It’s Star Trek Week here at The Nerds of Color and what better way to celebrate than to play one of three Star Trek related games that have been released in the past year.
Star Trek Catan
“The Settlers of Catan” designed by Klaus Teuber and originally released in 1995 has sold over 15 million copies worldwide with more than 30 different language versions. “Star Trek Catan” is a game that is a re-themed version of the original. The game is a resource management and trading game at its basic level and the first player to 10 points wins. The “Star Trek Catan” version maintains the same rules as the original Catan, so if you are already familiar with Catan you will easily jump into the Star Trek version. The “Star Trek Catan” does enhance the game play of the original Catan, however, with Star Trek TOS crew members cards with special abilities adding to the overall theme. If you are a Catan fan and a Star Trek fan, “Star Trek Catan” is a great addition. If you haven’t played Catan before but are a Star Trek fan, this is a good game to introduce you to the Catan game play and have Trek fun.
“Star Trek Catan” is a game for 3 to 4 players, ages 10 and up (some reading required for the cards but I’ve found children as young as 8 can grasp the game concepts pretty well), and an average game takes about 75 minutes (can range from 45 to 90 minutes).
Star Trek Deck Building Game: Original Series
Deck building games have the mechanic where each player builds their own set of cards. Usually you start with a small number of cards and then over each turn you add or improve your original deck by adding cards from a common area to all players. In “Star Trek Deck Building Game: Original Series,” you area a captain of a small Starship and you are looking to take your basic crew and Starship and ultimately improve it as the game proceeds and gain mission points. A typical game winning condition is the first player to achieve 300 mission points is the winner. Originally you will start off with a crew of ensigns (red shirts) and lieutenants (blue shirts) and over time you’ll upgrade your crew (dispose of the red shirts, obviously) to commanders or better. You can also battle other players to slow them down in reaching the 300 mission points. Ultimately, this can be a difficult game for those who are not already experienced with deck building type games. Even with deck building game experience, it can still be a challenge to play.
“Star Trek Deck Building Game: Original Series” is a game for 2 to 4 players, ages 13 and up, and an average game takes about 90 minutes to play.
Star Trek: Attack Wing
With the success of the “Star Wars: X-Wing” minatures game, there surely had to be a Star Trek themed miniatures game. In August WizKids Games released “Star Trek: Attack Wing,” a tactical space combat game featuring miniatures from the Star Trek universe. The base set comes all of the items you need to play the game plus 3 miniature ships, the USS Enterprise-D, IRW Khazara (Romulan), and IKS Maht-H’a (Klingon). You can then purchase additional ships such as the USS Enterprise (Constitution class), USS Reliant, and other Klingon, Romulan, and Dominion ships. The game basically plays as such: you pick a mission, you set up the ships for that mission, each player selects an action they want their ship to do on their turn, the turns occur, and actions resolve. If you have played X-Wing, you will be able to jump into this game very quickly as it uses the same system, though with Attack Wing you can modify your ships abilities depending on what crew members you have. If you are a Star Trek fan and space combat is something that interests you, this is a great game to pick up. However, if you or the people you expect to play with, find spatial reasoning challenging, this might not be the game for you. Unfortunately, the minis in Attack Wing and in X-Wing are not compatible so having Slave I go against the Enterprise or the Falcon go up against a Romulan ship isn’t possible.
“Star Trek: Attack Wing” is a game for 2 to 4 players (4 players play in teams), ages 14 and up, and an average game takes about 60 minutes to play.