Our friend Graham popped round again yesterday evening, bringing with him his new (to him) Firefly game. Published in 2013, I remember looking at it at the Diceni games show, it definitely passed the "weight test", needing 2 handy to pick up the satisfyingly heavy box. Graham got the base game plus several expansions for a good price earlier this week, so this was a chance to give it a try. As the name suggests, it's a game based on the Sci-fi space western TV series Firefly. Each player takes control of a ship, the objective being to "Find a job - find a crew - keep flying." Story cards tell you what "Goals" you need to accomplish in order to achieve this. We played the easy starting version, which meant becoming "solid" with 2 contacts (more on this later), earning 6000 currency, then delivering it to Niska. This isn't really a proper review, it's just a very brief run through of our game and misses out various things that simply didn't happen in the short "learning game" story that we played.
The game includes a board of the "verse" (expandable at either side with some of the expansion sets), featuring Alliance space around the white sun in the centre (through which the Alliance Cruiser travels) and more dangerous Border space around the edges (in which the Reavers lurk).
There are 5 contacts marked on the board, each of whom will offer you different jobs. Harken is based on the Alliance Cruiser and tends to offer legal, lower paying jobs. The others are located on specific planets and offer more varied (and sometimes illegal) jobs. When hunting for a job, you can look at 3 jobs and choose to keep 1, 2 or none of them. You are limited in how many jobs you can be actively working and how many spare jobs you have. The game also comes with some fantastic monopoly money style currency. Some situations may require you to "misbehave", and you draw from the misbehaving deck to see what challenges you must overcome.
There are 5 supply planets that you can visit, each of which offers a slightly different variety/mix of crew, equipment and ship upgrades.
There are coloured ship models for the players, plus an Alliance cruiser and a Reaver ship. It's a bit disappointing that all the ships are Firefly class. Even if the ships have all the same stats, some extra variety might have been nice.
Each ship has a captain - I ended up with Nandi from the episode "Heart of Gold". The ship has 8 cargo slots, each of which will hold a block of cargo/passengers (for completing jobs) or 2 sets of fuel (used for travelling) or ship parts (used for repairs when certain events occur). There is also a "Stash" which is hidden compartments where you can smuggle contraband etc. Along the bottom of the ship card are the main drive, everyone starts with a main drive of 5. Movement is either a "mosey" where you move 1 space, or a "full burn" which uses 1 fuel but lets you travel up to 5 spaces. When travelling on a full burn, you draw a card from the space decks each space you travel through. Alliance space is safer than Border space. The cards may be "Keep Flying" (continue on to the next space) or may reveal events such as salvage (stop here and try to collect it or carry on past), distress beacons, move the Alliance cruiser (and possibly remove any outlaws or contraband on any ship encountered), move the Reaver ship (might eat the crew and passengers of any ship it encounters), your ship breaks down (use some parts to repair it)... There are extra slots for any upgrades that you might buy. On the right of the card are the crew. Along the top you place the completed job cards which make you "solid" with that contact, granting some extra bonuses in certain situations. On the left side you place your active jobs (up to 3). I also have my stack of money visible, we all started with £3000.
The money is gorgeous and very satisfying to handle, and deserves a special mention!
This being the simple starting game, we didn't get as far as using any of the misbehave cards. They usually give you a couple of options, at least one of which often results in something unpleasant such as a crew member dying. The ship captains and characters you can hire all have skills you can use. Skill tests involve rolling a D6 and adding the relevant skills, i.e. "fight", "negitoate" or "tech". Given that some skill tests require an 8+ on a D6 to succeed, getting crew members with the right skills can be vital. Some jobs also require certain skills.
I picked up some low paid but very quick & easy jobs and concentrated on getting those finished rather than looking for extra ship parts/crew etc. After completing my last job, on my way to see Niska, I passed through the supply world Regina, so picked up a couple of crew just so I could say I'd done it. Thanks to my captain's special ability, I didn't have to pay any hire cost for them.
At the end of the game, I had amassed more than the required 6000 currency, so had some extra left after paying Niska his money.
The little Firefly ships are lovely little models, but as mentioned before, it might have been likely to have slightly different designs of ship, not just different colours.
My jobs gave me an obvious route to take. Pick up a shipment of 3 ore from Motherlode near the Red Sun. Deliver it (full burn, which cost an extra 1 fuel due to the "heavy load") to Bernadette orbiting the White Sun, earning 1,900 and making me "solid" with Amnon Duul. Mosey 1 space to Londinium to pick up some cargo bound for Newhope, orbiting Georgia (top left). Whilst at Londinium, I checked for jobs with Harken aboard the Alliance cruiser, I selected a couple of extra. The first involved loading 2 cargo and delivering it to Sihnon in the next space. The other was loading 1 cargo in Londinium and delivering to Kerry, quite close to my other objective at Newhome. Although these 3 jobs were all lower paying, they were enough to put me well over the 6000 currency I needed.
The Reavers didn't have any effect on this game, but I expect that if you played some of the other, longer-running stories, they'd have time to get in amongst the Border world at Red Sun or Georgia and become a much bigger threat to the players. Likewise, we didn't need much in the way of skills during this game, so there wasn't too great a need to pick up crew. Again, in other stories, crew would be more important because of "misbehaving".
Despite a couple of minor niggles, we enjoyed the game and might get our own copy...
