At this stage in my engagement with the hobby, it takes a lot to really impress me and I’ve also reached a point where I am not interested in the kind of ephemeral, disposable “filler” games with little or no replay value that exist solely to satisfy the ravenous demands of the new class of board gaming super-consumers whom regard two or three plays to be sufficient to get the most out of a title before moving on to something else.

I am specifically interested in fun games that feature rich theme-driven mechanics, strong narratives borne out by game actions, drama between players as well as the game system, and both strategic and tactical depth. Fantasy Flight, over their last several releases, has continually hammered every button that I respond to in terms of what I want and value most in gaming and STARCRAFT is absolutely no exception; the game ranks with the absolute best that the company has released and in many ways represents the cutting edge of what modern board game design has to offer in terms of merging traditional American-style hobby gaming and the efficiency, smoothness, and control of the European designs.

Playing STARCRAFT is like hearing The Clash’s “London Calling” for the first time- a lot of different influences, concepts, and creative threads merging into a whole that is completely unique, cohesive, and thrilling. I’m not just impressed by STARCRAFT—

I think it’s the best game published in 2007.

STARCRAFT is for 2-6 players, each taking on the role of one of the three factions from the PC game (Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss) fighting for control over planets, linked by navigation routes that contain regions generating resources or victory points. At the heart of the game system is an order system whereby players are afforded four actions each round that are placed to activate a planet’s forces to mobilize (i.e. move or attack), research, or build. Orders are placed one at a time and stacked so that players can effectively block and sometimes bluff other players as to what their intentions may be.

Players of A GAME OF THRONES or WARRIOR KNIGHTS will likely detect the influence of those earlier action selection mechanics but STARCRAFT’s system is smoother and simpler. Combat is very straightforward, handled chiefly through card play that boils down to comparing numbers—no dice. There are several ways to win: victory points earned by controlling key territories will do the trick but each faction has a unique special victory condition. It’s fairly complex and has a pretty steep learning curve; I’d say two or three complete games should be enough to take in the overall uniqueness of the system and the large number of cards, abilities, units, and technologies.

The payoff is that the game is highly thematic and practically every unit, technology, and building from the PC game is represented. With best-in-business graphic design, production quality (including 180 plastic figures), and complete fidelity to the style and atmosphere of the source material all that’s missing is the unique sound effects—which you can almost hear while you’re playing the game.

However, what you are not going to get out of this game is a slavish transposition of the action in the STARCRAFT PC game to a plastic-and-cardboard format. Many early online critics questioned whether the game actually felt like STARCRAFT at all and not just some generic science fiction setting with licensed property bolted on. The good news is that it does, but more significantly it expands on the license in a way that I think few could have expected. Designers Corey Konieczska and Christian Petersen did something quite interesting with their design by mounting it on much larger scale while also portraying combat at an almost dangerously abstract level. This is a game about controlling planets, not battlefields, and most fights are waged between a small handful of units rather than the typical swarms of Zerglings. It’s a bigger picture all around and I think it was a brilliant choice to develop the game into something resembling a campaign setting—after all, why bother playing the board game if it just duplicates what the PC game has been providing us for nearly a decade?

Don’t think that the little details like sending out resource collectors, researching technologies, or the importance of upgrading your infrastructure with construction units, modules and buildings has been reduced to vagary though. That’s all very much a part of the game; it’s just that when you build something it becomes a part of all your bases on every planet. I think the technology system in particular is absolutely brilliant. A tech purchase adds special cards to a player’s individual combat deck. So if you deploy and fight with units that you’ve upgraded, you’ll likely get to use their new toys in combat. The result is that combat plays out almost like a mini-collectible card game wherein you guide the composition of your individual combat deck by adding the technology cards (and the potential combinations they represent) that will best suit the units you’ve built. The game gives players plenty of opportunity to cycle through their relatively small combat decks so it’s actually rare to get stuck with useless or suboptimal cards and the result is exciting, close battles with some cool keyword effects and often brutal consequences.