Star Trek: Into the Unknown Review

boardgamequest.com:

As a long-time Star Trek: Attack Wing player, I was cautiously optimistic when I heard that WizKids was doing another Star Trek miniatures game. I always enjoyed Attack Wing (it is one of my favorites!), but lightning doesn’t always strike twice of course. Or is that never strikes twice… I’m not good with clichés.

Star Trek: Into the Unknown is a game for 2 players out-of-the-box, and games can take a good chunk of time: possibly up to 2 or even 3 hours. Though it can be shorter, especially the single ship intro mission.

Each game is meant to represent an episode of the show, including a division into “acts.” The game begins with an overture, which sets the stage for the situation with mission objectives for both sides. At a certain point in the game, there is a second act which is a complication that alters the rules for the remainder of the game. This complication happens at different times depending on the scenario being played and typically varies depending on which side has an advantage at that point in the game. The rest of the game is played out under the new conditions, and whoever is more successful at completing their objectives (and thus, earning more Victory Points), wins.

In the core set, the two available sides are the Federation (fielding a Defiant-class, a Constellation-class, and a Galaxy-class) and the Dominion (fielding 2 Jem’Hadar fighters and a Jem’Hadar Battlecruiser). With limited options, most games will use all of your ships, though presumably expansions will allow a greater degree of customization. Each ship has a board with several dials indicating statuses such as crew health, available power, hull, and alert status, as well as a miniature and a number of crew and upgrades assigned to it.

Each round consists of 5 phases, which each player carries out before moving on to the next. The phase that generally takes up the most time is the first, the Priority Phase. Both players take turns performing actions available to their ships. Each