Star Trek: Away Missions Miniatures Boardgame

Lead your landing parties to complete missions, conduct espionage, fight in glorious battle, or assimilate distinctiveness

I have a special fondness for Next Generation period Star Trek, and remember friends and I gathering around the TV every week to enjoy the first release of the early episodes; it was a bit of a social ritual for a while. This latest licenced game from GF9 uses card-driven miniatures gameplay to represent small groups of protagonists going on missions to complete objectives and sometimes clash in combat – in this case on the wrecked ships after the battle of Wolf 359.

For anyone who knows the show, this means Captain Jean-Luc Picard isn’t on your side – he’s an assimilated Borg! In the core set you get an away team led by First Officer Riker (Worf, Data, and Shelby), and 5 Borg led by Locutus of Borg (the assimilated Picard). It’s nice if you know the relevant episodes, but certainly not essential to enjoying the game.

After several games, my personal jury is still out on this one, but I’ll be filming a comprehensive review once I play a bit more, including with one of the game designers! Certainly, in my experience so far, I haven’t found the two teams working well together straight out of the box; whether they do after doing a bit of basic deck building and/or more experience remains to be seen (you do get starter decks and a generous amount of extra cards for each team). There’s also two expansion teams to be released at the same time as the core set: the Klingons and the Romulans, and that should shake things up a bit.

The style of the miniatures will inevitably polarise players, with their slightly cartoony large heads and funny proportions. Apparently this was to help with recognition during play; though since the Borg all look quite similar I’m not sure how it helps in practice (thankfully the character names are sculpted into the bases). I believe the style doesn’t gel with the rest of the visual design, which leans heavily on screen caps from the series, but some will love the slightly goofy look. As for the box design however … well I just have a bit of a thing against boxes with clear plastic windows in the lid!

However, my detailed examination of this game, and the sage of reviewing it, is all in my review. Once you’ve watched it, download my rules & reference and start planning your away missions!