High Frontier 4 All

A unique game of hard SciFi primarily about building orbital factories on near earth objects in the solar system. It verges on being a role-playing game and has common elements to other Eklund games such as designing a hand of cards from a free market, lots of chaos, and of course the ubiquitous comet. Similarly there is the characteristic thematic-integration of other Eklund games implemented with old-school mechanics like dice rolls and card draws which are usually frustrating but it all coalesces into a coherent design that is fascinating, deep, exhausting, and very time consuming. It is a silly game too despite it's serious exterior and produces some hilarious and memorable narratives

Jugado por Ahora:

• Diamantes Espaciales en Solitario.
• Too much for me.

Once you're over the difficulty cliff of learning all the moving parts - the rules, the combinations of cards to make a rocket that can prospect, the routes on the map, patent bidding, negotiations - this becomes this space nerd's dream sandbox. You make up missions for yourself: can I tag Saturn's moons before the other players notice? How far out can I get in a solo single career? It's not perfect nor perfectly balanced, though: the base paradigm is very much focused on physics and the dangers of space, and that can make it slow to start and frustrating. Fortunately, because it is a sandbox, there are simpler variants and ways to play in the box ("Space Diamonds", "Race To Glory"), in the Appendix and on BGG. Word of warning: don't try "Hermes Fall" without the errata-d rules, unless you really like dancing in a concrete overcoat.

This is a game different to any other. Some people define it as a simulator. And it is true, but it is also a very good game, where you have to take decisions, events happen and you have to have strategic and tactic decisions to win the game. It is a very complex game because there are many small rules that you have to take into account. Once you learn it, it is intuitive and easy, but if you stop playing it for a few weeks you will have to learn it again from the beginning and this takes a lot effort. You have to be an experienced gamer in complex games in order to overcome the initial learning curve, in other case probably you will not like this game. If you want to learn about aerospace engineering, the rules include complex explanations about the foundations of the game. It is very luck-dependent and this is sometimes quite frustrating because you have to draw a dice every other turn and very often the related event destroy what you were building in the previous turns. However, this events are an important part of the game because you have to design your strategy based on those and change it when a disaster happens to your rocket. I play solo and I like it a lot. However, I think playing with people would be much better because when playing solo you loose auctions, negotiations and criminal actions, which are fun.