First Game of Centauri Saga

So one of my Christmas gifts this year was Centauri Saga. I had wanted it for a while.

I'm a big fan of Twilight Imperium and greatly enjoyed TI4, but time wise it is an investment. My group also has become more focused on co-op games, not surprising for story RPG gamers. So a quick co-op 4x game, I was sold!
First things first, this is certainly not as epic as Twilight Imperium (possibly Legacy version will be). On the other hand after playing a game I feel the 60-90 minute length is accurate so that is a far trade off. Like most co-op games there are multiple missions you can play. We played the Repair the Jumpgate. While the game is rather straight forward, organizing the game straight from the box is not. We certainly spent longer than we should of. A lot came from not sure if mission cards needed to be separate.

Each mission has its own tracking card as well as numerous special event cards and rules. Most missions are set at a maximum of ten rounds. For this we needed to find 4 repair parts and successfully install them into the Gateway. During this time raiders will try to stop us. On top of that, we can only start the Gateway and win if no Raider Bosses are on the table (They appear on 3rd, 5th and 8th turns in 3 player).


Each player commands an Armada. The initial armadas vary by which commander you pick. During upkeep you can upgrade your spaceport or research using two energy crystals. This will unlock other upgrades you can pick from to improve the Armada.


At the beginning of each turn events or boss effects occur. This is followed by scanning which will randomly put a repair part and raiders on the board. If no repair part is found, two new tires are added (you can also move off an edge to reveal new tiles). If an enemy is in the square combat occurs. Fastest fleet goes first. Player rolls defense dice and attack dice against the raiders scores. If no enemy is present you can regroup or explore with random discoveries occuring. Naturally there are cards you can earn that allow one time bonuses and special abilities. They definitely saved us a few times.
Overall a great game. A nice feel of co-op, exploring, upgrading, and combat. It also easily fits in 60-90 minutes. Looking forward to many more plays and trying new missions. After a few more games maybe it will be time to take out the Legacy Version (they have add on pieces so the base game is still usable post Legacy.)