Houston, we have an awesome euro

We were lucky enough to get a slot for a Shackleton Base demo during UKGE 2024. Fabio Lopiano himself was teaching us the rules, and the more we heard the more excited we got to play! There are many fun ideas in this midweight euro, with lots of player interaction.
We played through 2 rounds, with a full game being 3 rounds, so I think we have a pretty good idea of the game. Here is a quick rundown!

General Overview

In the game you play as competing space agencies, building a base on the Moon. Even though you are building it together, you are competing with each other.

Each game there are also 3 neutral corporations chosen randomly out of a pool of 7, that are the sponsors of this Moon-base building endeavor. All of these have unique components or resources, cards, mechanics and ways to score - so they do a LOT to increase variability and replayability.

(E.g. in our demo there was a corporation who sent tourists to the moon that you could draft and assign to cards for points. There was one who wanted you to mine Helium3 and send it and other rare metals back to Earth for bonuses. Lastly, one that had you collecting 3 types of minerals to fulfill contracts with.)

Each round begins by drafting a rocket tile with 6 astronauts. These are the workers you will use throughout the round. They come in 3 colors, each having their special uses. (An extra effect if used at a matching worker spot). After everyone has placed all their workers one-by-one, you have a round-end upkeep phase, then repeat for 3 rounds then add up your points to see who wins.

Gameplay Details

Workers can be placed in two main ways.
Most notable is around the game board grid, to activate rows or columns to gather resources - but with some important rules: you only collect where there is at least one building present, and if there is no building of yours there you have to pay the rival player with the biggest building. (Cost depends on your worker spot).
Then depending on worker color you gather basic resources, corporation specific resources or credits.

Otherwise you have worker spots to build, buy corporation cards or activate special actions, and these spots give an additional bonus if you use the correct worker type. As spots fill up, you will have to pay more and more credits to place your worker. I think it is important to highlight some details of these actions:

Build:
You have buildings of size 1, 2, 3 and 6 available. You can build these anywhere on the board, given that you don’t have a building in that grid space yet. (Additionally, if there isn’t one yet, you have to build a solar panel with a free action, which also generates a shared energy resource.) Building placement will be important for round-end majority checks, so the decision where to place them actually has multiple layers.

The different sized buildings have different effects, which turns your player board into a puzzle of its own. As building slots empty out, you will be able to draft astronauts from the board to fill them, enabling their special powers.
-Size 1s provide income.
-Size 2s have ongoing effects.
-Size 3s have an end game scoring effect.
-Size 6s give an influence income and also upgrade the power of your asymmetric Space Agency effect you started with.

Corporation cards:
Each corporation comes with their own deck of cards. Getting a card costs credits and energy and they have all kinds of effects like a free action and/or an ongoing ability, plus they all give you points. So getting these cards is good for some engine-building.

Special actions:
This is how you can interact with the main mechanic of the neutral corporations, like shipping out things or assigning astronauts to cards. Another way to use up these actions is the influence track: the higher you go up on the track, the more options you have (among other bonuses), but your upkeep is increased too.

Closing thoughts

While the rules were relatively simple to learn, I think there are many interesting layers to this mid (mid-heavy?) euro, making it a compelling experience. We played 2 rounds in 2 hours with a longer explanation, so I think normal playtime should be pretty quick, especially for such a fun decision-dense game.

I particularly like the idea of the neutral corporations, as games will be quite different thanks to them. I am always a fan of replayability.

My only question now is how it will all hold up at 2p (which is our most common player count) given that there are quite a few interactions and majority-checks between players, but for now I am excited to see the game’s final release at this year’s Essen Spiel.