Can you Survive Space Attacks!!!

Survive is an oldie but goodie. Survive was once a game about surviving on Atlantis as it sunk.  Having to face down sharks, whales and even a big ol Kraken…Now, I’m not sure about you, but I would much rather be on a space station facing down Alien monsters!!! Muahhaha. Now, I have zero experience on Atlantis, but I got this space station stuff down.  It is a major BLAST.  Apparently there are very few differences from the first other than the skin of the game. ( Which is brilliant because…come on, who doesn’t like SPACE???!! )

So, in Survive you have a small adorable group of mini astromeeples battling to be the first and largest group off the station and into the…I dunno…astro heaven thing of safety!  Ok, I may not know what it is but I do know that you want as many of your astromeeples in as many different portals as you can get. YOU CAN DO IT!!! Now you can play 2-4 people and if you buy the awesome mini-expansion even up to 6 people at a time.  The game play only takes about 45 minutes.  Of course the more people, the longer it takes.  ( Even longer if you have that one friend who loves to contemplate the next move…for that friend I recommend killing all his astromeeples.  The game goes very quick once that happens.  Muahhahaha)

Let’s take a closer look at this bad boy. 

The box comes with…SPACE.

 The board has two sides.  The main side is the base game; you will recognize it by the large space station size outline in the middle of the board.

Now, the opposite side is for CHALLENGES!!! I have not gone so far as to play those, but when I do, I shall write another review…I imagine it will be titled Survive Challenges!
This board doesn’t have that large space station outline…Easy Peasy.

Now, you can see on the board that there is a little chart on the sides…let’s get even closer and look at that.

This is a handy dandy little villain cheat sheet.  The left side shows the creature, Queen, Warrior, or Spawn.  Next, it shows how many spaces they can move( if they get to. )  Finally we get what they can nommm on.  Queens can nom on ships and astromeeples.  Warriors only on the ships ( indigestion issues with meeples. )  Finally, the spawn…which can only eat astromeeples free floating in space.  Each player will get a chance to move these mighty villains during their turn.  Which ever one will you choose?  It’s okay, the game actually takes that little bit of worry out of the way and you just have to roll a die and then move one of those selected villain types.  Ta Da done.

AstroMEEEPLES.  The absolute best adorable part about the game.

The base game as I mentioned in above ramble only comes with 4 meeple colors.  Once you get the mini expansion you will get 2 more meeple colors.  Today I happen to be playing with the white from that expansion. ( I just thought they looked pretty together. Yes, it was a slight moment of girly weakness…don’t judge me. )

Now in most games I would recommend just counting them as a solo point…but…if you wanna be all hard core you can actually use the numbers on the bottom of the individuals and try to get the most points at the end.  Hard core players will memorize every single astromeeple’s position and value.  That sounds like waaaay too much work for me.  More fun to just save the most and see what happens!

Last but furthest from least are the station tiles.

We have multiple levels of thickness of tiles with four different colors on the bottom as shown here.  We’ll talk about the colors first.

• Blue take effect after you have rolled the monster die.  They usually are monster converters ( you don’t have a queen, you really have a spawn and a warrior. )
• Green instantly take affect.  They can be a warrior or a spawn which immediately show up in that spot ( sometimes eating an astromeeple. Nooooooooo but oh yes, it’s true it happens. )
• Red are used during your movement.  In this example we are taking a free action to shoot a monster from any turret on the board.
• Yellow…yellow are the best; they are counters. They deny your opponents from using the villains to attack your guys…and even taking control of the monster and using it for yourself!  Take that!!!!

Here is the actual guide showing you what each can do.

Now lets talk about size…hehe…

Each player will have to remove a tile during their turn.  You are going to remove one smallest thickness tile that touches open space from the station first, moving up until you are at the thickest.  Beware, the thickest tiles are the most deadly.  They hide black holes and one mean old explosion on their underbellies.  It is the end…no more…nada.  Once it has been revealed, it is over.

Okay, we have taken a gander at what is in the box, let’s discuss how to go about playing and setting up this game.

For setup it’s really rather easy…you first set up the board

You are going to have to mix up the tile pieces and find your way to randomize the draw.  So far I really haven’t found a great way to do this.  Once randomized you are going to color in the lines of the station.  I personally like to outline the station then fill in, but I’m sure you will find your own method. ( Please fill free to comment with a great alternative method ) 

Once the board is set you are going to add the queens and the canons ( aka turrets…but come on, they look like canons. )  The queens are going to go in all of the places where there is a queen outline and the canons are going to go on the four largest tiles.

Every player gets a color of Astromeeples and two space ships to dock.

Now to start you are going to take turns placing the Astromeeples.  Once all meeples are placed take your turns placing the ships.

Now once this is all done you are going to have four different phases to your turn.

• Placement…If you have a captured monster you can place them on any open space space.  Now you can place all, one, or none if you wish.

How do you capture a monster?  You can capture a monster either by shooting it with the turret or using the fighter ship. 

• Movement…you have 3 actions…be it moving players on the space station, hopping into a ship, or taking a shot with a cannon.  Now if you have an astromeeple floating in space they can only make one move each turn.  If they are on the station or in a ship then you can use all three moves if you wish.  It also takes one action to hop out of the ship and into the astro heaven thing of safety.  Empty ships any player can move and control during this phase as well.  If you have a red tile this is when you would play it.
• Remove…or as we call it Explosion!  You are going to set a charge in one of the station tiles, hopefully it has an opposing astromeeple on it and they will fall into the vast oblivion of space.  Once you have chosen your targeted space, flip the tile…keeping it hidden from the other players.  If it’s a green, you have to follow the action immediately.  The rest you can keep and play at the designated time.
• Monster Bash…this is your time to be villainous.  Roll your dice and then move a monster of the designated dice roll type.  If you have a blue tile you wish to use, you would use it after this dice roll.

That’s it!  That’s how simple but strategic the game is.  Simple moves, high strategy.

Tip: Use the monsters…Eat everyone.  Get in other people’s boats!  They aren’t likely to destroy their own boats, right?  Right.

Well now that it’s all set up, let’s play a game. 

We are playing as is since it’s already set up.  We have Mark Watney as blue, Howard Wolowitz as white and Buzz Lightyear is yellow.

So, Mark is first to move.  He moves two of his Astromeeples into the nearest ship, then the third action: he moves a solo meeple into another ship. Now, he has to choose a tile to esssplooode! Uh oh he found an Evil spawn lurking under that nasty tile.  Immediately place a spawn in the designated spot.  Let’s roll! Warrior!  Dang, there are no warriors in play. Mark can’t do anything… Next

Howard, Go!

Howard moves three different astromeeples into spaceships. Let’s destroy a tile. Oooh look he flipped a Fightership! Sadly, instead of hurting Buzz he gave him flight. Dang! Roll Time!! Look we moved that adorable queen closer to Mark’s spaceship!

Buzz!!!! Buzz chooses to move his fighter and captures the spawn, and then hops into two different spaceships!  Distraction Time!!!  Ooh look it’s a Spaceship…

Let’s play monster!

 

 

Look Buzz can move the non-existent warrior!

 

 

Rounds Continue….

Monsters move… and eat people…

Station blows up…

Let’s see who won.

If we are just going to go by the suggestion earlier, each meeple 1 point then this is the score

• Howard… 10
• Mark… 9
• Buzz… 10

Now if we want to go by the harder rules

• Howard… 21
• Mark… 17
• Buzz… 22

Buzz wins!!!!

 

 

Time to put Survive away until another day, hope you enjoyed the post!

Thank you all for reading and as always, suggestions and comments are always welcome.

Have a game you want me to show? Let me know.

-WarBird signing off.