting the tokens into separate bags... for that price it might have been nice if they had included them.

Bought as gift. Well received.

Excellent

as expected

Really cool game, love the idea they included one person rules. Also love that the Borg ships can be used in the Star Trek Fleet Captains game.

Overcomplicated and not much of a challenge to play

I’ve never played Mage Knight, but after finding out that this Star Trek game is adapted from it, a lot of the design suddenly made sense. This is a game where you can use data (mana) to power up the abilities of crew (villagers) recruited from Romulan starbases (villages) you control so that you can conquer Dominion starbases (mage towers) and unlock their Undiscovered tech (powerful spells) for all of the players. It’s a big, complicated system and the more you know about Star Trek the less sense it’s going to make.However, it is fun, if you can get past the confusing Trek theme and tolerate the slow pace and very long play time. Recruiting crew and adding abilities gives a real sense of creativity to play, and the core systems for moving around and interacting with the game world are satisfying and intuitive. While the theme does little for helping you understand the game, thoughtful elements like reference cards help reduce the time you spend digging through the rule book.I feel like I should’ve just bought Mage Knight, though.