With the holidays upon us, a great space board game makes for great entertainment and a terrific gift for the family, or just for you.
Games are classified as heavy, medium or lightweight, depending on their complexity and the amount of time required to play. All of the games in this article were either self-purchased or played with friends who own them; none were given to me for review, but we have reviewed a few of the entries below. You'll find some of the best space board games ever made here, and if you're stuck for gift ideas, why not check out the best star projectors or the best holiday gifts under $100?
Best space board games this holiday season
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Best heavyweight board games
Twilight Imperium is the quintessential game for hard-core gamers. The game starts out with exploration and resource building, but can quickly skew towards battles, depending on how aggressively it is played. In the base version, players select one of 17 factions; with both expansions, that number grows to 30 options.
Negotiations and diplomacy are essential. Immediate deals are binding, but the rules actually state that 'future' promises are not. Players tend to carve out chunks of space around their home planets, using those resources to expand their fleet. Attacks are common, particularly along borders.
In addition to resources, your planets also have influence, which helps during the diplomacy phase of the game. Players vote on council issues that affect the rules, players or individual planets, and influence is vital. So is convincing others to vote your way.
Twilight Imperium is one of the most complex and longest games in the boardgaming community, but it provides sufficient variety to keep players returning for more. But it's not for the faint of heart. It's also worth noting that two expansions, Prophecy of Kings and Thunder's Edge, add additional elements to the game, as well as expanding faction options. Including them will increase game time.
Gaia Project is one of my top game choices at the moment. It features several improvements over its predecessor, Terra Mystica, including a variable game board. Gaia Project's changing, rotating hexes mix can be combined to create a wealth of different playing spaces, making the game infinitely replayable.
Players have an option to select one of fourteen factions in the base game; the expansion provides four additional options. Because each faction board is double-sided, that reduces the choices during the game but also prevents two players of the same planet type, which is a small price to pay. Each round scores differently, and the scoring options are mixed up for each play. The tech board options also change, along with the map, again, making the game infinitely replayable.
I also own the expansion, Lost Fleet, and found that while the base game is excellent, the expansion makes it better. It introduces an additional mechanic (ships that grant access to new action spaces) and smaller, new map tiles, which, combined with the larger board, enhance the game's playability. I still love the base game but definitely prefer the expansion!
Nemesis is an alien-themed board game that I heard best described as "inspired by but legally different from" the Alien franchise. It's also complex and time-consuming.
Setting up a four-player game took us roughly half an hour, although I suspect most of it was because only one of the four of us knew how to set it up. All three of our new players watched a 23-minute teaching video beforehand, so we got the speed-teach in person.
The game itself was a lot of fun. Players wake up from hypersleep after an alien lifeform has been detected on the ship. With no memory of the ship layout, we scurry around trying to accomplish individual goals. Xenomorphs of all sizes randomly pop up and must be fought off or escaped. And of course, one of your party members may be working against you — after all, the crew may well be expendable.
Nemesis has a solo mode, which I've not played. It's ranked 23rd on BoardGameGeek.com. There are several expansions, none of which I have played (yet). They include Nemesis: Aftermath, Nemesis: Carnomorphs, Nemesis: Void Seeders and several promo decks and dice.
Best mediumweight board games
Terraforming Mars (TM) looks complex, but is relatively easy to pick up. Its popularity suggests that many have used it as a first step into heavier board games. The efforts of all of the players contribute to the terraforming action, even though you aren't all working together.
Each player represents a corporation, striving to make money by converting Mars into a human-habitable planet. Players can place ocean or forest tiles, use heat resources to raise the temperature and build cities to colonize. There are myriad options to succeed, and you have to keep an eye on other players to make sure they don't beat you in the goal you're working towards. You can read more in our full Terraforming Mars review.
There are a LOT of expansions, including TM: Prelude, TM: Hellas & ELysium, TM: Colonies, TM: Venus and TM: Turmoil. You can get these five combined in TM: Big Box, which also includes a set of 3D terrain tiles and some additional goodies. There is also TM: Prelude 2, TM: Automa (for solo players), TM: Utopia & Cimmeria and TM: Amazonis & Vastitas.
All they had to say was 'space bees', and I was hooked. In Apiary, humanity has died off, and bees dominate the Earth. Now those bees have gone to space, and it's your job to grow their crew and their ship.
Apiary is a medium-weight, engine-building worker placement game that has a few unique twists. Unlike most worker placement games, you'll never find someone else blocking your spot; you can easily bump them, though you may not always want to. The game is relatively fast-paced, which means the end can come up suddenly. But it's an interesting theme, and a lot of fun.
The original game offers a solo mode via an automata, which I have not yet played. The expansion of Apiary, Expanding the Hive, adds additional ships, factions, frames and dances to the base game. I found the frames the most valuable, along with the new rules regarding exploration tokens, and thought it was worth the cost.
Expeditions is a card-engine worker-placement game that casts the Tunguska meteor explosion in a completely different light. Instead of a warning event, Expeditions imagines the historical fall that corrupts the Earth. Scientists travel to Siberia to hunt for related meteorites and cleanse the Earth of the meteorites' spreading corruption.
The mechs, the workers and the board are familiar, but Expeditions utilizes cards and workers to expand the gameplay. Essentially, players build a hand with cards that can be amplified by workers of the same color/type. The game offers a variety of paths to earning points, one being the collection of meteorites, creating the tenuous space connection.
Expeditions is another game where the expansion, Gears of Corruption, only makes it better. Surprisingly, the biggest differences are minor: The addition of resources and a wild worker at the start, along with map tokens with rewards, brings far more value than the additional player and mech types. I prefer the expansion's upgraded player boards, which offer two recessed tracks for tracking resources, but that is one of the perks rather than a drawback.
I have to say, the artwork is some of the most stunning of any board game I have seen. The cards are gorgeous, and there are times when I have been tempted to take a face-up card not for what it could do but just because I loved the art.
Pulsar 2849 intrigued me with its neutron star premise. Players move through the galaxy, exploring systems and claiming colonies or pulsars, as well as 'spinning up' Pulsars they already have in play. Discovering tech that will help build on a cosmic scale is also an option.
Although the game is heavily reliant on dice, the randomness is fairly well mitigated because players can pick one of several dice rolls to apply. The game has several paths to winning, although players will self-eliminate options as they move through the rounds.
For more than 25 years, Catan has been the default board game for gamers who want to explore outside the standard mass market games. For many, myself included, it was the first exposure to the slightly more complex world of board games, one that was introduced by my then-elementary/middle school kids. Over the years, Catan has had a wealth of expansions, but all of them exist on a relatively Terran-like planet.
No more. Catan: Starfarers finally opens the universe up to settlers. Whole planets make up the previously established land types, producing food, fuel and other goods that drive your development. Players familiar with the Catan universe will recognize that many of the elements of ocean travel have been reapplied to space, though movement has been upgraded to cover the vast distances required.
Encounter cards offer a new experience (though I'll admit I haven't played all of the terrestrial expansions). Things that have caused struggles, like never getting the dice to roll your way, have been remedied by allowing players to draw on their turn, based on their score, making it easier to start when colonies are scarce.
Every player gets a rocket. Not a small, movable piece on the board. I mean, you get that too, but a rocket roughly half as tall as my forearm, used to establish movement and track upgrades. I'm still deciding how I feel about it, but it seems like something kids would love. As you cannot blockade other players, and things like 'longest road' and 'largest army' are gone, the game is overall less complicated than regular Catan. It's up to you to decide if that's better or worse.
Best lightweight board games
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a group trick-taking game where players work together to complete two randomly selected missions. Players are dealt their hands, and the first player, the commander, is selected and leads accordingly. Unlike a standard 52-card deck, there is only a single trump suit, which makes it a bit easier to follow. While direct communication is not allowed, players can use their token once per game to provide hints about their hand.
This is a great, quick game, with each hand taking only five to ten minutes to play. The variety of missions lends itself to replayability, and the ease fits nicely for more casual gamers.
The company also produced The Crew: Deep Sea Mission, and there may not be enough of a difference to warrant purchasing both. While Planet Nine has more straightforward missions, Deep Sea has potentially more interesting combinations. Some players prefer Planet Nine for more casual players and Deep Space for slightly more seasoned ones, but both work for light gaming.
Twilight Imperium is my husband's favorite game that he never gets to play, so when I learned Twilight Inscription was a lighter version that didn't require coordinating a crowd, of course, we had to buy it.
The game provides 25 different factions from the original game, and you get four sheets rather than a giant planet-spreading board. You'll track your progress using dry-erase markers on your board, including building up a fleet similar to the good old days of pencil-and-paper Battleship. I don't have any previous experience with roll and write games, so this was a good introduction.
If you expect this to be a streamlined version of Twilight Imperium, you'll be disappointed, but it still does a decent job of capturing the flavor. You'll still build dreadnoughts and war suns, research techs to gain points and you'll be making your drive for Mecatol Rex. If you've never played, this can be a great way to catch (or share) the flavor of the game in a shorter form.
