This game is out of this world! It’s on the moon actually… are you ready to establish your mark on the moon? Your mission is to have your space agency thrive in the crater of the moon’s south pole and achieve the most points.
The game is only 3 rounds long, and in each round players draft a shuttle with a variety of workers and resources, which will also decide turn order. You’ll use your 6 drafted astronauts to complete actions. These range from a variety of corporation actions, placing buildings for your future inhabitants from your player board, and inviting specific astronauts to your base to further establish your stake on Shackleton Base.
A Mishmash of Enterprises
As part of setup you will randomly choose three different corporations out of seven. This means every game will be quite different each time you play! Each corporation will have a small deck of project cards to expand your action possibilities, valuable resources to use, and/or provide additional opportunities to race and gain points from the printed corporation goals. I haven’t yet, but I would like to try out all the combinations of corporations. The variety each one offers really makes each game unique and interesting!
Let’s Lead Different Lives (trust me on this)
I really admire the asymmetry this game offers. Players are dealt a corporation leader with 2 different sides, A or B, in which all players must choose the same A or B set up. Unfortunately, the USA leader happens to be the weakest, so whoever is the most experienced should probably choose that one. It’s odd, but its abilities are not as powerful as the others. As the game progresses, players will diverge in different directions: funding different corporation cards, building structures on strategic spots on the moon, and exploiting the crater.
Competing with other players on funding the same corporations can lead to tighter actions and create challenging tension. Corporation actions can and will become more expensive the more players do them, especially in the same round.
The three different types of astronauts provide different bonuses when placing on the three main actions of the board. The yellow astronaut helps you exploit the different resources on the moon as well as building structures. The red astronaut helps obtain credits (ca$h money) for each active sector as well as spend money on funding projects. The blue astronaut, my favorite, helps with obtaining the corporation’s specific resources as well as executing multiple corporation actions in a single turn.
Additionally, having the different astronauts in your player home base provides a variety of benefits between rounds and end game. It is crucial to make sure you fill the board with the correct types of astronauts for some strong end game points!
The corporation project cards are all unique and work well, specifically for the corporations they are related to, which furthers the asymmetry of the players’ game. They offer conditions to be met for additional bonuses, different scoring opportunities, and improved corporation actions. They are also points at the end of game, so try to collect them all.
Players need to pay attention to the Lunar Gateway action. Any type of astronaut can be placed there and then be exchanged for a different astronaut to be placed on an open space on your player board base. It also gets you a quick three credits and a corporation action. It seems like a catch-all type of action, or “lesser” action, but it is actually a great action to take as the cost of the other actions increase later in the game.
Try to Take Over the Moon
Exploiting the moon action is key for setting up which astronauts are obtained at the end of the round. Aside from the different bonuses for placing the different types of astronauts, you’ll want to place them strategically as each row of hexes is calculated and the player with the majority of their structures will gain the astronauts onto their player board.
As long as there is space on your base, the astronauts will have a place to call home, otherwise they’ll be spaced (back to supply)!
Managing your resources throughout the game can be tough, but exploiting the moon is a great way (and sometimes free way) to obtain them. If you don’t have presence on a hex with resources you’re trying to gain, you must pay the player with the largest structure. Sometimes you have to lose something to get some!
Low Energy Makes Joe a Dull Boy on the Moon
This review doesn’t cover everything that can be done in the game. There are a lot actions that are intuitive, and some smaller details to remember when performing actions. For me personally, managing the energy level track and going up on the reputation track each time a player increases the energy level was sometimes hard to remember.
Placing out solar panels provide energy to hexes so structures can be active. Without enough energy, completing the big actions can be difficult without proper planning. The energy track is shared among all the players. It can be used by any player on their turn and the lack of enough energy could hinder other players’ turns when they were planning on using it. Placing out solar panels costs one rare Earth, but most times that rare Earth is all you have. You need it for other purposes, or maybe you’ve grown accustomed to it and you’ve named it Andy because it looks and tastes like your favorite flavor of rock candy when you lived on Earth (the space madness is setting in).
The reputation track is another important part of the game as it provides more corporation actions and bonus points when claiming corporation goals. Players will score points based on the amount of reputation they have reached at the end of the game. The downside of going up on the track is that it increases the maintenance cost for your base. It requires some planning to be able pay off those costs, otherwise you will lose reputation for each credit you cannot pay. The bonuses on the player board can help mitigate the fees as you gain your income first before paying the costs.
Final Thoughts
Some of my favorite games are spaced themed and Shackleton Base has joined those ranks. It’s somewhere in the top 20, for sure! I already see there is an expansion mentioned and I’m very excited for even MORE to be added to this amazing game.
The story of Shackleton’s expedition in the Antarctic is a great read as well. I did some light reading on it, and it was an insane venture but also really shows the best in humanity. What a life that man lived!
The publishers for Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon, Sorry We are French, have some really great games out there and I’m glad to see Pandasaurus brought this over to the States for distribution.
Shackleton Base is available at your local board game store, through the Pandasaurus Games webstore or online through Amazon today.
Highs
- Small worker, big actions. Lots of combos that can be triggered
- The variety of corporations keep the game fresh and replayable
- Great in box organization using tuck boxes for all the pieces
Lows
- Game length can be long, around 40 minutes per round
- Lots of iconography, pieces, and a bit of a table hog
Complexity
Time Commitment
Replayability
