Episode 175: Godspeed

Godspeed is a 2 to 5 player worker placement game designed by Clayton Hargrave and Adam Hill, with art by Jesse Riggle and Stevo Torres, and published in 2020 by Pandasaurus Games. In Godspeed, players will take on the roll of nations competing to colonize a distant, secret exoplanet years before the first official moon landing. To do this, players will negotiate on common goals, build various structures, improve their basecamp, and reach various milestones – all of which will contribute to your final score.

Godspeed plays out over 10 rounds of 4 phases each. The first phase is the Council phase. The players will flip over the top card of the Council deck, representing a challenge the players need to meet as a group by contributing one of their unique workers. If all players send the required worker, everyone gets a bonus. If any player or players decide not to send the worker, those players receive a penalty and no one else gets the bonus.

The next phase of the round is the Supply phase. Here, a number of cards will be flipped over representing various assets the players might be able to collect – resources, bonus workers, special actions, and even bonus points. Players will then secretly bid for turn order to select from the revealed cards, bidding at least one of their workers and any number of their resources. Each worker in a player’s pool has an influence number – and these in turn vary from nation to nation – that will be added to the bid. After bids are revealed, players will select one of the available supply cards – or the first player token – in bid value order, highest first and working their way down.

After collecting supplies and benefits, players will move to the action phase. Here, they will place an available astronaut not used during the Council or Supply phases to take actions. Each astronaut is limited to certain action spaces on the board, and once placed may block other astronauts from going to the same location depending on player count. Actions will allow players to do a variety of things, from collecting resources, selecting development cards, completing development cards, adding constructions to their player board, and more. Throughout this phase players have the opportunity to reach certain milestones – be the first to complete a certain number or color of development cards, complete all personal structures, be the first to the top of a prestige track, etc. – which will grant them end game points.

Finally, after all actions are taken, players will reclaim their astronauts from the board and will, depending on the structures they completed, generate resources or advance along a prestige track for points.

At the end of the 10th round players will add up their points from milestones, development cards, prestige track positions, and other bonuses, and determine which nation is the victor.

01:40:14 – Review

01:58:20 – Ratings

ReRoll

02:08:46 – Pipeline [Buy] – Capstone Games; Designer: Ryan Courtney; Art: Ian O’Toole;

Check out our original review for Pipeline during Episode 150.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.

Show Notes

Banter

Plays

News

Godspeed [Buy]

ReRoll

Gameplay Photos

Episode 303: Tag Team

Episode 302: Shackleton Base

Major Announcement