From: Synelix Games
Reviewed by: Ron McClung
Venus Needs Men! is a new Board Game from Synelix Games.
Venus Needs Men! is a strategy board game where players choose one of five alien planets, each with unique abilities, build spaceships to invade Earth, and then abduct its population. They can also attack their rivals to prevent them from capturing all the humans for themselves. Alternatively, they can play Earth and try to scavenge alien technology to improve their defenses, while evacuating as much population as they can to a secret underground refuge.
From page #1: “It is March 1954. A few days ago, the United States detonated a hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, inadvertently disabling an ancient alien artifact which generated a force field protecting the entire planet.”
I have always been a big fan of classic pulp sci-fi and this game looked so cool when I got it from GR. The cover and the board art harkens back to the classic 50s sci-fi movie posters or pulp magazine covers. Being that I am also a war game fan, I had high hopes going into this game.
There are two set of rules for Venus Needs Men!.They are Basic and Enhanced. They are explained simultaneously in the rulebook as there are only subtle differences between the two, at least on the surface. The Enhanced game does add a few more interesting elements and does make the game longer.
The set up is fairly quick. First, players choose from the aliens or Earth to play. There are 5 aliens to choose from. There are the Venus warrior women seeking humans as slaves, super intelligent Martians seeking human brains for power their cybernetic technology, tentacled creatures from Ganymede dwelling in Earth’s oceans who want humans for food, parasitic centipede like aliens from Titan who are seeking hosts, and the robotic xenophobes from Pluto who simply want to destroy all human life. As said, the alternative to playing invading aliens is to play Earth. All the aliens get spaceships. There are Earth spaceships, but they do not get to use them right away. The number of ships depends on the rules of the game you are using. In basic, the number of ships are varied.
There are also population markers – colored chips – that must be laid out across the board. On the board there is Earth and the five alien homeworlds. Earth is divided up into 13 land areas and 8 ocean areas. Population chips are distributed on the land areas according the preset amounts in the rulebook. There is also a special location called the Secret Underground Refuge, where Earth takes its population to safety.
There are 4 sets of cards that are used in the game (in either the Basic or Enhanced). In the Basic game, only the Zap cards are used. These are general events and actions a player can take during play. The cards define when they can be played. All the Zap cards are dealt out to all players so that each have their own stack to pick their hand from. Hand-size is 3, but if you run out completely you do not draw back up. You only draw back up if you have at least 1 card.
Along with Zap! cards, the Enhanced game rules bring in Technology, Technology Upgrades, and Special cards. Technology and Technology Upgrades give players extra edges to their faction. Technology cards are obtained at setup and are public. Upgrades are acquired during play. Special cards give players their special abilities for the enhanced game. They include Earth: Scavenger, Venus: Alluring, Mars: Mind Control, and Ganymede: Amphibious. Each player gets one pertaining to the faction they are playing.
Turn sequence starts with the Pluto player (or the player to the right of Pluto’s homeworld if Pluto is not in play). Each player can do one thing from a choice of 5 actions. Actions are build, move, attack, collect population, and research (for enhanced game only). Each have special rules to them strictly defining what is entailed in that action. Each step is fairly simple and straight forward. It does leave a player frustrated at times because you wish you could do more in a turn. Some cards allow you to do a little more on a turn, however.
Each action is simple on its face but gets more involved as the game progresses. The ‘build’ action allows the players to build a ship (or multiple ships in the case of certain aliens in the enhanced game). They are placed on their homeworld to start and must wait until the next turn to move. The ‘move’ action allows the player to move any and all their space ships. As more space ships are built, this action becomes more significant.
In ‘attack,’ all ships may attack one target. What target depends on the location of the ship and its target – Earth land/ocean location or orbit/space location. Combat is a matter of rolling a number of 10-sided dice as defined by the rules (in the Basic) or by the alien’s technology (in the Enhanced) verses the target’s defense value. There is no defending fire and combat is over after one shot from each ship.
‘Collect population’ is an action where the alien spaceship can take one (or sometimes multiple) population chips up to their homeworld or Earth can take a population to the Secret Underground Refuge. This is the goal of the game – to get a certain number of population chips as defined by the number of players. We had three players, so the goal was 34 population chips. This can happen a lot quicker than you think.
The ‘Zap!’ cards can really change the game. They can be played at any time and can have sweeping effects. ‘Zap!’ cards can, among other things, destroy ships, stop certain actions, allow for extra actions, or even stop other cards. The special cards (used in the Enhanced game rules only) define alien special abilities like the Titanian Parasite ability where that player can infect population and those in turn can infect others as part of a population action. Another example is the Ganymede aliens’ ability to nab population from neighboring locations. For them, it is most ideal because they can land in ocean zones and take from neighboring land areas.
In conclusion,this is a beer-and-pretzels sci-fi strategy “war” game with some interesting twists and tongue-in-cheek background to it. The more players you have, the more fun it is. I completely bypassed the Basic game and played the Enhanced and found it rather satisfying. There are some quirks to it that I had to adjust to, however. My biggest complaint is that there needed to be more diverse technology. The Earth player simply got bored with some of the tech duplicates and felt that the ability really was not helping him. Also, there was some concern with balance with respect to some of the special abilities aliens had. My first game was played with 3 players and one was a girl that I would characterize as a non-gamer. She won and had a blast. She picked up on the strategy right away, playing the Ganymede aliens, and totally creamed us. It was a very fun game that novice gamers can easily pick up. I would even characterize this as a fun family game if you stick to the Basic game. Well done!
For more details on Synelix Games and their new Board Game “Venus Needs Men!” check them out at their website http://www.synelix.com, and at all of your local game stores.
Venus Needs Men!
From: Synelix Games
Type of Game: Board Game
Game Design by: John L. Velonis
Art by: Jeff Durham
Number of Pages: 2 page rulebook
Game Components Included:
- 20″ x 20″ full-color mounted board
- 36 Zap cards
- 18 Technology cards
- 16 Technology Upgrades cards
- 6 Special cards
- 12 reference cards
- 30 spaceships in 6 colors
- 125 population chips in 3 colors
- 3 ten-sided dice
- Basic and Enhanced rules
Retail Price: $ 29.95(US)
Number of Players: 2-6 players
Player Ages: 12 and up
Play Time: 1.5 hour +
Item Number: Type Manufacture’s Item Number
Website: www.synelix.com
Reviewed by: Ron McClung