Forbidden Stars Review

MB: It isn’t hard to get excited about Forbidden Stars. If you are a Warhammer 40k fan, it is the first attempt at a Dudes on a Map style board game in that setting since the disaster that was Horus Heresy. If you are a Fantasy Flight Games fan it’s something of a return to form, getting back to the kinds of designs they were doing with titles like Twilight Imperium and StarCraft. And those who shake their head at how underrated and underappreciated StarCraft was (even though it was one of the company’s most innovative designs) will be delighted to find that it works on a heavily redeveloped version of that game’s central mechanics.

CT: I really feel like this was a homecoming of sorts for that Corey Konieczka-style coffin box design that formed the blueprint for the rise of Fantasy Flight. Frankly, the StarCraft order system is one of the most innovative and creative solutions to action management in a large scale conquest game. It deserved to be in print.

MB: Agreed, and I’m actually pretty OK with it being used in a Warhammer 40k game. I am, however, glad that they’ve ditched the coffin boxes. I stopped being impressed with those like, a decade ago.

Now, let’s be clear about something up front. I like Forbidden Stars and I think it’s a lovely production with lots of great figures and some of StarCraft’s best qualities including its order system and the proto-deckbuilding are brought forward. I also really like that it is, despite appearances and a cumbersome combat system, one of the most refined designs FFG has done to date. The objective system, whereby players get to place markers indicating where other players need to be directing their forces, is genius.

CT: Yes, the objective tokens are sort of the order system of this iteration, the big “Aha” element that shifts play in a very positive direction. It’s such a subtle change and can easily be glossed over when analyzing the design. However, single-handedly this sleek win condition pushes the game from a back-and-forth land grab with massive buildup to a quick strike blitzkrieg where risky play is incentivized. In theory it sounds exceptional, in play it’s liberating.

MB: We’re definitely a long way from “take over every territory” on the map from the original versions of Risk and other Dudes on a Map style games, that’s for sure. It’s a great example of the kind of refinement sense of focus put into this game. I like that each of the objectives have a little fluff for each faction – it adds nothing to the theme of the game, which is nothing more than the usual “use resources and materiel to claim territory, but it enhances the setting.

CT: Hey now, I think you can make the argument that those little slices of narrative framing each objective do inform the theme resonating in the background of the design. When you consider the amount of military force and massive loss of life in the perspective of trying to safely bring an Imperium VIP home to Mrs. Ryan it provides for a context shift in an ugly direction. I mean those Orks just want to find some turf to get their Mad Max on, no big deal if it results in the slaughter of thousands of Eldar.

MB: Those are good points, and it does impact the context that all of this grim, endless war-waging is occurring in- and it does give you a nice little narrative tag to think about while you’re churning out Boyz. Regardless of the attention to detail, I can’t help but feel like this is a completely expected, workmanlike design despite the impetus to make a StarCraft-style game that is playable under modern expectations. It is almost totally uninspired and soulless. There isn’t anything in it that feels like a risk apart from the messy combat, which squishes dice, temporary icon tokens and cardplay into a sluggish mess that bogs the game down. I don’t feel like it adds depth, just the illusion of it.

CT: I was ultimately shocked when I first experienced the combat system, as it struck me as a more fiddly and cumbersome de-evolution of the StarCraft battle cards. It really didn’t start clicking for me until I repeatedly hit the table with the same faction, tweaking my deck and chewing on the nuances of the multi-faceted card-play. You’re given a wealth of choices and effects that rely on the player to build combos through diversification in his attacking force as well as timely upgrades to his deck.

Card based combat and dice combat are both extremely satisfying ways to resolve conflict in a war game. The combination here seems to draw the best of both worlds. You get the chaos of random rolls mitigated by a player built deck of effects and abilities. Many of the cards allow you to change dice or temporarily alter your icon pool and it adds a sense of empowerment that’s missing from many other approaches.

MB: It’s definitely true that you’ve got to sort of break in the combat, and familiarity definitely goes a long way to circumvent the “clunk”. The problem is that there are just too many things crammed into the system. You’ve got icon-based die rolls, which I generally love and would frankly be satisfied if that’s all there were to battle in this game. Then you’ve got the cards, which you put into your deck as upgrades in a kind of deckbuilding fashion. These add not only special abilities and icons to your die results, but also temporary tokens that go away at the end of the round. And the cards may have different effects based on the units in play, which promotes diversification. All of that is already a lot of system for a suite of a resolution mechanics in a larger game. But then there are also reinforcement tokens that can come into play as well as rules for routing. And this all goes on for three rounds.

It’s almost like a card battler welded into a DoaM game. Which I’m sure a lot of people will love, but I think it makes the design feel unfocused. StarCraft had about half the combat resolution and it felt like a stronger game because of that. I think the battles also make the game feel unusually long, particularly in the early sessions where you might have two players twiddling their thumbs or playing Crossy Road while two other players pour over a combat situation. That said, it works more satisfactorily in a two player setting where digging in like that doesn’t cut other players out of the action.

CT: I absolutely agree that it can feel longer than it should and the tokens do in fact feel clunky. This is overshadowed by the building momentum of the three rounds as options narrow and units are ground out. The escalation of tension and opportunity for drama far exceeds that of StarCraft’s combat system, albeit at the cost of added complexity and time. It’s also extremely satisfying to have such a small deck you’re tinkering with to reinforce the impact of your card upgrade selections. You feel like it’s your hand on the throttle as opposed to the game’s.

MB: I feel you on the momentum, but I think by the same token it seems like there are battles in this game where there’s actually a sort of micro-drama going on aside from the board play where the outcome is up-in-the-air, and there’s other fights where, if this were a video game, I’d hit the “autobattle” button.

The issue is, I think, a question of scale. You’ve got the big, DoaM game going on and then a kind of sub-game with its own trajectory, mechanics and process happening to resolve the battles. We go to a different scale there. Yes, the board parts (resources, unit selection, movement and so forth) impact every battle, but we’re still getting down to a more micro- level in a game where an entire army is represented by a plastic flag. Some games pull off this shift in scale beautifully- I’m thinking of War of the Ring in particular, which zooms in even further from the big picture campaign- but others kind of struggle with finding the focal points. I think Forbidden Stars is one that struggles, and I think it has to do with building up the StarCraft deckbuilding with dice and other tactical considerations that wind up just bogging it down.

Length is another issue with this game. I’m comfortable in a two player, 120 minute game. When we’re at four hours or more with three or four, I’m wishing that we played something like Hyperborea instead. And I keep feeling like it’s this combat that’s dragging us back to 2005 in terms of duration. There are lots of hybridized DoaM games in this class now that are two hours tops. But I’m seeing Forbidden Stars continually linger past its welcome, even with experienced players.

Is that feeling of control that you are getting at worth the dissonance and the additional length?

CT: The length of the game is the one bitter aspect that keeps me from going all in here and it’s certainly a possible issue to be aware of. The combat certainly doesn’t help, but I feel the chief culprit behind the extended playtime is the clunky scaling rules concerning objectives. The fact that adding additional players means you are required to capture more objective tokens strictly lengthens the game.

Imagine Cyclades if going from four to five players meant you all the sudden needed a third metropolis. Or if Hyperborea added another new objective with each additional player, requiring all of them to be completed before end game was triggered. It would be ludicrous if not for the clear fact that the design team was attempting to enforce widespread interaction, which it certainly does. I just hate that we have to pay dearly with time in order to gloss over ugly scaling issues.

MB: Right, and that is an issue that is often forgotten in scaling- how the tempo or arc of the game changes. I like Forbidden Stars as a two player game and I almost wonder if it was really tuned to be at its best that way because it feels right in terms of its duration and what it is giving the players back. But even with three, I start to get antsy. With four, it just feels like it’s dragging on. Yet if you were to cut back on the victory conditions, the objectives it would likely feel abbreviated.

Granted, this is the kind of game where if you know the cards really well, you know the units and so forth, then at least some of the downtime and length is shaved away. More significantly, I think as you play it more you start to see how to build more effective fighting forces and to avoid scrubby little engagements, instead focusing on the more impactful battles.

CT: I actually feel like downtime isn’t too terrible as long as the group is plotting orders relatively quickly. Actions are performed in small slices so play bounces back and forth pretty well. It’s mostly just the enormous playtime for 3-4 players makes it hard to get it out at a normal game night.

I do feel two players is probably the best number in terms of game length and keeping the pace rapid. However, I really think the StarCraft order system shines with 3 or 4 as a bit more chaos and unpredictability can gum up your plans and make for interesting collisions you don’t see otherwise. You also get more interesting tactical choices in terms of where you want to allocate defense.

MB: You know, for as much as I appreciate this game for representing something close to a modernization of the classic “FFG style”, I keep asking myself if what I want to play in this space is Forbidden Stars or something that’s more complex, multidimensional and not much longer like Runewars. And I keep asking myself too if I’d rather just trade this one in and buy StarCraft again even though it was also underplayed and routinely passed over in my collection. When all is said and done, I wish that this game gave me something back other than “kind of like StarCraft” and “hey look, Warhammer 40k” but I’m just not seeing it. My groups had a flurry of interest but it’s tapered off mainly because of the length and also because a couple of us didn’t care for the combat mechanics. I’m left with the impression that this is a good game that makes you want (or even believe) that it is something more than the sum of its parts- which is a solid but unremarkable DoaM with a great license and a couple of great ideas that goes on too long due to a cumbersome battle resolution subsystem.

CT: I think being “kind of like StarCraft” will be good enough for most people. I feel it’s a definite improvement in many areas and provides for a MUCH smoother learning curve. New players sit down for a game of StarCraft and their eyelids stretch over the top of their head as all the options and units overwhelm.

It does seem somewhat dragged down by some of the old world crust of its predecessors and isn’t taking as bold of a step as a game like Blood Rage. I can forgive that lack of invention due to a solid experience with an exceptional core system. Forbidden Stars may sit on my shelf and collect some dust, but when it gets pulled out once every several months it will knock the wind out of me and remind me why I love these large scale bombastic designs.