Review of Rocketmen

Blurb from the publisher: 'A deck-building game with an innovative twist of preparing your missions on the Launch Pad, temporarily removing part of your assets from the deck you play. To win, you must find a balance between the „mission" and „money" parts of your deck and use them efficiently, as the victory conditions reward those who are the fastest.

Secretly, they have never stopped dreaming about the thrust of all their entrepreneurial actions and deeds - reaching the stars. Now, the time has come for them to embark on a second giant leap for humankind, to make the outer reaches of the solar system our home. Only one of them shall go down in history as the first explorer of space and a person who truly forged their will and power according to the bold words: citius, altius, fortius - faster, higher, stronger.''

What you get: Your GBP 30 or equivalent will buy you Rocketmen, a sci-fi, push-your-luck, card drafting and hand-management board game that can accommodate from one to four players in around 60 minutes. The game was successfully kickstarted in 2020, gathering more than four times the requested investment.

In addition to the 16-page English rulebook that one can also download from the publishers' website free of charge, the game includes the following: one game board, 4 player boards, 24 mission markers (6 per player), 4 Victory point markers, 12 double-sided achievement markers / Rocket points (3 per player), 24 double-sided achievement markers (6 per player), one First Player/Alpha Missile emblem, one Rocket Launcher Tag, one Moon Tag, one Mars Tag, 48 Mission cards (12 per player), 23 Resource cards (teal), 20 Resource cards (pink), 15 Engine cards (5 of each type), 12 Threat cards (4 of each type), 18 Mission Success cards, 12 Personal Goals, 10 Game Variant cards, 7 Solitaire cards, and 10 ziplock bags.

Gameplay: One to four players (let's randomly call them Elon, Jeff, Richard and Bill) compete for the conquest of space. There are three destinations on offer (Earth's orbit, the moon, and Mars), each of which with several locations of seven possible types, like a satellite, a space ship, a base etc. Each player begins the game with two secret, random Personal Goals linked to fulfilling certain missions and gaining fixed points as well as additional points, in cases of combos. Each player has his own starting deck, with an initial hand limit of six. Colour coding aside, starting decks are identical, and include cards like spaceships, bases, and space stations. Players have three areas in front of them: the mission plan, the launch pad, and the playing area. Assets are divided into teal and pink; the distinction serves only to show which will come first during the game. Threats are semi-randomly shuffled into these two decks, which are ultimately merged into one. Six cards from that deck are always on display for everybody to see. Missions and Engines are divided by type, and remain open.

The game is played in turns. During his turn a player can take any action he wishes, in any order. The three options are buying cards from the display, placing cards on the launch pad or the mission plan, and discarding cards.

To buy cards from the display, he uses the cards already in his hand. All cards go open into his playing area in front of him, for the time being. Other means of payment also exist, like tokens, combos etc. When cards are bought, the display gets immediately replenished. The purchased cards are to directly help the player towards the exploration of space or, in the case of Threats, award VPs when a player fulfils their requirements.

Cards on the mission plan are imperative, since without them cards cannot be placed on a player's launch pad. A player can only have one mission active. The cards that can be placed on the mission plan are the twelve initial ones that the player received. They state which of the three destinations the mission can reach (sometimes one only, sometimes more), the rocket points needed to launch it, and the Mission Success cards that can be drawn during the attempt. Some of them pay for their own cost, others however will require you using additional cards to play them. Mission cards provide ongoing benefits, should they succeed. The cards that can be placed on the launch pad are all cards depicting an item, but you can't use the same item twice. Any number of cards can be placed on the launch pad, provided you can pay for them. Finally, discarding allows a player to move one or more cards from his hand to his playing area in front of him. In a more drastic approach a player can also abort a mission and discard all the cards he has on his mission plan and his launch pad.

To launch a mission, a player needs to cover a certain distance (8, 10, and 13 for Earth's Orbit, the moon, and Mars respectively). A player can only launch one mission to a specific location in space. Cards cannot be played from one's hand during a launch. The player counts the Rocket points on the cards on his launch pad, as well as other circumstantial points, and aims for a sum equal to or greater than the value stated on the mission itself for that destination. Symbols on the cards on the launch pad (and other achievement tokens) help advance the mission on the mission track. The player shuffles the Missions Success deck which includes numbers from 0 to 4, and draws from three to five cards, depending on the destination he is aiming for. Cards are drawn one after another, and effects from cards on the launch pad can be used. The mission can be aborted at any point before drawing the last card. In such cases, the player discards some, but not all the cards from the launch pad. If a mission fails because all the allocated cards were drawn but the requisite number was not reached, all cards from the launch pad are discarded. If a mission succeeds, the card is retired from the game, while the player is rewarded with an achievement, not to mention the VPs for the mission and any additional bonus VPs (e.g. for being the first to reach one of the three space destinations).

At the end of a player's turn, cards from the playing area go to the warehouse (the discard pile, if you wish), and cards are drawn from HQ (one's personal deck) to bring his hand back to its limit. Achievement tokens are also reset, to use during the next turn.

The objective is to have the highest victory point total when the game ends. That happens either because a player reached the victory point threshold dictated by the game (23 points in a two player game, yet only 18 in a four player game), because a player has placed all six of his mission tokens in mission spaces and all three destinations have at least one by any player, or because all players have placed all their mission tokens on mission spaces. At that point, players earn bonus VPs from bought cards, moon and Mars tokens, one of their two personal goals, and variant cards.

If all that sounded too complicated, The Battle for Earth is an introductory game variant that uses only some of the game's elements and restricts missions to Earth's orbit.

If it sounded too easy, Variant cards alter some of the game's rules. Two cards can be randomly drawn per game. Examples include Threats having a higher VP value at the end of the game, an increase in hand size once a player succeeds in his first mission, and the player with the most items of the same type earning additional VPs at the end of the game.

In the solitaire game, the player faces an AI and tries to score more points than it. The turn's flowchart follows a structured approach, where certain steps are fulfilled depending on what the AI is currently doing at that point. All in all, one plays his turn as usual with only minor exceptions, e.g. not refiling empty slots on the display when buying a card.

The rulebook devotes three pages to card clarifications, as well as an explanation of the pictographs that it uses.

The strong points: There are many deck builders in the market, yet when Martin Wallace designs he can create space for a brand new one. The game is effectively a race. Some missions are more likely to be your first, while others will probably launch later... unless you decide to throw a few curve balls to your competitors. In that sense, a player doesn't have trouble planning, since all missions are accessible from the beginning. The available resources are clear. When your turn comes, you know what you can buy from the display, and how this can help your case. There are many ways to victory, not only race-wise but also through the systematic use of Threats. Cleverly enough, Threats are both more expensive and harder to resolve the higher one finds himself in the VP track. Think of them as side quests that can help you get points on the side.

So, is the game tense? Yes it is, and if you do a dramatic pause before each Mission Success reveal, it becomes even tenser! To start with, it actually fells like a space race, and there are many, and equally valid, paths to victory. There are the tactics on how to handle your hand overall and each launch in front of you, there are strategies of what missions to go for first in order for the upgrades to count, and there is the luck, not however in uncontrollable amounts. To a large extent the game is about risk aversion. The better you prepare for a mission, i.e. the more rounds you devote into preparing your mission plan and launch pad, the more likely one is to succeed. Yet, the objective is not risk-free launches; the objective is successful launches that land on their destinations before your opponents'. The game is tight; miscalculations and errors at the beginning can bite you later on, it is not however neither a hardcore gamers' game, nor is it totally unforgiving. Pushing your luck works both ways, and many times you will find yourself agonizing over deciding whether to draw one last card or to abort on the spot. Sometimes you will draw horribly; others you will draw brilliantly. Remember to shuffle the deck before you draw. Fair warning: you might fail, or need to abort missions, even though chances were initially in your favour. That's a part of life. The game evens itself out in the long run, not after one or two games. I felt that the luck aspect is well-balanced against everything else. What is the abort mechanic, if not a brilliant luck mitigating measure?

For those interested in more details about the deckbuilding aspect, the first obvious thing is that deckbuilding is only a part of the game, with numerous things happening around it. The innovation it introduces is that preparing a mission in front of you slims down your deck by default. Thus, the game does not require a particular mechanism for you to concentrate on your core business. For more pressing matters when you want to simply empty your hand, the discard action is freely available at all times without cost. The game is about trying out new things and not about perfect, uninterrupted recycling processes. Sometimes it is preferable to forego that really good card you have been clamouring for, simply because different opportunities present themselves, be them mission or Threat related. It is an interesting take, to say the least.

The game is very replayable, and even more so because of the Variant cards. You don't need to use them, yet if you use them you will have to be even more adaptable. Some make the game easier, others harder, and others faster. I am usually a sucker for higher complexity, in this case however I enjoy the standard game as much as I do the that with the Variant cards.

I enjoyed the solo game. I am unsure as to whether I would recommend somebody to start solo before tackling the multiplayer experience. It definitely is a good game to pull out when you want to indulge your brains without looking at a screen and no friends are available, one however risks getting some bad habits that can be detrimental in the multiplayer game.

The rulebook is well-written and I didn't face any major issues; a couple of minor ones got easily resolved, even though there are some discrepancies between what is written on the cards and their extensive explanations in the rulebook. The game is easy to explain and start playing, even though you shouldn't expect to have a good overview of what you are supposed to be doing before the end of your second game. From there on, the game plays fast. Whatever you do, don't bother using the introductory variant; keep on reading about that.

The production values are high. The cards use the 56 x 87 mm European size, something that declutters the table. The pictographs are intuitive and easy to understand, even though the background upon which they are superimposed does not always help them. The four player aids are mighty useful and trust me, you will use them a lot. The plastic insert is not custom made for this game, yet it hosts the game's components with ease, irrespective of whether the cards are sleeved or not. Were an expansion to come out, the box would have probably handled its components.

I like it when publishers include zip lock bags in order to better protect the contents. Classy. In this case, we get more bags than we need. Thank you, Phalanx!

The weak points: Many deck builders suffer from reduced player interaction, and this one is no difference. Meaningful interaction is limited to taking a card from the display that the other aimed for, claiming a specific location that another player gunned for, to cause the game to end before someone launches an almost ready mission, and that's grossly it. Everybody is doing his own little thing, and no, you cannot really waste time to play in a screw-you way. It never pays back. If you are not a fan of mutliplayer solos, you might have issues here.

Last Aurora, an otherwise irrelevant game to Rocketmen, reminded us how a good implementation between the allegedly easy game and the complex game looks like. Here, we get The Battle for Earth as an introductory variant, which simply doesn't deliver. The game is so stripped down that it literally doesn't feel like itself. If anything, it might create a wrong impression about what the game does, and ultimately dissuade someone from picking it up. I can't fathom whom this variant is addressed to, and for how long the designer expects them to play it before graduating to the actual game. My advice? Don't bother at all; play the standard game only, with or without the Variant cards.

One Personal Goal card remained untranslated in its original Polish version. Thankfully, it's not a biggie. The card repeats the standard text of the other Personal Goals, and for those in doubt the publisher has put the translated version on its website.

Conclusion: Rocketmen is nice! Not too heavy, not too light, not too long, yet very tight, it offers some cool mechanisms on the tried deck builder genre while honouring the space faring theme. This will keep coming to the table, even though none of my gaming friends is a billionaire.

For more info on Rocketmen and Phalanx Games visit their website at https://phalanxgames.co.uk.

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