Two Rex Plays #8 - Deep Space D-6

In this edition of Two Rex plays we’re discussing Deep Space D-6, a dice placement, spaceship simulator designed by Tony Go and published by Tau Leader Games. Choose your ship, tailor the difficulty, complete away missions, and fight-off a series of enemy ships until help arrives.

Here are the design features we liked:

+ Customise your experience - The box artwork is in the style of a choose your own adventure book and there are similarities in the amount of customisable options available at the start of the game which the player can use to tailor their experience. The big one is the choice of ship, each of which are meaningfully distinct and have their own unique features, requiring different levels of skill to use effectively. But you also control the number of ‘rest’ cards shuffled into the deck (which give you additional breathing space, and act as a more standard difficulty adjustment) and whether to include a boss enemy in the form of a capital ship.

+ Escalating tension – At times you feel like you have everything under control, only for an unlucky roll to tip the scales and leave you scrambling to stop multiple threats from overwhelming you. During these phases, the game requires you to make tougher trade-off decisions which create a sense of achievement if you’re able to overcome them.

+ No wasted moves – Whilst the dice roll at the beginning of every round are random, the crew allocations they provide are not set in stone. Most ships have a station that allows you to change the face of a die, and all ships have the backup of sending a crew member to the infirmary to achieve the same effect. This seems a fair balance - not frustrating strategies if you have an unlucky roll, but imposing a fair cost on players seeking to overriding the randomness.

+ Clear win / lose conditions – Whilst I know they are popular in the board game genre; I’ve never been a fan of chasing hire scores and much prefer the clarity of binary win or lose conditions. I’m a big fan of Monster Train, and by far the most satisfying runs are those where you’re just holding it together enough to crawl past the final boss, rather than those where you’re able to exploit one too many of the overlapping card engines and you stroll through the back half of the game and smash your high score.

+ Faster than light –This is effectively the dice placement incarnation of another of my favourite games, FTL (it’s a shame it’s not a roll & write, otherwise they could have called it faster than write?). I came across Deep Space D-6 by googling ‘FTL board game’ and quickly stumbled upon it. As well as sharing many similar design ideas, there’s a neat mod on Tabletop Simulator reskinning the starter ship in the FTL style. 

This is another solo game enjoyed whilst the senior half of Two Rex was basking in the Cornish sunshine. The reason for googling space simulators in the first place is that I think I have a good idea for how a two-player spaceship simulator could work with roll & write (or flip & write) mechanics and wanted to see what else was out there.  A co-operative version called Deep Space D-6: Armada exists, and I look forward to checking that out in the future.

Interested in Deep Space D-6? Find out more here:

Tau Leader Games Official Website

https://www.tauleadergames.com/

TTS workshop (including FTL skin)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2069713428