Deep Scan

by Brykovian (14 points, 2nd place)

For 2 to 6 Players

When the central planets began to run thin on resources, an aggressive hunt for materials on new planets was launched. As captain of a Geo-Recon vessel, it is your mission to bring back the best samples of metals, food, and oil.

Contents

• 9 Planet Cards - Each has a picture of a planet and 3 Nav numbers on it: Orbit (1-4), Atmosphere (5-8) and Surface (9-12)
  • 1 Deck of Nav Code Cards - Each card has a single value on it from 1 through 4 (the deck contains more 3's & 4's than 1's & 2's)
  • 18 Opaque Film Canisters
  • 35 Small Wooden Cubes:
  • 7 White (Metals)
  • 14 Green (Food)
  • 14 Black (Oil)
  • 6 Sets of Player Pieces (each in its own color):
  • 1 Ship Pawn
  • 25 Chips

Setup

Take all of the cubes and mix them thoroughly in a single pile. Fill the 18 film canisters with randomly selected cubes:

• 6 Canisters should have 1 cube
• 7 Canisters should have 2 cubes
• 5 Canisters should have 3 cubes

After they are filled, scramble the canisters to make it difficult to remember which canister had which cubes.

Shuffle the Planet Cards and lay them face-up in a 3-by-3 grid, with ample space between cards. Put 2 canisters next to each card (avoid giving away how many cubes are in each canister).

Each player takes a set of player pieces and sets his Ship on any Planet. The Nav Code Cards are shuffled and 5 cards are dealt to each player. The remainder of the deck is set next to the play area as the draw deck.

Playing

The purpose of the game is to gain the most points by collecting samples (canisters) from Planets. In order to collect samples, a player must provide the nav codes needed to orbit, enter the atmosphere, and land on the surface.

On a player's turn, he draws 1 card from the deck and then takes 2 actions (same action may be repeated):

• Move: Move Ship to any adjacent Planet
• Research: Draw 1 card
• Surface Scan: Pick up 1 canister from the Planet your Ship is on and shake it; return canister to its Planet
• Deep Scan (this counts as 2 actions): Pick up 1 canister from the Planet your Ship is on, open the lid and inspect the contents; re-lid the canister and return it to its Planet
• Navigate: see section below

Play is passed around the table to the left until all canisters have been collected.

Navigation

To navigate, the player discards 1 or more cards from his hand that sum to the next open Nav number for the Planet the player's Ship is on, and puts a chip next to that Nav number. Nav numbers must be fulfilled in the order: Orbit, Atmosphere, Surface.

A player may not navigate on a Planet that already has 2 other players' chips on it.

If another player has a chip next to the previous Nav number, the current player must play a combination of cards from his hand that will sum to each of the previous Nav numbers that the other player's chip is next to in addition to the open Nav number. The cards played may be reused for each Nav number fulfilled during that navigation. All cards played are discarded.

Example: Blue has a chip on Orbit (3), and Green wants to navigate to Atmosphere (5) ... he plays 2 cards: 3 & 2 ... the 3 fulfills the Orbit number and the 3+2 fulfills the Atmosphere number.

When a player successfully navigates the Surface, the canisters for the Planet may be collected by that player. If more than 1 player has chips on the Planet, the player with more chips may open the lids of the 2 containers and inspect their contents. He keeps 1 of the canisters and gives the other canister to the other player that had a chip on the Planet.

Canisters are kept with their contents hidden until the end-of-game scoring.

Scoring

When all canisters have been collected, players receive points based on the cubes they collected:

• 2 points for each White Cube
• 1 points for each Green cube

Only the player that collected the most Black cubes may score points for those cubes, receiving 1 point for each Black cube. If more than 1 player has the most Black cubes, all players tied for the most may count their Black cubes.

The player with the most points is the winner.

Drop Pods

by jpwoo (15 points, 1st place)

You and your neighbors have carved out your own little corner of deep space. The earth government has provided you with a faster than light supply gate to get your colonies started. The only problem is that it is faulty and doesn't drop its cargo exactly where you want it, or when you want it even. The cargo gets lost and materializes in the strangest of places. Each planet has created a recovery squad to try and gather up the drop pods for their own use. The race is on, and the help from earth won't last forever. The players must scramble to pick up what they can to build up their private solar systems.

Components:

• Hex Map board
• Solar system Player boards
• Drop Pods (film cannisters) with different colored lids.
• Tug boats in players colors
• Resource cubes of various kinds
• Warp Bag
• Warp Cards
• Start player marker
• Upgrade cards

Goal:

Your goal is to upgrade your solar system the most before the game ends.

Set up:

Each player starts with one Space Tug. A space tug is used to pull drop pods back to your solar system. Your home system is considered to have the basics, a life giving planet, and a small starting population. Home systems are marked on the game map.

There are resources like food, colonists, rare elements, weapons, ship parts. Etc each coming in a different color. Each player takes pods of their own color and loads them up with 3 resources a piece. Then the pods once filled are put into the warp bag. They are now in transit to the players. Players do this 3 times, so that the bag is stocked.

Players put their tugs on their home systems.

Game play:

A drop pod is pulled randomly from the bag and placed on the board in a random location determined the by a card draw. The card distribution brings in most pods near the center of the map. But some are scattered far from the center point.

Players then take turns moving their tugs. Tugs have a fixed movement. If you move your tug onto a pod you can immediately start to pull it.

When all players have moved all their tugs, pass the starting player marker and draw a new pod and card putting it on the map. This way there are constantly new pods entering the map.

When a tug brings a pod back to the home system, the player opens it up and can spend the resources inside on a system upgrade object. The player that brought the pod in, then is allowed to load another pod and put it into the warp bag. Even if they weren't the one that ordered the pod that was brought in.

Upgrades:

There are many possibilities for upgrades. Population, Farming complexes, opera houses, entertainment, trading posts, new tugs, upgrades for your tugs like speed or towing capacity. Some of these score points at the end of the game, others provide in game abilities. The players are generally considered to be competitors but not at war. There is no aspect of system destruction or overt war. However stealing other peoples pods, either tugged or in space is the name of the game. The only reason the pods are marked is so that everyone can have an idea of what it might contain.

Examples: A trading post would let you trade one resource with another player each time you harvest a pod. A new tug would let you gets pods twice as fast, A statue of yourself might be worth points at the end of the game. Weapons would let you steal a pod from another tug. The nebula theater is worth points and has a one time use of giving you the starting player token.

There would be deck of cards for each player, each card with a recipe on it for the cost and benefit of the upgrade.

End game

The game ends 5 turns after one of the resources from supply is fully depleted.

And in a nail-biter to the finish, "Drop Pods" squeaks out the win.

1st place - "Drop Pods" by jpwoo - 15 votes (4,3,3,2,2,1)
2nd place - "Deep Scan" by Brykovian - 14 votes (3,3,3,3,1,1)
3rd place - "Space Freighter" by Robert_C - 8 votes (2,2,1,1,1,1)
4th place - "Canned Space" by dmod - 5 votes (2,2,1)