Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60 minutes
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: 5 minutes

Alien Frontiers Rules Description:

In Alien Frontiers you and your opponents must colonize a planet. You must gather resources to create and place colonies for points.

Alien Frontiers ends when one player has placed seven colonies. The person with the most victory points wins the game.

You start the game with three ships (dice) and one random alien tech card. Each turn you roll and place your dice and may use each alien tech card once. Your dice will stay on the board until your next turn.

What you roll determines where you can place your dice. Some spaces require doubles or a straight, while others require a roll equal to or greater than the dice already there. There are a limited number of spaces to place your dice and you’ll often find someone else’s dice blocking you.

Your dice placement determines what actions you take. Actions include gaining resources (fuel or ore), stealing resources from other players, gaining more dice or building a colony.

Once you build a colony you may place it on the planet. The planet has seven regions and if you have the most colonies in a region you’ll gain its special ability. Special abilities help you utilize the actions on the board by allowing you to pay less resources or use lower valued dice. One even gives you another die.

The alien tech cards help you gain advantages in several ways. Some allow you to remove opponents’ dice, or protect your resources, change your dice values or a couple are worth victory points. You may only have three of these cards.

A Quick Alien Frontiers Review:

Alien Frontiers has a great mix of strategy, “take that” and luck. The action is driven by dice so you might think there is a lot of luck involved. But you will almost always have good options and be making meaningful decisions.

The artwork and components are top-notch. The rulebook looks great and is easy to read and follow.

Alien Frontiers can bog down a bit especially if you have players that suffer from analysis paralysis. Since you roll your dice then make decisions players can’t plan in advance. So there can be a good amount of downtime.

The only other thing I don’t like too much is the kingmaker aspect of the game. Since points are open and you know when the end of the game is coming, other players often choose who will win.

That said neither of those things make this a sub-par game. I really like the dice mechanic and how it drives the action. The ability to block actions and steal resources adds just enough “take that“ to make things fun.

Alien Frontiers is a great addition to anyone’s game collection. It has a unique blend of innovative mechanics, strategy and luck.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6