Rogue Review- Space Cadets

We picked up Space Cadets waaaay back in 2012 at OwlCon. This was literally a few days before my son was born. Naturally, it sat on a shelf for 7 years. There wasn’t a lot of opportunities for big group games for awhile and then we’d pull it out it would look very intimidating. Finally, when my son was old enough to be able to play, he found it and wanted to play. So we, finally, broke it out and sat down to learn it.

Production- B

There are a friggin’ lot of pieces. The game comes with quite a few storage bags so it’s easy, once you get it organized, to keep things straight. Most of the pieces are cardboard but they’re sturdy enough. The map tiles are the biggest weakness. They are very thin and slippery which means they slide around on the table at the slightest nudge. When they are lined up with a bunch of others, all with pieces on top of them, that can get problematic. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to reset.

Some of the games’ symbology and the tiles for ships can be hard to decipher at a glance. The ship tiles in particular have two sides, one of which cover half the image, making it hard to interpret.

Theme- A

The theme is right up there. You have all the classic jobs of a starship bridge crew who all need to work together to achieve your objective. Each of the enemy ship’s artwork is unique looking and fits with the theme of generic but slightly goofy space opera.

Gameplay- B+

Your team of 3-9 players work together to maneuver your starship through a dangerous region of space. The game comes with several playable missions that range from scouting a sector, escaping an ambush, retrieving items from behind enemy lines. Each player runs one of several stations aboard the ship: Captain, Helm, Engineering, Shields, Tactical, Jump Drive, Sensors, Damage Control, Tractor Beam. Each game every role needs to be filled so if you have less then 9 players, you’ll be doing multiple things. This multitasking is only problematic in one particular instance.

Each round follows a fixed order of operations. First, discuss a plan for the round of what they’re going to try and accomplish. Next, energy is distributed. Energy is key to most stations. Some can’t do anything without energy, some the job is easier with more energy. Stage three is broken into two parts, A and B, three things happening in each part. During the B stage is the only place having a small number of players becomes a problem. At this stage, if your ship is heavily damaged, you’ll need to keep it from exploding while also doing your regular task. Did I mention almost everything has a 30 second timer? Yeah…

Most of the jobs that each station needs to accomplish involve playing a mini-game. Engineering is a color matching game, Shields make poker hands, Tactical plays Tetris, Jump Drive plays Yahtzee, Sensors draws shapes from a bag. During the phase you’ll have 30 seconds to do your task the best you can. The tasks are relatively easy, except for the time limit. It’d be easy to make an optimized result otherwise.

It’s very easy for the ship to blow up if you’re not careful. Having a sound strategy each round that everyone works together to achieve is key. But there’s always an element of luck involved. Particularly for movement. Helm draws a collection of cards with maneuvers on them and then arranges them in a pattern. If you need to turn left and none of the ones drawn allow that, it can be problematic. This ends up being one of the biggest things that break the theme. With everything else, how well you play will affect how well you do your job. Helm could do great but still not accomplish their goal through no fault of their own.

Expansions- TBD

There is one expansion available for the Space Cadets original game along with two alternative stand-alone games. Dice Duel pits two teams against each other and Away Missions puts the intrepid crew on an alien planet rather than in space. I have tried none of these but the two other games sound promising.

Conclusion- B+

This is a fun group experience game. If you stick to the time limits it can be a challenge and it’s fun to win or loss as a group.