In Galaxy Trucker, you’ll be doing two things–building your ships, and sending them into space to watch their intergalactic journey play out. This is quite literally divided into two different phases: the building phase, and the flight phase. In the building phase, you will, well, build your ships, and in the flight phase, these ships are sent out, and cards are drawn that will determine their fate. These cards contain different events that your ships must be prepared for–poorly built ships will fall apart when exposed to asteroids, while poorly armed ships could get raided or blasted apart by space pirates. Ships have to have room for goods to be sold at the end of the round, but also must accommodate a sufficient crew. But wait, you’ll also need shields if you want to play it safe, and batteries to power those shields! Your ship may either return flawlessly, or return home in a wreck. Depending on how the flight went, each player will receive a certain amount of “galactic credits” (AKA money, AKA points), and then this process will repeat itself twice more. The game spans a total of three rounds, and whoever has the most money at the end of the game wins.

The Building Phase – Simultaneous Gameplay

The building phase is, without a doubt, what gives Galaxy Trucker its own unique identity. The goal of the game is to build the best ship possible, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. First off, all the tiles you can draw are face-down, so you can’t just find the best parts from the get-go. Second, all players build their ships simultaneously, which means that everyone is pulling from the same pile. Third and finally, the building phase is timed, so you’ll be in a frantic rush more often than not.

The timing aspect is the most important thing to focus on here. Players don’t have all day to build their ships–what would be the fun in that? Instead, players have to build according to the beat of an included hourglass timer. It’s not as simple as it sounds, though; the timer goes through multiple stops until the time ends, and it’s up to the players themselves to advance the time. For example, the timer begins on the “1” space on the first round. After running out, players can continue to build indefinitely, until someone decides to flip it over again and move it to the next spot, which in this case would be the “start” spot. Once the timer runs out on the “start” spot, ALL players must stop building. It’s also worth noting that, while any player can advance the timer on the “1, 2, 3” spaces, you can only advance the timer to the final spot if you’ve already completed your ship. This means that each build phase is a wild race to finish first, and the onus is on each player to put on the pressure for their opponents.

As far as the actual building goes, there are a few stipulations. Each piece has certain connectors on it that must match with their connecting tiles. You must attach pieces to currently existing parts on your board, and you can’t make any changes once you’ve placed. Also, while you’re drawing from a big central pile, you can choose to not play the tile you draw, in which case you put it back into the pile face-up. This means that, as the round goes on, more and more juicy tiles reveal themselves.

Once every player has finished building (or when the time runs out), the building phase ends and it’s time to move on to where this all matters: the flight phase.

The Right Parts for the Job

Building your ship right is incredibly important, because it determines how your ship will fare against certain events later on. In the next phase, the Flight Phase, you’ll be drawing cards that contain certain events and ordeals that your ship must pass through. Equipping your ship with the necessary parts is instrumental to your success in Galaxy Trucker. In the flight phase (which we’ll get to in just a moment), cards will be drawn that determine what kinds of events happen to our interstellar truckers. These cards react differently to different parts on your ship, and some of the relationships can be described as follows:

Cabins can hold crew members, which can raid Abandoned Stations or take off on Abandoned Ships. The former typically gives you goods, while the latter gives you money (the idea being that your crew members pay you to take off with the abandoned ship you find floating around in space). Furthermore, you have to have crew members to finish the flight, so you generally want to have as many of these as you can.

Storage Containers hold goods, which can be sold at the end of the run for cold, sweet cash. You can run into Planets, which allow you to land and stock up on goods, or you might find them on Abandoned Stations or as loot from defeating Enemies. You can only carry as many goods as you have room for, so you generally want to have as many of these as you can.

Cannons generate firepower for your ship, and are useful for blasting away Meteors (which appear on the Meteoric Swarm cards) and Enemies. If you can’t blast away a meteor, it will destroy whatever ship component it hits, while enemies (smugglers, space pirates, etc) might rob you of goods or crew if you can’t surpass their firepower. On the plus side, you gain some goodies whenever you can beat enemies, so, all in all, you’ll generally want to have as many of these as you can.

Engines are, well, engines. The more of these you’ve got, the faster you can travel. This is useful for Open Space cards, which allow each player to move forward on the racetrack as many spaces as their engine count allows. This means that you can boost ahead and take the coveted “leader” position if you’re able to oust your opponents on engine count. It’s good to be first, so you’ll generally want to have as many of these as you can. See a pattern here?

The parts mentioned above give your ship its functionality, but there are also a few tiles that can enhance your ship’s performance in certain areas.

Shields can protect you from laser blasts or small meteors, and one shield will protect two sides of your ship. So, unlike all of the other aforementioned parts, you only need two shields to fully protect your ship. What a nice surprise.

Batteries power said shields–every time you want to activate one to protect your ship, it costs exactly one battery. Batteries also power double cannon and double engine tiles, which deliver double the payload of their normal counterparts, but again, at the cost of one battery. You only need as many batteries as can supply your parts; too many is a waste of space, and having too few can spell doom for you later on.

Alien life support pods can be built next to cabins, and allow you to place one alien, pink or brown in color (according to its respective pod) in the cabin instead of crew members. A pink alien adds +2 to your cannon count, while a brown one adds +2 to your engine count. Useful for saving cannon/engine space, but having too many aliens also reduces the amount of crew members you’re capable of having.

Oh, and did I mention Combat Zones? These lovely little cards punish players who didn’t build their ship up to par; you’ll lose ship components, crew, and other valuable things if you have the least amount of engines, crew members, or cannons. Youch!

The Flight Phase

So, your ships are all ready to go. It’s time to start the flight phase! While most of the actual gameplay occurs during the building phase, this is where you get to see the fruits of your labors. The ships all get placed on a “racetrack” on the central board, in order of completion time in the building phase (if time runs out while building, it’s a free-for-all where players grab the 2nd/3rd/4th place tokens), the fastest-built ship being in first place. The player in first is the “leader,” and they’re the ones that will be drawing cards out of the ominous “Adventure deck.”

The flight phase in of itself is very simple–the leader draws cards from the adventure deck, and the effects of these cards are resolved, one by one, until all cards run out. What’s not as simple is what’s on the cards; there are eight different types of adventure cards, and each one has its own unique resolution. The effects of the adventure cards are conditional upon how you built your ship, so every player will react differently to the cards. This is where Galaxy Trucker’s strategic value lies. You’ll have to prep your ship to deal with a variety of circumstances, but there’s only so much room on your ship to do it. Every building part gives you something that will help you out, so you’ve gotta make the tough choices as to what you’ll find room for and what you’ll leave behind.

The other tricky part is that the adventure deck highly favors the leader. There are several cards that pass through the leader first, and if they’re not resolved by him/her, they pass on to the next player down the line. Leaders get first dibs on Abandoned Ships/Stations/Planets, which are often stacked with money and goods, but they’re also attacked first by enemies. This, however, isn’t even a bad thing if you’re equipped enough to overpower them; if you defeat any given enemy, you’ll gain precious goods. This naturally means that, once again, the players behind you get nothing. As if that wasn’t enough, there are bonus points at the end for whichever rank you finished in. Don’t be worried though–leaders don’t get to sit in front the whole time. Every time they cash out on some sweet card, they’ll move back a space or two or three on the racetrack, potentially allowing other players to jump ahead. Leaders can also change from the Open Space cards, which allow all ships to move forward according to their engine count.

Once your journey has finally ended (as in, once all the cards have been drawn and resolved), points are calculated for that round. You’ll get bonus points for whatever rank you finished in the race, as well as all the cash from the goods you brought home. The “sturdiest” ship (the ship with the least amount of exposed connectors) also gets some bonus points, and then everybody has to pay up for any goods they may have lost on the journey.

Once this is all said and done, you rinse and repeat; the process will continue twice more, only with each round, your ships will get bigger, and so will the adventure deck. The third round sports massive ships and terrifying events, giving the game a nice little sense of progression. Once all three rounds have ended, you count up everyone’s money, and whoever earned the most wins the game!