Making the great even greater
What do you get if you take the best game of 2024 and add an amazing expansion to it? The best game of 2025! 😉 I am talking of course about 📡 SETI by Czech Games Edition and its brand new expansion, 🏢 Space Agencies. 😊
SETI is deservedly climbing high on the BGG top list. It has the most important qualities that make a euro game great. At any given turn of a game you have a diverse array of choices you can make, and most of them are viable and fun choices - it is up to you to find the best ones that lead you to victory. It’s also just so satisfying to play: Often during a round I might look at my resources and say “darn, I only have 1-2 actions until I have to pass”, but then an action grants some resources for another action, which in turns fuels the next one, then in the end somehow you manage to draw out your round for so much longer. 🥳
The Space Agencies expansion adds asymmetrical player powers to the game, and also some quick start bonuses. In exchange you only play for 4 rounds instead of 5, but those 4 are longer and more eventful. Personally I enjoyed the “old” first rounds too, but these starting bonuses work well.
The 11 Agencies all have a once-per-turn ability and/or an ongoing one. There is a nice selection of abilities to make games even more varied. 👍 For example I played a game with the Futurespan Institute, which let me play cards in the future for free (meaning I only got to actually play the card when my VP token reached a given space).
3 new alien species 👽 are also added to the game with their own little decks and rules. I think the aliens are core to the enjoyment of SETI, so I’m definitely happy to see more added. 🥰 Of course there are some new cards too to mix into the deck, which is a welcome increase to the already enormous replayability.
There is one more small change that I didn’t anticipate would have such a big impact: Some new effects let you obtain Signal 🔊 tokens, which you can discard during Scan actions to send out more signals. This really helped us complete more signal areas and thus earn more pink traces of life, which are usually hard to do in 2p games.
An all-around great expansion! 😍
