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Rocket to me baby!
Rocketmen is the latest offering from Martin Wallace, famed designer of Brass Birmingham - the number one rated game. Here, your mission is to compete with others to lead the space race, sending satellites, rockets and more into orbit and even building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Out to Launch
The game consists of building your deck of cards until you have enough of the right stuff on your launch pad to attempt a mission. Then, there is a tense passage of play where you uncover Mission Success cards to see if you reach your destination or crash back to Earth! There is a push your luck element to this,where if things aren’t going well you can abort your mission early. This would mean you don’t lose all your cards off the launch pad but if you turn the final card and fail they all get discarded and you start again.
It is Rocket Science
The Mission Success cards have values from 0 (boo!) to 4 (hurrah!) and you draw a number of these dependent on your destination: 3 for Earth orbit, 4 for the Moon and 5 for Mars then move forward according to the values drawn. You need a total of 8 to get to Earth Orbit, 10 for the Moon and 13 (unlucky for some!) to reach Mars.
The total of all the values is 33 and there are 18 cards so an average draw is 1.83, let’s say just under 2. So the real scientists amongst you will have realised you are going to need some help if you don’t want to be betting against the odds for mission success.
It’s All in the Cards
Rocketmen provides said help in the form of the cards. Each Rocketeer has the same deck of 12 Mission cards to begin with from which they draw a hand of 6. These decks can be subsequently augmented by buying Asset cards from the board display or Engine cards from the array of engines. Your mission cards not only provide missions to accomplish but also help with the launch and/or monetary values to pay for card placement and buying Assets and Engines.
Firstly, you select a mission which can be launching a rocket or satellite, building a space station, base or even a space hotel. These will all score differing VPs if your mission is successful with the first success in any category getting more points, and will provide you with an Achievement Token bonus for future turns.
You pay to place this mission on your control deck. You can only have one Mission selected at any time but it may be able to go to multiple destinations and you do not have to specify which until the launch.
Once you have a Mission you can now add cards to your launch area. You will need a certain amount of Rocket Power to launch at all, from only 2 to launch a satellite into Earth orbit up to a mighty 15 for a base on Mars. This Rocket Power is gained from Engines and some of the other Mission cards. One you have successful missions under your belt you may have additional Rocket Power via Achievement Tokens.
There are also Asset cards which can help you get the vital extra spaces during the actual launch. These are paid for by the cards in your hand that have monetary values. As ever the more useful cards cost the most and will be out of reach in the early part of the game.
Finally, there are threat cards like Climate Change and Asteroid Impact. If you are feeling benevolent you can take these to clear them but they are expensive and will clutter up your deck but you do get VPs to compensate.
Over the Moon
Once you’ve assembled all your resources on the launch pad it’s time to go:– zero hour. State your chosen destination and get ready to draw Mission Success cards.
Moon Launch – we’ll get 4 cards need 10 spaces
Enough Rocket Power – Check
Assistance Assets – Check - we get 3 spaces start – 7 to go
Card 1 – a 3 - great start!
Card 2 – a 1 – not good, but wait an Asset let’s me discard and re-draw
Card 2 (reprise) – a 2 – better – just need a 2 or more now
Card 3 – a 4 – whoopee! – the Eagle has landed!
And that’s how a typical launch might go, with a nice bit of jeopardy as you ponder taking the last card or not.
The game ends when someone has reached a set VP level dependent on number of players or if you used all your 6 missions up (confusingly you get 7 Mission tokens but I guess it’s nice to have a spare). You then get an extra point, literally 1, if you were first on the Moon or Mars (maybe worth more?) and 2 VPs for each Threat you’ve cleared. There are also Personal Goals you can score. You get 2 of these at the start of the game and can score 1 at the end if you’ve met the criteria. Highest VP score wins.
Rocket man Burning out his fuse up here alone
There are a reasonable set of solo rules with a special set of seven Solitaire cards to determine the AI’s moves, but I preferred my usual Multi-player solo wher you play 2 or 3 different corporations yourself. This is a great way to try different strategies.
There are also 10 Game Variant cards that either give extra scoring opportunities at game end or in game rule changes, generally beneficial. If you wish to play with these, 2 are drawn at game start and stay in play for everyone throughout.
Mission De-Briefing
Rocketmen is a good deck-building game that encapsulates some of the excitement and drama of the space race. You’re often tempted to chance your arm with an early launch in an effort to be the first.
It took me a little while to get my head around the mechanics of the game but once I got the hang of it it was straightforward to play and teach. Turns will go around quite quickly and all the information you need is laid out in iconography on the board and listed in your “Space Aid Kit” player guides.
I would say that the requirements of the personal goals had me beaten for a long while. These are just detailed in iconography alone with no further explanation whereas two whole pages of the rules were used for clarification of some of the Asset cards which already seemed perfectly self-explanatory for me. Still I got there in the end.
It feels like there is a bias towards the first player, particularly in achieving first-to goals. You might want to adopt some sort of house rule handicap to compensate.
Notwithstanding the above Rocketmen proved an enjoyable experience and to paraphrase Sir Elton John:-
“I think it's gonna be a short, short time
Til touchdown brings me 'round again”
