Star Trek: Away Missions – Captain Kirk: Federation Expansion (Saturday Review)

Captain’s Log – Stardate… well, nobody is really sure. After having been drawn into some sort of temporal disturbance, the Enterprise is now floating helplessly in space without thrust and only minimal power. Our viewscreens show the presence of another vessel. It isn’t completely clear, but it looks like we have been transported into the aftermath of a massive battle. To find out what we are dealing with, Spock, McCoy, Chekov and myself, the captain, have decided to beam across and investigate. I know this is going to be our first of many Star Trek: Away Missions – Captain Kirk: Federation Expansion by Andrew Haught, Mike Haught and Phil Yates from Gale Force Nine.

To Boldly Go…

After having played the base game, Star Trek: Away Missions a few times, I wanted to try out the two expansion packs that I was sent for review. I replaced Riker‘s away team and The Borg with Captain Kirk‘s and Commander Scotty‘s away teams. Sure, playing as two Federation teams doesn’t necessarily make thematic sense, but even the publisher says it’s possible. After all, Star Trek: Away Missions isn’t all about fighting each other. Stunning or killing enemies, while being beneficial, doesn’t necessarily give you points. It’s the missions that allow you to score and it’s points that decide who wins at the end of three rounds.

In this article, I focus on the Captain Kirk expansion. I will review Commander Scotty separately and I won’t go over the base game here either. So please check out that review first, if you haven’t already.

The miniatures in the expansion pack follow the same style as the base game, as you would expect. I do love their poses and how the heads are slightly too big, making them look more like comic book characters than real-life science-fiction heroes. I think that is very fitting, because Star Trek: Away Missions, like the original Star Trek TV series, is about entertainment. While the crew faces new threats in every episode and often put themselves in mortal danger, death and destruction are always just out of shot. You never seen anyone being killed.

The same is true in the game. Star Trek: Away Missions doesn’t talk about killing or death. Instead, characters can be neutralized. In fact, when you play as the Captain Kirk away team, you can easily neutralize yourself.

Beam Me Up

A lot of the missions are so-called Beam Away missions. These add a clever little new mechanism to Star Trek: Away Missions. The active character, and sometimes another character, are removed from the mission boards and placed on the mission card itself. In their places, you put beam tokens. Then it’s the other player’s turn. When it’s back to you, you carry out the Beam Away section of the mission, before you activate your next character.

The missions work very similarly to those in the base game. You have to do skill checks, often multiple ones, but you don’t have to be in a specific location. The problem is, if you fail a mission, you don’t just discard the card. Instead, the character or characters that were beamed away are neutralized. I am imagining this as a transporter accident, where something goes wrong with the beams and the engineer frantically tries to rematerialize the people, but fails, resulting in a horrible death. So while some of Captain Kirk‘s missions can score very highly, they are also highly risky. You need to make sure you have the right character on the mission to give you the best odds of getting the dice results you need.

There are also missions that give you bonus points if another mission has already been completed successfully. The game is clearly trying to allow players to follow the events of the original series in order, which is a real treat for real fans.

Fandom

In fact, all of the cards are based on episodes from the original series. I watched them all as a kid, but I don’t really recall them now. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy playing as Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Chekov. Killing the captain on my very first beam-away mission was weirdly funny and made me think twice about beaming anyone else away.

Like the base game, the stories the cards and your actions tell are always a lot of fun. Add a little bit of Star Trek ambience and you’re fully immersed in what is happening. You curse yourself when Spock isn’t in the right place or Chekov decides to take the med kit, but never gets a chance to use it. You laugh when Bones is waiting on the bridge, while he really needs to be in the med bay to complete missions, rather than leaving them to his fellow crew, who woefully roll failures.

The expansion pack really adds a whole new level of interest. Not only do you get a completely new deck of mission and support cards, as well as lovely miniatures, which you can paint if you have time, you also get new twists to the basic mechanisms.

While I’m not much of a tabletop miniatures skirmish player, Star Trek: Away Missions feels a lot more like a board game. It comes with modular boards, which are double-sided to give you even more variety, and it is action and card-driven. It takes a little while to learn the base game, but it’s really not that hard when it comes to playing it.

So if you already have the base game, then I strongly recommend you give Captain Kirk a try. I thoroughly enjoyed playing him.

Useful Links

• Star Trek: Away Missions – Captain Kirk: Federation Expansion: https://www.gf9games.com/awaymissions/785/captain-kirk-expansion/
• Rulebook: https://www.gf9games.com/awaymissions/wp-content/uploads/StarTrekAwayMissions_Rulebook_WEB.pdf
• Gale Force Nine: https://www.gf9.com/
• BGG listing: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/412920/star-trek-away-missions-captain-kirk-federation-ex
• Star Trek: Away Missions review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2024/05/11/star-trek-away-missions-saturday-review/

Transparency Facts

I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.

• I was sent a free review copy of this game by the publisher.
• At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind.

Audio Version

Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Music and sound effects are the copyright and/or trademark of Paramount Global.

Playlist

These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this review: