If you remember, way back in September of 2020, we did an interview with Deon Carrico. He’s the Product Manager at IDW Games, and we were asking him questions about Galaxy Hunters while the Kickstarter Campaign was active. Well, the Kickstarter campaign came and went, and the game has been delivered. I’ve had a chance to play it a few times, and I’m ready to give you my thoughts.
Galaxy Hunters
Publisher: IDW Games
Designer: Daniel Alves
Mechanics
I want to try something different this time and focus on the various gameplay mechanics at work in Galaxy Hunters, then discuss how they tie in to the theme.
First, we have the up-front selling point of the game: modular pilot and mech player boards. These are awesome. After a few plays you definitely start to have an idea of which pilot abilities are better than others. Once you have those, and the board is set up, you can begin the game.
There are 3 major mechanics at work in this game.
First is Worker Placement. This is the main action of your turn. You’ll place one of your ships or your mech on a planet, or place one of your ships on a special area located on your pilot/mech player board. The number of docking areas for each planet are based on player counts. Because of this, the game feels much more competitive at 2 players.
The next mechanic utilized is Tableau Building. As you purchase weapons for your mech and upgrades for your pilot, you’ll place the new tiles around your pilot/mech player board. These can be anything from additional resources, to whole new abilities, to unlocking an extra ship to deploy during the ‘worker placement’ phase.
The final mechanic at work here is some subtle Engine Building. This is an aspect of the game that surprised me a bit. This upgrade lets me trade 1 of this resource for 2 of this other resource. Then I have this other item I acquired that lets me turn that resource in to money. Many of the abilities can work well together. In my first game we started to discover these organically, and it was very exciting.
And really, that’s it. There’s some resource management and minor set collection, but the sets you are trying to get change based on what missions you currently have. All of these things are just various means to get VP
Theme
Now, how do all of these different gameplay mechanics tie in to controlling a giant mech, battling alien kaiju? That depends on what you’re looking for.
Galaxy Hunters is not combat based. Yes, you destroy mutants. But the core of the game is optimizing your mech, especially building that tableau. So that when you do go to fight the mutants, you do it as efficiently as possible. When playing the game with some younger players, they were disappointed to realize they had no means of attacking mutants on their first turn.
You will likely get the most enjoyment playing Galaxy Hunters if you go in looking to build the best mech possible, while searching for those engine building combos. When you begin by looking how different resources can interact, you will have a much greater understanding of how each one might be valued differently which will ultimately help you optimize your mech better.
By the end of the game, players are racing around, defeating mutants to complete specific missions. That part was a lot of fun. You can almost imagine news coming out of a mutant attacking a planet, and players competing to be the first to defeat it only because of the type of DNA that can be harvested. Saving lives on the planets is not represented in the game. The only thing that matters is currency and resources. This really drives home the feel of the players being ruthless mercenaries, only out for treasure and fame. If I don’t need that DNA type, then maybe defeating that monster went down on my priority list.
New Ways To Hunt Expansion
Is the expansion worth getting? Yes. There is a new pilot and new mech in this expansion. While this mech, Iron Smoker, is one of my favorite designs in the whole game, that has very little to do with why I would recommend this expansion.
In the base game, your damage is equal to the attack value of your weapon (plus any modifiers). You cannot enter combat against a mutant with higher defense than you have attack. There is no real danger to combat, because you cannot enter combat that you cannot win. New Ways To Hunt introduces combat dice, which bring along a few extra mechanisms of their own.
First, the 6-sided combat dice have single damage faces (3), miss faces (2), and a double damage face (1). You will roll 1 combat die for each point of attack. The double damage face grants you a critical hit, allowing you to roll additional dice to your attack. If you roll a ‘miss’, it isn’t the end of the world. When using this expansion, each player has their own miss reward system. This is a reward system for winning a combat, despite rolling a miss. You place the miss die in the center of the wheel, and once combat is complete, you can obtain any of the rewards in that wheel.
With these combat dice, we also see the addition of Batteries. A Battery cube can be paid to reroll any/all of your dice in combat. This also allows you to enter combat against enemies that you might not have enough attack power to defeat, in hopes you can roll the critical double damage face, and gain additional dice to your attack. And if you have enough batteries, you can keep rerolling those misses. The player board for utilizing combat dice and batteries locks right on to your mech. It even comes with some additional armor spots, anticipating you’ll be taking more risks against mutants.
The combat in Galaxy Hunters needed an upgrade, and New Ways To Hunt is exactly that. I cannot imagine playing this game without the features in that expansion. Add in the fact that this expansion comes with everything to add a 5th player, and it’s a must own.
Final Thoughts
Galaxy Hunters is a great game. Honestly, I know it’s only April, but it’s leading the pack for my favorite game of 2021. The New Ways To Hunt expansion is must own, and really adds to the replayability, adding some randomness of dice in to the mix.
However, no game is perfect. There are two things I wish could be added to the game. First, I’d like an alternate game board. Give me a different layout of planets with different rewards for visiting them. Secondly, just about every new player who sits down to play the game asks, “How do I fight another player’s mech?” You can’t. There’s no PvP combat. I think that needs changed. Maybe if there was a different game board with a new set of planets, let’s see a planet that’s just a player combat arena. Like a sci fi Roman Coliseum. I’d really like to see something like this. Heck, I’d really like to make something like this for the game.
As a fan of giant robots and kaiju, I was excited for this game. It has delivered just what it promised. It uses a fun and lighter theme but applies some deeper gameplay interactions than you might not casually expect. In a world where giant robots are becoming more mainstream, and kaiju battles are all over pop culture, Galaxy Hunters explores these familiar concepts in exciting ways. Galaxy Hunters from IDW Games and the expansion, New Ways To Hunt, are available to purchase now.
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