We've known since the original series of Star Trek that the easiest way for a crew member to impress a starship captain is to exaggerate their estimate of how long a task will take and then appear to be a miracle worker by getting the job done in a fraction of the time. It was a trick Scotty routinely pulled in Engineering; typically telling Captain Kirk that it would take four hours to fix the warp drive but then somehow getting it back on line in three minutes. The practice was parodied in the Star Trek Next Generation sixth season episode Relics and it's become the premise for this light card Star Trek Lower Decks card game from Modiphius.
If you're not familiar with Lower Decks, you've a treat in store. It's a light, tongue-in-cheek animated cartoon series that follows the exploits and apparently humdrum routines of a group of very junior crew members on board a relatively unimportant Starfleet vessel. The setting is contemporaneous with Star Trek Next Generation. And tho' Lower Decks may have began as a jokey entertainment, the characters and storylines have developed as the animated cartoon series has progressed, and it's won plaudits too for an adherence to Star Trek canon that puts to shame other recent live-action spin-offs - particularly Star Trek Discovery. And Lower Decks cemented its own place in canon when it featured earlier this year in a crossover story with the live-action Star Trek series Strange New Worlds.
So what about the game? In Buffer Time, the 2-6 players are collectively tasked with five Assignments. These require a set amount of effort to be expended in their completion. Some but not all will earn the players 'leisure points' and to win this cooperative game you'll need to have collected a certain number of leisure points (18 points in a two-player game, rising to 26 points in a six-player game) by the time you complete the fifth Assignment. Leisure points are mostly earned by throwing in extra 'Side Projects', tho' these will also increase the total effort needed to complete the Assignment...
Each turn you add the top card of the Shift deck, contributing the indicated effort to the as yet uncompleted assignment, and you take one other action, including to add a Side Project card or play one of your Alpha Shift Ability cards for its text effect.
The Shift card that players add at the start of each turn mostly contribute 1-4 effort towards the required total but the deck of 28 Shift cards includes six Officer cards. Three of these show 1 officer icon, two show 2 icons and one (Captain Freeman) has three icons. If your effort pile ever has four or more officer icons in it, you earn yourselves a reprimand for time wasting: the Assignment card is discarded, the Side Projects you added to that Assignment are lost, and from any Assignments and Side Projects you've previously completed you lose the card with the highest leisure point value...
Buffer Time then is a push-your-luck game. With only five Assignments to be completed, you'll need to add Side Projects to have any chance of achieving your leisure points goal but every Side Project you add raises the total effort needed for the Assignment's completion and so increases the odds of you drawing Officer cards... The game is easy until it isn't: you can seem to be strolling towards an easy win but then find the Officer reprimand penalty is so punishing that it takes victory out of reach.
It's the Alpha Shift Ability cards that give players agency beyond mere luck of the Shift deck draw. Some of these cards simply add to the effort pile but others allow for manipulation of the decks and the Side Projects in play, so their judicious use can save the day when, for example, you find yourselves just one officer icon away from a reprimand. We were just surprised that the rules don't expressly facilitate solitaire play: this is a game that would readily lend itself to a solo mode and would be super easy to devise your own.
We've gotten a real kick out of our plays of Buffer Time. It's a light cooperative card game and, for fans of Lower Decks, the Assignment, Side Quest and Alpha Shift Ability cards are brimming with flavour. It's just what you need while you're waiting for the next episode of season 5...