Star Trek: Away Missions Unboxing and Components Review

When Star Trek: Away Missions landed at my office for review, I was surprised by how hefty the box felt. From the videos and images I had seen, it didn’t seem like much more than some cardboard and miniatures, but I quickly realized there is a lot more going on in the box than just that! Using a popular license like Star Trek is often an excuse for a company to skimp on components and quality. Is that something Gale Force 9 did with this release? Let’s take a look.

Honestly, the short answer to this question is, no! In the box from GF9, we received the Star Trek: Away Missions base game, which includes everything you need to play a two player miniatures game. No further expansions required. Right away, I like this approach to the game. Star Trek: Away Missions is straddling that line between board game and tabletop miniatures game, much like something like Star Wars: Imperial Assault . With many standard Table Top games, players are required to purchase a starter kit per player, with some obvious exceptions. But that isn’t the case here – one box will give you everything you need, so get to playing!

The base game includes a team from The Federation and a team from The Bog, each with their own player mats and miniatures. The Federation will have 4 team members lead by Commander Riker, Worft, Data and Shelby. They will battle it out with Commander Locutus of Borg and 5 minions. The sculpt on these miniatures is really solid, and are on par or better than other miniatures board games I’ve played like Imperial Assault and The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in the Dark. I’ve seen some people paint their figures, and they look phenomenal! I might need to try and do this.

The card quality in the game is find, split between two decks: the Mission Deck and the Support Deck. The cards don’t get shuffled or handled that often, so it’s not a real necessity to sleeve your game. I tend to do it myself, but i do that for all games regardless of the card quality. Here, however, I think things are going to be just fine for a few dozen plays.

Cardboard quality is always a sticking point for me when unboxing a game. If it doesn’t pop out of sheet well, I’m going to get frustrated. Poor punch boards will result in play pieces tearing and becoming ruined, so it can really ruin the experience before you even get the game played. Thankfully, it appears as if GF9 has used a good quality punch board, and all the pieces were easy to get out, easy to sort, and easy to put away. This is thanks to a great plastic insert that keeps everything where it needs to go. If you like to store your games vertically, you won’t have any issue with this one!

The overall quality of Star Trek: Away Missions is fantastic, and before you even get the game onto the table, your experience getting it punched and sorted will only get you excited for what is to come, not frustrated you beyond belief. It’s a good step in the right direction for a franchise I don’t care a lot about, but for a game with mechanics I’m excited to try!