RogerBW's Blog

I don't usually get to the Bucks Boardgame Group because I'm normally busy of a Tuesday evening, but this time the other thing fell through, and I got in an unusual game of Firefly. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

Unusual, because this was just the base game, with no expansions at all. (Not even the Artful Dodger - this was the smaller-box American version of the game.) I haven't played in this mode for years, and I was surprised by just how different it felt from recent games even though it had all the things that attracted me to the game in the first place. With one novice and one fairly new player, the scenario was First Time in the Captain's Chair.

I picked up an effective crew on Persephone (yes, I did mine for Simon and River, because with a 25-card deck why wouldn't you) while my rivals were faster to start acting. This led them into some bad situations, especially when the Alliance Operatives misbehave card came up repeatedly. (The third time it was on one of my jobs, and I had River.)

(Why yes, that is two Cry Babies on my ship. Again, not something that happens with the bigger decks.)

We all made mistakes – I had several jobs pointing in the same direction but plain forgot to start one of them – but Niška offered me a couple of high-paying three-Misbehave Crime jobs and really, how could I resist? Me and Niška, we're like that. Particularly since, with my rivals often on the other side of the map, the only crew member I had to pay was Simon (getting disgruntled because of the immorality of the jobs): the other Moral crew, River and Shepherd Book, were free, and the rest (Billy and a Scrapper Mechanic) could be single-disgruntled along with them until the next shore leave. With both of those jobs done, I had around $7,500 in the bank, and quickly got back to Ezra to win. My nearest rival had about $5,000, and the game's owner took a distant third place.

It's not the lack of options during setup that threw me; it's how safe it is to fly long distances, especially in Alliance space, compared with having the alert tokens and new nav cards from the Blue Sun and Kalidasa expansions. A long-range drive core is well worth having here, where you have a good chance of being able to get away with a 6-sector move, while in the full game you'll often have had to stop sooner.