Components:

4.5 of 5 UPDATE (5 of 5) All game components are well made besides one exception. The ship's, nodes and weapon/shield markers are a good quality plastic resin with no noticeable imperfections. The cardboard cutout parts and system discs are well designed and cut with the exception on a few warp tokens. For whatever reason, some of the warp tokens labels are lifting up (it was not done in the removal process). All cards are printed neatly and are well designed. Ordering on the day of release (October 30th, 2016) the Promo Exploration cards were included!!! The rulebook is a good size and organized well.



UPDATE: I emailed customerservice@battlefront.co.nz about damaged tokens with Pics, they sent me replacement warp tokens. A+++ Support.



Gameplay / Mechanics / Balance:

5 of 5. Each race (faction) has a completely different set of advantages and one disadvantage. Each race also has a set of advanced technologies they can research, which further grant advantages and some even are a great counteroffensive (like rendering Romulan Cloaks ineffective). You would think some might have too great of an advantage, but if that's the case you may just need to put your advantages to better use. All in all the game is well balanced and offers a lot of replayability due to a massive number of Exploration and Advancement cards.



Personal Experience:

5 of 5. If all players know the rules somewhat well (what each turn consisted of) a game can be as quick as 2.5 hours or as long as 4+. Our first game was 4 hours (not including setup and pickup time) and that's with us checking the rulebook every round or so to make sure we're doing it right and we ate a pizza. This game is fun, some people complain about downtime, but I think it's important to watch what the others do as it can affect your following actions. Like you might want to explore, but you really should build up defenses (we all lost our home worlds to each other). I highly recommend this game if you like strategic board games.