Shackleton Base Review

Shockingly enough Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon (to give it its official title) isn’t the first game I’ve owned that’s set around corporations vying for space on the moon. Skymines (review here) is a retheme of Mombasa, and while the themes are similar, the games are very different. And if you ask me, both deserve a place in your collection. Shackleton base is built around some seemingly simple actions which belie how deep and malleable the game is. Like a drainpipe full of play-doh, maybe. Despite the hype and my early good times with the game, I had some initial worries about the replayability, but I’m happy to say those worries have been blasted into orbit.

Can I interest you in an acre of land on the moon?

As I mentioned before, corporate greed is at the heart of Shackleton Base. The game comes with seven different corps, all in their own little (pre-made!) boxes in the main box, but you only ever use three of them per game. “Holy Clangers!” you might think, “That’s a whole load of replayability”. This is where my initial fears wormed their way to the surface. You see, a lot of the corporation interaction is in the form of contract fulfilment. Collect some stuff, turn it in, get some points and other stuff. After teaching the game three times, each time using the recommended starting corps, I was worried that the differences between the corporations would only be skin-deep.

I needn’t have worried. While the other corporations may be variations on a theme in a way, they still mix the game up enough to make it feel substantively different. Evergreen Farms, for example, let you build new greenhouse tiles on the board. To Mars lets you build your domes and place astronauts on a secondary board with a view to kicking them on their way to the red planet. Skywatch introduces the threat of an asteroid at the end of the game that will wipe buildings out, lest the players work together to build defences. You get the idea. It’s not like learning a new game, but throwing them in in different combinations presents some really interesting choices to make, and keep the game feeling fresher than a hunk of ancient moon cheese.

Actually playing the game isn’t too difficult. Players draft a shuttle tile at the start of the round which gives them some starting resources, six astronauts to place (one per turn, six turns per each of the three eras, so 18 actions for the whole game), and sets player turn order. On your turn the astronauts either get placed around the hex map to harvest resources and cold, hard cash, on the command action area to carry out actions like building, claiming corporation cards, or researching, or get sent to the lunar gateway to trade for an astronaut to place on your player board.

The main board is where a lot of the attention is because it’s a big, shared building area with some really neat area control mechanisms, but the player boards are equally fascinating. As the various buildings come off your board and get built on the moon, the spaces they free up become places you can house astronauts. There are loads of places to choose from, all giving different benefits. Discounts on upkeep, bonus stuff during income, increased reputation, or more lovely VPs for the end of the game. It quickly dawns on you that it’s not just a case of choosing the first building of a type and going with that. Long-term planning can reap big rewards.

Ring-a-ring-o’-roses

The hexes where you build are a part of my favourite puzzle in Shackleton base. Each hex can have a building of one space, one of two spaces, and a three-spacer too. If you build early in one of those spaces it costs you less to build in the small ones, with smaller upkeep costs, and you get the benefits earlier. Building later is more expensive (bigger buildings need more resources) but can pay huge dividends at the end of each round.

When a round draws to a close, each of the astronauts placed around the edge of the crater to get resources and money during the round are dished out to the players. Each astronaut faces a row of hexes, and the total space occupied by each player in the row is calculated. The player with the most claims the little astronaut and finds a place to put him in their player board, which as I mentioned before can earn you some serious income and discounts. It’s such a fun puzzle, and I love the moments when someone builds somewhere you weren’t expecting, meaning that the astronauts you were planning on banking are heading to someone else instead. Maybe no one can hear you scream in space, but on the moon, they can certainly hear you mumbling “You absolute bastard” under your breath.

This is one example of the thing that Shackleton Base does really well. It has mechanisms at play which feel simple and inconsequential, but after even just a couple of plays in the bank you start to realise their significance. Building late can net you lots of astronauts, but does so at the cost of more expensive command actions – i.e. the action that actually does the building. The first players to take actions there do them for free, while people later in each row pay increasingly more to do so. It makes timing crucial, and a lot of fun.

It all goes towards making what I love in a modern Euro – a ton of indirect interaction. There’s no take-that in the game but oh-so many opportunities to screw someone over just by doing something that directly benefits you. The juiciest little morsel is the energy track on the board. Some buildings and actions require energy to be spent, but energy is a shared resource. Anyone can build it, and anyone can spend it. There’s nothing more annoying than watching your plans blow away like dust because someone spent the energy you were banking on. You can make more power if you have the right resource, and it’s a free action, but it’s still this gorgeous layer of niggle that just bubbles under the surface the whole time.

Get the band back together

While there’s a solo mode included in the box (which works well, for what it’s worth), Shackleton Base is a game I only want to play with three or four players. There’s a two-player mode which blocks some spaces and uses an overlay for the Command action area. It works, but the game just isn’t as interesting. It’s up to the players if they choose to build in the same area of the crater or spread out. Sure, maybe you and your significant other like a game that lets you play without much interaction, but this game is so much better when the players are bouncing off of one another.

When you play Shackleton Base with three or four players, there’s really no choice about whether you stay away from the other player’s buildings. You’re tripping over one another for space to build and there’s a real tussle over the astronauts at the end of a round. In a two-player game, it’s easy to have an unspoken agreement along the lines of “Well, you’ve got those guys tied up, I’ll go over here and I can guarantee I get these”. It’s still a decent game, but it’s missing a little je ne sais quoi, like getting a fish supper on a Friday night and not dousing it with salt and vinegar, or eating a burrito without the spicy sauce. It’s good, it’s just not as good as it could be.

Play with three or four players to get the full experience, it’s where it’s at its best.

Final thoughts

I have a love-hate relationship with Fabio Lopiano’s games. Actually, it’s more like a love-infuriation thing, because I love his games, I just always feel like they end a round too soon. He’s a big tease. When I first played Merv (review here) I actually played a round more than I should. It just felt right. Ragusa (review here) and Zapotec (review here) were the same. His recent partnerships with Nestore Mangone and Mandela F-G seem to be steering away from that brevity, and I’m here for it. Shackleton Base is more like Sankoré (review here) and Autobahn in that it feels like there’s enough time to bring your plans to fruition. This is obviously very personal, but that’s why you’re here – to get my opinion.

Shackleton Base rode a wave of hype out of 2024’s Spiel Essen, and it’s deserved. It’s a clever, interesting game that feels different to any other game I’ve played this year. I love the way the shared building space has so much to consider. Building somewhere opens up those resources to you. Choosing which corporations place tokens around them dictates which corporations you lean toward. And then there’s the really satisfying collection of the astronauts based on row dominance. I have a near-irrational enjoyment of this part, and it’s not even an action I take. It’s just a part of the round-end process. Getting that sudden influx of astronauts just before you pay for upkeep and gather your income is wonderful.

The production levels are really high. The little boxes for the game components come ready-made, show what’s inside them on the outside, and aid with setup and teardown. I referenced Skymines in the intro, which also includes boxes, but doesn’t meet any of those conditions, so it’s a welcome relief to see Sorry We Are French doing it so well. It might not be worth mentioning, but my copy didn’t come with sticky dots to seal the player boards shut, but having spoken to the UK distributor it sounds like it was missed in the first run. The screen-printed wooden pieces are great, the cards and iconography are really well done, and I’m impressed with the A4 card aids for each corporation. It’s great to be able to hand them around the table so players can answer their own questions.

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I’ve played Shackleton base with nine different people now, and all of them have enjoyed it. The two-player game feels a little tepid to me compared to three or four, so maybe that’s worth bearing in mind, but overall this is a really good game. A clean, easy-to-grasp Euro game, with plenty of room to experiment with your approach, and a ton of variability with the seven included corps and asymmetric leader tiles. It’s also a game in which I can honestly say I don’t have to continuously refer to the rulebook to check, which is a sign of good design in my books. Shackleton Base is an easy recommendation for me to make.

Review copy kindly provided by Hachette Boardgames UK. Thoughts & opinions are my own.