One Deck Galaxy

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… okay, back in 2020, at home, everyone’s (well, not everyone’s…) social interaction was somewhat curbed by a scrub-lord virus that we have heard more than enough about, thank you. Now though my family are beloved to me, they do not have the same affection/obsession for table-top gaming as I do, so I quickly realised that me saying, ‘cheer up, folks – this is a great opportunity to play through Mansions of Madness in its entirety’ would go down, at this time, like a dry cough in an elevator.

So, like many of us, I turned to the solace of solo gaming. The dining room table, also my office, became my play area. There were a few games that I took through their paces at the time – Underwater Cities, which I still haven’t played with anyone else, Marvel Legendary, which is better if you pretend to be two people, Tiny Towns, which was fairly kind to me, and Ultra Tiny Galaxies, which kicked my rear-end so badly that it still aches in winter. There was one game that I returned to again and again, due to its small size and relatively forgiving mechanic – One Deck Dungeon.

One Deck Dungeon (ODD), designed by Chris Cieslik and produced by the kings of big games in small boxes. Asmadi Games, is a rogue-like deck-based dungeon crawler where you gather different coloured dice to help you defeat the denizens of a multi-level dungeon before facing off against an end of level baddy. Each level completed would add extra hazards to negotiate and traps to avoid whilst your successful encounters would allow you to up your stats (get more dice) or add to your abilities/potions/equipment. You’d have to be careful, though, as you had a limited amount of life – exhaust your life and it’s KO.

The great thing about ODD was that it took a few moments to set up but would give you a decent, satisfying play arc without having to bother anyone else. Sure, it had its flaws – unfortunate draws and rolls could mean untimely deaths – but most of the time you’d end up with a mighty double handful of dice to throw against the evil overlord.

It was also a game that had an entirely female cast, which was refreshingly different set up from your usual cast of muscle-bound barbarians and bearded wizards.

Not everyone is a fan of the fantasy genre though – CS Lewis apocryphally said, whilst reading his friend JRR Tolkien’s opus masterwork, Lord of the Rings, “Oh dear, not another [blooming] elf…” – but it’s too nice a mechanic to keep to the hobbits and goblins. Let’s get cosmic…

Galaxy Quest

If you are already familiar with One Deck Dungeon… no, come back! Yes, you will be rolling dice and yes, you will be assigning them to different places to get access to more dice and ways to rig them, but there’s a lot of new/different stuff here. Trust me.

Note: I’m going to lean into the one-player version of this game despite it being playable by two, because that is how I play it. My game. Mine.

You begin the game by choosing from one of five Homeworlds such as the sensibly named Timtillawinks or Plumplim and one of five societies such as the ridiculous Scientists, Explorers or Mathematicians. These show you what Colony resources you have, what Tech abilities you have and what level of civilisation you are – you start at one, but by completing certain conditions you can raise your level and unlock new abilities.

You also have to set up your Space Base at Level One and an Adversary. There are five Adversaries to choose from, ranging from the insidious Neeble-Woober Colony Fleet to the ominous Dark Star Syndicate, each with their own ways of scuppering your fledgling Federation, winning the game or, preferably, being defeated. Your Space Base is there to gather your fleet, build your scientific prowess and essentially do something with the dice that you can’t do anything with.

Dice? Yes dice. This may be called ‘One Deck Galaxy’, but if it were to be entirely accurate, it would be called ‘One Deck and A Whole Heap of Dice Galaxy’, though that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The dice are your resources and will allow you to explore the galaxy, resolve difficult alien encounters, build your fleet and your scientific knowledge and hopefully defeat your galactic Adversary. But this will take time; and determination; and lots and lots of dice.

It’s Just A Phase…

Each turn comprises of four phases: the Adversary Phase, the Discovery Phase, the Action Phase and the Results Phase. In the Adversary Phase, the Adversary does its thing, which varies depending on the Adversary, but will always include discarding a number of cards from the deck, adding cards to Encounters and ‘Escalating’ their nefarious plans – for instance, the Neeble-Woobers will add to a card to their colonies every three turns or roll a number of dice corresponding to their colonial resources and keeping all the dice that scored over their level (raised as they are weakened by your attacks). This can get pretty irritating as the game progresses, but you can always claim back the dice and/or ability tokens… for a price. This is also the point where the Adversary may reach its ‘overwhelm’ point – for instance, for the Neeble-Woobers to Overwhelm the Federation they must have double the number of colonies as the civilisation’s level. At that point, it’s all over.

Of course, that won’t happen for a while. If it hasn’t happened yet, then it’s time to do some discovering. In the Discovery Phase, cards are played out from the deck until four cards are revealed in the middle of the table. These cards will either be Locations or Encounters. Locations have two places where dice and things can be allocated, according to certain conditions (for example, no dice with the same value etc.) in order to gain influence on that Location – once enough influence has been placed on that Location (which varies from Location to Location), the Location is gained as either a Colony (adding dice and tokens to the player’s pool) or as Tech (adding an ability that can be activated to adjust dice, add different coloured dice, add fleets etc.). Encounters are events that need to have a certain value of different coloured dices placed on them to complete the encounter. Once completed, that too can become a Colony or Tech.

Unlike the Locations, Encounters have a limited amount of time to be completed – once they have three influence on them, with one placed every Adversary Phase, they cause the Adversary to Escalate and cause mischief of one kind or another. All is not lost though, as a failed Encounter becomes scientific research. Which is a good thing.

In the next phase (the Action Phase) you get to roll dem bones! Gather as many of your resource dice and ability counters as are available in the pool according to your Colony resources and ROLL THE DICE! You can also activate certain abilities with your counters to give you extra dice of different colours or reroll dice, or you can use some abilities or trade some dice for black dice. These are essentially any colour dice and very useful for topping up or fulfilling assignment criteria. You can now assign dice to the Encounters and Locations revealed in the Discovery Phase, your Adversary or your Space Base. We’ve already looked at Encounters and Locations, but the Adversary and Space Base need a bit of explaining as they are new. Ish.

The Adversary is a bit like the Bosses in ODD, but each time you defeat them, their abilities get a bit nerfed (to balance out their chance of Overwhelm getting more imminent). You can also change the way you attack them, choosing between a dice heavy attack and an attack that uses dice and fleet or science, depending on how your rolls have gone or how much fleet/science you have accumulated.

Which brings us to the Space Base, which is completely new. In ODD, you’d often be left with dice that would be of no use because they were the wrong colour or not high enough. Well, even these trash dice can be of use now as you can use them to build your fleet or science research. Science research can be used to complete Encounters, influence Locations and upgrade your Space Base. To do this, assign three of any dice and gain the top card of the deck as research, or assign one dice of a value equal to or higher than the research of any location in the Discovery Area and gain that as research. Fleets can be used to defeat your Adversary, influence Locations, complete Encounters and also raise or lower your dice results. Fleets are gained by assigning two or three dice of different or similar values – the same values give you more Fleets. When Fleets are gained, cards are put face down under the Space Base, and discarded when used.

But why upgrade the Space Base, I hear you ask, it seems pretty groovy already. Yes, it is, but your level one Space Base has only one counter to send out and increase influence or attack or any of those sorts of things, and only has three slots to increase Fleets. Upgraded bases give you more tokens, more Fleets… more POWER. UNLIMITED POWER!

Sorry about that – got carried away. So, your dice are assigned – time to reap what you have sewn. This is where you will assign influence or complete Encounters, gain research or Fleets. It is also where you will attack and eventually defeat your Adversary, because each time you defeat them, you will gain a token – not just a trophy either, as you can use an Adversary token to prevent Overwhelm. Of course, you’re going to have to do something about that, or else the Adversary will just beat you the following turn, but a lot can happen in a turn. They also become less effective in their Escalations, but also more desperate – never turn your back on the Neeble Woobers.

Now all these actions and reactions will use the other resource of the game – the cards. There are only 40 cards in the deck, so pretty soon you will get through all the cards. When that happens, there are Event cards relating to your Adversary. These may involve taking dice from the pool, or adding colonies, or anything else that will make your life difficult.

And that is a round. It looks like a lot, but after a few rounds, you get the hang of it, because by then things have started to get real…

Perfectly Balanced… As All Things Should Be…

One Deck Dungeon was always, for me, a very good game, but not a perfect game. Having four doors that remained resolutely closed until you kicked them down meant that you ended up spending a lot of cards just to see what was out there, and depending on what you got, you could end up facing the big boss and having to deal with his shenanigans a lot earlier than you expected. Having a limited amount of life also meant that you could end up going out like a punk to an angry boar or something of its ilk due to an unlucky roll before you could even get a couple of decent stat boosts. Oh, the humanity!

One Deck Galaxy acknowledges the maxim ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ whilst also respecting that when things are broken, you should definitely fix them. Although there is one thing that remains resolutely busted…

The cards for Locations and Encounters are simply illustrated but often amusing – one of the Locations is an intergalactic burger bar – I’m not saying the Big Bang Burger Bar but… – as are the Adversary cards. The primary art-flex is with the Homeworlds, and these are gloriously bonkers, especially the sentient-tomato-like Plumplims. The remaining player cards are simple but functional – this is all about keeping things compact and clear, it’s not a CMON game.

The action remains frantic and puzzley as you make tough decisions on where to place your dice – do you go all in on the planet of Eys Kreem to get that extra dice to go up a level or do you send your fleet off to the Neeble Woobers to slow them in their tracks? And every time Asmadi release a small box game that has the cards doing pretty much everything in the game, well… my hat just keeps on coming off for them. There’s a bit more in the way of player boards and tokens in this game, but everything has its purpose and gives the game balance and flow – you don’t feel as if the game is just going to dogpile you on the basis of a bad role. The addition of the Space Base to mitigate those truly disastrous rolls is a godsend.

But.

That One Deck Galaxy rulebook! Sure, I was trying to work out how to play it straight after UKGE and I may have been a weeeee bit tired, but the way it’s laid out is… confusing? Mind-boggling? Maybe that is a bit too harsh, but… it’s tricky, let’s say that much. This is why we have See It Played and the like, and I am kinda used to Asmadi rule books making little to no sense – they’re a bit like one of my conversations… and now I realise what it’s like to be on the receiving end of them.

I am so, so sorry.

But this is a small, minor thing. One Deck Galaxy may not look as flashy as One Deck Dungeon, but it is certainly a meatier prospect with more room for variation with Homeworlds and societies and yeah, let’s throw in five Adversaries that all play differently too. I am looking forward to boldly going again and again. We could even do with another lockdown.

WE COULD NOT DO WITH ANOTHER LOCKDOWN.