Game Salute Alien Frontiers 5th Edition

Game was a ton of fun. I bought the Factions expansion alongside it, based on advice of others, but so far, I haven't needed to add it to the base yet. We've been having tons of fun with it, and love that the mechanics employed aren't too common in games. Components are all high quality and visually striking. A great play.

Game was exactly as I expected. Quick to unpackage and get playing. Lots of fun. May need to get the expansion so more people can play.

Alien Frontiers fast became a family favorite when we first played it after a couple editions. We liked it so much we got expansions for it to keep the variety of fun alive.Highly recommend this fun worker-placement game with dice.You can see our full review on our game review site: TheBoardGameFamily

Before I get to my thoughts on it, if you have the 4th edition or 1st edition (I would guess all the editions as well but I've only played on the 5th, 4th, and 1st), there is no need for you to get this edition. It is exactly the same as the previous editions.With that said, this is a worker placement game that uses dice as ship. You'll roll your ships/dice then place them on the board. There are several twist here from the traditional worker placement games. Instead of everyone placing their tokens in turn order then after placing them in turn order you are claiming the resources and removing your token, here you'll place your ships/dice in the corresponding areas to what you rolled. Then you'll claim them. The difference from traditional worker placement, is that your dice stay on that spot until your next turn. I believe this is one of the first worker placement game to do this. This allows you to block people from a spot over multiple turns (like a traditional worker placement) if you get the right roll. This game has a lot of player interaction happening in it. There is spot that allows you to bump someone off of the spot they're on (there is a way to prevent someone from hoarding a spot) and one that allows you to steal from any of your opponents. When you colonize a part of the planet, you'll get an alien tech card that gives you a bonus depending on the part of the planet you colonize.So on a buy, borrow, or bury rating scale, this is a buy. There might be people out there that don't like worker placement. Alien Frontiers has really improved on the traditional worker placement game to the point I've had several people that really didn't like worker placement games, play Alien Frontiers and like it. Almost all of them were planning on buying it. A lot of fun, replayability, and easy to learn!

Alien Frontiers is a modern classic! Without expansions you can play 2-4 players. It plays tight even with 2 players but plays best with 4. The box is square which makes it easy to store if that's important for you. I highly recommend it for less than $40 if you like any worker placement games like Viticulture, Lords of Waterdeep, or the like. This game is different enough that it fits in quite well even if you have those games.

The concept and the presentation are beautiful. But, this is a very low scoring game, so every point counts. There are a limited number of turns, and things moved along well at first. With three players the last turn took over an hour because each player examined every single possible move to maximize the few, precious available points. We only played it once, and I can't get anyone interested in playing it now.

Great game. Happy to get a copy

I haven't played with the expansions yet, but overall a very solid game. Pretty approachable even for newbies to board games. The dice as ships works better than you'd think. Perhaps the expansions will introduce a little more back-stabbing.