These are “super” early, just observations I’ve had that could easily be wrong.

We are in the early stages of discovery (at least I am) where it’s difficult to evaluate some cards because you need to see them interacting with other cards. In particular the Near/Far Frontier worlds have some big swings.

• Taking a non-military start world is fine. If you have the lowest military for a few rounds, that’s OK and likely a bonus point or two.
  • But you’ll have to jump on the train, at least before wave starts.
• But don’t forget that there’s an automatic settle on T1, so if you can call trade that might be right.
• After a few games, I don’t think the Frontier Worlds are overly powerful, because even if you get something, it may not be something you want or that will synergize.
  • That being said, they are decently powerful and can provide a path to victory.
  • They are also more fun to explore, so the meta seems to be “Frontier Early, Frontier Often.”
  • Because of this, leeching those “Frontier Settle” calls will be important … more important than leeching Develop. This does benefit having at least a few points of military (to drop the 2 defense uplift worlds or a 1-2 defense world that boosts military) or having a small production world or two.
• Similarly, temporary military is an OK defense early … but you’ll definitely want some for Fronter Conquest. Half those homeworlds say “Ignore your numbers¹, you need X temporary military” (where X is 2/2/3/4/6).
  • There a several “Spend a rare for +2 military” cards, often on rare worlds. Those are nice, better than “discard this for +3” because you can re-use them.
  • The Far Frontier Run-Amok Robots damages a world for +6 Military. ²
• Don’t under-rate Defense vs Xenos! Particularly by the time you’ve repulsed and are dealing with retribution you’ll want a few points (and more is better). (The first card that caught my attention was Frontier Isolationists, because it gave me +6 Defense vs Xenos!)
  • Almost half the retaliation cards are “your military + your Xeno military + #” You simply can’t be better, those cards cancel all your “regular” military, but a few points of Xeno Defense will go a long way.
• Having a world (or two or three) you can afford to damage for little/no cost is fine. Sometimes you don’t want to spend cards/goods defending … taking the damage is fine and you save the goods for your Frontier Settle / Conquest.
• A random consume power sometimes means getting a point (or card) or two and …. losing your temp military for defense or offense next round! That temp military (particularly on offense) can be worth 10+ points!
• I’m not sure I’ve seen a winning strategy, but I do think “Big Military/Xeno Military” and “Frontier Settle/Conquest every other turn” without much card draw is a trap. An oh-so-tempting-trap … but even if you catch a world every turn, they tend to not build an economy.
• Consume x2 still exists …. with worlds that consume 2 goods for 3 (or 4!) points. Getting up to 8+ points before doubling is much easier, also because there’s no 12 card limit to tableaus.
• Because of this (OR conquering all the Xeno’s systems OR surpassing the Conquest Value) I suspect the game often ends with tableaus of ~16-18³ cards. (That is likely very meta-dependent).
• There is also the “Produce every turn and ship the extra goods to the war effort” strategy. Particular in the early game when you aim for the 5 point award and also (perhaps) messing up opponent’s timing for when the game transitions⁴. If you have a few worlds that earn a card when producing, this is strong. I don’t think this is dominant, but you can have implicit collusion tilt the balance.

Some Notes on the Frontier Decks

Note — Both decks are exactly half black (worlds you buy) and half red (worlds you conquer).

• The Near Frontier Deck is 18 cards
  • For the black worlds, the costs are 1/1/1/2/3/3/4/4/5
  • If you have 3 Mil and 2 XenoMil then you can conquer any of the red worlds. If you have 2 Mil and 3 XenoMil, there is one you can’t (Pirate Lair)
  • If you can only handle half the cards (ie, you have 5 cards in hand but no military) your odds of drawing 3 unplayable worlds are about 10%
  • New Sparta could call Frontier Settle on T1 and get a playable world 19 times out of 20⁵. Anyone else is about 17 times out of 20. And if anyone calls explore (and you get a card) the odds go up. Just FYI.
• The Far Frontier deck is 28 cards
  • Black Worlds cost 5/5/5/5/6/6/6/6/7/7/7/7/8/9 … so if you can afford a 7 card world you have decent odds
  • Red Worlds defense are 6/6/6/6/7/7/7/7/8/8/8/9/9/10
  • Roughly half of each defense number has the Xeno keyword (so military vs Xeno applies)⁶.

1. Although you still need a base of 9 military vs Xeno to try a conquest ︎
2. Much like Malevolent Lifeforms in the base game, I love me some Run-Amok Robots. ︎
3. Rules Note — You can start conquering the Xeno homeworlds once you have a Far Frontier world (and enough military) well before the 16+ card alternate requirement. ︎
4. Having a good development in hand for the first turn of the second half is something to keep in eye on. ︎
5. You can handle 8 of the cards assuming you are willing to dump your hand, and New Sparta can also hit the 3 cards that are “2 defense” ︎
6. But not the 10 defense card, it’s Alien. ︎

When I reviewed Nine Men’s Morris a few years ago, I noted it is one of the oldest recorded games, with boards having been found “etched into ancient roof tiles and still exists in a temple from the 9th-10th Century AD in Karnataka, India.” Since then, I’ve also learned that a blogger  had discovered the board “scratched onto the side of Charlemagne’s throne in Aachen [and] at Canterbury Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey in England.”

Given the historical popularity of this three-in-a-row game, it’s not surprising that there have been many variations over the years—or that variations have continued into modern times. One such variation is Gigamic’s Qomet. 

The board is based on the Twelve Men’s Morris board, where the corners of the three squares are connected by a diagonal line. Designer Fabrice Puleo added a central space to give Qomet its unique design.

Next, he changed the number of pieces per player from 12 (or 9) to 7 and created a unique winning condition: the first player to form a square takes the game.

On your turn, you can either place one of your 7 wooden stars on any open space on the board or you can move one of your stars along the…

The post Qomet Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

It’s Women’s Day! A great opportunity to look pair a book and a game on the American women’s suffrage struggle: The Woman’s Hour (Elaine Weiss) and Votes for Women (Tory Brown, Fort Circle).

Check out my previous Book & Game posts here:

Eastern Front: Russia’s War and No Retreat! The Russian Front

Reformation Era: Four Princes and Here I Stand

The Second Hundred Years’ War: The Rise of the Great Powers 1648—1815 and Imperial Struggle

Prussia in the Seven Years’ War: Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich

The Book & Game

The Woman’s Hour was published in 2018 by Viking Press. It focuses on the campaigns for and against Tennessee to ratify the 19^th Amendment which enshrined women’s suffrage in the US constitution – as the 36^th, and decisive, state to do so.

Votes for Women was published in 2022. It is Tory Brown’s first published board game. The card-driven game can be played in a solo or cooperative mode with the player(s) representing the American suffrage movement from 1848 to 1920 against an automated opposition, or with two to four players facing off against each other (half of them for, the other against women’s suffrage). In either case, the suffrage players must win 36 states (either by shoring them up decisively during the game, or in the final vote on ratification of the federal amendment) to win.

Connections & Conclusions

At first look, book and game seem to have very different scopes. After all, Votes for Women sets in with the Seneca Falls Convention (at which women’s suffrage was first voiced as a political demand in the United States) in 1848 and covers the following 72 years, whereas The Woman’s Hour begins with the arrival of activists Carrie Chapman Catt, Sue White, and Josephine Pearson at the Nashville station in the sweltering summer of 1920. Yet as the narrative progresses, background stories are woven into the tapestry – on the context of the 1920 presidential election, suffragists’ previous efforts to gain voting rights for women in the states and to lobby for a federal amendment, the women’s suffrage movement’s relationship with abolitionism, and all the way back to Seneca Falls (and a little bit of Abigail Adams’s “Remember the Ladies”). If you have played Votes for Women, you will recognize many of the people and events on the cards from the early and middle periods of the game when reading The Woman’s Hour.

What unites book and game is their focus on procedural politics. Historical change does not simply happen, nor is momentarily decided upon. Instead, it is brought into effect by the “strong, slow drilling into hardwood boards with passion as well as sound judgment” (Max Weber). The drills used come in both cases from the toolbox of political activism:

The Woman’s Hour details how suffragists (suffs) and anti-suffragists (antis) lobbied the Tennessee lawmakers, how they organized in associations and clubs to channel their activists’ time, funds, and energy, and, of course, how they campaigned for public opinion to win the hearts and minds of the American people with newspaper articles, public speeches, great processions, and all kinds of civil disobedience.

Votes for Women makes these the three actions from which the players choose on a given turn: Lobbying (for and against the 19^th Amendment in Congress), organizing (to gain the crucial buttons which are the currency for some powerful in-game effects and die re-rolls), and campaigning (which spreads influence cubes and thus eventually decides if enough states come out in favor of ratification of the 19^th Amendment or not).

As we’ve mentioned civil disobedience already: The women’s suffrage movement was no monolithic bloc. One of the great dividing lines was that of styles: The more conventional part of the movement, organized in the late 19^th and early 20^th century in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) led by Carrie Chapman Catt, paid close attention to appear as respectable as possible (knowing full well that their demand for equal suffrage was enough of a provocation to the male public opinion of the time). Others adopted a more radical style, inspired by the British suffragettes: The Women’s Party, led by Alice Paul (and represented in Tennessee by Sue White) referred to the president as “Kaiser Wilson” in reference to the German war enemy, burned him in effigy, and (successfully) provoked the police into arresting activists over minor infractions. The dainty young women and respectable matrons who served some prison time then embodied the injustice of depriving women of their vote.

The Woman’s Hour details these fractions within the movement, as NAWSA and the Women’s Party led entirely separate campaigns for Tennessee’s ratification of the 19^th Amendment. While infighting was avoided, the reader is left to wonder if the movement could have been more effective if not for these parallel structures – or if the split between a more moderate and a more radical wing was able to compel a broader spectrum of audiences by working in parallel.

Votes for Women depicts the multifaceted character of the women’s suffrage movement by splitting the suffragist player into campaigner figures and influence of cubes of two colors (yellow/gold, the traditional color of the American women’s suffrage movement, and purple, a color which Alice Paul had coopted from the British suffrage movement). As several Opposition event cards target the highest concentration of one or the other color, the Suffragist player is well-advised to aim for an even spread of colors in the individual states.

Votes for Women also tackles another split in the women’s suffrage movement which is outside the scope of The Woman’s Hour – that on strategy. After the initial push for women’s suffrage as a part of a great campaign for equal suffrage regardless of sex and race had failed in the aftermath of the Civil War, the suffragists disagreed on how to proceed: Some pushed for a federal amendment to the Constitution (like the 15^th Amendment had codified the voting rights of black men), others wanted to win voting rights in the individual states first. While the struggle for women’s voting rights was eventually won with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment in Tennessee, the voting rights advances in the individual states had laid the groundwork: Wyoming had established women’s suffrage as early as 1869, Montana sent Jeannette Rankin as the first woman to Capitol Hill, and by 1917, women in 19 states – mostly in the West and Midwest – had won the right to vote (sometimes only in a limited fashion, like voting in local elections).

Votes for Women’s stance is that it needs both – after all, the game is lost for the suffragist player if their lobbying fails to get the federal amendment through Congress, but to win, they need the strength amassed in dozens of local campaigns to have the amendment ratified in enough states. The game, however, makes a statement about timing: While it is possible for the suffragist to have Congress pass the 19^th Amendment in the mid-game already, that is a decidedly risky strategy which gives the Opposition a lot of opportunity to snatch individual states and rack up the necessary 13 rejections which mean the failure of the amendment. The ideal move for the suffragist is to build up the strength in the states as much as possible before pushing Congress into action as late as possible. While that is not without its risks (Opposition can still try to throw wrenches in the wheels of congressional action), it spreads them more evenly between federal and local action.

As mentioned above, equal suffrage spread from the American West and Midwest. It had a much harder time in the Northeast and in southern states – like Tennessee. The southern states were not only more conservative in general, suffragists also faced specific obstacles there: Many southern whites remained committed to the cause of white supremacy after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Enfranchising women would give the right to vote to black as well as white women, and in the mind of the white supremacists, white women would be much less likely to actually exercise it (be it because they, as “proper” women, would rely on their men to represent them, or because they would not go to a polling station where they might meet with Black Americans). Others, while generally in favor of women’s suffrage, resented the method: After the Civil War, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments had enshrined certain rights (including male voting) for Black Americans in the Constitution. Federal amendments were thus unpopular with many southern whites.

As The Woman’s Hour details, this provided for a lot of traction for the anti movement in Tennessee. Activists like Nina Pinckard and Josephine Pearson railed against carpet-bagging outsiders swooping down from the North to meddle with Tennessee’s affairs, warned of impending “negro domination”, and appealed to the chivalry of southern men to rescue their women from being thrown into the dirty cesspit of politics. That they themselves were knee-deep in that cesspit – after all, they were political activists! – bothered them as much as modern-day “tradwives” are bothered by the fact that their plea for women to be submissive to and dependent on their men is at odds with their often successful social media enterprises.

Inherent contradictions aside, the antis’ arguments needed to be countered by the suffs. Many of the white suffragists were willing to make rhetorical or substantial compromises: One of NAWSA’s most-cited statistics in the Tennessee campaign was that the number of white women in the south exceeded that of black men and women combined. Enfranchising women, so the more-or-less subtle subtext, would thus not threaten white supremacy – it might even strengthen it. In the end, the tacit agreement was like that found after the Reconstruction amendments designed to protect Black Americans’ rights in the South: The women’s suffrage amendment made its way into the constitution. Yet voting rights were overseen by the individual states, and federal institutions looked the other way about the blatant disenfranchisement of black voters in the South until the Voting Rights Act almost half a century later.

Neither The Woman’s Hour nor Votes for Women shies away from this uncomfortable part of the women’s suffrage movement: The protagonists of the movement are not portrayed as infallible saints in the book. While they held wildly progressive views for their time on women’s suffrage, their stances on issues of race and class were often more in keeping with those of their contemporaries. They also made tactical mistakes, like Carrie Chapman Catt railing against outsiders trying to influence Tennessee – a charge that was immediately turned against her, a Northerner herself, and restricted her visibility for the remainder of the campaign. And most of them were willing to make compromises for the cause of women’s suffrage – sometimes with themselves (Carrie Chapman Catt supported the US effort in World War I against her pacifist convictions lest the women’s suffrage movement be branded unpatriotic), and sometimes at the expense of others. In short, they were human.

Would the 19^th Amendment have passed in Tennessee if the suffragists had been less willing to assuage the fears of southern whites about “black domination”? – Probably not – maybe another state could have become the decisive 36^th then, but all likely options had been exhausted before.  Did the Black Americans in the South, men and women, suffer from the continued disenfranchisement after 1920? – Undoubtedly.

Suffragist players in Votes for Women face the same strategic and ethical question (of course, with infinitely lower stakes): One of the most powerful cards in the game is The Southern Strategy which places an immense amount of suffragist influence in the South (representing the union between suffragists and white supremacists). It does open the suffragist for some counter-plays from the opposition, though. Savvy suffragist players might hold the card from turn to turn to play it as late as possible, as an uncounterable stratagem in the final struggle for women’s suffrage. Victories won that way have an odd aftertaste, I assure you.

Since Votes for Women has been released, it’s been in the top 5 of games I have played most often. And while I rarely re-read books, especially non-fiction (because there are always intriguing new books to read), I have come back to The Woman’s Hour and have now both read the physical book and listened to the (excellent) audiobook production. Besides all their worthy exploration and analysis of history, that speaks to both the game and the book being excellently crafted, incredibly engaging pinnacles of their respective medium.

Back to the strategy posts – this time in the tried-and-true fashion of giving three basic tips which new and intermediate players can easily remember. Today, we’re going for one of the most anticipated historical games of the last few years: Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games). Its pedigree recommended it to many gamers, but it plays very differently from its spiritual predecessor Twilight Struggle – so, mastery of the one will not help you much with the other.

Here’s how to play Imperial Struggle successfully: Get advantages, initially prioritize board position over victory points, and use initiative wisely. Let’s go!

Get Advantages

Now this may sound a bit basic. Of course you want advantages! Yet when you’re planning what to do with your investment tile, you might often be tempted by other things – shiny prestige spaces, or simply spaces with a lower cost which help you gain the majority in the region. Advantages, however, are often the better choice: A well-chosen advantage can gain you another space (or deny it to your opponent) not only once, but several times over the course of a game. If your opponent is smart, they will often try to counteract your gaining of an advantage by unflagging the space which gave you the advantage, or at least gaining a similar advantage, which means you are acting and they are reacting.

Some of my favorite advantages: The Indian alliances with Mysore, Nizam, or the Marathas which allow you to drown your opponent in a sea of conflict markers, the Asiento advantage whose discount on fleets gains you a cheap military edge – and spaces – which can be flexibly moved around, and, best of all, Baltic Trade whose debt reduction amounts to two free wild points every turn. Get it or at least deny it to your opponent!

Board Position First, VPs Second

Advantages are long-term benefits. In the same spirit, I advise you to prioritize the long-term benefits of a sound board position over the short-term gains of winning this regional or that global demand scoring. If your board position is good – if you have the right alliances, military outposts, and advantages – you will put pressure on your opponent, win wars, gain spoils, and the VPs will come rolling in anyway.

A key investment in that sense is a turn 1 fort in North America. That’s the only theater which is active in all four wars, so the fort will give you a military benefit four times (a strength point and the conquest line) in addition to controlling its surroundings (which makes unflagging harder and removing enemy conflict markers easier), and, of course, it’s a space which counts for regional scoring.

Use Initiative Wisely

If your opponent scores a few more VPs than you early on, that is not only bearable, but might even be to your advantage, as the player behind in VPs has the initiative and decides who goes first in a turn. That’s a weighty decision, as going first gives you a better choice of the investment tiles, but going last allows you to mess with your opponent’s plans and they have no chance to repair the damage before scoring.

My rule of thumb is: I go last, unless there’s an odd number of investment tiles with a major action in the dimension that will be crucial (early on, that’s often diplomatic), or an odd-and-low number of investment tiles that allow you to play an event.

Which strategies and tricks do you use to win at Imperial Struggle? Let me know in the comments!

Heute gibt es wieder ein altes Spiel … und dazu eines dass einen total spielerischen Namen hat. Game of Pure Strategy oder GOPS … ja … was soll man dazu sagen. Es wurde entwickelt von einem Mathematiker in den 1930ern.

Was braucht man dazu?

Ein Pokerdeck. Eine Farbe wird aus dem Spiel entfernt. Jeder Spieler bekommt alle Karten einer Farbe auf die Hand und die letzte Farbe kommt als verdeckter Stapel in die Mitte.

Reihenfolge der Karten: Ass niedrigste Karte, König höchste.
Punkte für Karten: Ass – 1, Zahlenkarten der Zahlenwert, Bube – 11, Dame – 12, König 13.

Es gilt die Karten in des verdeckten Stapels zu gewinnen und damit mehr Punkte zu machen als der Mitspieler.

Ablauf

Denkbar einfach. Die oberste Karte des verdeckten Stapels wird auf gedeckt. Das ist der Preis für die Runde. Jeder wählt eine Karte aus und legt sie verdeckt ab. Dann werden die Karten gleichzeitig aufgedeckt. Die Person die die höhere Karte gelegt hat, gewinnt den Preis und legt die Karte verdeckt bei sich ab. Haben beide Spieler denselben Wert gelegt, bleibt die Preiskarte liegen und die oberste Karte des Stapel wird dazu gelegt.
Wer am Ende die meisten Punkte hat gewinnt.

Meine Meinung

Hier haben wir ein sehr einfaches Spiel, dass anders ist als viele Spiele. Es ist wirklich nur Einschätzung des Gegners und sich eine eigene Strategie zurecht legen. Ich muss ehrlicherweise sagen, dass ich das ein paar Mal ganz unterhaltsam fand aber ich persönlich komme eher aus der spielerischeren Ecke und damit das einen Reiz für mich hat, würde es mechanisch noch etwas mehr Unterbau brauchen.
Ich denke da an Hol’s der Geier von Alex Randolph, das mit mehr Personen spielbar ist und wo 1/3 der Karten im Punktestapel Minuskarten sind, die man nicht haben will (das ließe sich mit der aussortierten Farbe sogar bewerkstelligen…zumindest für 2 Spieler) oder in einem der Spielbücher von Reiner Knizia gibt es ein Spiel, wo dieser Mechanismus genutzt wird um Teile von Regionen zu kontrollieren und dann Gebietsmehrheiten abgerechnet werden.

Erwähnenswert finde ich das Spiel, da es ja beinahe ohne Regeln auskommt, man nur ein Pokerdeck braucht und es sicher einige da draußen gibt, die eine Menge Spaß damit haben können.

Heute gibt es wieder ein altes Spiel … und dazu eines dass einen total spielerischen Namen hat. Game of Pure Strategy oder GOPS … ja … was soll man dazu sagen. Es wurde entwickelt von einem Mathematiker in den 1930ern.

Was braucht man dazu?

Ein Pokerdeck. Eine Farbe wird aus dem Spiel entfernt. Jeder Spieler bekommt alle Karten einer Farbe auf die Hand und die letzte Farbe kommt als verdeckter Stapel in die Mitte.

Reihenfolge der Karten: Ass niedrigste Karte, König höchste.
Punkte für Karten: Ass – 1, Zahlenkarten der Zahlenwert, Bube – 11, Dame – 12, König 13.

Es gilt die Karten in des verdeckten Stapels zu gewinnen und damit mehr Punkte zu machen als der Mitspieler.

Ablauf

Denkbar einfach. Die oberste Karte des verdeckten Stapels wird auf gedeckt. Das ist der Preis für die Runde. Jeder wählt eine Karte aus und legt sie verdeckt ab. Dann werden die Karten gleichzeitig aufgedeckt. Die Person die die höhere Karte gelegt hat, gewinnt den Preis und legt die Karte verdeckt bei sich ab. Haben beide Spieler denselben Wert gelegt, bleibt die Preiskarte liegen und die oberste Karte des Stapel wird dazu gelegt.
Wer am Ende die meisten Punkte hat gewinnt.

Meine Meinung

Hier haben wir ein sehr einfaches Spiel, dass anders ist als viele Spiele. Es ist wirklich nur Einschätzung des Gegners und sich eine eigene Strategie zurecht legen. Ich muss ehrlicherweise sagen, dass ich das ein paar Mal ganz unterhaltsam fand aber ich persönlich komme eher aus der spielerischeren Ecke und damit das einen Reiz für mich hat, würde es mechanisch noch etwas mehr Unterbau brauchen.
Ich denke da an Hol’s der Geier von Alex Randolph, das mit mehr Personen spielbar ist und wo 1/3 der Karten im Punktestapel Minuskarten sind, die man nicht haben will (das ließe sich mit der aussortierten Farbe sogar bewerkstelligen…zumindest für 2 Spieler) oder in einem der Spielbücher von Reiner Knizia gibt es ein Spiel, wo dieser Mechanismus genutzt wird um Teile von Regionen zu kontrollieren und dann Gebietsmehrheiten abgerechnet werden.

Erwähnenswert finde ich das Spiel, da es ja beinahe ohne Regeln auskommt, man nur ein Pokerdeck braucht und es sicher einige da draußen gibt, die eine Menge Spaß damit haben können.

(This was originally published in incomplete form. I hit “publish” instead of “save.” Lots of updates since then).

I remember playing Fugger, Welser, Medici dand realizing the basic game was too … basic. (I later relayed this to Frank and he said “it wasn’t for gamers like us, that’s what the advanced game is for.”)

High Frontier isn’t exactly the same thing. You need at least one basic game to learn the mechanics. (I needed lots). Jumping straight into the advanced game is optimistic. Even adding only the support module ridiculously increases the number of moving parts. But even for slow people such as myself the basic game does seem too basic after a few plays.

It ends just after it gets going. Industrialize a second colony, you are done (or almost). After the first few games,  TaoLing and I played “longer” extended games to seven colonies, where you might get something like a claim on Sycorax, but our most recent 7 colony game took …. 40 minutes. We’ve started adding advanced modules.

The basic game is not without interest, so some thoughts.

• This is a race game. Only one action a turn, but also space travel in addition. If you start your trip a turn or two earlier that can be a big advantage because its hard (but not impossible) to make up time later on.
• One rule I was taught wrong is that you can’t bid if you have three (non-crew) cards in hand. It turns out you can bid if you have less than four (so, three is OK).
• My big mistake in my early games: buying random cards, then trying to make something work. Most cards are good for something, but trying to figure out what is hard.
• In general, Robonauts before Refineries. Makes sense — Robonauts prospect. Yes, you can use your ISRU 4 crew but here’s the list of ISRU 4 sites inside of Jupiter: Mars (10 gravity, ugh), Ceres (a good target, although 6 gravity probably means you’ll need your crew) and eight inconvenient size-one sites (which aren’t near anything). It’s not a great list. Even an ISRU of 3 opens up a lot of options.
• If you only looked at the asteroid belt for your first mission, you’d probably be right. (For your first game narrowing your decision space is a good idea). If you are playing to seven (or some higher number depending on # of players, which isn’t a variant) you can start looking at Jupiter’s moons or even more distant.
• Remember — the map represents delta-v. Sites on opposite sides of the board but in the same belt are surprisingly close (in terms of number of burns and turns). You can run from Lutetia (a 3M-3 hydration site) to Hertha (ditto) for two burns in a single turn (via Sol-Jupiter L1 burn). Think of the board as “energy bands.”
• There is no “C” class refinery, FYI. Type D and S sites are much rare (in the basic games) so those cards are slightly less useful.
• Weight matters, but less with good fuel efficiency. A nice rule of thumb I found on BGG states “Your wet mass/dry mass ratio will need to be roughly equal to your fuel single-burn fuel consumption (or better).” So if you have the Metastable Helium thruster (5 Mass, 5 Net Thrust * 1 fuel per burn), then your wet mass doesn’t have to much exceed your dry mass, so you can get a heavy robonaut and refinery and still go tooling around for 4 water. But if you get the Mirror Steamer (0 Mass, 3 Net Thrust * 4 Fuel per burn, Solar, Push) you are going to have real trouble if your dry mass gets above three-ish, so you’ll probably need two trips. Bid up the 1 fuel/burn cards.
• Getting your first factory ASAP is a big deal. It provides:
  • 8 free water for refueling. Even if your robonaut and refinery can’t be built, you can take a turn to refuel and send your (now light) rocket back to LEO to pick them back up instead of having to re-boost and refuel the rocket.
  • ET production. Not only are the black side of cards better (much, much better), you get a card out there a few years in advance, save the cost of re-boosting, etc.  ET producing a robonaut to prospect for your second factory (using your on-site thruster) is a big deal. If you have a robonaut and refinery of the type you just colonized, it’s probably a winner. (With both for Vs, aim for Vesta, which at size six means you can’t fail the prospecting roll, and only has a half landing burn. Getting both Ms aim for Lutetia then Hertha, for a 75% chance of a claim. Ds and Ss

Common planning pitfalls to avoid:

1. Can you land? Remember, your net thrust must exceed the sites size. Some ways to get around this (if your main thruster isn’t good enough).
   • Afterburning.
   • Size games. Take everything, drop a part in orbit to lower a size class (increasing net thrust). Leave the first part on the site,take off, pick up the last part. (Dropping off and picking up is a free action, but you can’t pick up in the middle of a move).
   • Use your crew to land. It costs no fuel (if there isn’t a lander burn). Vesta and Ceres with their half lander burns are reasonable. (If you have to pay a full lander burn, your main crew’s rocket may be prohibitively expensive).
2. Will you be able to take off? (This mainly applies to aerobraking). You can easily trap yourself if you use your crew to go someplace like the moon. (If you can’t take off, you can turn your crew into a colonist and get some VP).
3. Do you have enough fuel? Seems obvious, but don’t forget fuel for afterburns. Size tricks may cost you some fuel as well
   • Consider Demos (or some other high hydration site) for a turn or two of refueling. Particularly if you have a low ISRU, you can get a lot of fuel that way. Seeing a ‘pit stop’ at the (already busted) Demos to refuel was my first “aha” moment.
4. Do you have the ISRU rating to prospect the site (or refuel)? (Even after ten games I’ve still just said, “Oh, I’ll go there” and then realized my robonaut couldn’t cut it because I was so focused on fuel/thrust/etc.

Sites of Interest

The training book’s guide is good and worth reading for your first few games. Some thoughts:

Planets are Hard. You can go for Mercury (North Pole) or Mars but you’ll need 11 thrust (or aerobraking rolls). But those are basically one way trips unless you can build a factory. For those, you’ll need a crew with a 10 Net thrust and afterburn. You could also just send down a robonaut and refinery, but the advantage of getting your first factory is basically negated because you can’t really ET produce or use the factory to refuel unless you have a powerful crew rocket. On the other hand, these can be a guaranteed second factory.

The moon is easier, but you’ll need a good ISRU.

Ceres is a sure thing with four hydration, requires only 7 thrust (usually within the reach of a basic game crew) and only a half burn. Depending on your thruster you may need to stop at Demos. Vesta is also a sure thing but slightly farther away and requires an ISRU of 2. (To compensate, its a V world, which is likely to score better and will have a few refineries that can be ET produced there).

Thrusters

In the basic game the most important thing is Fuel per burn, because lower means you can go farther. High thrust is nice (because that lets you land on more places, or maybe get there a turn or two earlier) but you often get around that by taking your crew and using it (assuming no lander burns, or maybe a half burn). In the advanced game the worse rockets are balanced by needing more supports, or worse rad-hardness, but in the basic game? Nope.

If you ordered thrusters by FPB in the basic game, you’d be close to right. (Ignoring the solar sails, because 0 net thrust is a problem).

Key is [#Mass, Thrust * Fuel per Burn (After Burn cost, Class), P = Push, S = Solar]. I’m not going to worry too much about the advanced (black) side because you won’t for your first games.

In rough order of worst to best:

Photon Heliogyro / Photon Kite Sail [0M, 0*0 (-,C) Solar] — Basically the same. Not really useful in the basic game (said the guy who almost never goes inside the earth orbit]. You could use these to get maybe a free burn if you are a small light ship, so perhaps I shouldn’t discount this.

Mirror Steamer [0M, 3*4(2,D) SP] — Zero mass, but 4 fpb. Ugh. The one thing that’s nice is that you could boost this with a robonaut and leave really early, take a pot shot at Demos and refuel. But the problem is that the mass savings from boosting are (in the basic game) a one time savings. You’ll be paying for fuel the rest of the game. Also, this can’t land too many places.

Ablative Plate [4M, 2*2(1,V) P] — Two fpb isn’t bad, but nothing else is great. High mass, low thrust. If you get the black side you get a mass reduction and a thrust increase, but its nothing to write home about. You’ll almost certainly need to take your crew to land anywhere. The rare case where low fpb isn’t great.

Cermet NERVA [2M, 7*4(1,S)] — OK, terrible Fuel per Burn (fpb), but the 7 thrust means you can land on Ceres or Vesta (which are sure things], but you are likely making two trips. If you can flip this you lose one thrust (but can afterburn) but your fpb drops to 2, which makes this pretty good.

Hall Effect [2M, 3*2(-,C)P] — No afterburn and a low thrust means you’ll need your crew, but otherwise good.

Mass Driver [5M, 4*3(-,M)P, Dirt] –This is heavy, 3 fpb isn’t great, but being a dirt thruster compensates. You can always grab 10 fuel anywhere (dirt rockets refuel at ten and ignores ISRU rating!) so you really only need to pay to get to Demos and then jaunt out. If you flip this over you go to 3M 2*0.5, which basically means you never run out of fuel, but you’ll need another rocket to land most places.

De Laval Nozzle [4M, 5*2(2,M)P] — Decent thrust, decent fpb. Can even land on Ceres or Vesta (often taking two trips).

Ponderomotive VASIMR [3M, 3*1(1,V)P] — Compare with the mirror steamer. You pay 3 more mass, but you save so much fpb.

Metastable Helium [5M, 5*1(1,V)] — The king of rockets. Yes, its heavy. But 1 fpb rules. If you flip it over you’ll drop some mass and your fpb goes to a ridiculous 1/3rd, but even unflipped its a workhorse in the asteroid belt. With 5 thrust (maybe 4 or 3 due to weight) you can often make a hohmann pivot every turn and gain a lot of time. And you save time by taking your robo+refinery in one trip. Letting this go cheaply is a mistake.

Robonauts

Buggys let you get a re-roll or multiple sites (on a planet), so that’s nice. Missiles have a built in thruster (Uusually with terrible fpb, but in this case you save an auction and a part, so you could buy this and start scooting around early to make a bunch of pot shot claims and then buy/send a refinery later). And Rayguns let you go for multiple sites from orbit. Unlike thrusters (in the basic game) there’s lots of differences between robonauts.

There are a few different ‘classses’ of robonauts:

• The 4 fpb missile. These are good to grab as a first card if you can launch and run to Demos (etc) to refuel and go get a claim, planning on getting a thruster and refinery later.
• The rayguns. These let you hit a bunch of asteroids at once.
• The oddballs (including buggies).

A quick note of sites: C are common, M aren’t common, but there are a few good targets. There are many S targets but they tend to have lower hydration (often zero). V and

[#Mass, type-ISRU (Type) ]

In alphabetical order:

Cat Fusion Z-pinch Torch — 3M, Buggy-2 (D).  Decent mass, decent ISRU.  Turns into a higher mass ISRU 0 Missile.

Explosive Gas Dynamic Laser — 3M, Raygun-2 (S). Improves to 2M Ray-0

Flywheel Tractor — 2M, Buggy-3 (S).  Improves to 1M Buggy-1.

Free Electron Laser — 5M Raygun-1 (S). Don’t let the 5 mass worry you (I mean, unless you have a 3-4 fpb thruster). If you get the Free Electron Laser you may want to go to the Karin cluster and hope to get one of Karin-a, b or c. That’s a 50/50 shot in one turn (you can raygun produce without going onto the hazard roll). If you get the claim you can ET produce this (as the Wakefield E-beam Missile with a quite decent 4*2(2) dirt rocket, but it becomes a Missile-1.

Kuck Mosquito — 1M Missile-3, 10 * 8(2) (V). The Mosquito pairs nicely with Ablative Plate or other low net thrust thruster, in that you only use this for the landing. You save weight on crew, its mass is low. If you happen to build it on a V planet, you can ET produce the Ablative Laser, which is a 3 * 1(3, push) Missile 2 with no mass. No raygun, but it can hop around quickly.

MET Steamer — 3M Missile-2 5*4(1) Push (C). This guy is a reasonable first buy. Buy, boost, fuel, go to Demos to potshot and/or refuel. By itself it can make a run at Ceres (small size for +1 thrust, afterburn for another). You’ll need another rocket to bring the refinery, but then you can ET produce the Nanobot, a zero mass Buggy-1.

Neutral Beam — 5M Raygun-2 (S). Slightly inferior to the Free Electron Laser, but this does flip over to the a 3*1/2(1) Missile.

Nuclear Drill — 2M Missile-3 5*4(1, Push) (M). Like the MET Steamer, this can be used as an early scout, planning on bring a rocket+ refinery later. This is an odd card in that the black side has a much higher mass (5), but it does become a Raygun-0 (while still having a thruster), which means you can scout a bunch of small asteroids (like the Koronis group) in one go.

Phase-Locked Diode Laser — 3M Raygun-3 (C). A very good robonaut, because there are lots of C targets, and it flips over to 0M.

Rock Splitter — 3M Buggy-4 (V). Buggy is good, but ‘4’ is bad. You could claim 2 Mars sites, I suppose. But there has to be a worst robonaut.

Solar-pumped MHD Exciplex Laser — 5M Raygun-2 (C). Doesn’t the name just roll off the tongue and fall like lead to the floor? This is another one of the 5M rayguns, and this one flips over (Quantum Cascade Laser) to a 3 mass ray-0. Ray-0 is great, and as a ‘c’ type card, this is the easiest to get.

Tungsten Resistojet — 2M 5*4(1) Missile-3 (M). Another decent “early thruster explorer.”. This flips over to a decent 4*2(1) Push missile-1.

Refineries

In the basic game, basically you just want to get one. If it matches your target, that’s nice. Mass 3 is nicer than mass four, but unless you have a bad fpb its not a huge deal.