Forbidden Stars First Impressions

Forbidden Stars is an epic space battle in the vast Warhammer Universe which is the subject of many books.

Bring some, you’ll probably get through a couple during another player’s combat.

The shifting Warp Storms that surround the long lost Herakon Cluster have finally abated, leaving the ancient treasures and planets within this sector open to the rest of the galaxy. Now, the great factions of the galaxy mobilize their fleets and race to establish a foothold. The reward for successful domination surpasses all other concerns, and the price for conquering this sector will be paid in lives.

Players control Space Marines, Eldar, Orks or Chaos Space Marines each with their own unique models, strength and weaknesses.

I had the Eldar, mostly because I like them but also I prefer Yellow as a playing colour.

The board, in a 4-player game, is made up of tiles placed in a 3×4 grid. Players take turns placing tiles and this is where a MAJOR part of the game begins.

Objective

To win, you need to capture 4 of your objectives… (or have the most after 8 rounds) Each player starts with 2 objectives belonging to each other player and as you place tiles, you put 2 of those objectives on that tile. What you’re trying to do is tactically put each objective as far away from that race’s Home World (Starting Tile) as you can…

Sounds easy, but you don’t necessarily know where their Home World is going to start the game until they play it. So this little dance is pretty cool, and that’s just the setup!

So how do you get those objectives? Well, you move and fight of course…

Players take turns placing order tokens on the map, face down one at a time on a tile. You can play your token on top of another player’s tile if you like.

Actions

You have 8 tokens, 2 each of the 4 actions available.

Once everyone has played 4, you go in play order revealing one of your tokens from the top of a stack. This again leads to interesting play as you can put your counters on top of other players and block them from taking that action early on. If you can’t take an action, you just pass until you can.

You have to plan here… For example, if you plan to move from tile A to tile B, then tile B to tile C, you need to make sure you can play the actions in that order… Sometimes, due to bad planning, bad luck or evil opponents that can read your mind, you may be forced to take that second movement before the first messing up your plans.

If this happens and you don’t want to take the action, or you can’t for some reason or another, you put the token on top of the event deck and you get a little bonus in a later phase.

One of the four actions is to Move as I have mentioned.

Another is Deploy where you build things on Planets you have Factories.

Strategize lets you buy cards for your deck which you replace old cards with. These are used for combat.

Dominate lets you get asset tokens from planets you control on the tile you activate. You also get to use your faction’s special ability if you do this.

Forbidden Stars Combat

Combat is nice… but I didn’t like it…

You roll dice depending on your strength, then the attacker plays a card and resolves it, and the defender plays one and resolves it. Damage is dealt if things remain the happen 2 more times or one side is destroyed…

Sounds simple, but seems to take FOREVER…

Forbidden Stars Summary

There are plenty of more ‘things’ to Forbidden Stars. I know it has its audience but this kind of game isn’t for me.

Still, there are some great ideas. I’d like to see it in a shorter more streamlined game and of course, it looks great.

Jesta ThaRogue