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Saturday, November 28, 2015

Review: Firefly: The Game by Aaron Dill, John Kolaleski, and Sean Sweigart

Firefly: The Game - Gale Force Nine

Holy mackerel this game has a lot of stuff! Our last outing in the verse used all off it! Two expansion boards, too many Reavers, close to a million cards (slight exaggeration) this game actually barely fit on the table. In fact I wouldn't recommend playing this on an inferior table, you need the space or you will lose track of things, like your ship upgrades, etc. I did find that with the latest expansion the game is now solidly in the Ameritrash gaming category - that isn't bad, I really enjoy the odd Ameritrash game, but it does mean I'll hesitate to bring it to the table because it inevitably means a late night of gaming.

The other thing this game has in spades is theme. I can't think of another Intellectual Property(IP) game that so captures the sense of the IP. Even if you don't do well in this game, you got to fly around the Verse doing jobs and watching your profits evaporate. Although this might be frustrating for the more competitive players, you can almost always find something worth doing even if it doesn't score you the big win. I should say that with every expansion in it was easier to have an unsatisfying pull of jobs though. This might be one game that I prefer to play with less than a full compliment of expansions - even though each expansion adds a good deal of fun to the game, just not all of them at once please.

Likes: Beautiful components, brilliant theme, enjoyable play even when you do not win. 

Dislikes: Too much stuff with all the expansions in, takes up a lot of table real estate.

Fun: When you enjoy yourself even when losing a game then you know the game is fun. 
Quality: The miniatures are big and beautiful (although a spot of glue would help them stay on their bases), the cards and cardboard is premium quality. Which is good because there is a lot of it. 
(re)Playability: The game could use a few more scenarios. The fact that it is a beast to set up (even just the basic game) and being a long playing game means this game hits the table less often.