At the bottom of your ship is a cargo hold with limited slots to hold treasures (and damage) you will receive throughout the course of the game. As the game progresses these spaces will fill up, with either defeated pirate ships or artefacts you collect.

Cadets can’t activate rooms (except for repair) but they can be promoted to an ensign if players spend medals, this allows for players to instantly gain an ensign of a colour they need by spending this resource. After using your crew to activate a room or complete a mission, they slide around the path and form a queue. When a new round begins you slide everyone towards the ready area and leave 3 again at the starting positions.

Our Verdict?

Room techs can be activated as normal rooms later by a matching crew member, and each of these unique cards give your crew better options beyond the four basic rooms you have on the bridge of your ship Final Score: 3.5 Stars – A well-produced game with a fun theme, but it’s hard to pin down what it excels at. Ensigns can be promoted to commanders by spending 3 medals. These upgraded units can be used to activate a room twice or bring across a matching coloured ensign from the queue into the ready room, allowing for more actions on future turns. The vibrant galaxy holds many peculiar mysteries to explore and uncover! Skillfully manage your team of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers to make the most of their unique abilities—all while balancing essential ship roles, completing unique missions, and upgrading your ship with powerful engine-building alien technology. Among the other rewards for various deeds (points, androids, artifacts, influence, etc.), each captain can also accrue medals. These can be spent to promote cadets to ensigns, trading their gray, unimpressive miniature for one color-coded ensign of your choice. But medals can also be spent to promote an ensign to the rank of commander, which is awesome! Commanders can work twice as hard as ensigns (for double the effect), or can even command other ensigns of their specialty to zip out of the queue and into the ready room, giving you more flexibility and control over your available actions.

Each player in Starship Captains gets their own ship and crew to command. Each crewman will be focused in one of three areas (movement, shooting, or research) or be a lowly cadet who’s only good at repairing your ship. You can load up your ship with a variety of tech.

Logo

Settle into the captain’s chair of your very first star cruiser and get ready to embark on an exciting voyage through the depths of space in this euro-style action selection and engine building game for 1-4 players. These specialists are your workers, and you will place them in different departments of your ship and your tech board to take actions. (I won’t call this a worker placement game though, because these spaces are available to all players on their various ships, then the spaces clear at the end of each turn.) A space-themed board game with thematic similarities to the beloved sci-fi television series Star Trek – particularly its focus upon the wonders of space exploration – Starship Captains will support two to four players in a tabletop title about adventures in the galaxy. Manage a diverse crew of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers—each with different special roles and capabilities. Starship Captains puts players in control of Enterprise-like starships working together in the faction known as the Cooperative (in part because I’m guessing “Federation” was taken!). Recently promoted to the rank of Captain, each player has command of a small crew of specialists from across the universe.

In this 1-4 player Eurostyle game, which mixes action selection and engine building, you'll manage a diverse crew of cadets, ensigns, androids, and officers — each with different special roles and capabilities. By earning medals, you can promote and train your crew for even greater effectiveness. Similarly, you can upgrade your ship with powerful engine building technology for maximum synergy. Researching tech will provide you with a plethora of bonuses, as well as new abilities that let you take otherwise-impossible actions and open up new tactics and strategies. Technology like Stealth Paint, Universal Translators, and Wormhole Generators provide unique advantages to the players who develop them, so every captain will be looking for the technological edge on the competition.Do you have what it takes to deftly command your crew and become the best captain in the cosmos? We'll see!

PUBLISHERS: please, please, please, you’ve got to include player aids with your games if the iconography is even a minor challenge! Why are we still talking about this on the eve of 2023????? Hailing all Starship Captains! Get ready to boldly embark on a maiden voyage through the cosmos in this euro-style action selection and engine building game for 2-4 players.The small coloured ships consist of 3 small cardboard pieces that need to be folded over and clipped together. Folding these small cardboard bits over and sliding them together can be risky as they could be damaged rather easily. On a player’s turn, they can take one of three actions: Activate a room, Complete a mission, or Pass. Medals allow players to train any of their cadets or ensigns to another color; pay three medals and you can upgrade an ensign to a commander, which allows for the commander to do double actions or command a crew member of the same color to come out of the waiting area onto the ready room of your ship. Each player starts the game with their own ship which contains spaces for medals, upgrade rings, mission cards and a queue path to push your crew after use.