Review of Starcraft Brood War by Fantasy Flight Games
Overall Score
Brood War is the first Expansion to Fantasy Flight's Starcraft the Board Game. Not only does this expansion add content from the computer expansion of the same name, but it also drastically changes tactics. Both attackers and defenders receive several new options in combat. While this expansion is expensive, it definitely improves game play and makes combat much more dynamic.
Loads of New Stuff
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Lets take a look at what make this expansion so expensive by examining the contents of the box. Brood War contains about 100 “new” cards, 48 new figures, six new planets, six new faction cards and several sheets of other tokens. I say new in quotes because about 40 of the cards actually replace cards from the base game. These changes are to accommodate new units or altered stats of the old units. Quality of Brood War components are on par with the pieces found in the base game. With a retail price of $60, the value of this expansion simply cannot match the value of the original core game. Integrating the two sets together is also quite annoying. Fishing out all the old tokens and cards took me around an hour to complete. Don't expect to be going back and forth between the core game and the expansion on a regular basis.
On plus side, just about everything that is in this expansion improves upon the original game. The new planets have regions which can only have air or ground units occupying them. Dealing with these spaces will force players to change their tactics if they want to shoot for a standard victory. However, Where are the planets we know from the game? Auir is still absent as are other planets like Braxis.
Leadership cards are a new addition which can cause the game to change at key moments. Starcraft the Board game is broken down into three stages. At the beginning of each stage, every player will play a leadership card. These cards perform a wide range actions from determining starting units, to recruiting heroes, and dealing devastating blows to enemy forces. If these cards negatively impact the game in any way, it's that special victory conditions can no longer be removed and they help reinforce SCBG's play style of denying the enemy victory instead of working towards your own win.
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Most of the new units and technology cards will see action. Lurkers and Dark Templars bring some heavy hitting firepower to the Zerg and Protoss forces. The skies are now ruled by the Terran Valkryies and Zerg Devourers. Corsairs give the Protoss more flexibility in attacking the Dark Archon bring some interesting abilities to the table. Unforunately, the Medic will see little play since infantry only find themselves on the front line early in the game. Don't expect to see the Infested Terran on the field since it is kind of worthless and its flying cousin, the scourge, has been nerfed to the point of uselessness. Each faction also gets one or two heroes. Heroes are named characters from the computer game which function as normal units expect they all have one or more advantages over common units of the same type.
I absolutely love all the new modules, order types, and abilities. Defenders have been give boost with the defensive module which allows them to swap units around in a battle. The new Defend Order can give defenders a little extra strength to survive a battle. Of course, Players who prefer a defensive strategy have had their world turned upside down thanks to the new aggressive module and collateral damage ability. Long story short, bases are no longer invulnerable. So the players who counted on using their base as nearly impenetrable road block will be furious with the new changes. Probably the module with the most universal appeal is the assist module since it make assist units, like the queen, dark archon, and science vessel practical to use.
The back of the Brood War rule book also contains some scenarios which are based on missions from the computer game. To be honest, I didn't find them to be very appealing. The scenarios feature several interesting mechanics, but for the most part they are standard games with predefined setups and different victory conditions. Since each of the four scenarios required a different amount of players, don't expect to play them out in any sort of campaign fashion.
To finish this review up, Starcraft Brood War only makes SCBG a better experience. This game was an aggressive playing game before and now it is even more focused on aggression. If you want a game which is all about hiding the corner and trying not to fight, then don't play a game of galactic conquest.
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The Tabletop Battlefield Review of Starcraft Brood War
