Fly your cruddy ships across the galaxy....

I know, I know, you hate me talking about Board Games, but this one is a little special.
Many of the "gamers games" out at the moment are very serious, and have dull themes... you know the sort of thing, creating postal routes in medieval Germany for example, or trading bits of cardboard at auction.... so far so YAWN, right?

Sucks sometimes, if you don't let yourself get into it... so hoorah for the genius, Vlaada Chvatil who designed another of my favourite games, Through The Ages, who has in this case created the rather wonderful "Galaxy Truckers", which gave me one of the most immensely fun Wednesday evenings I have had in ages...

What's the game about? Well... it's mainly in two parts... the first is you, against the clock, trying to build as good a spaceship as you can from the parts available and in the second yhe ships you have built are sent across the galaxy encountering meteor storms, space pirates and the like and for the most part getting smashed to bits.

It's not a game for people who like reliable strategies and predictable gameplay since it is impossible to build a ship capable of withstanding everything the game throws at you and is even harder to guess what the trip across the galaxy is going to throw at you in the way of laser blasts, potentially lucrative cargo and meteor storms...

There are lots of bits to choose from when making your ship, but there's a catch - everyone is grabbing them in a time limit from the same pile of parts, creating competition... especially since there aren't enough pieces for everyone and each person to finish gets a headstart on those behind them. Yowzer!

So in fact it is purely a game of trying to protect yourself from all hazards, but this is impossible so you come to rely on crazy luck based guesswork... bearing this in mind though, it is ridiculous amounts of FUN! I lost this first game by an absolute mile as my poor little ship was absolutely smashed to bits on the final run through the galaxy and I lost half of my ship to a wayward asteroid. Nevertheless it was the most chatty, laugh out loud and friendly experience I have had for a long time. It has for the first time in ages led me to really bemoan the lack of funds I have at the moment (so anyone looking for Christmas inspiration....).

Thanks for listening,

A