OUR REVIEW
Take Care! Danger of infections!
PANIC STATION
Find and smoke out aliens!
When the new era of cooperative games was getting off a good start with Shadows over Camelot I was more than happy. At long last I could play at a table with my friends and play without trying throughout the evening to damage them so that I could win.
Unfortunately many cooperative games are hampered by the problem that one player dreams up an optimum solution and the others move their markers according to his instructions. There is even a name for that, its “multi Player Solitaire”. Already in Shadows over Camelot there was a solution presented for this problem with a traitor in the game, whose goal is exactly opposite to that of the other players, which means that nobody can guide all other players because purposes are so different.
That this mechanism produces a paranoid mood at the table, because you weigh every hint or tip one gives very carefully, is part of the flair of such games. Unfortunately this leads to some disadvantages, but more on that later.
Panic Station delivers many of the advantages known from Shadows over Camelot or Battle Star Galactica. You work together to achieve a goal, you are are not sure if other players are really on your side, which makes a lot of accusations fly around; but the special feature of Panic Station is that the playing time is not as long as in those other games but is - with a stated duration of 40 minutes - much much quicker than comparable games.
What’s it about?
A threat from outer space has overwhelmed Space Station Recon-6 and players are taking on the duties of clearing up, Each player represents a team made up from a human and an android of the same color. Players must search the complete station in order to find the nest of the Aliens and to smoke them out.
The game comprises room cards featuring a symbol and entrances at several of the edges. The room is printed on both sides of the card. The front and back sides of the cards only differ in the color of the symbol that indicates whether the room has already been searched once or not. The station is assembled with those room cards, and the target room with the eggs of the Alien Queen is shuffled into the bottom part of the deck.
Players place their markers in the first turn and then have between one and four actions at their disposal, depending on how much damage their characters had to take already. Those actions can be used for movement, attacks/fighting, searching rooms or implementing special actions.
Movement means simply to move one of your characters - you are guiding a team! - from one card onto the next one. When there is already a character of another player on this card you must either attack this character or exchange an equipment card with him. This is a very important mechanism as it allows the host to win over players to the other side. But more on this later, too!
Attacking sounds good at the first moment, but unfortunately players are lacking ammunition at the start of the game. Should you have already come a across and acquired a knife or ammunition you can - as an action - damage an Alien parasite or a player’s character.
Searching of rooms serves the purpose to acquire more items. When you search a room for the first time - you can recognize this by the color of the room symbol, the black one will be visible - you simply take one or several equipment cards. In this way you can find valuable equipment like ammunition or petrol canisters. You can search each room several times, but each additional search not only yields additional equipment, but also attracts Parasites who can cause damage.
You can also discover rooms by placing the next room that has to be placed adjacent to one of one’s own characters. The cards may only be turned by 180 degrees maximum and you cannot block a door. When there happens to be no way to place a card according to the rules you but it underneath the stack and use the next one.
And last of all, special actions; with this I mean actions which are enabled or activated or allowed by equipment cards or room cards. For instance, there is a First-Aid-box which lets you heal damage or there are rooms with computer terminals which make additional options available for players.
When all players in turn have used up their actions, you roll the dice to determine the direction in which parasites will move. You determine one of the cardinal directions with a roll of a four-sided die and all parasites move one room card along that cardinal direction; the may only pass open doors in order to do so. Each character who shares a room with a parasite after the parasite movement takes one damage.
So far, so simple. Players simply search for the target room, the final room and stir very clear of parasites by circumventing them widely - were it not for the infected player the game would be very simply and not very challenging at all. At the start of the game one of the players is infected by one of the equipment cards and secretly take on the role of the host who can infect other players and who will only win when the remaining humans do not achieve their goal.
The host tries to infect other players by cleverly moving into rooms and swapping cards with players. For this purpose each player starts the game with three blood cards in his color, which have the same backside as the proper equipment cards. Only the host or infected players may give away a blood card to infect their vis-a-vis, a healthy player can never do that. You can protect yourself from infection when you trade the petrol canister. However one believes that would work, petrol must have an antiseptic effect and you stay healthy.
Now, that both players know which cards they did give away they also know now if an eventual attempt on infection was successful or not. When the attempt was successful both players now play against all the remaining healthy players. Of course it is to the interest of both players to keep this a secret.
The paranoia that springs up due to that mechanism is the element that makes the game a real tense challenge. Of course players may loudly accuse each other, but no player can show any cards to support his arguments, which in turn results in many rather interesting situation which are real fun for a logic aficionado.
Due to the assembling of rooms in the course of the game and also due to different equipment cards there are lots of differences between one game and the next. Some equipment cards allow you to pass closed doors - because those are present, too. Or you might be able to protect yourself with a Protective Vest from damage or you might be able to implement extra action due to the Energy Drink.
It is a bit more difficult to understand ammunition. Androids carry a weapons symbols on their card and - despite this symbol - can only shoot with an ammunition card laid out. Humans can never shoot. The ammunition card is - similar to the mechanism from Settlers of Catan the Card Game - turned by 90 degrees for each use to indicate the remaining shots and is spent after four such turnings. The character that was hit takes one damage which is enough in case of a Parasite to eliminate him. There are also knives with a 50% hit probabitlity, which can be used by Human characters, too; but then there are also hand grenades, sighting telescopes and much much more which all must be shown, explained and demonstrated before the start of the game.
The rooms are not only different due to their doors, but also due to different symbols in them; for instance, there are rooms that yield several items already at a first search or rooms with sick bays where you can heal yourself. One special room is shuffled into the top of the card stack, it holds the computer terminal. This terminal can be used by spending an action in order to call up one of three special functions: 1) you can place the next room anywhere instead of adjacent to one of your characters. 2) you can open all locked doors. 3) you can use a scan to determine how many members of the troop have already been infected. This scan of course happens anonymously, but if the result reveals that all players are infected, the game ends instantly.
The original rule book contained a big mistake at that point: All infected players were able to win together. Therefore there were some groups who were thinking that strategically that all players let themselves be infected voluntarily so that all game were won won by all players having turned Alien. In a new version of the rules an infected player can only win if he manages to infect a healthy player or eliminated him from the game in combat.
This brings us to the - in my opinion - very big problem of the game. I believe that it is one of my missions in life to acquaint as many people as I can with that kind of more complex games. Therefore I very often am the one to explain complex games at a games evening and it is inherent in the definition of such a partially cooperative game that all rules including all special cases and all cards have to be explained very explicitly and very thoroughly to all players before the game begins, because you simply cannot ask questions in the middle of such a game. There would be too much danger to reveal your situation.
For instance, what happens if a player - after the host tried twice unsuccessfully to infect him - only holds blood cards? When there is a difference of opinions on the rules at that point the whole game is a goner, because either too much information is passed or a player believes himself to be infected while not being infected.
Yet another problem are the rules; at a minimum, the first batch of Panic Station was delivered with rules that were written so confusingly that it took our group a few games to extract the meaning of a lot of rules.
Meanwhile, better rules are available online, which change quite a few things in the game and which are written in a much more understandable way. You recognize the new rules on the strategic tips that are included in them. If those new rules are included in later batches of Panic Station and if they were translated into all four languages I do not really know, but, however that may be, you should try by all means to get hold of the new rules because the old ones did not work very well in certain parts.
It is my guess that it would have been better, too, to produce different versions of the game in different languages with text on the cards. This would have overcome the initial obstacle of needing to know the effect of all cards at the start of the game, when, for instance the petrol canister would list both its functions (avoiding of infection and necessary for winning the game).
Panic Station is a game that is played rather quickly, that can run extremely different from one game to another, a game that offers loads of tactical and strategic possibilities and choices and is - on topic of all this - cooperative, too, is at the moment in a niche of its own. IF you are not frightened away by the complexity of choices and the rule book, you find a good mixture of mechanisms which are quickly absorbed. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of chance in the game and you sometimes can be eliminated from a game rather quickly without being responsible for it and without having done much, but in such a situation you will just have to play again, won’t you?
Players: 4-6
Age: 12+
Time: 40+
Designer: David Ausloos
Art: David Ausloos
Price: ca. 25 Euro
Publisher: White Goblin / Pegasus 2012
Web: www.pegasus.de
Genre: Cooperative SciFi game
Users: For experts
Version: de
Rules: de + cz en fr nl
In-game text: no
Comments:
Good mechanisms
Detailed explanation necessary as question could reveal affiliations
Plays fast
Rather high factor of chance
Compares to:
Shadows over Camelot
Other editions:
White Goblin Games, Netherlands; REXhry, Czech Republic; Stronghold Games, USA
My rating: 6
Christian Grundner:
A fantastic cooperative game with lots of possibilities, the only drawback is the intense explanation and necessary detailed knowledge of rules and cards before the start of the game so that questions during the game do not give too much away.
Chance (pink): 2
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 1
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 1
Communication (red): 3
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0