Space Cadets: Away Missions

[putting on Hipster glasses and ironic trucker cap]

Yah, Space Cadets Away Missions, I was into that when it was still called Spacemen vs. Aliens. It was cool. But all the new fans have kind of ruined it.

[removing pants and glasses but keeping the hat on 'cause that's how you like it]

Looks cool. Congrats, Al! I see it plays 1-4. How well does it scale between that range, would you say?

Funny that you should ask about that becuse we just changed it from 1-6, feeling that since only one scenario was for six players it was not really fair to advertise it that way. All the other scenarios are for 1-4.

I think it scales perfectly since the number of aliens appearing each turn is dependent on the number of players. It might possibly be a little harder with more players, but more players on the map means more options (since each character has a different "super power") and that seems to balance everything perfectly.

Is 60 minutes still about right from the website?

Looks cool. I think fast and simple person level action is a little underdone, most wargames are at a higher complexity level and squad based.

Really digging that retro style in the concept art.

Gary Sax wrote: Is 60 minutes still about right from the website?

Absolutely. It could be even shorter than that it you are quickly overwhelmed by the alien hordes. Of course then you will want to set it up again for another try. . .

Late the party as usual (had to reverse search based on your blog post), but congrats on getting this published! Looking forward to adding a new co-op to my shelf that I can never get anyone to play with me.

cdennett wrote: Looking forward to adding a new co-op to my shelf that I can never get anyone to play with me.

Welcome aboard, "C"! Im sure your friends will all be happy to play. Just show them this:

I feel like we've been discussing coops around the forums here the last few weeks... I was curious how this game plays. Does it have a "draw a card" type encounter system? Or a carefully planned scenario in a booklet? Just reading the little bit we know about it, it doesn't seem to share much in common with the "crisis management" put out fires style of coop game like Pandemic.

Also, any updates for us about this game?

I played two games of it this weekend and it's more of a creeping doom than a crisis deck.

No deck at all actually, instead there's a chit on each spaceship space that you explore as you work to complete the mission. Each has some level of alien presence on it, there's often materials available that are useful in some way or another, and some of course are the objectives that you need to complete. Some turns bring more trouble than others, but it's more of a building push-back on what you're trying to accomplish, and the Space Cadets don't believe in sacrificing even one guy for the success of the mission. Everyone lives or it's deemed a failure, so you need to manage holding the aliens at bay while making progress through the landscape.

I'm putting this more in the Arkham Horror end of the spectrum than Pandemic. It's much smaller than Arkham on the table, but there's a LOT of issues in the mix on any one turn, giving you the ability to react to a lot of different conditions and find ways to wiggle out of jams. Rules will be a challenge on this to start, but the good news is that it's not as important to hit them perfectly in this one, as playing to the spirit of the rules is going to give you a good time and a good story afterwards.

S.