League of Adventure: Rocket Race Review

Publisher: Triple Ace Games

Number of Players: 2 – 6

Age: 10+

Time: 20 minutes

League of Adventure: Rocket Race, is a new game by publishers Triple Ace Games, which is currently on Kickstarter and nearly funded (as of this date) which you can check out here. Rocket Race is a game with a steampunk theme set in Victorian times, and you have been set the challenge to be the first group to get to the moon, any which way you can.

Rocket Race, contains two versions of the game Standard and Advanced Rules, depending on how many players you have in your group. I will be focusing on the Advanced Rules, which is the two – four player version of the game and we played the game with two players.

Just to give a bit of information on the Standard Rules, this is bidding game where players will use the allocated tokens to purchase and bid for Component cards to eventually launch their rocket to the moon.

The Advanced Rules, make the game a Resource Management game and remove the Bidding element completely. At the start of the game, each player randomly selects a League card which gives you your Scientific Resource points and also a Workshop card where you can keep track of your scientific breakthroughs which also is the “money” of the game.

The Aim of the game is to acquire three different rocket component parts (Steering, Propulsion and Capsule) as well as any additional Accessories that you think will help you on your quest. Component and Accessory cards are acquired, using your research points and the cost is indicated on the cards. There are also Event cards, which can work as sabotages against your opponents and also help you in your quest.

The game is won by being able to be the first player to launch your rocket to the moon. This is done by collecting the three component parts and any accessories, and then adding the total reliability points which are found on the bottom right of the card. Dice are rolled, and if the score is equal to or less than the total reliability score, you win. Simple!

The game itself, is incredibly simple to learn. There is very little complicated about the Advanced version of the game, perhaps calling it advance is a little bit misleading. It is also a very short game, and works well as a quick game to play a few rounds of to get you in the mood for more “hardcore” games.

The first few games that we played through, there seemed to be very little strategy involved however that is probably down to us learning how the game works. Later games we played we realised that the Workshop cards which give you more chance of Scientific Breakthroughs, and also Event cards can be used to make your hand a lot better, and also make it a lot more interactive. This added to the strategy of the game no end and made for some very compelling and extremely competitive games. Saying that, in all the games that we played no one failed to launch their rocket, which may be an issue the more we play this however or may be a case of us having to adjust our tactics to the game using more sabotages etc., the catch up mechanic which they have included within the game if you do fail on a launch does sound interesting and allows you to remove at random one of your opponents cards, which gives you more time to steal the win.

The art on the cards is great, and a variety of artists where used on these, the cards themselves are of a high quality and are also quite humorous. Triple Ace Games, stick to the theme of the game throughout and you really do get transported to the Steampunk world that they have created. My one major complaint about them would be that there is far too much words on some of the Event cards to make the game play quickly, and really does slow down the game as it involves every player picking them up to check them out before attempting to gain the card.

Rocket Race, is one of those perfect filler games that has a lot of replay ability and the fact that it is also two games in one makes this sure to be one that will comes off the shelf a lot, especially if you are playing with more than two players you can get two different games out of this in one night.