Rogue Review- Star Trek Ascendancy

For my birthday this year I was gifted with a massive box containing Star Trek Ascendancy. For the past few months, I’ve also had Star Trek Frontiers sitting on my shelf. It looks very intimidating so I haven’t gotten around to learning it yet. But since it was my birthday, I felt no guilt about spending a morning reading a rulebook so I actually cracked open STA. And I found the rulebook surprisingly straightforward. So much so that I’ve sat down for three complete games. The first few games had quite a number of mistakes and improper rules following, but we got through them.

The basic idea of Star Trek Ascendancy is a 4x (Expand, Explore, Exploit, Exterminate). In some ways it’s the board game version of Birth of the Federation (remember that old thing? I sure miss it, bugs and all). You take on the role of the Federation, Klingon, or Romulan Empires. You’re not playing as a captain, or the leader of these empires during a conflict. The idea is much broader. You’re overseeing their growth from first becoming warp capable until one of them dominates the entire quadrant.

On each player’s turn, they play through three phases. In the first phase, players have a chance to build new things for their empire using three resources; Production (red), Research (blue), and Culture (yellow). The simplest thing to build are starships, which they’ll use to explore the galaxy and defend their realm. This is also your chance to colonize new star systems, develop buildings on your colonies or devote resources to researching more advanced technology.

Once construction is complete, you move to the action phase. Each player starts with five Command tokens which equate to the number of actions they can take. As their empire grows, they can develop technology or build starbases which give them additional command tokens. These are a very precious commodity, primarily due to the way movement works.

In order to explore the galaxy, ships need to move from system to system. Each system is connected by paths that are placed as you discover them. These paths vary in length from two to four spaces. When moving, you have the option to use impulse and travel two spaces, or go to warp and travel a number of systems equal to the number of warp tokens they have. It takes one command to enter warp, and one to exit. You can also spend additional commands to add warp tokens, increasing the distance you can travel.

In essence, to move from one system to another, it costs a minimum of two commands. When moving from one end of your empire to the other, it can get pretty costly on commands, which means you need to think strategically about ship placement. Some technologies give you what amounts to free warp tokens, increasing your speed without spending command tokens. These are invaluable.

You also spend your commands on things such as building starbases, exploring stellar phenomena, starting new research projects and, of course, attacking. To engage in combat, ships need to be adjacent or in the same sector. Combat is resolved through a series of dice rolls, adding modifiers for each side’s relative weapon and shield technology. It’s possible to get to a point where your shields are so advanced no one can damage you. But that’s pretty pricey.

While you explore, the map of the galaxy will grow and shift. When you move to a new system, you draw a tile which will contain one of three types of systems. Many, are safe and just contain a planet ripe for colonization. Some contain a planet but also some kind of hazard. A few tiles are stellar phenomena. These contain a hazard and no planet. Anytime a ship enters a system with a hazard, they must make a roll to survive. If they fail, those ships are destroyed and the Enterprise will have to come along later and figure out what happened to them.

When you discover a planet for the first time, you also draw an Exploration card. These cards will have random events on them. Some are benign and do nothing. Some present you an opportunity to gain some benefit. Some cards reveal the planet is colonized by a pre-warp or warp-capable civilization. Some also contain a hazard you must survive. These hazards can range from pretty easy, such as Tribbles which just eat command tokens for a round, to the Crystalline Entity which could eat your ship and the entire system.

Once your command tokens are exhausted you move on to the refresh phase. You regenerate your command tokens and gain resources for each structure you control. Any ships in warp also gain an additional warp token. It can be helpful early to send a ship to warp with your last command and pull them out the next round to help them move a good distance.

In order to win, a player must acquire five Ascendancy tokens or conquer the homeworlds of the other players. Ascendancy tokens are acquired by spending five culture resources. So the more yellow culture generating buildings a person has, the easier it is to acquire these. It also makes them a target.

Now, at this point, you’re probably asking yourself, I thought this was a Star Trek game. Are you telling me the Federation can win by conquering the rest of the galaxy? That doesn’t feel right. And you would be correct. Fortunately, the game handles that quite well.

Each civilization has special traits, one unique technology, one set back trait, and one advantage trait. The Federation can not invade any planet nor can they colonize pre-warp civilizations while the Romulans and the Klingons are free to do so at their leisure. However, the Federation does receive bonus culture tokens anytime they discover warp-capable civilizations or stellar phenomenon. The Federation wins by exploring the galaxy. Meanwhile, the Klingons can never retreat once they’ve started a fight. They fight to the bitter end. And the Romulans are suspicious, so any trade agreements they make (a form of peace treaty) they don’t benefit from right away.

So the Federation can only win by getting five Ascendancy tokens because they can’t conquer other planets? Not quite, they can’t invade other planets but the game also allows planets to be taken over peacefully with what it calls Hegemony (I think Diplomacy would have been a better term). It’s a form of cultural battle, which the Federation has techs to improve their odds.

Overall, the game is a pretty fun experience. The early phases of exploring the galaxy and trying to balance peaceful coexistence with not letting your opponents get too far ahead in development is well thought out. It is possible to get to a position where there is no way for a person to lose several rounds before they win. We ran into that in our first game, none of us really engaged the others and I ended up winning by happenstance (I had more culture producing planets).

In order for the game to go well, everyone has to be pretty aggressive. You have to move in and bloody each other’s noses to keep them from getting too powerful. But you also have to make sure you don’t appear like more of a threat than you are, because then the other two will gang up on you.

If you have a few hours available on a weekend, I recommend giving it a try. There are also a few expansions available which add the Cardassians and Ferengi to the game and one with the Borg.