Chris bought this Firefly the Board Game at London Film and Comic Con last year, along with a few expansions for it. While I wasn’t with him at the time, I believe he got “quite a bargain” and paid a lot less than it usually sells for in the UK – since its a US import. For those of you who don’t know, Firefly is a TV series that was far too short lived and has now become part of cult tv. The show features a spaceship called Serenity, of Firefly class (its model basically). It’s crew is a band of misfits, brought together through various stories. If you haven’t seen it, then you definitely should. There is literally only one season of it but its great and really worth a watch – if nothing more than for the fact Nathan Fillion is in it (and he gets naked at one point!). It’s also by Joss Whedon – master of all things geek.
Anyway, back to the game! The really great thing about this board game is that you can play it alone. Don’t ask me how as I haven’t done so – but it was one of the biggest selling points for Chris. He has played it by himself and I believe he found it enjoyable. He has also played it once with myself, Jon and my brother, once just him and Megan, then also with myself, Nat and Jon.
While at first the game seems a little complicated, it isn’t really. You pick a ship and a captain, then add money, fuel and parts to your hand. You gain jobs from various people around the ‘Verse and depending on which “goal” you’re playing, have various tasks to complete in order to win. There are shops to buy more fuel and parts, along with crew, guns, transport etc. There are ways to be both moral and immortal – there are ways to be both legal and illegal. Its a lot of fun, with multiple ways to play and tactics to use, in order to make sure its never the same game twice.
I have to admit that I always want to be Serenity and I always want to be Mal. Luckily both times we’ve played, no one has cared that I wanted those specifically. Luckily you don’t actually need a knowledge of Firefly in order to play either – which was good as Nat has never seen it. You do need quite a lot of space to play, but mostly that’s not a problem as we do have a large dinning table. One thing I have found though, is that games seem to take a lot longer than the estimated time on the goal cards – this last game should have been 2 hours but it was over 4 by the time we were packing away. There are a lot of great elements to this game – its competitive but not too much so, its skill based but you also don’t need to be a genius. I have to say that if Chris was to get this board game out every time we had friends round I wouldn’t worry at all. I genuinely enjoy playing it a lot – at least until it gets around to midnight and the tiredness is fighting in. That said, we have a lot of great board games and I’d really like to get a few more out – so stay tuned and I might well be sharing them with you next!
