Designers: Clayton Hargrave, Adam Hill

Artists: Jesse Riggle (Unearth), Stevo Torres (Blume, Coldwater Crown: The Sea, Plunderbund)

Publisher: Pandasaurus Games (Dinosaur Island, Duelosaur Island, Fire & Axe: A Viking Saga, The Game, Machi Koro, The Mind, Tammany Hall, Wasteland Express Delivery Service, Yedo)

Genre/Mechanisms: auction/bidding, card selection, hand management, resource management, set collection, take that, worker placement

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Godspeed is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 6x the initial funding goal with 4 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 2-5

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About:  Play as the European Nations, India, Japan, the Soviet Union, or the U.S. as they race to colonize a distant Eco-planet in this mid-weight worker placement game set in the shadow of the Cold War in an alternate universe.

How It Works: Godspeed is played over 10 rounds, with players taking the roles of various Nations as they compete to establish their foothold in the colonization and resource exploitation of an Exo-planet discovered in the shadow of the Cold War. Each round has 4 Phases: High Council, Supply Depot, Actions, and Resolution.

During the High Council phase, a new High Council card is revealed, presenting a new challenge and opportunity for every Nation. During the Supply Depot phase, Nations bid for first player status, precious resources, and special abilities that will help them accomplish their mission. During the Actions phase, Nations send their Team Members to take actions and complete Developments. There are 11 available actions on the board, with 10 of them split into 5 different categories: Defense, Commerce, Infrastructure, Exploration, and Government, containing 2 actions each. Actions generally have the player gaining resources, gaining cards, constructing buildings, and in some cases drawing 2-3 cards from a specific deck, keeping 1, and discarding the others. Furthermore, players have 5 different types of workers, one of whom specializes in each of the different action categories: The Captain executes Defense actions, the Trader Commerce actions, the Engineer Infrastructure actions, the Biologist Exploration actions, and the Ambassador Government actions. Any of the different worker types, or Team Members, may visit the 11th location, the Scrap Yard, where the player can take 1 resource of their choice. The design of the different Team Members and their location limitations means that players will never be visiting all locations, or even using all of their different Team Member types, in a single round.

Actions taken will allow the player access to several different types of cards. Production Building cards can be built with the required resources. Once built, they’re placed in the correspondingly colored slot of the player board where it the constructed Building generates resources during the Resolution Phase. Supply Cards simply give the player the depicted resources immediately. Some Supply Cards are Assistants, which can be used one time only (and then discarded) in a location associated with their corresponding Team Member, and even used when that location is already occupied. So the Assistant can’t be blocked from using a location, but once played, it will still block other Team Members from using that location. Finally, Development Cards come in 4 different flavors: Defense, Commerce, Infrastructure, and Exploration, with each collected at their corresponding location by their associated Team Member; the Ambassador’s corresponding Government location allows the player to complete any of their acquired Development Cards. Completing Development Cards will cost the player resources, but reward them with greater resources, Prestige Points, an immediate bonus action, or a Resolution or Council bonus. Finally, during the Resolution phase, players collect Relic Bonuses from completed Relics, Resolution Bonuses from Development Cards, resources from Production Buildings, and then retrieve their Team Members, discarding any Assistants.

Whenever a player gains Prestige Points, they can take allocate those points to one of 4 different Prestige Tracks. At the end of the game, players will gain Victory Points for the following: 8 VP for each first place position on a Prestige Track, 4 VP for each second place position, 2 VP for each third place position, -1/-2 for each Prestige Point Track position below Start, 4 VP per completed Civilization Milestone, 3 VP per completed Lunar Season Scoring tile, 1 VP per inactive Alien Power, 1 VP for every 10 leftover resources, and Bonus VP for Artifacts, Special Objective Cards, and the Scepter of the Ancients. Them the player with the most Victory Points, wins.

Comparisons:  While the game’s designers are first-timers, Godspeed seems to share some of the same design sensibilities of other Pandasaurus Games, namely Dinosaur Island and Wasteland Express Delivery Service. All three approach their themes with an inspired sense of outlandishness as well as a general creative joyfulness. Godspeed’s space race theme might be echoed in more serious fare like Twilight Struggle or 1960: The Making of the President. But it’s also a very specific type of city-builder, with a lot of resource management and resource management card play, as players drill down on the surface of one distant Eco-planet in a very focused type of space race. It’s Champions of Midgard without the dice, colonizing another planet in an alternate universe’s Cold War-era Space Race… instead of killing giant monsters with Vikings. Plus there’s the Prestige Track scoring, similar to that of the also space-themed Gaia Project. And finally, there’s definitely quite a bit of Splendor DNA in this hybrid monster, although not quite on the nose as something like Space Explorers.

What Should I Pledge?:
$15 Dinosaur Island: Space Dinosaur Promo– just the Dinosaur Island Add-On at a $5 mark-up from it’s Add-On price: a Space Raptor Dinosaur Tile, a set of Space Raptor Meeples, and an Astronaut Specialist Card.
$70 Godspeed Deluxe Edition– includes the Deluxe Edition, set of 40 metal coins, and all unlocked Deluxe Edition stretch goals.
$115 Godspeed: Deluxe + All in– includes everything in the Deluxe Edition, plus the Plastic Tokens Upgrade Kit and all Unlocked Plastic Token Upgrade Kit stretch goals, and the Mission Patch Bag Upgrade Kit and all Unlocked Patch Bag Upgrade Kit stretch goals.

Add-Ons:
$30 Plastic Tokens Upgrade Kit: replaces all of the game’s cardboard markers with custom molded plastic pieces with 4-color heat transfer graphics on the front and back sides.
$20 Mission Patch Bags Upgrade Kit: for use during the bidding portion of the Supply Depot Phase.
$10 Dinosaur Island Add-On: a Space Raptor Dinosaur Tile, a set of Space Raptor Meeples, and an Astronaut Specialist Card.

KS Exclusives:
The following items will not be sold until at least 90 days after delivery, and will then only be sold through Pandasaurus’ website, in limited quantities and at a higher price: the Plastic Tokens Upgrade Kit, the Mission Patch Bags Upgrade Kit, the Dinosaur Island Add-On, and the set of 40 metal coins included in the Deluxe Edition. These items will not be available at retail or included in retail editions.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $115 for the Godspeed: Deluxe + All in pledge, $10 for the Dinosaur Island Add-On, and an estimated $20 in shipping for a total of $145.

Godspeed completes its Kickstarter on Friday, October 18th and tentatively ships in April 2020.