Stellar Horizons

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. elvis82566

   Stellar Horizons is a "build your own space program" game in which you lead one of five Earth factions to explore and develop our solar system. Designed by a real-life space engineer with a PhD in long-duration spaceflight from MIT, Stellar Horizons is intended to be a plausible representation of the first steps of humanity towards the stars between 2030 and 2169, with each turn representing a year of time. You control your faction's space program, outposts, and fleets spanning across the solar system, although you also have some influence over your faction's politics back home on Earth as space development becomes more important. Movement is based on real physics. You move from orbit to orbit, or conduct long range transfers to move between planetary systems like Earth, Mars, or Jupiter. As you send out robotic explorers and crewed vehicles to explore the solar system, they bring back valuable data to further your scientific research. Technologies are intended to represent plausible extrapolations of existing development during the next 150 years: there are no transporters or warp drive, but you will be able to develop rockets powered by fusion and even anti-matter. In the engineering and biology domains, you'll eventually be able to construct space elevators and put your crews into safe hibernation for long journeys. You'll design your own ships using over fifty different component types based on your level of technology on the tech tree. These range from tiny probes intended to merely take photographs as you fly past Jupiter, to giant destroyers, cruisers, and battleships which ply the space lanes with peaceful or hostile intentions. The policies you choose determine your focus (robotic, crewed, economic, diplomatic, settlement, or military), allowing you to draw new ship and base components you'll use to design and construct your ships and bases. These range from ship components like engine rooms, medical bays, airlocks, and command centers, to weapons and defenses like lasers, rail guns, and stealth systems, to base facilities like mining stations, research labs, or spaceports. You'll be given a budget to spend on Earth and can also build bases to harvest minerals, organics, and fuel to expands your economy. You can also forge diplomatic relationships with players and non-player factions alike, and trade resources at their bases to earn extra cash. Each of the five factions has different strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and available ships based on their unique geopolitical situation. Military conflict is certainly possible but not always encouraged. Stellar Horizons features more diplomatic, technological, and economic competition than outright combat, although neglecting warships entirely leaves you vulnerable to pirates, trade embargoes, and sneak attacks by rogue players and factions. Stellar Horizons includes short co-operative and competitive scenarios lasting an hour or more, and campaigns lasting a day up to about a full weekend for experienced players. Up to seven players can play at a time and the game is most fun with at least two, but there are also one-player scenarios, and the campaigns are highly suited for solo play. There are three ways to win the campaign: be the first to develop an Interstellar Colonizer, terraform a world, or achieve dominance in space over your rivals.

2. 5 out of 10

   boulou

   I find the pace of collecting development points too slow in this game. And there are so many dice rolls to collect those points!

3. 5 out of 10

   Blaystro

   OMG. This is the hardest evaluation I did for a boardgame. [size=18]The Great...[/size] - the theme : YOU ARE ACTUALLY BUILDING A SPACE NATION FROM SCRATCH AND IT FEELS REAL. - there is so much STUFF in there : there of planets, moons, asteroids, darwf planet, spaceships, probes, robotic vehicules, resources, money, research (3 types), etc. I LOVE IT (and I hate it, read below). - There is 2 rulebooks and 7 players' aids. [size=18]...and the nightmare[/size] - the rules are... OMG... AWFUL. This is a real nightmare. I played almost during 12 hours in one week-end and I believe that 1/3 was double checking the rule book. - there is so much completely arbitrary exceptions : i.e. you can build several infrastructures but you can't use both, spaceships can mine planets but not if there is a base you own on the planet (someone's else base is ok...). To summarize, I never saw a game with so much : "you can do that BUT... actually no". - some of the rules are actually pretty bad : space combat and diplomacy are ugly. - THIS IS DICE ROLLING KINGDOM. One action : 3 dices minimum. Plus more dice rolling if it succeeds. PLUS card drawing. PLUS again dice rolling. A simple exploration (you do that all the time, several times a turn) can takes 10 minutes, I'm not kidding : Example: [i]one single EXPLORATION action is like: dice exploration > check dice > if SUCCESS draw research > if SUCCESS deplete planet > solve mission > draw money > draw world Card > check valid world card > replace (maybe) previous world card > dice for life > if SUCCESS place "sign of life" > get free research (many exceptions here) > draw research > draw politics token(s) > Dice for recall/malfunction > if FAIL ship is RESERVED/EXPLODE, draw research (1 or 3 or 5 depending of the type).[/i] Seriously, it is a single action, and I even simplified because sometime the choice is not that straighforward and you should double check the rules. [b]Each turn, you do that between 2 and 10 times per player[/b]. [b]There are 120-140 turns[/b]. It means you will repeat this same ugly pipeline of actions between [u]300 and 1200 TIMES PER PLAYER[/u]. Even if you have an amazing pace of 1 minute to do all of this, prepare yourself to do between 5 hours and 20 hours PER PLAYER of this action again and again. I'm not even talking about building ship, moving, fighting, trading, etc : all of them have a different pipeline of actions drawing/rolling/drawing/rolling again... [size=18]This is crazy![/size] I know pretty well the rules. I tried a solo campaign (hoping it would be faster). I took me more than 12 hours to go from 2030 to 2085. It is not even half the campaign. Some are reporting that a single campaign with 2 players take more than 60 hours in UTOPIA (not a single fight/war/embargo). If you can put that amount of time, good for you. But are you willing to do again and again these repeating actions ? If you do. Buy it right now ^^ The game is still somehow good because of the theme and of all the details. But c'mon... it is a missed opportunity! [size=18]Last words[/size] This is the sad part of the review : could have been better. It should have been better. Much better. When you will have your first game, you will feel it like a spear in your heart [i]"It could have been so EPIC ! Why this game take so much time ?! Did I just roll the engine failure or the malfunction ?! Can I have more coffee ?"[/i] I tried, like many, to rewrite some rules. After a while, I said, like many, [i]"hell yeah, why not rewrite ALL the rules"[/i]. And this is a daunting task because of the scale and ambition of this game. That's why I don't blame the author (who is not a full-time game designer). Maybe designing a game of this scale should have required much more work, that's all. And this is the only sad conclusion I can give. [size=18]more last words[/size] So why this HUGE 8.4/10 rating on BGG ? I don't know... or actually do I ? I may have one answer : stuff. Lot of stuff. Lot of stuff inside a big box. Lot of stuff inside a big heavy box bought on kickstarter. You see this pattern all the time: A KS campaign put a lot, a lot of stuff in a box. People are happy. Or maybe I'm just wrong and stupid and this is one of the greatest niche game of BGG... My rating : 4/10. 5/10 if you count the "THERE IS SO MUCH STUFF INSIDE" oh wait. Actually it deserves a 1/10 because of "2 hours" estimation for the mars scenario which is actually 10-20 hours! OMG BETA TEST YOUR GAMES FOR GOD'S SACK (please).