Critical Reviews - Sky Traders

Steampunk is a very popular sub culture in the gaming world and among nerds, geeks, and all types in between.  However, despite it's popularity, there aren't as many games, let alone good games, that one would think they'd find when perusing the shelves of their local game shop. Enter Sky Traders, Fantasy Flight Games' latest release, where trading goods, influencing others, and downright attacking other airships is completely encouraged!

Fantasy Flight bills this as a game of commerce and inrtigue set in the age of skyships.  There are a ton of components, goods to buy, crew to hire (and fire), sludge to cart off, and the illegal "drink" known as Grog to hijack and make windfall profits from!

But does the game pull it all off in a way that makes you want to keep command of the skies?  Check out our video and read more below to find out!

The first thing you'll notice, apart from the sheer amount of cardboard pieces to punch out is that the artwork is beautiful and the playing pieces are wonderfully unique!  Each player gets a playmat representing their Skyship and a character "bust" that reperesents where their ship is on the playing board.  These busts are very detailed, wonderfully creative, and very fun to move around the board.

Speaking of the board, as you see in our video, it's created at the beginning of each game from a set number of hex tiles, so every game is different, even with the small amount of tiles. The artwork on these is beautiful and adds to the flare of the game very well.

Players vie for "Influence" to become the new master of the Sky Guild.  To gain influence, well, you do it the old fashioned way, you buy it!  You have to trade goods, both legal and illegal, to gain money, and then use that money to buy your way up the ladder so to speak!

There is an element of combat in the game, both with players attacking each other, as well as "Ill Wind" cards that reperesent the governmental characters and other Wind Pirates that may attack you.  Once nice thing, is nothing gaurantees you safety! Some cards impact you if you have legal goods on your vessel, others if you have illegal.  Some hunt you down if you are wanted and some will force you to ditch goods over the side to avoid a hassel! There's a small stack of these Ill Wind cards, but their effects are well done.

In addition, you can hire crew to help you fight, help you hold more, and hinder your opponents.  Each city you land in allows you to trade goods, hire and fire crew, gain phlogiston (the magical liquid that moves your ships) and upgrade your ships.  In addition, there is a special city that randomly sells certain goods while buying others, and it changes each time a player goes there.  

Finally, there are Zephyrglyphs that allow you to teleport from one glyph to the next, so depending on where they are on the board, they can be placed to your advantage... assuming you have them when the tiles are distributed at the beginning of the game to place them as such.