How to play ISS Vanguard Review (Spoiler-Free)

ISS Vanguard is a cooperative, dice game.

Title: ISS Vanguard

Year Published: 2022

Designer: Andrzej Betkiewicz, Krzysztof Piskorski, Paweł Samborski, Marcin Świerkot

Publisher: Awaken Realms

Players: 1-4

Game Time: 

Set-up Time: Hard to say!

Ages: 13+

Theme: Space Exploration

Mechanisms: Co-op, Resource Management (kinda)

How to win: Complete the scenario

Game Description

ISS Vanguard will bring players right into epic Sci-Fi adventure, as they will play as 4 sections (security, recon, science, engineering) onboard the first human ship with the possibility to reach outer space.

ISS Vanguard Review

How to play ISS Vanguard. But it’s not the same as my normal how-to-play videos, this is giving an overview of the mechanisms in the order they are needed. I want to give an overview of the game to assist in playing the tutorial or as an alternative to a review.

Main Mechanisms

It’s a cooperative campaign game so there’s that if you count either of those as a mechanism.

I mean, The rest of it is just managing your dice and rolling them really but it’s not a mechanism as such, not in the general sense.

USP

Nothing super unique. Having the cards go in folders is fairly unique but hardly ‘USP’ level interesting.

Everything else was kinda done in Etherfields.

Theme

Not a fan of the space thing but the story is pretty cool. I’m looking forward to delving further.

Setup & Rulebook

Initial setup takes FOREVER, and that’s just the game box. You have to separate all of the cards and put them in specific compartments of specific card trays. It’s explained quite well in the rulebook but takes a while to find what you need especially as there are some similar-looking cards.

The rulebook is good, much better than Etherfields. The tutorial teaches the game really well and the index helps you re-find the rules it taught you but you forgot.

However, I will say the rulebook teaches the exploration phase well and the ship phase fairly well. What it doesn’t do is cover the bits in between which left me feeling lost when playing through.

The rulebook also kinda glosses over some elements and doesn’t provide enough detail and it left me feeling a little confused. A standard for Mythic Games.

Components & Artwork

The dice, boards and minis are really nice. The app does a good job of telling the story despite some dodgy voice acting in places. The dual-layer board helps divide stuff in your play area well.

I’ve always liked art when it’s on a white background, it makes it pop. The characters all look really cool too.

Ease of Teaching

I’m playing it solo as I write this so no teaching issues are to be seen.

However, due to there being only a few actions that are well summarised on a sheet, it is a co-op game and has open information I can see it could be quite easy to teach.

Similar Games

I’ve mentioned Etherfields which has the Dream part followed by the ‘Dreamscape’ in that game. Here a Dream is replaced by an ‘Away Team’ mission and the Dreamscape is back managing the ISS Vanguard and the team.

ISS Vanguard Summary

I really enjoyed Etherfields, especially the theme and the feel. The problem was the game was awkward and the bit between the fun deck-building game parts was tedious.

Here, the away missions are fun and easy to play. The bit back on the ship is really really easy. You flip through the folder and the book tells you what page to go to, on that page are the rules for what you can do step by step. No memory is required.

My only issue, apart from setup and tear down taking ages is the game length. A session can take a while and that’s not what I want from my solo games.

But having a fun story, simple gameplay and the app telling a tale makes for really fun game sessions.

Round-Up

A good game that just takes too long to play but I’m looking forward to powering through the base game content and seeing what happens!

Rating

I give it 7/10