Gunship: First Strike AAR

First up for games this year is Gunship: First Strike by Escape Pod Games. Apparently this game was funded through kickstarter and was widely successful in its campaign. Unfortunately the producer had to focus on his business and the game slipped into possibly becoming unsupported. It seems that 2016 will see a renewal of the game by the producer with many exciting new things to come.

I managed to pick up the base game, Gunship: First Strike, as well as its expansion Afterburners and several additional components when they went on sale. Let me start off by saying the art work is awesome and makes me feel like I am living out the action of The Last Starfighter! I cracked out the base game during the new weekly game night and we dove in feet first with a four player game which turned out to be simply awesome!

Each player is in charge of a gunship, hence the name of the game, which they can customize using a number of cards the represent different weapons. There are blasters, ion cannons and bombs which are used to attack the enemy carrier. The main goal is to destroy the enemy carrier which can happen from the carriers shooting each other as well as your gunship making attack runs with torpedoes and bombs. To add to the chaos, you have a wing of fighters that can attack other fights and harass your opponent’s gunship.

Though there is free-for-all, which requires each person to also have a carrier board, we went for a 2 vs. 2 as it was our first time playing. I have to say that this game is wonderfully balanced and you really can’t be sure who is going to win until the end of the game. Side 1, which consisted of my sibling and me, faced off against side two, my other sibling and sister-in-law. Side 1 started off in what seemed to be a lead, our carrier doing more damage as we whittled down the enemy fighters, even managing a couple of runs on the carrier. Side 2 matched blow for blow but it seemed they were on the back foot for the first half of the game.

Thanks to an awesome ion shot and a series of crazy events, the pendulum swung swiftly to Side 2 with my sister-in-law launching an all out attack that resulted in our carrier exploding, ending the game. We played with the basic setup on the ships and may have gotten a rule or two wrong, normal when it is the first play through, but the game was still exceedingly awesome, really encouraged working together and plotting out who could do the most damage with initiative. I really look forward to getting the game out onto the table again in the near future! Hopefully with pictures next time!