The inner workings of Galactic Cruise
Saying that 🚀Galactic Cruise is a worker placement game probably doesn’t clarify much, as there are so many different implementations of this mechanic. So let’s dive a bit deeper into its inner workings. 🕵️
Whenever it is your turn you can either 1️⃣ place a worker 2️⃣ launch a cruise, or 3️⃣ call back your workers and collect income.
Worker placement itself seems simple at first: you can go to one of 6 spots, potentially bumping off rival workers if they are there (bumping means they get to reuse the worker and get an income bonus). There are a couple of details that make it much more interesting than it may sound:
⚙️By placing a worker you can take 2 available actions
⚙️Placing Development tokens between the worker spots allows you to use actions on adjacent spots too - making you more flexible in your action choices
⚙️The 12 actions of the game are randomly allocated to the 6 spots, so combinations will change between games.
⚙️Expert workers can be unlocked that have a special ability, which is different for each game depending on a randomly chosen tile.
An essential thing is the namesake of the game: launching galactic cruises! 🚀 If you’ve prepared everything (scheduled a cruise, sold tickets, have a ship with cabins, enough food, oxygen and fuel), you get to launch a spaceship. 🧐 This will then trigger bonuses each turn depending on the type of destination and passengers on board, until the ship returns to Earth. You also lose a worker for those turns, as it acts like a pilot.
Another thing I really enjoy are the agenda cards. These add lots of flavor - both thematically and mechanically. They can be used during the depicted action to modify the basic rules.
As the game goes on you get more versatile: you can reach more actions in the network, get access to public techs or unlock special abilities from your player board, and you can also improve your income bonuses. Galactic Cruise has amazing replayability thanks partly to these, and also to many things that are randomized at setup - like the Expert worker abilities, goals, techs, action locations or passenger bonuses. These will change up your strategies each game!
