I’ve now played High Frontier, 3rd Edition, High Frontier 4 All and I owned Rocket Flight (aka Lords of the High Frontier). I’ve never played 2nd Edition, but as far as I know, there was no second edition, but I’m sure a comment will correct me. I’ve gone from “indifferent” to “suggest” back to “indifferent” and I’m back to “suggest.”

Not a blanket suggest …. I see a yearly game that involves all of the expansions¹ and that 10 hour behemoth is not for me. High Frontier has a snowball growth. The first exo-factories give you better patents (hopefully) which means your second rocket has first opportunity to explore and exploit key sites.

This may not be true of the most experienced players (several of which are in that yearly game). but it’s certainly true at my level and in one of my three games so far this year I busted site after site in my first hour, squandering my early launch advantage. If I had rolled well, though, I would have snowballed in a positive way. Like many of Phil Eklund games, HF is more simulation than game, with scoring tacked on. That sounds too harsh — the scoring scheme is actually reasonable. Quite often the ‘winner’ is the person that objective observers would say “Yeah, that space agency did the best.” But me personally, when I’m getting snowballed, it’s can be a bit of a drag. Three hours is often enough to determine that.

There is also the brain-burn factor. High Frontier isn’t as complex as Magic Realm, although the fact that its in the same conversation is telling. No, High Frontier’s brain burn is the paradox of choice. In the Realm, you start of with a world where you are going to wander around for a bit … the great treasures could be anywhere. Sure if you are hunting dragons you will have some preferred destinations, but the early game is exploration. In space, we’ve got decades of exploration done before the first mission launches. The map is known, and cosmically complex.

Even ignoring anything past the asteroid belt², your first mission has plenty of options limited by hydration, distance in burns and/or time, landing thrust …. and also preferences relating to spectral type and risk management. Then you have to calculate fuel, and High Frontier’s ingenious implementation of Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation take some time to think about. Even initiates with a few games under their belt (such as myself) have to ponder mission planning.

After about three hours, I’m tired.

That being said, I’d like to learn the Bernal and TW thruster rules (some modules in HF4), so I watched the heavy cardboard rules video (and am watching the playthrough) and I’ve set up a solo game (of HF3) which I might play off and on. A solo game has the “I can get up and come back to it tomorrow” advantage.

So, High Frontier is back into the suggest rating. I’ve re-caught that particular bug.

1. Possibly including expansions still under development ︎
2. Possibly a mistake, and I also typically ignore Mercury and Venus (a definite mistake) ︎