While sheltering-in-place during our present global circumstances, I had the privilege to playtest the upcoming expansion to SpaceCorp, titled SpaceCorp: Ventures. One of my favorite parts of the new game is the updated solo play options, especially the custom competition HQ! In this article, we take our player HQ, New Nomads, out of the inner solar system and see how we fare in the Planeteers Era!

When playing Ventures, there are three immediate strategic considerations you will need to think about as you progress through the Eras: the player and competition HQ setup adjustments, the new 8th Contract and the new actions and abilities for your HQ. Moving into Planeteers, the New Nomads setup is the same as for Mariners; they receive 3 teams and no extra cards. But several new actions become available starting in Planeteers:

• Recycled Material: When you Migrate or Settle, your action is considered shielded.
• Populate: When you gain an Adaptation card, you may also place a team from your HQ to any of your bases in play.
• Deplete: Gain an additional 1Ŧ when you place your Exploiter base. You can’t remove your Exploiter base to Migrate.

Planeteers is my favorite of the 3 eras. The strategic choices are the most varied of the 3 and this creates a sandbox feel. Because of this, now’s a good moment to mention the Contracts. Ventures adds an 8th Contract to each Era; you draw a random Contract Card for the Era and tuck it under the Business Display with it’s 1-4 player Contract showing (the other end is only used in multiplayer games). I feel that during Planeteers, more than in Mariners, the Contracts become a primary driver of strategy. I base my initial Planeteers decisions on what’s happening on the Business Display: depending on what Contracts were claimed during Mariners there can be a lot of available Profit. In my game, the 3rd Contract (bases in 3 regions beyond Jupiter) and the 7th Contract (bases on 4 sites containing water or life) were attractive because their Mariners versions were not claimed – that’s 10 potential Profit! But even more interesting in my game is the revealed 8th Contract row (4 bases and a Beyond marker), since I know I’ll be going for the 1st Beyond marker anyway. Sequencing your actions is critical in the solo game; do it well and the Profit gains can be enormous. I decided to initially focus on the 3rd and 8th row and see where it led. I can get a head start on these Contracts by taking advantage of a simple New Nomads special ability that is easy to overlook: one of the Infra slots has a preprinted 0 shielded Move or Build action. I can add that 0 to any Move or Build action to make it shielded, so I don’t have to wait to get shielded Move actions to start moving my teams towards my goal.

I ended Mariners with the 1st Beyond marker and my genetics cube 2 spaces along its track. The genetics cube position is important for New Nomads. If I remove a team from the board using their Settle action the team gets placed on my HQ, but will come back into play when I get an Adaptation card. This makes the  timing of my Adaptations important. Since I grabbed the 1st Beyond marker in Mariners, I started with 2 benefits; exploration of Ceres with a team starting there, and the competition is denied getting 3 turns in a row. I think that the latter is the primary benefit. Like in Mariners, the competition starts play with 6 of the 12 “Start” cards on top of the competition deck. After those 6 cards are played, where they go and what they do will be less predictable.

I started by building a Spaceport on Ceres to get teams off Earth quickly and once at Ceres I used Migrate, removing the Spaceport, to move a team to Titania out at Uranus. Next I focused on researching to get Move and Build cards. At Uranus I move from moon to moon, exploring and building, and grab the 5th row Contract (3 bases in 1 region). I also was able to rebuild the base in the asteroids (removed by my Migrate) and since I now had 5 bases, I again used Migrate to move to the Oort Cloud to secure the 1st Beyond marker. This also allowed me to claim the 8th Contract (4 bases and a Beyond marker). I was now ahead of the competition in Profit.

Halfway through Planeteers players should be mindful of prepping their position for Starfarers; closing Profit gaps, selecting helpful Progress Cards, building an Infra engine, acquiring the 1st Beyond, all in preparation for the endgame. By the time I had the 1st Beyond marker I had two helpful Adaptation cards; Low Body Mass (Move 5) and Energy Efficient (Build 3) as well as 2 additional Infra cards. These helped to position my teams around Saturn so I could claim the  3rd row Contract (bases in 3 regions beyond Jupiter) with a timely Migrate and Settle.. The New Nomads Settle action is a powerful tool if you don’t have the Build value and need to claim a good Contract. It becomes paramount in Starfarers.

My play examples above are not to say the competition is weak, far from it. My aim here is to show you how the New Nomads can take advantage of their special abilities to jump around with minimal effort and Build at high cost areas. I’ll let you discover on your own how the competition will respond to these moves, especially since some of their actions have been altered in Ventures to be more competitive.

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Previous Articles:

An Illustrated SpaceCorp: Ventures Solo Session Report: Introduction and Competition HQ

An Illustrated SpaceCorp: Ventures Solo Session Report: The Mariners Era