Trekspire – A Star Trek: Away Missions Review

Attribution is a tricky thing. It shouldn’t be, really. But continually, we hear stories like a Wings of Glory nod being cut from the X-Wing rulebook late in development. In the ideal world, Star Trek: Away Missions would credit David Sanders and the Warhammer Underworlds system as this new release is clearly an influenced work. Unfortunately, Games Workshop always has their finger on the trigger and ready to fire off another lawsuit, typically at fans. So, I will be charitable and assume Gale Force Nine have the best of intentions despite not offering credit where it’s due.

All of that is to say that Away Missions is Trek Underworlds, and quite frankly, it has potential to be the better game.

You wouldn’t know that by looking at it. The half-chibi miniatures are a bold choice. A GF9 design article clarifies that this style was adopted because it made the miniatures easier to identify on the board. This is true. Determining which miniature pairs with each character sheet is definitely a problem with Warhammer Underworlds, so I don’t believe these words are just damage control.

I was a naysayer. I prefer gritty, realistic imagery in most of my entertainment. These Funko Pop/Marvel United style figures suppressed my interest. Like a coldblooded Borg stuffed with wires and malice, I began to adapt. Slowly, my perspective changed.

I can’t really explain why, but I have come to appreciate this stylistic choice. It’s distinct and doesn’t undermine the game’s personality. This is a serious board game. It’s chock full of nuanced tactical decision making and high drama. Now, I would never have chosen to make the box cover highlight these deformed creatures over an artistic representation of the conflict within, but let’s move on. Let’s talk about the system and the experience it creates, because it’s one of the most fulfilling and interesting board games of 2023.

If you’re not familiar with Warhammer Underworlds, it’s a Games Workshop series of board games that pits opposing warbands against each other in a brief competitive skirmish. It’s more abstract than typical Warhammer fare, as it features player constructed objective decks that reward behavior such as occupying numbered spaces on the board, knocking out opposing fighters, or even having your own people killed off. It’s a mature line and there are hundreds of varying objective cards at this point.

It feels more sport than story-focused bout. Part of that is the style of missions present, part of it is the somewhat spartan arena. It’s also a very tight and direct game with limited actions over very few rounds.

This is all mostly true of Away Missions as well. You still utilize two constructed decks, one with faction specific missions and another with variable support cards to trigger events or equip upgrades on your characters. Pre-game is handled much the same way. You roll off and take turns deploying boards to build the map. Here, it’s either a Federation starship or a Borg cube. Each have their own distinct feel that affect sight lines and strategy.

Players still alternate taking actions, although we do begin to see a heavy divergence from Underworlds. Instead of performing a single action, you choose a character and perform two. This effectively doubles the quantity present in a game when compared to its predecessor. This enhanced economy is necessary because many of the missions increased require effort and time.

Everything feels so similar to Underworlds that it puts me in a juxtaposed duality of comfort and unease. It’s forcing me to frame my review around this angle because it’s integral to the game’s existence and dictates how it integrates within the culture of hobby gaming. Not discussing this would make the review feel incomplete or narrow.

All of this setup was necessary so that we can get to the good stuff; where Away Missions takes us that Underworlds does not. The starkest contrast is that action economy. At first blush, it feels as though you have so much more opportunity and the game is almost loose in comparison. This is an illusion, however. As I stated, many of the missions in this game are time sinks. The Borg in particular must spend actions to put some of their mission cards on the table, and then several more to score them.

The outcome is odd, in that it feels different than its peer, yet it maintains a similar balance in gameplay. It accomplishes that really ecstatic atmosphere of a tight experience where every action is of utmost importance, yet the usage of abilities, items, and support cards opens the game up in ways that elicit drama and a sense of freedom. It maintains that balancing act that is devoid in so many other titles, an approach which makes the game suited for not just competitive but for casual play as well.

One of the differentiators of this title is that it’s positioned to cater strongly to those casual players. The miniatures, whatever you think of them, don’t need to be clipped from sprues and constructed. More significantly, while there is still deck construction necessary prior to play, the overall card pool will never reach the insanity that is Warhammer Underworlds. This is because they’ve done away with neutral cards entirely. Besides the boon in terms of minimizing administrative time with deckbuilding, this also reduces the necessity to track down sets for other factions. It will also reduce the pain in expansions temporarily going out of stock. Additional releases will be produced that offer new options for existing factions, but the sheer quantity should be manageable and not overly aggressive. This is a huge win.

The other quality that enhances casual play is the design team leaning into narrative. The game’s setting is scavenging the aftermath of the Battle of Wolf 359. It’s a smart play, as it feels dangerous, lawless, and creatively rich in potential. Additional factions can be brought in with ease – indeed, as we are already witnessing Romulan and Klingon releases. But the setting isn’t just a skin for the game. It’s realized through the interaction of environment and mission. The Federation wants to activate and repair their ship, requiring positioning their characters around the different stations of the vessel. The Borg meanwhile wants to assimilate their foe’s flesh and material, opting for violence or alternatively taking control of the ship.

The outcome is interesting and lends itself to a strong emergent story. Battles erupt in chokepoints, characters evolve, and targets are assimilated and change sides. Yes, the Borg can take control of their opponents and add to their ranks. In my very first play I assimilated Worf and turned him against his own crew. It was glorious.

Each warband offers a unique playstyle. The Borg arrive on the board slowly, beginning with only a couple of scouts. Their inevitable flood of bodies establishes a sense of dread, sending the more versatile Federation crew into a scramble to accomplish their goals as fast as possible.

Many of the support cards are contextualized with wonderful flavor. One option lets you activate a console to beam around the ship. Another sets phasers from stun to kill. All of these options instill cinematic flair and create an emergent narrative that is memorable. It feels less a sporting pitch and more a vivid warzone. It’s exceptional in this regard.

Another system change that I’m totally on board with is the dice mechanism. Instead of Underworlds custom dice pools with symbol matching, GF9 are returning to the excellent dice-system of their Spartacus board game. Standard groups of six-siders are rolled, and results are paired off with the attacker and defender comparing their highest die to one another, and then comparing the next highest of each of their rolls, and so on. This is a neat device that results in textured results.

Even better, you can re-roll any result by discarding a card. This is such a strong addition to the overall system as it creates a vital tradeoff, fomenting moments of agony as you struggle with whether you should save a mission that is unlikely to succeed or discard it for a re-roll. It also is a perfect solution to cycling out useless cards based on the current board state.

All of these design elements are positive evolutions of the Underworlds system. In fact, the only discrete change that rankles me is the new mulligan mechanism. In that previous game, you could mulligan your starting hand, but you had to place all of your cards in the discard pile, never to be seen again. It’s a huge tradeoff, one that is interesting and clever. In this new game, you can now mulligan individual cards at the start of play. And they get shuffled straight back into your deck.

This is ludicrous.

The intention is to help jumpstart a specific strategy, which I can appreciate in theory, but it results in a very sluggish opening sequence. Unless you are dealt the perfect opening hand, you should be carefully considering each card and likely exchanging several of them. This is time consuming, requiring some thoughtful analysis. I wish it’d be stricken for a more traditional all or none approach.

In terms of the overall impact to play, this new mulligan mechanism is just an annoyance and a brief moment in the 75-minute session. I’m blowing it up a bit here for effect, but it’s a quality-of-life loss I can live with.

Star Trek: Away Missions is exciting. It feels full of potential and fresh, despite being built upon the bones of another title. There are several data points of concern, however.

It’s difficult to assess the degree to which this stymies my enthusiasm, but it must be recognized that these two base factions do not feel balanced, not in the slightest. The Borg missions require an overall higher level of effort than their counterparts. Even with a greater total number of characters and their excellent ability to repeatedly activate Drones from afar, they feel woefully sluggish in terms of earning points. I’ve wrestled long and hard with this issue, trying to build a more perfect deck, trying alternative strategies such as going all-in on assimilation. Nothing seems to work. When the Borg play a very strong game, they either win by the narrowest of margins or, more frequently, still lose. When they don’t put forth their best effort they are blown out by over a hundred points. It’s very discouraging.

Let’s illustrate the point. A key card in the Borg deck I constructed is “Assimilate Engineering”. You can’t really build a deck without some of these station assimilation cards as there just are not enough point scoring vectors in the card pool yet.

“Assimilate Engineering” requires an action to play to the table. Then, when you have a character at an operations terminal on the Engineering tile, it requires actions spent on skill tests until you’ve attained seven total successes. Skill rolls are a 50/50 proposition, and a Borg character is rolling three dice by default on an attempt. You can increase this pool by one with another friendly character in the area. If you’re lucky, you may have a support card to add a die or two. You should also be aggressively discarding cards to re-roll, in order to save as many actions as possible. Still, you will likely need three optimized rolls to succeed. This nets you 40 points, the largest amount on any card, at the cost of four actions.

The Federation meanwhile can score the same number of points by having three characters at specific terminals on different tiles. The Fed player will have needed to spend actions maneuvering into position, and then will need to spend a single action for the mission card. The only challenge here is if the Borg can successfully block their opponent’s movement, but it’s difficult to do when the Federation characters move twice as far and can utilize turbolifts to move about the ship. There is enough variety in mission cards, in terms of terminals requiring access, that it’s difficult to predict which you should block at any given moment. Couple this with slow moving Borg and it’s a waste of actions. The calibration of missions doesn’t feel equitable, and the challenge is not the same in practice.

It would be reasonable to theorize that deckbuilding could fix this. Some may indeed wonder if the preconstructed starter decks are the chief culprit. This isn’t the case. The card pool is small at the moment and you can’t wholesale swap core strategies. You can nudge your deck in various directions, but it involves turning over just a fraction of cards. For instance, I was able to focus the Borg deck on fewer stations, hoping to score points more efficiently without needing to move around quite as much. But you can’t swap out all of those station-focused cards for ones focused on violence.

This doesn’t torpedo this release as it can theoretically be fixed. Something as simple as giving the Borg an extra 30 points to begin the game would alleviate the pain. Gale Force Nine, if they determine this is an actual issue, could release new mission cards in future releases as well. As the card pool turns over we may arrive at a more desirable place.

Due to their unique ability suite and enticing playstyle, I still prefer to play the Borg over the Federation, despite this perceived imbalance. The core systems are not inherently broken. It’s still a hoot and an overall treat to play. This is important to emphasize.

The second issue is one more subtle. I’ve found that sessions can occasionally devolve into a situation where neither side wants to engage. Instead, both players sit at consoles attempting missions and turning the game into a race. This could happen in Underworlds as well, but it was less common as most of the missions in that system dovetailed with aggressive tactics.

Underworlds is also slanted towards more dynamic play. One factor is that it allows you to combine movement with attack at no real action cost. Here, they are separate, so you’re possibly giving up two actions to maneuver and confront a foe. Additionally, scoring your objectives in Underworlds does not require actions typically. That’s not the case with Away Missions as the game is built upon the structure of throwing more actions at the player but requiring them to be spent on missions. This creates a constant opportunity cost which can result in foregoing the cool option – such as piling on a character to assimilate them – and instead strapping Locutus to a terminal and cackling at his acute carpal tunnel.

Again, klaxons aren’t blaring, and this doesn’t undo much of what Away Missions gets right, but it highlights nuanced design considerations that may have been overlooked. Some of the impact is minimized due to the quick pace of play and how short the overall experience is. Effectively, I would rate this an area of concern moving forward, a caution for future releases and the evolution of the card pool.

These quandaries don’t significantly undermine my enthusiasm and hope for this line. My interest is sufficiently engaged to the point that I will be writing a follow-up article dedicated to the Romulan and Klingom away teams, and I hope to provide insight on how they interact with the Borg’s deficiencies and influence the standard conventions. The core structure is mostly solid and I’m certainly taking the optimistic perspective here. Conceptually, a more narratively focused Warhammer Underworlds is hugely appealing, and this execution is in many ways fantastic. Despite misgivings, Star Trek: Away Missions is one of the most exciting and unexpected releases of 2023.

 

A review copy of the game was provided by the publisher.

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