Review - Firefly The Game

Firefly the Board Game

Today I turned up on Friday night at a friends in order to catch up with a few old uni mates, only to find that we were going to play a spot of "firefly the board game" from miniatures and terrain manufacturers Gale Force Nine.

Now my friend is not a gamer, as such I was surprised, I am pretty sure he doesn't know I am either... I had known he was into the excellent, and criminally short TV series and apparently his wife had decided to buy him a copy of the board game. 

Maybe this shows that these big boy board games are becoming more and more mainstream? 

But today beardlings I want to share my thoughts on the game, which has received much praise on the Internet and had been on my "toys to buy or trade for list" on my phone for some time!

So first impressions on the game were that there were a lot of cards and counters. I mean more than a fantasy flight game. There were loads! (this is an image from the website)

After the group of us got around the set up. The usual roll off ensues and we choose ships, now it starts to get a little odd now, there are 5 ships to select from, but 4 are identical! The other one holds less cargo and can be slightly faster.. But has the same model. Why not make them all different for a tactical edge? 

Now we have picked our ship sheets we receive our models. Ok so this is a board game, not a miniatures game but these minis aren't great, the fireflies are in five different colours, but the reaver ship looks a bit rubbish and our version of the alliance cruiser was so wobbly it looked a little bit sad, like a slowly deflating bouncy castle, see above.

Then we pick our captains. The man Malcolm himself is there, and all the other characters from the story, each give you a set of traits. Some key requirements in terms of skills as your crew do later. 

Starting the game seemed to take a good while, we had to pick a set of mission cards and sift through the mountain of tokens before we set off.

Each of your missions is a "job" that will hopefully earn you money. In order to complete jobs you gather a crew and move cargo from place to place on a star map, all the while avoiding the Alliance Cruiser and the Reaver Cutter. However this began to be a little tedious if I'm honest. 

I felt like I was playing a mail man simulation, with the reaver cutter as a ravenous Terrier and the Alliance Cruiser my overbearing boss. There just wasn't enough direct interference from other players for my liking, the game seemed to swing on the getting of overly powered cards, which you draw as you move through space. In one turn three of us had our cargo seized, and entire crew slaughtered… IN ONE SINGLE TURN! If I hadn't had to get a tube, we may still be there re-crewing and delivering parcels. 

All in all it was great to remember how brilliant the series was, and the little items and characters do that!, including things like Jane's Hat of fearlessness, the swearing in chinese etc was all great, the game had been researched zoo well, but the mechanics were a bit off and I will be removing this game from my list. But it is very well made, chock full of bits and will no doubt engage a lot of people, especially those who loved the series.

I'll just be spending my money somewhere else.

The Fat Dwarf

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