Because of my love of Firefly and a desire for more I picked up Firefly the board game and gave it a go with some not so brown-coated people.
There are a lot of pros and cons to Firefly the board game. There are also some elements that really depend upon personal taste on whether you will love or hate it.
The game has limited player interaction. It gives the feel of a multiplayer solitaire game. Each player is running their own ship, getting jobs done, hiring crew and buying gear. There really isn�t much in the way of interacting with other players. This can be nice when you really want a game where you control your own fate but it also dulls the conversation and attention between players. So it�s a plus if you want a night without player fighting but it also sucks out the player back and forth.
I do have to say the limited interaction is good in that you can play the Firefly Board Game strictly solitaire and still have the same gaming experience. The game scales well from 1 to 4 players without taking away from the experience.
What the Firefly board game does very well is it allows a player to control their fate in the game. Players have so many options and are able to immerse themselves into the role of a ship captain that you really get the feel of being in the universe. A player can chose to be the heroic do-gooder running completely legal and legitimate careers, or they can run Robin Hood style crime jobs playing fast and loose with misbehaving, or they can play the bad guy doing immoral jobs to make money at the universe�s expense. For a board game the role play element is superbly designed. In fact even though this is a tie-in product for a TV show it is crafted in a way where you really don�t need to know the property in order to become immersed in the universe. Anyone who would enjoy being a spaceship captain will enjoy playing the Firefly board game.
I do have to warn players that, as with any game based on a licensed property, the rules could have had some fine tuning. The rule book should have been streamlined in order to find rules easier and the rules are sometimes needlessly complicated. You will need to play through a few times and keep going back to the rule book in order to remember all the special circumstance rules. I would advise playing the single player goal a few times to fully understand the rules before trying to run a game with friends.
The pieces are interesting and there are a lot of them. This game takes up significant real estate on the table so make sure you have plenty of playable space. While I do love having huge complicated games I actually found that for the style of the game there were too many pieces and the set up is a tad complicated. I did have two issues with pieces in that one ship stand was deformed a little and the alliance cruiser looks smooshed from being in the box� it looks like a sad alliance cruiser. Both pieces are completely usable but they end up looking a bit off.
To sum up I�d have to say I do recommend this game for some players. Any player who wants to be a ship captain with a universe of options for running their own crew and picking their own jobs should definitely get this game. This becomes truer if you want a game where everyone just gets to play their best game with limited interference from opponents. But if your players aren�t willing to invest time in learning a complicated rule system or are looking for some heavy competitive action this probably isn�t the game for you. Personally I will enjoy playing this game in the future and look forward to getting some Browncoats in on the action.
Until next time� I�ll be in my bunk. Playing this game of course.
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