Star Trek: Expeditions is a board game for up to four players, set in the "New Universe" of Star Trek, as seen in the 2009 movie. It is built upon the cooperative board game model and the players will work together against the game itself.
In the game, players assume the roles of Kirk, Spock, Bones and Uhura. The premise is the Federation has received a petition for membership from a planet and the Enterprise is dispatched to assess their application. When the Enterprise arrives, they discover:
A Klingon battle cruiser is in orbit;
Civil war is threatening to break out on the planet;
And the planet is (coincidentally?) reconsidering its application for UFP membership.
Your mission is threefold; defuse the threat of civil war, deal with the Klingon threat and get the planet to join the UFP. And you only have 30 days (roughly equaling 30 turns) in which to do it, or a Klingon battle fleet will warp in and you will be forced to withdraw (thus failing your mission).
Each objective is tracked on a scoresheet that monitors your progress. Decisions you make in the game as well as how you interact with the other players will affect the outcome of the mission.
The four figures are fully rendered, 3D versions of the four Bridge officers. The four figures and two spaceships are similar to Heroclix figures, with the clicks on the dials at the base of the figure representing damage and corresponding diminished abilities.
This product is designed as a non-collectible, non-blind, all-in-one-and-done game, but is built upon the "expandable" board game model meaning that down the line, new missions and crew members will be made available for folk to play other "episodes"!
- Iconic IP with thematic appeal
- Flexible player count and mixed-table dynamics
- Artwork not top-tier; not always in print
- Availability can be spotty
- Cooperative exploration and mission completion with space conflict
- Star Trek universe; Enterprise crew exploration with space combat
- episodic mission-based progression with two-thread tension (planet vs space)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Cooperative Game — Beaming down, exploring planets, and managing space threats
- cooperative_play — Beaming down, exploring planets, and managing space threats
- scaling_difficulty — Difficulty scales with number of players
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This video idea is actually inspired by Rolling solo so be sure to check out his channel
- This game is hard uh you may survive the tutorial you're probably gonna die most of the time on everything else but it's possible
- I adore this game I adore this game I adore this game
- it's rambunctious fun
- the solo mode is very good it's a little too easy so I had to tweak it to make it just a little more challenging
- the tutorial takes you through the basics a step at a time