Space Alert

I would love to explain Space Alert, but I cannot. There are six positions on the board. There are up to five players. No matter how you slice the pie, you are going to have to share responsibility for defending the ship. You strategies under timed pressure. You plan and attempt to work together to defeat an enemy. Then when the pressure is off, you play out the scenario. At this point, you get to watch your best laid plans dissolve in to chaos before your eyes.

Ken said Space Alert is more fun to watch than play. He also said you have to read the rules for an hour to play a ten minute game. Ken was not pleased. It boils down to working together and planning your moves several steps in advance. You have to make things work in time and in some cases simultaneously several step in the future. Not as easy as it sounds, and it sounds like a bitch.

Adam and I discussed this game after the fact. I wonder if the military put it out in order to find people who are good at it and recruit them for some special project. This board game smells of "The Last Star Fighter" to me.

What cracks me up are some of the rules that say specifically that if two people push a button at the same time, you only get one push of the button. This is spelled out explicitly because this happens constantly without planning. The moves and actions are waisted. You blue your chance. Shut up and do better next time.

Another rule says you can tell people what cards you have, but you are not supposed to show them your cards. At some points in the game people are allowed to hand a person one and just one of their cards. The rules say you must hand the card to that person and cannot toss it to them. Again, this rule came about after playing Space Alert several times.

Both of those rules appear to exist to force people to communicate in a premeditated manor what resources they have and what they need to the rest of the group.

Something I noticed last night is a miscommunication happening over and over. People would say "I'll do ..." There was no leader who decided what needed to be done and then called for people to decide who needed to do what when.

First step should be to scatter throughout the ship. Whom ever can go to specific places on the ship needs to go to those places. This is going to be different people every time. They all need to be able to cover the different tasks.

Next comes a card check. There are a finite number of threats. Those that come from the outside require energy to fire the guns and those that come from the inside need to be handled by battle bots or jamming or whatever. Each person assess the cards in their hands and decide what need to be given away and what you need as an individual to do your job. Be prepared to trade off when the call comes.

When a Threat comes in, be prepared to move, shoot, reload. That strategy counts for all actions. Move, act, prepare for next action. Repeat.

The object of Space Alert is to make it for ten minutes. From what I noticed last night that is about all of this game that can possibly be fun. If you had to keep this up for a couple of hours, you would go nuts. It makes me think of real combat encounters that took a week to fight out. There are plenty of times that two armies have simply stood off from each other and pounded until one or both fell.

it has been a long time since a board game made me think this much about anything. I have to give kudos to the developers for making something highly intelligent and challenging. It is just too bad they couldn't get the two audio CDs that came with Space Alert labeled correctly.

On a technical side note, my camera was acting strategy. The cheap batteries I got heat up pretty bad. It kind of looks like this may be messing with the white balance. The more I use the Canon 940 IS, the less I like it. I had to restart the video a half dozen times last night because of the ten minute limit crap on this camera. There is going to come a point where I just need a real video camera.

Field	Data
Title	Space Alert
Description	I would love to explain Space Alert, but I cannot. There are six positions on the board. There are up to five players. No matter how you slice the pie, you are going to have to share responsibility for defending the ship. You strategies under timed pressure. You plan and attempt to work together to defeat an enemy. Then when the pressure is off, you play out the scenario. At this point, you get to watch your best laid plans dissolve in to chaos before your eyes. Ken said Space Alert is more fun to watch than play. He also said you have to read the rules for an hour to play a ten minute game. Ken was not pleased. It boils down to working together and planning your moves several steps in advance. You have to make things work in time and in some cases simultaneously several step in the future. Not as easy as it sounds, and it sounds like a bitch. Space Alert
Tags	Space Alert strategy game board game spaceship intelligent frustrating stressful war game night
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