Alien Frontiers

As of 01/11/15 I received the 4th edition, 2nd edition printing which includes the new plastic dome colonies (as opposed to the previous wooden bits in the 3rd edition and prior) and the corrected double sided game board (4th edition, 1st printing had a misprint on the d6 side of the board), as sold by Game Salute.This is a great game, I really enjoy it. I have to comment on how high quality the game pieces are. Even the box appears a little thicker than other games I own, the printing is beautiful and the box feels wonderfully smooth. They included tuck boxes for all the pieces (yes, everything) which is impressive and a great touch for those like myself that are overly concerned with organizing their games. The 4th edition includes the new plastic bubble colonies as well as rocket scoring tokens which I really like and add a little flavor to the board. I've seen some people scoff at the price tag of this game but I'd like to again comment on the fact that everything in this game is super high quality and the game does comes with a lot of pieces (including a double sided board), I feel it very much justifies the price tag ($60). The game largely relies on dice rolls to place your dice (ships), some people may not like this as there is obviously a lot of luck involved, I however don't mind it and enjoy the game play. A unique mechanic to this game is you don't clear off your dice (ships) once placed until its your turn again, so everyone is basically "jamming" up the board with their most recently placed dice (ships) on your turn. I really like this because I feel it really eliminates any advantage you might have had as first player or disadvantage as the last, it feels very equal. The game flows really nice, there are in fact a lot of options and ways to score points and colonize the planet that I've never felt like "oh man, I'm totally stuck." I would consider the game medium weight in difficulty, there are some complex mechanics of the game, but over all the play order and how you make all your moves is really rather simply.

Yahtzee with space theme, with some resource management thrown in. Fun, but... Average gameplay, average art design, average theme. Baffled by raving reviews here. As for value, there's nothing here that warrants this set being more than about 35 tops, but is sold for 60-75?? You can get a much better game for much less money. Not a lot of variety or creativity. A decent blend of good elements from other games.

Excellent game with just the right amount of complexity and depth. I bought it to play with my 9 year old son, and while it's a little too much for him, there are a couple of layers of rules/gameplay that can be stripped away if necessary (e.g. the "ability" cards). This version supports the kick-startered "rocket dice" with a completely different printing of the board on the back with appropriate parking spots for the bigger dice. Very nice.

Just finished playing this game for the first time in our group last night. Our group has already added it to our "keepers" list.We tend to play games from fairly simple to mid level difficulty strategy games. We like and play Stone Age, Railways of the World, Waterdeep, and the like.This game fits right in. We liked the game mechanic by which you rolled a set of dice each turn to find out what strength of spaceships you would be using during your turn. A major early strategy is to increase the number of your spaceships.The game depends on careful planning of their use, and provides mechanics to manipulate your dice to change the numbers, and therefore the uses you can make of your ships during a turn. This makes each turn interesting, and rewards good strategy.The game is quite well balanced, with ways to keep one player from running away, but definitely rewards good strategic play. There are relatively few points to be had, which makes it important to fight for each point, which differs from many other games.One thing to watch for is table talk. Depending on the custom of your group, it is unusually easy to talk a new player unfamiliar with the scoring and strategy into playing moves that look good but are poor for his/her game chances, and for everyone else but the table-talker.Overall, highly recommended. Can be played in a few minutes of learning, but requires quite a bit of time to play the first time, as you have to read the various cards which manipulate the dice and resources, and this will take some time at first.

This is one of my favorite games. The cheesy SciFi theme is classic.You have ship (the dice) that you roll and depending on what you roll you dock at various ports. The ports allow you to gain resources, pirate other players, colonize the planet surface, gain more ships(dice) and gain alien technology. The game is scored with victory points and the goal is to colonize the planet's surface. The game play is fun for beginner to expert game players. There are also many expansions that add more to the game's content and create even more replay value into a game that already has great replay value. The expansions also add additional rules and potential for additional players. Of all the games I have, the colony pieces are very nicely made and some of my favorite game pieces.In a nutshell...BUY A COPY! It is a great game.