Stats:
No. of players: 2-6
Amount of time to play: 60-90 min
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: 5 min

Galactic Strike Force is a sci-fi themed cooperative board game. You must build your ship and fight off the enemy fleets and flagship to win.

Galactic Strike Force Rules Description:

You start Galactic Strike Force by selecting a Strike Force ship you want to pilot. Next you choose which enemy you want to face and pick the three sectors the game will take place in. Each sector gets three piles of five Station cards and you place opposition ships equal to two times the number of players.

To begin you draw four cards from your ship’s starting deck and place the remaining pile of cards in a face up pile near your ship’s board.

Each turn is divided into five phases, travel, requisition, installation, battle and aftermath. During these phases some enemy ships may act too.

At the start of the travel phase you check if any enemy ships or sectors have actions that trigger. Then you may move from one sector to another one.

Just as before, you start the requisition phase by looking to see if any enemy ships or sectors take actions in the requisition phase. All the cards in your hand are worth a certain number of credits. In this part of the requisition phase you total their value and may buy Station cards from your current sector. These cards are added face-up to the bottom of your deck. Cards used to buy things are not discarded. They stay in your hand.

Again you check for installation events and then you may install any tech cards you have in your hand onto your ship. Most tech cards add weapons or shields to your ship and some tech cards grant you special abilities. Weapon and armor upgrades gain tokens on those cards and are placed next to your ship. If all the tokens are removed from a tech card it is scrapped.

During the battle phase you fight. As with every other phase you need to check for battle events on ships and sectors. Then you may choose to engage one opposition ship in your sector. If you outnumber the opposition ships in your sector two Strike Force ships may engage one opposition ship. When you engage a ship you mark it as such and you attack each other simultaneously. You both do damage equal to your weapons minus the defender’s total shields. When removing token for damage you remove shield tokens first. If a ship loses all of its shield and weapon tokens it is destroyed. When you destroy an opposition ship you can a bounty.

The last phase is the aftermath phase. You check and resolve any aftermath events. Then sector by sector you count how many opposition ships were not engaged. For each opposition (up to three) that you did not engage you flip one station card and resolve the event. Sometimes this lets more ships enter play, other times it adds tokens to enemy ships and it is always bad for the Strike Force. If you ever flip three station cards at one sector that sector is considered overrun and is flipped over.

To win Galactic Strike Force you need to clear all opposition ships or defeat the flagship. The flagship will appear in a sector based on a trigger that occurs during one of the phase events. An event trigger (the specific one depends on the enemy you are facing) will also put mission cards on sectors. These tend to be another more obstacle that hurts your effectiveness in that sector. If all three sectors are overrun or if all Strike Force ships are grounded, you lose.

Quick Review of Galactic Strike Force:

Galactic Strike Force is a cooperative card game in which you build your ship and your deck in order to defeat the opposition. There is a good bit to keep track of so it might take a non-gamer a few times to get a hang of. But since it is a cooperative game more experienced gamers can help newer ones.

The components for this game are really nice. The art looks good and the rules have plenty of examples. The layout of the cards could be better as the type is bit small, specifically for bounties.

The way combat works is very cool. Even with my weak math skills I like the way you subtract the value of your shields from damage you take, but that the damage you take hits your shields first. It makes combat smooth and quick and makes sense.

There are ten different Strike Force ships you can try and each plays a bit differently. This adds to the replay value of the game and you’ll want to try them all.

The biggest issue I have with this game is the amount off things you need to keep track of. Every phase you need to check all the ships and sectors for events that might trigger. As much as I like how orderly the game structured, is can feel like a bit much. On top of that with all the tokens you need to move around the game is pretty fiddly.

If your group doesn’t mind the amount of accounting, Galactic Strike Force is a fun, cooperative game. You can even play it solitaire. But no matter how you play it is it has lots of replay value.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6