SETI (Space Agencies) - Board Game Expansion Review

Hi everyone, I'm Luke Hector and this is the Broken Meeple, a show where I rave and rant about board games, but mostly about the latter part. And finally, we actually get to do an expansion video. It's been a while since we've had any major expansions to talk about, and let's just say this one has been um highly anticipated, shall we say?

Yes, it's no secret that Sette is one of my favorite games. I gave it a 10 out of 10 when it came out. It was bordering on nine, but I gave it a 10. And you know, it has some, you know, some issues, but not many. But I really love its mechanics. I love its theme. I like the card play. I like all the options I've got.

Sette is just a game I really enjoy playing. You're not sleeping with it, are you, right? So of course, naturally, I was somewhat excited to be getting an expansion that could make one of my favorite games even better. I mean, remember what I said about Marine Worlds when when that came out for Arrakis.

Similar deal with this one. So there's two main aspects to this expansion. A bunch of the same, you know, variety inclusion, and a couple of new aspects. So let's stick with the variety part first. You have got some more cards. Yeah, well, it's good to get more cards, you know. It's never a bad thing to have more cards in a deck with a bunch of unique cards.

So again, it adds to that. Although some of these cards introduce this new idea of signal tokens. The idea being that when you collect these, when you do a signal action, you can discard one of these and it allows you to bin another card from the display to get another data token. Now obviously, there's only three cards in the display, so basically, you're restricted using two of these in a particular turn.

But it just means that you can get a little bit more bang for your buck without having to invest in the purple technologies as much. You also have three new aliens in in place. So we've now got three new aliens. Arc, what was it called? Arcos, sorry, I forget his name. Arcos, Ameeba, and Glyphtis. And of course, I like the alien concept in this game, and I like all but one of the aliens in the original.

So to get three more is already a good thing. So in terms of the new aspects of this game, we'll start with the card aspect first. We'll get We'll get back to these aliens a bit later. So first off, you have got player powers. Yes, it's nice to get player powers and asymmetry in a game like this. And basically, the game comes with, you know, a good 11 or so like different corporations that you can use, and they range in difficulty in terms of like the lower numbers being a bit easier for people to rock, and the higher ones requiring maybe a little bit more expertise with the game.

But we got things like, you know, the Deep Sky Survey, Turing Systems, Cosmos Strategy Group, whatever. And it's essentially giving you a player power that applies to uh once every round. It gives you a unique setup, so it determines, you know, a starting array of tokens and power and credits and income and that sort of thing, as well as one major ability that distinguishes you.

So for example, you've got an easy one here, the uh Orbital Dynamics. You can have one extra probe in space. You start with a couple of probes, and once a round, you can move them for free. It's like quite nice. Uh then you've got, say, the Turing System here. So every time you research a computer tech, you gain a publicity, and you know, you're able to, as once a round, basically use other techs even if you haven't already grabbed them before.

Uh Deep Sky Survey, analyzing data costs you no energy, and you can exchange cards from your hand with the with the card row. There's all sorts of, you know, cool little things here, and they don't massively overcomplicate the game. They are very easy, for the most part, to use. I'd probably say, I mean, that one's quite a Let's see, the Future Spanish Institute um is a little bit more interesting with what it does, and I would say probably also Xeno Lab requires a bit of expertise with the game to really use well, you know.

But for the most part, you know, these are relatively simple to put in, and you could easily throw this in with a teaching game. In fact, I actually kind of recommend you do, because the fact that you have a unique setup is not going to confuse anyone. But having a specific ability or power that you do better at means that you can gear the player who's new to the game into a particular strategy, cuz there's a lot of options in Sette.

So it's nice that the game can basically say, "Right, okay, I'm going to give you uh the Fenwick Research Center." You know, I gave somebody in the last game I played of this, I gave somebody who'd only played the game once before this one. And what's it do? Research and tech costs you only five publicity, and you can spend one publicity to gain a card and get its free action corner effect immediately.

Pretty cool. As soon as I give this to someone, they know that technologies are their bank. There's an objective for technologies as well. Great, I'm going to get a bunch of technologies. Easy. It directs new players into what to do. I find these pretty cool. You basically choose one of two at the start, and yeah, they're good fun to use.

Are they balanced? Ooh, short answer, yes, with an F. Long answer, no, with a butt. Hard to tell. I mean, there are some that I have thought are maybe a little bit better than others. I mean, Orbital Dynamics, you know, having one extra probe in space is not a big deal, but being able to move with two different probes as a free action is pretty powerful.

And the fact that you actually start the game with two probes in space is maybe a little bit powerful, cuz that's a good amount of credits you have saved in getting those probes out. Now granted, you also don't start with a lot of credits, you only start with twos, and you're not going to be playing many cards, but you do get to slot some cards as income, so you could get your credits back that way.

I don't know, I just feel like that maybe Orbital Dynamics, I've seen people run away with this one quite well, and it's difficult to catch them up. But I wouldn't say there was any in here that I say is like, "Oh, broken." Like this is completely overpowered. We're certainly not delving into Stone Age territory here.

But yeah, I really like these. And to go with these, you've got the quick start cards. So this is basically Prelude for Terraforming Mars if you threw it into Sette. It basically gives you a couple of cards that give you, you know, maybe a life trace, some extra victory points, some publicity, data tokens, signals in various places, whatever.

And basically, you pick two, and you get this on top of your organization. The whole idea of these two in combination is to remove round one. You only play a four-round game now. You basically play round two, three, four, and five. So you only get three rounds where you choose a set of cards and pick one when you pass.

But the idea is is that it gets you stuck into the action quicker. You're not playing the setup round. Underwater Cities did a similar thing where you had a quick start variant where you started with more stuff, but you didn't have to play the first couple of rounds of the game, so it meant that you could effectively sort of get into the meat quicker, and it also kind of shortened the game to some extent.

Here, the game is sort of shorter, but it's not like it's crazy short. You may think, "Well, I've just removed a round. Surely that means the game will be shorter." Well, it is, but up to a point, cuz obviously, you're doing more in the rounds. You've got given more to begin with, so you can get your engine going quicker, and scores can be higher in this time.

So you will do more in a round, you just won't have as many rounds. Now overall, I think having one less round is faster than just doing a bit more in a round. So, you know, it is a shorter game, slightly. But don't think that like It's not like how Prelude made Terraforming Mars a lot shorter with the way that one worked.

This one just makes it a little bit shorter. But when you've got a couple of these dotted with these as well, you can create some pretty good starting combinations. If anything, I wish there was maybe a few more of these. There's not a huge amount of them, and I find the idea that some of them give you victory points at the start kind of almost slightly little pointless, really.

I mean, this is a game where you score like 200 victory points. Does the fact that this card allow me to start with two really make much of a difference? The only real The only real like benefit you get from having victory points at the start of the game is that you're quicker to get to those gold objectives.

But even then, it's only a couple of points, two, three, or four max. It's not exactly a big deal. I'd rather have more resources than a couple of points any day of the week in Sette. Is that it? So the aliens, of course, you want to know about the aliens. Hehehe. Well, spoiler alert. Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler.

I'm going to tell you how the three aliens work, okay? So if you don't want to know how the aliens work, I will chapter this video so that you can see that this is the aliens with a big spoiler text, okay? If you don't want to know how they work, then you just go to the end of this chapter, all right?

So we have got Arcos, Ameeba, and Glyphtis. Ameeba is the very easy one. Basically, this one gives you a bunch of little tokens that sit on the pink, blue, and yellow spaces there. And basically, they have directions as the way they move. Some move clockwise, some move anticlockwise. And every time you get a life trace with this, you basically place the token in, and when you trigger the Ameeba effect, all the little bonuses that are in the tokens on these segments get you bonuses as well.

So you're basically timing your life trace with the Ameeba to go, "Hmm, pink's got a load of extra little benefits here. If I get a life trace for pink now, not only do I get the cards, you know, with the deck and all that lot, I also get these little extras as well." And that's pretty much all it is.

It's kind of like a uh an alternate version of the anomaly from the original game, where you had to time uh the rotation of the the galaxy, basically, with when the anomaly came round, so you could get bonuses. This is kind of the same thing, except to a smaller scale. It's very easy. It You could probably throw this into your first game of like with new players, and they'd be able to understand this alien fine.

It's not the most interesting alien ever, but it's a different alien. It's something, you know, light, simple, and cool. You know, not all the new aliens have to be hideously complicated. They just need to be varied. And I'm fine with this one. But yeah, that's about all there is to it. Uh probably my favorite one I mean, favorite one I'd say favorite one from a theme perspective is Arcos.

This one is basically that classic sci-fi trope of you find something in space, and you have no idea what it is, and you decide you're going to breach its security and go have a dig around and see what's inside. How How times have we seen a sci-fi movie where that doesn't tend to go well for you? You can't leave.

She won't let you. Well, here you don't get like you don't find a portal to hell or you or anything else like creepy like that. But the idea is is that the cards you get um are laid out in front of you and they represent security cards. And so what happens is you can't access some of these levels until you've breached the security of this thing.

So the idea is is that when you get a life trace for purple, yellow, or blue you have to diversify with this faction is once you get it the card comes into your hand and there's a little subset um exploration deck. I haven't got it out at the moment but it's an exploration deck of cards with bonuses on it, small bonuses and big bonuses.

Putting a life trace on here gets you the mini bonuses but if you play one of those cards for breaching security you get one of the major bonuses and they are pretty dang major. They are life savers at times. However, it is taken randomly off the top of the deck so you don't know what bonus you're getting which is a bit of a negative.

I wish it was more deterministic. You could probably house rule that, you know, just to say it was not like that way but you do cycle for the deck quite quick and let's face it all the bonuses are pretty dang useful. But you know, you once you start up here you can't get many points. You just get an odd minor bonus but sorry I'm trying to make sure the uh light doesn't reflect off it.

But when you start getting to the lower securities you start getting like you know like more bonuses or five points a piece, seven points a piece and the last game I focused on this one quite heavily and just managed to squeak a one point win over somebody using funnily enough the orbital dynamics um uh you know, faction.

And yeah, I was just completely munchkining this. I was breaching all that security quick and I just got control of the lower levels before anybody else did. It's just a It's gameplay-wise it's a little finicky finicky finicky uh whatever fidget whatever. I don't know. You know what word I mean. It's a bit fiddly with the exploration deck having to constantly mess around with that.

But you know, so gameplay-wise it's probably the second best of this one. I mean you and me are probably my third favorite out here. It's nice and simple. It's cool but there's not a huge amount to it. This is probably my second favorite gameplay-wise but this is definitely my favorite like you know for like you know theme-wise.

I think the theme of this one is just great. Not too Not too difficult but I probably wouldn't recommend this one for a first game with new players. I think that this one maybe should be held back. I do sometimes do that with this game. I'll take one or two of the agents that I think are a bit complicated and hold them back from selection if I'm teaching new players.

There are some that are much easier than others. This one I would hold back until you're a bit more comfortable with the game. Uh and then this one this one has a little bit more setup sort of with it. It's the Glyphids. This one is probably my favorite from a gameplay perspective. This one gives you a board and it's basically about translating alien glyphs.

And like with all of them you get well with most of them you get like cards from a unique deck that have cool abilities on them and I always love getting the new cards for these agents. But the idea is that you have this translation board and it's got two little like sort of bonuses set up here. One of them's gone upside down.

That's not helping. And there's normally sets on top of the board so it's going to be a little fiddly to do it here. But the idea is is that you get these little tokens that slot into these places but they're dotted around the whole board. So you put some of them on you know this board here but you also put some on sectors around the galaxy.

You put some on technologies that haven't been invented yet. And the idea is is that it's telling people to go for the stuff that people haven't already done yet. So when you you when you research that technology that someone hasn't already done you'll get one of the tokens. When you you go do a signal win a signal in this particular area you'll get a token there.

You know, it's stuff like that. And then what you can do as a free action is that you can plop them on this board to get the respective bonus but you build it up kind of like a pyramid structure. So you've got to do the two below before you can get the one above it. And they have to be unique. So you've got to put a different token in each one.

It's like you're saying this particular weird glyph translates to this one. And I'm saying theme-wise it's pretty cool. But what I also like is that there's another end game scoring objective with this one. Yes, you get the victory points in the cards from here but there's not much extra you get from this board.

But what you're getting is cool bonuses based on your choice. I mean if you want a bonus of let's say the publicity well you better make certain you go get a glyph token and plug it up before someone else does cuz otherwise you're going to make it that that one is the one that gets you this bonus. But you've also got an end game condition for getting unique tokens.

So if you can get all seven unique tokens throughout the game you can score yourself another 20 points which is not bad. I mean that's 10% of a typical score. I mean it can be a decent swing depending on what you're doing but gameplay-wise I quite like this. It's you know, it's incentivizing people to go check out other bits.

You know, you might think well I didn't really feel like doing a signal this game or you know, getting that particular tech. But you know what? If I get that tech not only do I get that bonus I also get one of those glyphs. That could be pretty sweet. So it it makes people seek out and race to get those tokens off the board and I like that it's done on the ones that haven't been like you know, haven't been done yet.

So it you don't just get one by having played the game already. Gameplay perspective I think this one's probably my favorite of the lot. Theme-wise probably I would say Arcos is my favorite. So you know, these two are definitely I'd say my favorite agents in the box with this one probably being my third favorite.

Not to say it's bad it's just that it's not the most interesting one in the box. It's just nice, simple, and cool to use. So a good first time game perhaps. You know, throw it in now and again when you're you know, familiar with it but you know, these ones I mean this one you could throw into a first game not too bad because it encourages people to try different stuff.

This one maybe hold back until you're a bit more comfortable with the game. So that's all the agents dealt with, okay? So spoiler alert over in that regard. So anything left? Well, not really. I mean that's kind of what's in the box. You've got the player powers, you've got the asymmetric starts, you've got three new agents, and a bunch more cards.

The it sounds like a fantastic expansion, right? And to be fair it is kind of a fantastic expansion. I mean it >> [laughter] >> really is just basically giving you more of the good stuff. It's giving me some extra player powers and setups. I think cutting out round one is a good idea because I always felt that five rounds is probably a bit too long for the other game.

I think four rounds is much more manageable and you're not doing a setup round. So it worked with underwater cities, it worked with Terraforming Mars, it works here as well. I think more publishers need to bear this in mind when they design when they well, designers need to bear this in mind when they design these games.

More cards, not going to lie. You know, give me more cards I'll be happy. The one negative I have with this though is the signal tokens. These ones that you grab there's only so many cards that get you these tokens and they all come from the new cards. So you may not see a lot of these when you play the game.

Now one or two of these like starting labs and maybe some of these starting cards will allow you to get a signal token and in fact the Glyphid alien actually has one bonus as a signal token on here. So they do pop up every now and again. But one of my issues with the base game is that and this is shared with a lot of people is that the scanning part is probably the weak link because if you're landing on planets that's going to be good regardless.

If you're analyzing your computer that's going to be good regardless. If you are doing the scanning and you are one of maybe only you and someone else doing the scanning you're in a weaker position because it's very hard to win the sectors on scanning if you're the only one doing it and this still is a factor even with these tokens in play.

They help but it's a bit like sticking a plaster over an open wound. It helps but it's not going to fix the problem entirely and I would have liked these to have had a bit more impact. You know, I like the fact that they are there and if I'm doing a scanning if I'm doing a lot of scanning and I'm certainly going to try and grab these whenever possible but it's not guaranteed I'll be able to get a lot of these, you know, because if I'm not using a a corporation that has them and we're not using Glyphid for example the only way to get these is to find them in the few cards that there are in the deck which is not reliable enough.

It's a little too swingy in that regard. I think they still should have put in a rule somewhere where they basically fixed the issue of having like uh uh what do you call it? You know, like having more of those neutral tokens there because granted you should be trying to do a bit of everything in this game if you want to play it well but a lot of players will focus on one or two aspects and maybe just ignore the scanning part.

And if you are just one or two players left doing scanning it hurts because the other two life traces for computer analyzing and landing on a planet don't suffer from that negative. Only scanning does. So there is still a little bit of work to do I think to fix that problem. It doesn't kill the game.

You know, it's one of the reasons I think that I maybe I was debating between a 10 and a 9 for the base game but I'm still sticking with a 10 out of 10. I still really enjoy it and I think this expansion just makes everything better. It's not as amazing as Marine Worlds for Art Nova. I think there was nothing in Marine Worlds I didn't like.

Everything in that was fantastic. Here I just think maybe the signal tokens could have done a little bit more like you know, more needs to be done to that mechanic but overall it's still nice to have something. Like it helps. It's just not a perfect fix. So you know, with that little blemish aside I love this expansion.

It's more of the good stuff. It adds more variety. Three more agents that are all pretty cool. Just some I prefer over others. I love these corporations. I'd love to see more of these. Give me some promo ones. Give me some Give me another expansion next year and throw in more of these. I'll be perfectly happy and honestly next time you only have to give me an expansion like this.

Just find a way to make scanning just that little bit better, you know, in the future. Maybe a little pack or another expansion. And then just give me more cards, more agents, more setup cards, more corps and you're done. You don't need to introduce any new mechanics to this game whatsoever. I I need a solo campaign like with our Anak or anything, although that was a pretty good solo campaign.

Just give me more of the good stuff and I'm happy. And I'm happy here as well. It's definitely, I would say, a 9 out of 10 worthy expansion. It's, you know, it doesn't entirely fix the signal problem, but it does give me a, you know, something to assist with it. But everything else in here is great, you know, free cool aliens, more cards, more stuff.

It's a simple expansion. If you love the game, you're going to want to get this. If you don't like the game, this isn't going to suddenly fix it for you. So, it's pretty much a simple, you know, answer to, you know, a simple question to ask yourself. Do you love it? You're going to get it. If you don't, it's not going to make a difference.

>> Shut up and take my money. So, that's it for me on this episode of the Broken Meeple. If you like what you see, then please thumb it up on YouTube and thumb it up on BoardGameGeek when it goes live on the page. Check out the rest of my content and by all means, check out my full review of SETI originally.

You can find out why I gave it a 10 and why I was debating giving it a 9 at that point. For me, it's still a 10 out of 10 now. I think it's more comfortably in the 10 category for me. I absolutely love this game, but you might want to hear my detailed thoughts on it. So, by all means, go check out that review.

Leave your comments down below as to whether you enjoyed this expansion. Are there any corps that you think are actually going down that unbalanced route? Do you think the signal tokens help enough or do you think there's still an issue there? Be interested to know your thoughts and of course, let me know which is your favorite alien, not just out of these three.

Let me know what your favorite alien is out of the whole lot. I think for me, my favorite alien is still got to be, I forget what they're called. Um, they're the ones that let you communicate uh, across like, you know, 15 victory points up the track and you get those cards that trigger at 15 victory points ahead.

I love those ones. They're my favorite. I just forget their name, but I'm sure all you SETI fans know exactly what I'm talking about. So, yeah, let me know your favorites down below. So, take care and remember, regardless of whether you would dare to probe deep into a dark object in space like a it's still only a game.

So, bye for now.