Star Trek fans seeing the subtitle Battle of Wolf 359 might be expecting a game involving battling starships. In Star Trek lore, Wolf 359 was the location of a major showdown between the United Federation of Planets and the Borg. It was at the heart of the two-part Star Trek Next Generation episode The Best of Both Worlds which formed the cliffhanger ending of STNG Season 3 and the first episode of Season 4. The operative phrase here tho' is Away Missions: this game focuses on competing away teams rather than space battles...
The focus of Star Trek Away Missions is very much the aftermath of the space battle. The double-sided modular board pieces can be configured either as a Federation or Borg ship, and, in the core game, one player takes on the role of the Federation and the other controls the Borg. The Federation player has miniatures for key crew members Riker, Data, Wolf and Shelby. If you've watched any STNG, you'll be very familar with the first three but Commander Shelby featured in only a few episodes, tho' she was prominent in The Best of Both Worlds two-parter. The Borg player controls Locutus (the Borgified Captain Picard) and five Borg drones. The miniatures themselves are okay, but they're nowhere near as good as the miniatures produced by Modiphius for their Star Trek Adventures RPG.
For each miniature, players have an individual board showing that character's specific skills and their stats. Pegboard slots on the cards start off initially filled but a peg is removed when a character takes damage and their effectiveness is correspondingly reduced; for example, full strength Federation characters can move 4 spaces as an action but if a character loses a peg on movement, an action will only move them 2 spaces. The pegboards are a neat idea, and we liked in particular that they give players a choice of where to apply damage, but the tiny pegs are rather fiddly.
From set-up, Star Trek Away Missions has the look of a skirmish game and your characters may indeed be involved in ranged and melee combat. Happily, there's no need for tape measures or complicated range rules in this game: phasers and their ilk are effective weapons and targets will always be in range provided you have clear line of sight. And unlike the majority of other games, a player's own characters can obstruct each other's line of sight... But tho' there's combat in this game, and the Borg player may very well also be trying to assimilate opposing characters (ie: place them under Borg control, just as Picard has evidently been taken over prior to the start of the game), that's not the main thrust of the game. In each of the game's three rounds, players will have a hand of five Mission cards and five Support cards that they can play. It's completing Mission cards that score you the points, mostly for passing the requisite skill checks at specific ship locations.
Skill checks and combat are resolved through dice rolls. The number of dice rolled depends on your character's stats, whether or not they are supported (have an ally in the same space) and whether they have relevant skills. Support cards may also affect how many dice are rolled. The game uses conventional six-sided dice, except that the 6 is represented with the faction's motif. Where a skill test is uncontested, you succeed on a roll of 4 or better. For contested rolls (typically combat), the highest attack and defence dice are compared, much like in Risk (Hasbro). It's hardly essential but the game comes with a ladder template so that dice can be laid out against each other. Where in combat an attacker rolls more dice than the defender, any 'uncontested' dice will score hits if they show a 4 or higher.
With its focus on Missions, this is very much a card-driven game. It's a notable strength of the design from Andrew Haught, Mike Haught and Phil Yates that the games comes with pre-built decks of 20 Mission and 20 Support cards for each faction. With these you can play the game straight out of the box. There's a further batch of cards, however, and so once you've played the basic game you can build your own deck for your next play, subject to the only proviso that decks must always comprise exactly 20 Mission and 20 Support cards. We have fond memories of playing Decipher's Star Trek Customizable Card Game. With its built-in customisable decks, Star Trek Away Missions delivers much of the flavour of a CCG experience but without the hassle and expense of an ever-expanding collectible card game. And tho' we haven't fallen in love with this game's miniatures, we've no complaints about the card art, which makes excellent use of shots from the TV series.
But there are expansions for Star Trek Away Missions... Tho' you'll be playing it as Federation vs Borg straight out of the box, players may yearn to play as Klingons or Romulans. Gale Force Nine have you covered. There are expansions for both, with a Klingon away team led by Gowron and a Romulan away team under the command of Sela. This won't come as a surprise since these factions are actually cited in examples shown in the core rulebook. For us the big plus of the different factions is that they have been expressly designed to play differently: the Missions have been generally well chosen to direct players to model their tactics on those that match their faction's motivating characteristics. Again, this will be particularly appreciated by dedicated Star Trek fans.
Star Trek Away Missions then is an evocative game with great replay value. With the expansions you can either substitute for the factions in the core game (for example, playing Klingons vs Borg) or you can turn the two-player game into a game for three or four players.
We gather that Gale Force Nine have plans to beam down more expansions, adding more characters from the various Star Trek series. We can't wait to try them!