Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon (2024)

The reviewer enthusiastically praises 'Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon' as a highly engaging and rewarding Eurogame, highlighting its crunchy and variable gameplay driven by unique corporations and action combinations, despite a somewhat lengthy initial teach and potential for analysis paralysis.

“Top Game:Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon”

The reviewer expressed strong enjoyment for 'Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon,' considering it a very good game that is an instant contender for game of the year, especially for enthusiasts of heavier Euro-style board games.

“Tom and Matt consider Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon to be an "all-timer" among recent excellent Eurogames, praising its strong theme, challenging puzzle, and high variability introduced by its corporations.”

The reviewer highly recommends Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon, praising its sandbox nature, strategic depth, and high replayability, calling it an excellent game that is a permanent keeper in his collection and one he will play often.

“Shackleton Base: A Journey To The Moon has hit me sideways like a comet slamming into a planet. It’s a tremendous experience, and carries the banner of the Italian design ethos very well.”

The reviewer enthusiastically praises Shackleton Base, calling it a great heavy euro game with high replayability due to its seven corporations and an engaging optimization puzzle, despite requiring some effort to fully grasp initially.

“It’s a clever, interesting game that feels different to any other game I’ve played this year. A clean, easy-to-grasp Euro game, with plenty of room to experiment with your approach, and a ton of variability with the seven included corps and asymmetric leader tiles.”

“Overall, this is a fantastic production and one that makes playing the game so much more enjoyable. From setup to cleanup, everything is made to be user friendly first, but good looking as well.”

“Capitalism on the moon, but in a good way. The standout design choice is the corporation system: the box includes eight corporations, but you choose three per game, and the board behavior changes based on which three you use.”

Rahdo highly recommends "Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon," praising its thematic integration, engaging worker placement mechanics, and the constant meaningful decisions it presents, leading to a highly replayable and challenging experience.

“Otherwise, Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon is an absolute must for fans of medium-weight worker placement games, particularly at the maximum player count. The playground on display here is ripe for expansion content in the form of additional Corporations and player powers, so I’m curious to see how well this sells in the hopes that we can achieve those dreams.”

The reviewer highly recommends Shackleton Base as a strong Eurogame, praising its overall quality and stating it's a must-buy for fans of the genre, despite noting that the game can sometimes feel a bit slow or drag.

The reviewer found Shackleton Base to be a compelling and increasingly engaging worker placement game, especially with varied faction combinations, despite its initial complexity, demands for teaching and setup, and being best with four players.

The reviewer highlights the game's excellent modularity as a core strength, contributing to a highly positive overall impression.

The reviewers found the game to have solid mechanics and smooth gameplay, appreciating its clear iconography and ease of learning, despite wishing for more flashiness in the art style.

The reviewer found Shackleton Base to be a smoothly operating and decent system overall, but noted issues with unintuitive graphic design on some cards and a "cheaty" and erratic AI for solo play, which could lead to significant difficulty swings.

The reviewer found "Shackleton Base" to be a decent and enjoyable game with good replayability through its corporation variations, but ultimately felt it fell short of greatness due to issues such as player scaling and a lack of innovation.

The reviewer considers Shackleton Base a decent and enjoyable game with good replayability due to varied corporations, but ultimately finds it falls short of being a truly great game due to a perceived lack of deeper development, interaction, or meaningful player scaling.

The reviewer, Cody Carlson, found 'Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon' to be a technically good game, particularly for fans of mid to heavy Euros, but personally did not enjoy it, finding it generic, lacking in theme, and feeling like 'doing taxes' due to its focus on resource-chasing rather than building something cool.