I went to my local board game store today and found a used bundle for Firefly the Game, which included the base game, and two expansions. This got me in the mood to do a comparison video focusing on 4 space western / blue collar space games:
- Firefly
- Xia
- Star Wars Outer Rim
- Spacers
These games all have some similarities, but also offer some different approaches, especially when it comes to solo play, which will be the focus of the episode.
I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts on these games, especially those who have played a few of them.
Some potential topics of discussion will be:
- How well they play solo
- The setting / theme
- How expansive is the sandbox
- Overall visual design
- Ease of getting to the table
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Of those I’ve only played SW: Outer Rim, and never the solo variant. I’ve played it with 2 mostly, but a couple times with more. And always with the expansion, which we felt was mandatory. The addition of ambitions from that expansion is what really made us love the game, despite the fact that you sacrifice some player agency to be given personal goals and asymmetric win conditions.
We like it a lot 1v1. Enough for it to be our current go-to sandbox game. At more players it just kept getting better. There’s not much reason to bargain and deal with other players when playing 1v1, but with 3 or 4 players, making deals and trading out favor tokens (which are also expansion content) can add a lot of interactivity and discussion to the table.
I should probably note that we don’t play or enjoy a ton of competitive games. But this is one of the few that sticks in our collection for that purpose.
Oh, and we do have Xia coming, but I picked it up alongside the Arydia crowdfunding campaign. So we won’t actually own it until that delivers.
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I’m excited for this one and interested to hear your Firefly thoughts. I bounced off it because I did not want to be the one choosing who to send the Reavers after. I never looking into solo or other ways of handling that.
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Do you typically not enjoy “take that” elements?
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We are fine with game-controlled monsters, but in-game kingmaking has two issues for us. First, the metagaming - he is ahead, send the big bad over there. Second, the theme breaks that we affect autonomous characters. For example, in Runebound 3rd, where a character has to play the monster against another player. Using the flowchart solves it for us in RB3
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Hi Daniel,
i´ve only played XIA and Outer Rim with the expansion.
XIA: only 6 times solo… actually never won 
but i really like the sandbox style game. Due to the fact that i own a “Folded Space” inlay it’s really easy and quick to setup.
Outer Rim: i´ve played the base game 7 times solo with the BGG Solo expansion. That was quite good, because every character got a different behavior. Handling was a little fiddly but gameplay way nicer.
Ive played only 1 time with the new expansion, so can’t tell if it’s “better”
Setup is a lot cards to separate/ shuffle and building the numerous stacks… so very long. Another thing is the game length. It is for me a little too long for what it provides…
Maybe some more plays will change that…
Time will tell 
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The only one I’ve not got is Spacers.
I love them all and still not seen a who.e load in each game.
I have mostly just played each one sandbox throwing away any timers as such and just 2 handed seeing which gets most fame credits or things.
I don’t “finish” games just kinda need food or sleep and stop. They are all superb on the table all day games that you can pick at as u choose….well for me any way….
One game of Xia got ridiculous as i played for two days and each hand went on a complete journey 
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I have only played Xia. I’ve played maybe 10 regular games, and probably about 10 solo games. I like it as a solo game! I think the visual elements of the game are just outstanding, and why I keep returning to it. It plays fun enough solo, but I only like it, I don’t love it. A solid B in my personal rating. I have to be in the mood for space adventure. The theme/visuals is what pulls me back, not my pure love of the mechanics. The variety is amazing, another strong factor in it’s solo ability. The universe always shows up different, requiring you to think on the fly and adapt to the map as it’s revealed.
It’s just that “rolling to see if the NPCs got victory points this turn” is kind of… meh. Rolling a D20 for everything while having virtually no dice mitigation is… meh. Sometimes the AI can be a little wonky. The police ship has “tunnel vision, and goes after anyone who goes into loath (bad guy planet)” Well… if I never go in there, no one ever goes in there, and he just… sits there all game?
I know I sound like I’m being harsh on the game, but still I give it a solid B rating. It’s fun, you have to have strategy, and sometimes the dice will really screw you. Sometimes they’ll save you though too, and that’s also exciting.
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I found a group game of Firefly base game very “relaxing”. Tooling around doing jobs and picking up crew.
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Does that mean you were not chucking Reavers at each other? I think it gets pretty mean and kingmakery.
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Yeah I don’t recall us doing that
So does Xia need house rulings now that Daniel chose Spacers over it? Seeing that was a letdown as I own all of Xia and haven’t played it yet. Daniel, how would you improve Xia?
Nothing to improve! Xia is amazing. I just prefer Spacers because it takes less table space and is shorter.
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Oh OK. I guess I could find ways to make it shorter. I wonder if the rules need some tinkering.
We played Spacers and it is a stripped down Xia, but it is also swingier with a d6 system. If you hit me with 5 and I defend with 2, that is 3 hull damage, which is quite a bit. I get using the D6 system to see the board with blips, but for combat, maybe a 2-3-3-4-4-5 die would work limit the swing (if you are not into it). I think Xia being longer has more die rolls, so things even out a bit more.
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We just got Xia on the table for the first time. We’re about halfway through a game (we leave it on a dedicated table) and it’s been an awesome time. I’m not sure what I was expecting but the emergent narrative is a bit more than I thought it would be.
And as random chance would have it, we started off in quite a tough situation with both players planning to try trading and choosing only shields, engines, and mods to start (no weapons)… Only to have the first event that popped spawn a tier 3 ship flavored as a pirate captain chasing us down with 2d12 attacks.
The game definitely has a lot going on, which is what I want in a sandbox, but I’m also glad that nothing feels unintuitive or confusing. There’s a bunch of systems and mechanics but they’re all simple enough and make sense.
It’s a very different approach to the sandbox space game than Outer Rim though. I don’t feel like they quite scratch the same itch, so definitely easy to keep both in our collection. Xia seems more about responding to the board as it changes, where Outer Rim (at least with the ambitions from the expansion) has you locked in from the start with your personal win conditions. I like both approaches for different reasons.
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The friction I had with Outer Rim was that it takes established bits and pieces of the Star Wars narrative(s) and stews them together in ways that don’t always make a lot of sense in the context of that world – e.g., I’m playing as Boba Fett but I wind up at the helm of the Millennium Falcon and I’m currying favor with the Rebels, or somesuch. I don’t mind if a game’s emergent narrative is somewhat inchoate and ambiguous (in fact I rather enjoy it – hail Civitas Nihilium!!). But for Outer Rim, I felt like the depth/baggage of the IP put it in tension with the game’s sandboxy aspirations. I could set aside what I know about these characters and places and just let it ride… but then, why use the IP at all? Spacers (which I have played) and Xia (which I have not) don’t face this problem, since the narrative only exists when you cook it up.
Those were my early impressions based on a couple plays of OR, at any rate. I should sit down and try it again.
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Yeah, that is definitely an issue that comes up with Outer Rim. I just pretend it’s some alternate bizzaro universe or a clone or something when that stuff happens. But that’s not a great solution…
I can absolutely see why it would bother people who want to feel like they’re in the star wars universe. Especially if the ambition drafting leaves you with options that are completely at odds with the character you picked. If I remember correctly you draw X+1 ambitions, where X = the number of players, and the last person to pick only has 2 choices? I know I got stuck with a republic character doing an ambition that had them working for the empire once.
But I bet it sold better because of the IP. And perhaps that’s the only reason it got that expansion? I’m not sure I’d like it nearly as much without that added content.
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I will say the 2nd half of our Xia game felt way less balanced. I got a level 2 ship with an upgrade that lets you self-destruct at the start of any turn, then respawn and continue the turn… and when you die you respawn at any chosen spawn point with no damage. So the only penalty is no cargo and no missions. So I dropped all shield outfits from the ship as death no longer mattered. Then I could just respawn near the enforcer while holding tier 2 and 3 blasters (plus piercer mods) and almost assuredly blow him up. We even used the solo rules NPC stats to make it more fair, but it didn’t seem like anything could compare with that level of fame farming unless the other player also went combative and tried to chase me down. Which she didn’t want to be doing.
So while we had a lot of fun we’re going to have to agree on some house rules to keep that sort of thing in check. Maybe only getting fame once per ship type that you kill? I’ve got some other ideas too.
EDIT: Played another game with this rule and it was very close at the end. Felt much better in a 2 player game.
I’m excited for this video. I’m the contrarian in that I have the same reaction to the Firefly IP that a lot of people have to Star Wars (mostly due to the degree of nerd worship it recieves), but Xia has always interested me since Outer Rim might be my favorite board game of all time, and I’m interested in something that potentially (?) offers a deeper experience.
I love Outer Rim because there are so many different ways to approach the game and victory and how since most people are at least tangentially aware of the SW universe, they can glom onto certain aspects and laughingly accept incongruities when they occur. For example, in my last game, Boba Fett for the life of him could not best Lobot in hand to hand combat 
I also appreciate the little vignettes surrounding skill checks in missions, although in group play my friends don’t really read them, in solo play I take my time and imagine myself in there.
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