All The Stars Above Our Heads: SHACKLETON BASE review

Space Exploration has always fascinated me. I grew up in the heyday of the Space Shuttle years, when American youth turned to a burgeoning space program to restore faith in our ability to accomplish great things. But it wasn’t just the adventure of exploring space, or even the idea of potentially discovering alien life. Something else drew me to the night sky. 

For me, it was a simple thought. What can humans accomplish if they work together? As a species, we have been relentlessly moving toward the cosmos. I could imagine our earliest human relatives, looking up at night time around a campfire. Did they ever share the same dreams as us? Did they imagine in their wildest dreams that their descendants would eventually fly toward the heavens? 

Any visit to the United States Space Center in Huntsville shows that developing a space taxi, setting up bases on other moons and planets, and taking tourists throughout the solar system is not easy, no matter what Walt Disney pitched to us in Tomorrowland. Space exploration and development takes tons of people working their tails off individually and in groups to pull something like that off. It’s amazing to me that even some little part of it has already happened. 

And that’s the promise and the premise of Shackleton Base. No wonder I enjoyed this game so much. 

Shackleton Base: A Journey To The Moon has hit me sideways like a comet slamming into a planet. I played it once at Southern Board Game fest with Rob from the Board Boys, and while I cannot say I understand every part of the machine, that first play intrigued me enough to hunt down my own copy. (Shout out to Doug and Logan). That was two weeks ago. 

And in those two weeks, I’ve played it five more times. I interacted with every single one of the corporations that come standard in the box. And I’m still thirsty for more plays. 

But what is the game about? Shackleton Base is the latest medium+ weight euro from Nestore Magoneand Fabio Lopiano and published by Sorry We Are French (although we hear that Pandasaurus Gameswill soon be publishing it in the States). 

Full disclosure time. I had some trepidation diving into Shackleton Base for one reason. I really did not enjoy Autobahn, Mangone and Lopiano’s earlier collaboration. Frankly, I found it clunky disjointed from start to finish, and never went back to it. 

But Shackleton Base, notwithstanding a couple of picayune comments, feels nothing like Autobahn. It’s as smooth and joyful as a summer drive to the NASA Space Center near Orlando when you are an eight year old space nerd riding with your space-obsessed father to see the rockets. (A boy never forgets.) 

At its heart, Shackleton Base is a worker placement game, with three different types of astronaut meeples. (Astromeeples? Nah.) Over the course of three rounds, with six actions in each round, players will build bases in the Shackleton crater on the moon, upgrade their player boards, and interact with three corporation boards.

There are seven different corporation boards, so players will likely see a unique combination each game. 

This is not your maw-maw’s worker placement game, though. Any good worker placement game has tension and competition, and Shackleton Base has that in abundance. First, players will compete hard for the three main actions on the Command board — building, buying cards, and corporation interaction. The longer you wait to grab a spot, the more expensive it becomes. 

Next, they will compete for the spots in getting resources and corporation tokens and money on the moon itself. Again, the best spots will have juicy returns, but if you wait too long, that juicy spot might become prohibitively expensive. And players can intentionally add bases or seal off spots to increase other player’s costs or affect their ability to score points. Yes, Shackleton Base delivers passive aggressive interaction to the max. 

It’s a tricky little bugger, too, because Shackleton Base demands that players squeeze the juice out of every space rock they find. This game is loaded with combos, and if players play the right astronaut on the right action, they will not only get an adrenaline boost — who wouldn’t when you deliver these gorgeous screen painted meeples to the board — players will not only get their regular turn action, but also access to a powerful bonus action at the end of the turn. 

But the game is more than just taking powerful command actions. Players must successfully manipulate the moon base board to their benefit. Players that need resources (to buy stuff with the corporations or build bases on the moon) can grab them from the moon. Players that are low on space cash (useful to buy cards that give special powers and bonus actions and resources and tons of points) will find moolah there, too. There is even a spot that does a little of everything, and players should do all of these things.

Puzzling out where to place your astronauts is so satisfying, because getting the right type of meeple onto your board can score big points or create an engine that can help in the third round. 

As you can see, Shackleton Base shows off multiple layers of interlocking pieces that might look like a smooth, seamless rocket panel at first, until enough turns elapse. That’s when the bubble-wrap starts poppin’. The more I play, the more I enjoy watching players place an astronaut to take an action that gets them a card that gives a free action that interacts with a robot that gets them even more stuff. It certainly feels good pulling those combos off, but it’s also fun watching other people do it, too. 

Just writing all this down convinces me why I like Shackleton Base so much: 

• cool space theme
• engine buildin’, bubble-wrap poppin’ goodness
• multiple ways to score points
• replayability
• competing with yourself each game to get more efficient
• exploring the new corporations and how they affect game play
• reading internet bulletin boards for rumors about new corporations

(That last one does not come in the game box but is highly recommended.)

But maybe the best thing about Shackleton Base is that these intricate concentric circles of actions and resources and bumpity bumps do not come with the cost of opaqueness. In other words, this isn’t a Lacerta game, and never feels like it. 

Instead, it feels so much like the best of the Italian design school, recalling the deep beauty of games like Lorenzo il Magnifico and Ragusa where players are encouraged but not chastised to think a couple of turns ahead, and are handsomely rewarded for finding ever efficient ways to score points. 

I am kind of stalling here. Up until now, I’ve had SETI as my strategy game of the year, but I am definitely wavering. I think I know what is troubling me, though. 

I think the difference to me between the two game experiences, besides ye olde recency bias, is how the variable set ups in each game are presented. I remember the first time we played SETI, at how exciting it was to reveal the aliens and spend the last third of the game interacting with them. That’s such a cool cinematic moment. 

But, now, after seeing how Mangone & Lopiano utilized the exact same mechanic, namely separate boards with which players must interact, I like their way much better. We know right at the start of the game what three corporations are available, and during the first round, we can kind of kick the skids a bit, before hitting go on the launch sequence. Less dramatic? Of course. But more strategic and more fun. 

In fact, it’s the promise of the corporations in each game that makes me want to dive back in immediately after playing. How would the Evergreen Farms module interact with Artemis Tours or To Mars? Would it be risky to completely ignore Star Watch’s impending doom and let other players bear the load (and get the rewards) while I max out my efforts on the other two corporations? Knowing that we can contribute to our game experience in the very first decision of the game — which corporations to include — seems so apropos to our experience in space exploration. 

Admittedly, Shackleton Base is not going to be for everyone. It’s a pretty chunky medium-heavy weight game. The weight derives not from the rules overhead — because all of the actions are relatively simple and straightforward — but more from the strategic decisions that are required to win. Some people are going to want something much more accessible and streamlined. 

And I do have to warn you that some of the rules slip dangerously close to Autobahn’s too fiddly territory. For instance, the same symbol for adding tokens to the board is the one for getting corporate resources. It’s really confusing to most players. And remembering when to move the energy up and down is about as fiddly a mechanic as I’ve ever seen. But once you get the hang of these little rules, it’s second nature. 

But if you are a fan of the Italian design school, then it’s likely that you have already played Shackleton Base or it is on your to-do list. It’s gotten a lot of buzz recently, and I think the hype is justified. It’s a tremendous experience, and carries the banner of the Italian design ethos very well. 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler. 
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo