Space Base

Number of Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 60 Minutes
Recommended Ages: 14+

As the commodore of a Space Base, your job is to draft new ships into your fleet to work and patrol the 12 sectors under your watch. Use cargo vessels, mining ships, and deploy carriers to earn profits and expand your influence. Only one Space Base commodore will be promoted to U.E.S. Admiral of the Fleet!

Space Base is a dice game where players draft ships into their Space Base. Every turn, no matter whose turn, players harvest rewards from their Space Base, whether those rewards are an increase in your baseline income, credits for the next turn, influence or some other powerful effect that will lead you to victory. Space Base has you involved and engaged on every player’s turn, from the first roll of the dice to the last!

• Dice Game where players build their own chart of rewards
• Fantastic Artwork by Chris Walton set in a hopeful and humorous world
• Easily taught with rich depth of play
• All players engaged on every turn and every roll of the dice!

Contents:

• 204 cards
• 45 wooden cubes
• 5 player boards
• 1 rulebook
• 2 dice
  

  
  
  

  What People Are Saying

  Dice Tower Top 10 of 2018 — Tom Vasel also included Space Base on his Top 10 Essential Games, Top 10 Introductory Games, and Top 10 Games for Sleepy People lists.

  "Space Base will sneak up on you. When you look at the cards, and you see how the dice work, you understand that basic die probability is at work here. Every purchase — looking at potential rewards in coins, income, or points — must be carefully considered. In the end, it is a beautiful puzzle." — Meeple Mountain (Would Recommend)

  "Space Base is an unbelievably easy game to teach and learn... Those incredibly minor criticisms aside, we all had a tremendously good time. It's a natural fit for the lighter, faster gameplay that many game nights are composed of." — Gameosity

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  Game Mechanisms

  Dice Rolling Two dice hit the table every turn. You can use them together as a sum or split them into two individual results — triggering two different sectors instead of one. This choice alone adds meaningful texture to every roll: sometimes the sum hits a high-value sector; sometimes splitting gives you two modest payouts that add up to more. Dice rolling is the engine that drives everything, and because every player benefits from every roll, there's no downtime between turns.

  Engine Building You start with a basic set of ships across your 12 sectors. As you draft and deploy new ships, you replace weaker ones — pushing the old ships into a "deployed" state where they generate passive income for you whenever opponents roll your sector numbers. The game's momentum is built through this layering: early turns feel modest, but a well-constructed fleet in the mid-game generates coins, income, and points seemingly on its own. Building that engine efficiently is the core strategic puzzle.

  Open Drafting A shared market of ships is available to all players each turn. Ships are tiered by cost, and the market refreshes as cards are purchased. Everyone sees the same options, which means timing matters — a card that's perfect for your sector 5 might be exactly what your opponent needs too. The open market creates natural tension without hidden information, and reading what your opponents are building is just as important as knowing what you want next.

  Random Production Your income — the credits you collect at the start of each turn — grows as you upgrade your fleet. Credits aren't spent on dice rolls; they accumulate and reset each round, giving you a spending budget that scales with how well you've built. Managing the balance between immediate coin payouts (spent this turn) and long-term income increases (permanent) is one of the game's central decisions, and players who ignore their income track tend to fall behind in the late game when big ships get expensive.