Spark Riders 3000 Boardgame Overview | DaniCha
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Transcript
Hi everyone, Danielle here. I'm doing an overview of Spark Riders 3000. Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this. So, in this game, uh you and up to three other players will take on the roles of riders, the crew of the spaceship Spark. So, this over here is the spaceship. And I do have two riders set up. You have to have two riders at minimum. So, even if you're playing solo, you'll have to control two riders. So, here I have Nova and Alex at the cockpit. Um, your primary mission is to pilot the Spark to a destination thousands of astronomical units away to deliver a valuable shipment. To succeed, you have to survive constant attacks from various alien species that are trying to destroy your ship. So core component of the game is a mandatory free companion mobile app that you have to download. So I do have it downloaded on my phone and it's free.
So you just download it and it looks something like this if you're mid game and there's a couple different options that you can do. So if I were to um hit give up, you'll see those options. Arcade and mission or if you had a game that you previously were running, you can hit load game. So, if you go through all of this, a uh Iris will be walking you through the setup of the rest of the game as you um set up the game. All right. So, again, Iris is going to be uh the ship's artificial intelligence, and it will guide you uh through the game by managing alien behavior, tracking your ship's status, and progressing the mission story, and events. And without the app, you won't be able to play it.
So to win this game, you have to successfully reach your destination. And there are multiple ways you can lose the game. So if the cockpit is destroyed, the cockpit is up here, you'll lose the game. If the Nexus in the middle, which is here, is destroyed, you'll lose the game. And then we have two thrusters, the left thruster and the right thruster. If both of these are destroyed, essentially in the engine room or the cargo bay, you'll lose the game. So, a little bit about the game play. Um, the game is divided into two main phases. We have the aliens phase and the crew members phase. So, in the aliens phase, you're directed entirely by the companion app. So, it's going to announce the arrival of any new alien ships, dictate uh their movement into combat zones, and also detail any attacks against the spark. So, during this phase, there's something called rapid fire. As aliens move into a combat zone, if you are in a room with the turret, and a turret looks like this, this is what a turret token looks like.
So, if you're in a room that has a turret, you can take a free rapid fire shot at any incoming ship. And then there's defense protocol, which will um mean that you have to defend the ship's rooms against alien attacks. So you'll roll armor dice that correspond to the armor tokens in a targeted room. So the armor dice look like this. And so depending on how many shields there are, you'll have to roll that many dice. Um to block any of those incoming shots. And then any remaining shots would be blocked by sacrificing armor plates, which are these. So you'll see that some of these rooms have um just one and some has two. In this instance, Nexus and cockpit each have four of those tokens.
So, after the aliens phase, we have the crew members phase, and that's where uh Alex and Nova will be able to take their action. So, you'll notice that there are uh unique abilities here. So, we have Bullseye. For Nova, it says during your shooting action, add one hit. And then for Alex, it says DIY. During your tinkering action, add one level, tinker level. So, they both have um different abilities at the top, but then the abilities at the bottom are all the same or I believe help uh the helper rider uh is basically the same, but they the details here um are a little bit different depending on your character. Um, so during your crew members phase, you could perform one of each of the following per turn. So the first one is movement. So you get to move up to three rooms through connected open air locks and you perform uh an action and then it'll end your movement for that turn.
So, for instance, if I wanted to move uh from the cockpit all the way to the cargo bay, uh I would be able to just move one, two, three. So, moving up to three rooms. And something to note about about moving into rooms are these kind of doors. So when you move, you have to be aware that it might not be able to uh like these doors won't be able to open for you to get into uh in this case the armory from the cockpit and you wouldn't be able to get into the observatory from the cockpit directly. So you will have to use your movement to get to some of these doors by itself. But there are these tokens here that could potentially close um some of these doors from being opened as well. also say at some point Iris tells us we have to place one of these um here to block the direct access from the nexus into the bridge section.
So there will be instances where some of the openings will be changed from open to close or close to open. There are also uh four actions you can choose as one of your primary actions. The first one is piloting. So you have to be in the cockpit to do this. And basically this action increases the spark speed or execute combat maneuvers against aliens. So this the speed of your ship is actually in the app. So you'll see all of the stats for that in the app. Another thing you could do is shooting. So you would have to go into a room with a turret. So again, that's what this token would look like. And then um this action targets aliens in the corresponding combat zone. So, um, if there's an alien, you'd be able to use a terror to do that.
The third action is called tinkering, which is something that Alex will be, uh, kind of specializing in. So, this is a versatile action that allows you to repair damaged thrusters. So, again, the thrusters are down here. The left one's in the engine room. The right one is in the cargo bay. So, you'll be able to um repair those thrusters if they're damaged. You can repair damaged rooms. Um, you can add defensive armor plates to rooms. So the more, you know, armor plates you have, the better. This way it won't take so much damage. And then, um, lastly, you could build new constructions. So this over here is not built just yet, but this is a token that will tell you, oh, hey, I could build something here. And this this is um placed by Iris. Iris will instruct when you can add those tokens to the board.
And then the last thing here is called event action. So uh some missions will have special events that require you to use your action to complete them. So just something to keep in mind. And then uh one final type of action that you can complete on your turn outside of movement and the four primary actions I just explained is called help. So you could actually give your help to another crew member providing them a bonus to that player's action. And that's what this token is actually. Okay. So, has that help icon on it as well. So, you'll be able to give help to to uh another crew member. So, throughout the game, you're going to be enhancing your capability throughout the game, earning crystals. Um they're collected by drawing powerful prosperity cards. And a prosperity card looks like this. So, for instance, Nova had the prosperity disc. At any time, draw four prosperity cards. Choose one and discard the others. And then um Alex had XR raid during a piloting action add one. So these are just items you'll just be placing to the right of your board. As you can see your board has a section here to the right for items. And then on the bottom you have three kind of sections for your uh your gear.
Okay. So a little bit more about the spaceship. This is a a really cool looking b uh spaceship, but it can be a little bit overwhelming with a lot going on. So, let's talk about um some of the critical rooms that you really want to protect throughout the game. So, I start with the cockpit. Let me just move my players out. So, we have the cockpit here, and this is the control center of the ship. It's the only room that you can perform a piloting action, and if the cockpit is destroyed, your mission fails. Now we have the nexus which is in the center of the ship. So this is the central hub of the spark. The nexus is where component tokens for building and crystal tokens for prosperity are stored. So you can see the crystals um just around here. You'll be able to store up to six.
Um and if this is destroyed, your mission will also fail. Um it also saves as a safe point. So if you're in a room when it is destroyed, you actually teleport to the uh teleport to the nexus. And then two more critical rooms, engine room and cargo bay. I think I talked about basically the fact that we need both thrusters for a successful mission. So if both of them are destroyed, you'll also lose the game. So we have also the combat um uh uh so the combat and support rooms. So we have the observatory which is up here. We have the deck and then um we have the armory and we have the bridge and then things about the room themselves. So damage states rooms could be undamaged or damaged indicated by a code orange or code red card or destroyed. So for instance, we have a code orange card right now on the cargo bay. And you'll just be placing these cards which are double-sided. So, I'll give you what the other side looks like.
So, the code red is on one side and we have code orange on the other. And this gives an indication of what the status is of each of these um sections of the ship of the spaceship. Um, and you're not able to actually add armor or defend a damaged room. So, you do have to work on getting rid of these. And then as far as air locks, which I mentioned as the doors, um movements between the rooms is possible if they're open. Um but they could be closed, which makes it impassible. And so Iris will be able to let you know which one which one it is. And then lastly, the thrusters. Um just a little bit more detail here. They could be leveled up to level three, but it could also go down by levels. in this specific mission that I was setting up.
The left thruster has three levels. The right thruster had two. So, that was a quick overview of Spark Riders 3000. Um, let me know what your thoughts are so far, but I do plan on having a playthrough on my channel so you can see this game in action. Um, but I thought a quick overview would give you the idea of whether or not this game is for you. All right. Well, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.