Components:Really well designed components, the ship models are excellent, the card design and stock are again excellent quality. The shipboards and cardboard components are excellent quality and thought has gone on to the design aspects of the entire game so all of these fit well into the overall theme and flavour of the game.
GameplayEach player takes on the role as Captain of their own FireFly class ship, they each pick a Captain card with each one having their own abilities to assist your endeavours in the 'verse. You pick a story card which outline the goals your Captain will need to achieve to win the game and what changes (if any) are made to the initial setup rules.
You each start with some job cards which can be legal/illegal and each one tells you where you need to start the Job, any pre-requisites needed etc. It also shows you what payment will be made upon successful completion. If you complete a Job you get a Solid rep with that contact which brings additional rewards and options you can utilise as you venture through the 'verse.
There are numerous actions you can choose between each turn but can only take 2, and they have to be different. Travelling the 'verse is dangerous so when you attempt this you can either mosey along slowly or take a Full Burn but doing this means you have to draw navigation cards (Alliance or Reaver depending on the sectors you are in) some are just "Keep Flying" others require skill checks or cause events or move the Alliance Cruiser or Reaver Ships .
All in all the Atmosphere and theme of the game suits the Firefly Universe very well, though one caveat to that is the first game is hard work as the rulebook is certainly not the best. Once you get a hang of how things work the game flows quite quickly and there are plenty of hard choices to be made along the way.
This needs a huge table, the board is quite big and there are a LOT of decks of cards each needing there own discard space, each player shipboard needs space around it for drive cards, upgrades, crew, jobs and cards to show being "Solid" with contacts. You really need to find an efficient use of space to fit this on smaller tables then there is only so much you can do
The new expansions seem to be adding more cards and options which look like they will improve the gameplay somewhat as well as adding some additional player interaction options.
Conclusions:The game, whilst it does provide End Goals, via the story cards, to win the game does not actually force the players to complete those goals. This means this is an excellent story telling game where players, if they enjoying the really rich atmosphere of this game, can just keep playing for the fun and enjoyment. I have found myself getting lost in the game and having an absolute blast just flying around the 'verse.
A truly social game with great atmosphere, with the right players, that can be quite long to play initially but it really does not feel like it at the time. This is probably my game of the year and one of the best licensed games I have ever seen or played. It scales really well having played it with both 3 and 5 players, but does not really have too much impact on play time. I would think with the same group of players the time to play would drop as you can streamline you actions by thinking ahead and can overlap to a degree depending on what other actions players are taking.
Excellent game that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone to add to their collection and will only improve with more plays.
