Rezension

demolition party in space

2491

Planetships

After the natural resources of Earth had been depleted, so-called Planetships were constructed to ensure survival and travel across galaxies. When the mothership, Planetship Alpha, gets into trouble and is destroyed, players, embodying commanders of other planetships, want to take the opportunity to win DNA from the wreck. Who will be the most successful looter?

Based on the same mechanism that was used in the game City of Spies: Estoril 1942 (Mesaboardgames, 2015) - the title of the game subtly and elegantly gives a hint on this re-use by the play on numbers in the title - you need, in each of four rounds, to place four out of your six character cards in six, eight or nine sectors (depending on the number of players), or you might rather call it docking. Only at docking stations, of course, but with rewards. For instance, “place space probe”, which enables me to take a look at face-down cards and thereby be able to assess better if a majority at that sector is worthwhile  - a tactical advantage, as is the rather often selected face-down placement of the character card.

Yes, majorities are the main aim of the game, majorities in each of the sectors, whereby each of the sectors only has room for three characters. The winner in a sector, the player achieving majority there, that is, receives the DNA treasure, which sometimes is visible, sometimes face-down, represented by an additional character card which you can either integrate into your team or place - as a victory point - on your own discard pile.

Usually, you keep your DNA booty in your team, as the card rather often offers several of the thrilling traits - as there are teleporting, hacking, scanning, wireless contact, shield or tractor beam or even higher values for combat strength or victory points, which only kicks in at the end, when the card remains in your action team - usually quite same dilemma on which of the surplus cards shall “only” be end up as one victory point. Hacking, wireless, tractor beam? We interact with those character traits at the point of majority determination when the card has been placed and thereby remove opponents from the sector, receive a strength bonus in relation to adjacent companions or even transport some in from adjacent sectors. In this way, a success imagined as sure and safe can change into cleverly conjured debacle, which, however, must be cleverly planned or, cleverly tuned and timed that is, because sectors are scored in adjacent sequence of sector numbers - an important, sometimes all-deciding factor.

If you want to act independently, you should assemble your team prominently from characters with Shield symbol; if you want to surprise, Teleporting might be of interest. The Scanning trait enables gamblers or players shy of conflict a chance to upgrade unalluring booty. Really thrilling-entertaining fun  which maybe causes you to overlook one or several of minor details in your first game. Even at the end of that first game, undecided or hesitating players will have something to ponder, as the various sectors themselves have a few special traits - which do a lot of good to the game. Who wins the marvelously futuristically designed plundering? Sometimes a surprise winner, because the „stronger“ characters, which maybe provide two or three majority successes usually yield less victory points than “weaker” ones; the scoring of the mission cards, which provide orientation in your strategy and nicely round out the game, are of some importance. Well-made!

2491 is- contrary to the graphic design, which perhaps lets one expect more wham-bam than ponder-ponder - is not a bellicose or conflict dominated game but an intensely tactically-intricate, highly interactive majority game for friends and experts. The plethora of variants will please experienced players, as will the clever mechanism; the moderate chance element in combination with the interaction element will exasperate hard-core planners - but that should not deter them and the four rounds of the game do not take too long, so that a second game can easily follow.

Thomas Bareder

Players: 2-4

Age: 14+

Time: 90+

Designer:

Artist: Manuel Morgado

Price: ca. 44 Euro

Publisher: MEBO 2020

Web: www.mebo.pt

Genre: Placement, majorities

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en es pt

In-game text: no

Comments:

Uses mechanism from City of Spies: Estoril 1942

Cards are victory points or characters for their traits

Team of characters can be adapted

More interactive/tactical than confrontational

Compares to:

City of Spies: Estoril 1942

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Thomas Bareder:

Interactive, highly tactical, and richly varied - a recommendable game to chew!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0