New Game Round-up: Build Ships, Learn Skills, and Beat People Up with Mechs — Twice

In Space Base, players assume the roles of Commodores of a small fleet of ships. Ships begin docked at their stations and are then deployed to sectors as new ships are commissioned under your command. Use cargo vessels to engage in trade and commerce; mining vessels to build reoccurring base income; and carriers to spread your influence. Establish new colonies for a new Commodore in a sector to gain even more influence. Gain enough influence and you can be promoted to Admiral!

Space Base is a quick-to-learn, quick-to-play dice game using the core "I roll, everyone gets stuff" mechanism seen in other games. It's also a strategic engine builder using a player board (your space base) and tableaus of ship cards you can buy and add to your board. The cards you buy and the order you buy them in have interesting implications on your engine beyond just the ability on the card you buy, making for a different type of engine construction than seen in similar games. Players can take their engine in a number of directions: long odds and explosive gains, low luck and steady income, big end-game combos to launch from last to first, or a mix-and-match approach. Ultimately, Space Base is a game you can just start playing and teach everyone how to play in the first round or two and has a satisfying blend of dice-chucking luck and challenging strategic choices.

In Galaxy Hunters, players take on the role of mercenaries hired by the Megacorps to hunt and harvest the rampant mutations. Featuring an inventive pilot and mech combination system, pairing different pilots with different mechs unlocks new powers and special abilities. Using money earned for harvesting DNA from the creatures, players upgrade their mechs with new weapons and items. Galaxy Hunters seamlessly blends the excitement of crafting a unique character with the deep strategy of Eurogame-style worker placement.

Critical Mass is a fast-paced mech combat game. Players go head-to-head in this fighting-strategy game with deck-building aspects. Players choose their favorite mech to battle it out, with each mech offering a different loadout of cards to start the game and unique powers.

Each turn, players play a card face-down. When both players have chosen a card, they reveal them. Cards resolve based on their speed if they haven't been interrupted. Weapons deal damage and interrupt the enemy, while defending avoids weapon hits. Upgrading offers you additional cards to add to your arsenal but is vulnerable to being interrupted. Lastly, recharge reloads spent cards.

As cards are played, they go to their owner's cool-down pile, where they remain until they're reloaded. As players take damage, the armor on their mech is destroyed. When enough armor is destroyed, an armor core becomes vulnerable and can be destroyed to stun that mech for the next turn. The game ends when a mech's armor is completely destroyed down to the last core.

You are a senshi, a warrior-monk studying diligently at the temple under the tutelage of the current master. You and your fellow students train vigorously every day to improve your mind and body, but your master is ailing, and only one senshi will become the next master. To prove your worth, you must develop four attributes: strength, agility, wisdom, and honor. A true master must be strong in all of these, and weak in none.

Senshi is a strategy game for 2-4 players that takes only 15 minutes to play! Carefully manipulate stacks of tiles that represent your four attributes: strength, agility, wisdom, and honor. Competing in a battle of wits, players will choose one of three actions each turn: study to take stacks of tiles, train to take a single tile off any stack, and test to score tiles when the time is optimal.

Whoever has the tallest scoring pile of any of the four attributes at the end of the game wins; however, first the player with the shortest scoring pile is eliminated. Watch your opponent's moves closely and exploit their weaknesses to achieve the great honor of becoming the temple's next master!