A few days ago we got together with a couple of our heavy strategy buddies and tackled one of our new favorites- Galactic Cruise! It was a solid three hours of choices, cruise ships, and crumbly muffins. Don’t worry, we vacuumed the table afterwards. 😊

At a Glance…

PB&J Muffins

I am a child when it comes to my never-ending love of all things pb&j related. These muffins are so delightful, and one of our friends that afternoon said ‘they taste like a sandwich’. I immediately said ‘thank you! 😀’ and then was like, wait…🤔, was that a compliment? He assured me it was. Minimalist Baker did it again with these guys. Super simple, but so satisfying. I’ll admit I use a *generous* *heaping* teaspoon when it comes to adding the pb&j swirl into the muffin mix. They end up gigantic and gooey. Perfect. Ya gotta try these!

Galactic Cruise

Galactic Cruise quickly rose to the top of our informal rankings and is currently on our 10×10. We backed all the things on kickstarter, which was a bit risky with a new designer/publisher, and man did it pay off! These guys knocked it out of the park with design, production, and fun! It’s a gigantic box, partly because it’s so well organized with Game Trayz inserts. It also came with delightful things like an employee badge, a letter from the CEO, and our own employee handbook, aka an amazing player aid. Our friends kept asking, ‘how do you do…’ or ‘what is…’, and I’d say, ya know…that’s actually in your handbook.

Production aside, the game is totally worth the time investment. It feels like a Lacerda game in some ways, with the clean design system. In it, you’re trying to build up your cruise ships by getting the blueprints, getting the resources, attracting passengers, etc. to go on your cruise. You also need to get your cruise director to reserve your itinerary, and we have affectionately and forever dubbed our cruise director meeple ‘Sharri’, after our cruise consultant IRL. You do this with worker placement and a super fun bumping system where other people can bump you out. You can also build up a series of cogs to let you access multiple actions from a single point. There are tricky, tight times where you struggle to get money or resources, but overall I love how they make it doable to get the things you need. Usually I try to get all my ships ready before launching so I can make the most of scoring the ships. It often pays off, but this time it didn’t and I sadly ran out of time to launch my third ship. That’s ok, cause I’m getting a rematch in a couple of weeks! If you like long but fulfilling games with great theme, check this one out!

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].