Yesterday morning on what was meant to be a day off but saw me doing a four hour shift in the afternoon, did see me playing some games with Diego and Ben in the morning.
Our first game of the morning was a brand new game that very few people have played called Rock Hunters.
For the record, and so you can make an informed opinion about my words on Rock Hunters. I know and am friends with Rock Hunters designer and creator Byron. He also sent me a copy of the game for free.
The first thing you need to appreciate about Rock Hunters is that it’s a hand made game by Byron. He makes each copy himself. This is not a game from an big publisher.
Given that the production values are very high.
Just look at the photos above. You get a laser cut box using the same sort of wood material that other companies use for game inserts.
I don’t even have to sleeve the objective cards, which is a good job as there is no room for sleeved cards. The cards are laminated.
One change I’d make to the components is to colour code the space ships so it’s easier for players to identify and remember which is their ship.
Before I’d opened up Rock Hunters I had no idea what sort of game it was, or really the theme.
So reading the rulebook (more on that in a moment) it turned out to not be what I was expecting. I was not expecting a game about mining asteroids in space. Or one that had elements in common with war gaming, X-Wing, etc.
When I was reading the rulebook (which doesn’t take long) there were one or two questions about the game that came to mind about playing it. Such as rolling a die to determine the number of actions you take on a turn. Would the game benefit from a movement ruler? Plus there was player elimination.
I did think the rulebook needed it’s layout changing so that setup was at the start, then a summary of a turn, followed by more detailed explanations of the actions that could be taken during a turn.
As you can see in the photos I took during our games I used my starfield playmat. Yeah the one I got to use with my space themed games like Xia, Outer Rim, etc. I think it added to the theme of the game.
Setup sees players taking turns placing asteroids on the play area, followed by placing an opponents space ship. Apart from the placing an opponents ship, placing the asteroids is similar to in war games where the players are placing terrain.
I love the karma rule here, where if an opponent positions your ship in a really nasty position then you get to return the favour to their ship.
So on your turn you can either move your ship, turn your ship 45 degrees, or fire your ships laser. The number of times you can do these is determined by the number of actions you get from that die roll. But the thing you have to remember is you have to spend at least one action on doing a move.
So if you only have a single action all you can do is move your ship. Which was one of the concerns I had from reading the rulebook. Just how would this feel, especially if you kept rolling low, or worse ones? With turns being fairly quick this doesn’t last long, and didn’t present an issue. Maybe I was over worrying.
A movement ruler would have been real handy. However we found that the provided dice were approximately a ship length (just under) and handy for judging a single move. We also found that the objective cards were also approximately three ship lengths. Which was super handy for checking if a ship was in range of an asteroid or opponent for shooting/mining.
We did think that the odd contract (see below for an example) were too difficult in comparison to the majority and should have been a collect or destroy. It’d allow players to pivot during a game if they hit a streak of die rolls that give them a result opposite to the one they are going for.
At the moment these two examples would require a player to mine and destroy ten or twelve asteroids compared to six of other objective cards. Unless you house ruled the above suggestion.
We also came upon the situation of what happens when ships collide? After a brief discussion we house ruled both ships took one damage.
Which reminds me, we did have player elimination when Diego rolled a five (he had already taken damage from me) and destroyed his ship when he was too close to an asteroid when mining it.
This was less of an issue than I thought it’d be as games were pretty quick.
The game was much quicker than I thought it’d be. We played two games in an hour. Each taking roughly thirty minutes.
We really liked Rock Hunters. I really liked it.
It looks fabulous on the table. It’s quick to learn and play. And it’s fun.
I love the war game/X-Wing light feel this game has.
I can’t wait to play this some of my other friends who I know will love this game.
Our second game of the morning and my last before heading off to work was Trekking Through History.
This was also a new game for me.
It too has mechanisms that I’d seen in other games, especially the player at the back on the action tracker takes a turn until they are no longer at the back. Think Tokaido, Glen More, for this.
I liked this a lot.
I love the art style, it has a great insert, high component quality. I mean other games would use lots of cardboard tokens. Not Trekking Through History. This games gives you pimped out plastic tokens.
There are some great decisions to make when choosing a card from the trade row. Do you go for a card to fill up spaces on your player board for the score, or to continue your trip through history (the longer the trip the more points), or does it’s time cost mean you have to take something cheaper.
This might have ended up in my Amazon basket. Yep I liked it that much.
