From: Chuck Lietz Subject: Princess Ryan's Star Marines Review (Long) Hi all, I recently picked up PRSM as it was a game I thought I could get my 11 year old daughter interested in. To be quite frank, at least from a sample of one, the folks at AH have hit the mark of appealing to the younger generation as my daughter could only be torn away from it with a promise that we'd play again tomorrow night. I just finished playing a second game solitaire and have some overall comments. COMPONENTS This is a first-rate production but this should be expected for the rather high price tag. The board is overally large but has some first rate artwork on it. The nice thing is that almost all of the necessary info is right on the board and this really helps quite a bit in that I don't spend all my time leafing through a rulebook, thereby putting young minds to sleep. The rulebook is colorful and has been written fairly simply but there is still are some minor points that could have stood to have a little more examples in it. I would have liked to have seen a couple turns mapped out as it would have made some of the mechanics a little clearer but still, a simple game with a fairly easy to read and comprehend set of rules. There is also a 4-page cheat sheet that is sort of like an expanded sequence of play. At first, I was using this one more for rules questions but after awhile, I switched back to the regular rulebook which had all the icon summaries and special guard info. The miniature did nothing for me and it always wanted to slip off the base but it really has fairly little to do with gameplay. There are five decks of cards; Marines, Guards, Weapons, Sites, and Dispatches. The first four are standard sized, heavy stock playing cards that are generally sturdy enough to last through many playings. The Dispatch deck however is alot smaller and comes on perforated, thinner card-stock paper and I can see the edges wearing after awhile. A minor annoyance really but one I can certainly live with. The Marine deck has some "OK" black-and-white drawings of the "marines" on them and the style actually reminded me of the drawings on the old SPI/AH Freedom in the Galaxy character cards. The characters are stereo-typical Hollywood types and each has some special ability. Each marine card also has a flag rank and skirmish value that will be discussed later. This deck really didn't move me one way or another but I wish they would have made the the flag rank number a little more legible. The Guard deck is similar in artwork style to the Marine deck. The Guard forces have a little more flavor than the Marines and come with a skirmish value, a prestige point rating, and any icons that indicate special abilities. There are also a number of special Guard cards like Doomsday Bomb, Chemical Attack, and Counter-attack that generally are bad news for the Marines. This deck is functional and I had no complaints. The Weapons cards are actually nice in a lot of ways. First, it is obvious that this game was originally done using a standard 52 card playing deck. There are four suits indicated weapons type (edged, vehicular, energy, and firepower) with a a value ranging from 1 to 13. The cards are all full colored and have some nice, unique weapon types and drawings on them. One other nice touch here that I didn't get at first was that there are from one to four colored boxes at the bottom of each card. Upon further inspection, I discovered that each suit color has the same number of boxes so that a suit type could be determined by a color-blind or impaired individual. Now someone was doing some thinking there as suit type plays a pretty big role in some sites. The weapon deck also doubles for the random number generator using the values for all sorts of checks that will be discussed later. The Site deck though is where PRSM really shines and the artwork on these cards (as well as the 40 or so sites on the mapboard) is up to par with the art found on top-notch CCG's. The site deck alone really makes an otherwise above average set of component move into the excellent class for me. GAMEPLAY The object of the game is to move from left to right across the map-board to the final "site" in the top right corner where the Princess is being held captive. Along the way you must fight off the never-ending hordes of guards who generally can be pretty nasty but the Marines have some advantages. To make matters worse, the game is "timed" in that you have time tokens that are expended as you try and fight your way to the Princess. I have only played the game two-player and solitaire (from 1-6 players are possible) and will confine my comments to where the game system rather than a live player controls the Guard units. Game play starts out easily enough with each player getting dealt three marine character cards and six weapon cards. The Commanding Officer or CO is determined by the player with the Marine card with the highest flag rating. This player gets to choose the direction the Marines will move but this will change as casualties are pretty easy to come by. From there you're off and running as you start in the top left square or "Drop Zone Alpha" with a special first turn that doesn't use the normal sequence of play. The first step is to draw a card from Weapons deck to see if you expend one of your 15 "time tokens". Each site has a rating on it ranging from about 2 to 10 and if you draw equal or less than the rating, you lose a time token. The next step is to draw a Guard card to see what the defenders strength is. Once the Guard value has been established the play moves into the heart of the game, the skirmish round. Each Marine player chooses one of their Marine cards placed face up which can then be changed once you see what other players are playing. Then a weapon card is placed face down (secretly) by each Marine player. The object is for the combined Skirmish value of ALL the Marine players totals to be greater than the Guard value. You then reveal all the weapon cards and add or subtract certain Marine's special values and or site adjustments to arrive at a total Marine and Guard skirmish value. The Marines get one more chance to change the ratings by being allowed to play any accumulated Dispatch cards before the final comparison is made. If the Marines score is higher, the one Marine player with the highest individual skirmish value (marine rating + weapon card + special modifiers) gets the prestige points of the defeated Guard units and draws a Dispatch card. If the Guard wins, the Marine skirmisher with the lowest skirmish rating takes a casualty check that almost guarantees at least something bad is going to happen. Ties are kind of wimpy in that you just kind of have a stand-off and depending on the Guard unit, you either have to fight them again or discard it and fight a new one. I would have liked to see a sudden death option or maybe a mutual destruction option where all Marine skirmishers take a casualty check but defeat the Guard unit. After combat all weapon cards are discarded and you go through the initial six weapon cards fairly quickly. You're not supposed to table talk about what the value of weapon card played is and this leads to some interesting problems and weapon card play strategies being available, especially the way the rewards/risks work. The problem though is that if you play with the same folks, it would I suppose become somewhat easier to "guess" what your fellow Marines are going to play as it is generally tough sledding to make it to the final goal and so the incentive for player co-operation is fairly high. Assuming that the Marines won the skirmish, the CO now has a choice to make. The board has two tracks, the upper track is the direct route where the time check numbers are generally lower but the site modifiers generally work against the Marines. The middle track on the board or flank route is generally more friendly to the Marines but the time check numbers tend to be higher leading to a faster expenditure rate of your time tokens. Most of the time, it depends on where you are at on the board and how many marine and weapon cards you have that will dictate the path chosen. The game system does not allow you to just trot across the board that easily though, once the CO decides which site he'd *like* to go to, you have to do a Move check. The move check is equal to or greater than 7 on the direct route and 9 or better on the flank route. If you draw that number, you get to the site on the board but most times, you end up getting "lost" and you end up in a replacement site that is random in the non-guard player system but there are rules where the Guard player can dictate the replacement sites. The replacement sites vary quite a bit in that some are easy or helpful and some are not but this simple little mechanism keeps each game from being routine. Once the new site is chosen a time check is done to see if you lose a time token and then the Guard card(s) are chosen face up (unless in a special "Hide" site where they are face down) before going onto another skirmish round. The last major item is that after a short number of skirmish rounds, your weapon hand and three marines are generally going to be depleted pretty quickly. The CO has the option of performing a Regroup-ing action after any skirmish round whereby player throw back all but one Marine card and from 0-2 Weapon cards and gets a refilled back to three marines (if available) and two weapon cards per marine. You can also use accumulated prestige points to buy weapon, dispatch, and time tokens. The problem is that regrouping costs 3 of the valuable time tokens which go pretty quickly. This continues as you make your way across the board until you either run out of Marines, time tokens, or win the final battle. There is an option entitled "Do or Die" where you can take a pretty risky shot at crashing into the final site if things look bleak on the time tokens or Marine cards. At this point, I have merely brushed the surface of the nuances and options (like maybe you as a Marine player don't like the current CO so with the right Weapon card, you can take him/her out with a casualty check) created by the special sites and other cards but this should give the basic overview of how things work. I would say gameplay is going to be about two hours give or take depending on the number of players but the time token concept keeps things from stretching much longer than that. OVERALL Generally, I liked PRSM. The game is simple, easy to just jump in and learn, is appealing to older children, has enough twists to keep the game interesting over many playings, plays well enough solitaire and offers enough of a challenge as to winning or losing to hold your attention. However, as is the case with most simple games and especially card games, the "luck of the draw" is going to play a big part that in my opinion, is not compensated by the skirmish round card strategy or the rest of the "chrome" in the game cards. If you don't like games such as B-17 where the results are more of a result of the game system rather than individual strategy, than PRSM may not be right for you. If however, you want something a little different, that has some of the better elements of a good old-fashioned poker game, than PRSM is right up your alley. If you have kids, I would say this is an excellent choice but beware; I see this more as an avenue towards CCG (where $$$'s can start to be a big concern for a parent) rather than one that leads towards more traditional board games or conflict simulations. If anyone has any specific questions, fire away and thanks for reading. Chuck Lietz