High Frontier 4 All – Space Diamonds

Check out part one of this High Frontier 4 All series!

As I built a plan to tackle the science-based adventure game High Frontier 4 All and introduce it to my network, I decided for once that I would follow the advice of the game’s publisher to the letter. I read the Read Me First rulebook—one of five included in the box!—first. (I know, shocking, right?) Then I read the rules for Space Diamonds, the introduction to the core game’s movement system that strips out almost everything from the core rules to let players focus on learning the map and how movement works with fuel, rockets, and net thrust bonuses.

I was worried that this variant would still be at the weight of something like a Lacerda game. Turns out I was wrong. Way wrong. In fact, the rules for Space Diamonds say that even “a bright child” (in the words of the manual) could pick up the basic rules that change rockets to space sails in order to teach players how to navigate Lagrange burns and pick up chits during discovery operations in the Heliocentric Zones close to Sol.

So I read the brief eight-page rules for Space Diamonds and came away shocked. ”I can DEFINITELY show this to my eight-year-old”, I said to an empty basement. “Let’s break this out!”

Learn to Sail

After setting up the game, I showed my eight-year-old the basics of space travel and did a ten-minute overview of the game. Fly around, read the map, and pick up at least four black, lettered chits on sites around the map before flying back to Earth. In the Space Diamonds variant, players each have an electric rocket sail that can move through two pink “burn” spaces on routes across the map, as well as coasting through spaces to navigate the galaxy.

More importantly, fuel consumption is not tracked using the wet mass (the weight of the vehicle, plus fuel) and the dry mass (sail/rocket weight only) markers on a player mat. In fact, in this basic version of the stripped-down ruleset, players don’t even have a player mat. They have a goal card, something to guide them on this first mission, and a rocket on the map to track movement. That’s it.

My son went first, and he made a couple of mistakes understanding the limitations of moving through burn spaces, as well as understanding the rules around “pivoting” (turning) at Hohmann intersections on the map. By his fourth turn, he had it down, including understanding how to move through a second burn, then coasting through non-burn Lagrange intersections to end up in areas where he could land his ship to pick up a chit. These chits basically have treasure on the other side—at least, it was treasure to him—in the form of symbols and victory points, tallied at the end of the game.

We both picked up five chits and then found our way back to Earth to end the game. All in, about 20 minutes for a quick two-player game.

“What did you think, buddy?” I asked.

“This was fun. I still can’t believe this map is the board. I don’t think I want to play the bigger game, but I want to watch.”

Learn to Rocket

Later that same night, we did a six-player game of Space Diamonds, but used the slightly-harder game mechanics tied to the use of rockets (the flip side of each spaceship card used in the main game) and the management of fuel resources.

I was surprised how much this changed the game. That’s because the players who had nuclear rockets (with a net thrust of five and a cost of three wet mass per burn) were really watching to ensure they could get from place to place while also occasionally landing to take the ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) Refuel action.

Even tracking fuel on the fuel track was interesting, as my group learned the basics of that action as we plan to play the scaled-up version of this system next. Two players ran out of gas by the end of the game and had to finish out their games by standing pat on a distant moon. (One of those players still won because they had so many points from discovery chits.)

The big learning point with this second game? We need a much bigger map. Six adults spent the entire game standing, huddled over the map, because it is basically impossible to see all the various texts listed in the areas where players needed to ensure they were pursuing the right place for their mission cards. At one point, a player who was seated on the northwest corner of the board just stood up and walked to the southeast corner of the table, where all the action was going down.

“I can’t see anything over here!” he complained.

This is fair. The game board included in the base game is too small unless the player count stays small. There’s really no way around this, either, given the amount of things that a player has to take in while scanning the board. (In Space Diamonds, the other wild thing is that only about a third of the entire map is used!)

So, a week or so after my first games of Space Diamonds, I bit the bullet and ordered the oversized neoprene mat. It arrived and my eyeballs were beyond thrilled. Now, we can stand over a map of the galaxy that I can actually read!

One and Done

Space Diamonds was a great way to learn some of the basics tied to rocket movement and map exploration. But all six adults agreed that we wouldn’t play Space Diamonds again, since the game’s luck-based discovery elements meant players had wildly different scores.

As a teaching tool, I like what Space Diamonds is doing here, and I am thrilled to say that it really does work as a family game with younger children.

Now that child’s play is over, it’s time to Race to Glory with the variant that includes the majority of the “core rules” for my next play. Armed with a larger map and an understanding of how flight basics work, I’m fired up to see what happens next.