Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare Review
Let’s be plain: If you have ever dreamed of stepping into the role of Commander Adama, Ender Wiggin, Captain Benjamin Sisko, Admiral Ackbar, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart (er . . . Jason Nesmith?), or any number of other space-faring legends, then the commands and colors game Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare (2019), designed by Richard Borg and published by PSC Games, could just be the possibility space you’ve been waiting for. This game has it all: fleets of capital ships (including dreadnoughts, carriers, and command ships), scores of fighters, and the command cards and lazzzzzors to back them up. In the case of a hull breach and loss of containment, avoid the common mistake and remember that you will be blown out into space, not sucked out into space.
KeeganKing: Hey Pete, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
PeteSteele: A firefighter.
KeeganKing: After that.
PeteSteele: Board game reviewer.
KeeganKing: Before that.
PeteSteele: Oh, you mean what did I really want to be when I grew up?
KeeganKing: Yes.
PeteSteele: A starship captain.
KeeganKing: There’s a lot of leeway there. Starship captain like Battlestar Galactica or starship captain like Galaxy Quest?
PeteSteele: Depends on my level of caffeination, why?
KeeganKing: Seems like an important distinction. Anyway, why a captain? Why not an admiral commanding fleets of ships?
PeteSteele: Well, maybe because I like the hands-on approach—in the trenches. That may be one of the reasons why I like board games. But, yeah, I could do admiral. Why?
KeeganKing: Well, I know you love space and spaceships, and all things space and spaceships, so why don’t you play Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare, and then do a review?
PeteSteele: Dude, I’m in the middle of five other reviews right now. Why don’t you do this one—*sees game* holy crap! I need to order five copies of this right away!
KeeganKing: Well, why don’t you start with one copy?
PeteSteele: No, I need all of these little space ships, all of them. Every single one! I’m gonna invite 50 friends over and we’re gonna have the biggest game EVER! Bring out the folding tables!
KeeganKing: Just . . . write the review.
PeteSteele: Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare, at a time of its release in 2019, was the latest in the long running series of commands and colors games by Richard Borg, with this particular iteration being published by PSC Games.
The contents of a box of Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare includes almost as many joyful play-things as an entire aisle of Toys “R” Us of the 1990s. Does anyone remember that? Or the entire contents of KB Toys. Now I’m really dating myself. Kmart? Lechmere? Sears and Roebuck mail order catalog? I’m getting sad and just a little nostalgic. Let’s move on
Here is what comes in the box:
92 ships in total
6 red battleships, 1 red command ship, 12 red cruisers, 12 red destroyers, 15 red fighters, 6 green battleships, 1 green command ship, 12 green cruisers, 12 green destroyers, and 15 green fighters
92 ship bases
154 ship poles
12 combat dice
60 command cards
50 combat cards
12 task force cards
2 player boards
2 reference boards
36 star tokens
11 red alert tokens
3 cloaking device tokens
50 assorted ship tokens
16 red maker tokens,
16 green marker tokens
18 space terrain tiles
6 starship debris tiles
1 cloth game board that measures almost 3.5 feet by 5 feet
1 rulebook
And a 10,000,000-unit standing army of robotic ninja soldiers that can materialize out of the ground and will follow your every command
Okay, maybe not the last bit, but it kinda fits, does it not? No? Okay, let me know in the comments below which IP it does fit (hint: there is a correct answer).
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare, which can be played by an impressive spread of two to eight players, sends players off to slug it out in space. Depending on the exact player count and configuration, Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare can be played as a competitive, team-based, or one-versus-all game. By playing the command cards available to them on a given turn, players may maneuver their fleets of plastic ships on one or more sections of the board and chuck battle dice to resolve combat quickly and efficiently. Ships’ abilities can be augmented and altered by playing bonus combat cards. Using star tokens allows for the further enhancement of ships’ powers and abilities.
Examples of Command Cards
The base game of Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare comes with a number of scenarios. On top of that, each expansion (more on them later) comes with several additional scenarios—each with their own objectives, win conditions, and lose conditions. However, most scenarios have a win state that is based around gaining a certain number of victory points by destroying multiple enemy ships (with each ship having their own point value based on various strengths and abilities).
Squadrons of Team Green and Team Red fighters face off in an asteroid field orbiting a gas giant while their respective carriers remain on the outskirts.
With all of this plastic, cloth, cardboard, and paper stuffed inside of this really rather heavy duty box, it’s almost too easy to forgive the total lack of unified theme or purpose to go along with these toys.
The red ships are fighting green ships because, well, we really have no idea. Is it a butter side up, butter side down sort of thing? Because they look different? Well, let’s be honest, that’s been a “good enough” reason for humanity for the last 10,000 years, but you would think a game designer could come up with something better. One could argue that the lack of story gives players the freedom to come up with their own stories for why factions are fighting, but there are no prompts to encourage players to do so, and the artwork hardly models original or creative thinking.
If there is one message from the artwork in this game it is, “spaceships shoot at each other in space to blow each other up . . . because . . . that’s . . . what spaceships . . . do.” I would almost say that the artwork, narrative story, and clear purpose in this game is a combination of the 1997 Starship Troopers film (side note: Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel on which the film is based is far superior) and the very real United States Space Force if the comparisons weren’t so ridiculous.
Team Red is supplied with groups of convoy ships.
If you ever had a friend or a sibling with whom you both shared a love of action figures, micromachines, army figures (or the equivalent), and set them all up for an epic battle while discussing the complex systems and rules by which you determined who would win in this titanic contest, and then on round two you disagreed about these specific rules because, of course, the rules were under-developed and not play-tested, and your game quickly devolved into a screaming match with the picking up of your figurines and throwing them into your opponent’s figurines in the hopes of knocking them over . . . well, then you’ll know exactly what this game feels like. In a word: underdeveloped. It may be pretty, beautiful, and full of possibility, but it will leave you wanting more. And not necessarily in a I-want-to-play-more type of way, but in a I-wish-the-game-designers-had-done-more-to-help-me-feel-drawn-into-this-world type of way. Again: underdeveloped.
Team Green moves to defend their space station from Team Red’s attack.
I would have loved a version of Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare where ships lost combat abilities with the advent of battle damage, tactical maneuvering involved slightly more than a list of exceptions of line of sight and to-hit rules, and thematic narrative elements elicited some sort of emotion with the loss of a ship. But nope. This game had none of that. Complex starship battles are reduced down to the simplicity of the plastic miniatures that represent them; tactical maneuvering, which matters in this game, is boring; and there is no emotional attachment to any ship other than the victory point value it is worth.
SarahVasa: You made me play this game with you once . . .
PeteSteele: Yes, you did not seem happy.
SarahVasa: I wasn’t. This isn’t a game for me. Never again, please.
PeteSteele: Can you say more?
SarahVasa: *pained look* I mean . . . I don’t like miniatures, so already I was hesitant as soon as I saw my fleet, or whatever you call it. But then you have this fairly beautiful game mat and you set up and the rules make sense—for how big of a box it is, it’s pretty approachable—but then you’re just attacking for the sake of attacking. There was no story. I had no buy-in. I felt like I was babysitting an 8-year-old boy who was trying to play make-believe, but I couldn’t understand him or this fantasy world he had put together.
PeteSteele: Not sure why you need to gender the thing. 8-year-old girls can like spaceships with lazzzors, too.
SarahVasa: *eyeroll* Sure, but that’s not the point. The point is it had very little creativity and for such a large box, I was disappointed there wasn’t *gestures wildly* more.
PeteSteele: Totally fair. The reality is that I have a soft spot in my heart for all things spaceships and the blowing up of spaceships . . . fictionally, that is.
SarahVasa: Fine, it’s just not my thing. Maybe your internal creativity was able to make up for what happened in front of us.
PeteSteele: Despite the underdeveloped game system being . . . well . . . a thing, the production is pretty darn great. Almost too great. Great enough for me to forgive the fact that this particular iteration of the commands and colors system really adds nothing new to the genre. That being said, the game is so over-produced and so large that it is hard to get it to the table, if only because finding a game table large enough to accommodate the game is a challenge. In fact, the cloth game “board” is large enough to serve as a makeshift tablecloth for a family dinner.
Family dinner with a Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare tablecloth.
As mentioned above, PSC Games has published a number expansions for Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare and I heard that more had been planned, but may have been canned due to SARS-CoV-2, something else entirely, or a combination of the two. That being said, the current expansions are:
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Logistics & Space Platform Escalation Pack(2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Carrier Starship Escalation Pack (2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Dreadnought Starship Escalation Pack (2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Vice Admiral Flagship Escalation Pack (2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Quartermaster's Escalation Pack (2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Meteor Storm Escalation Pack (2019)
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare – Space Rift Escalation Pack (2019)
If you love the base game, I highly recommend all of the expansions because they add something to the game. That being said, none of the expansions fix (or even attempt to fix) the underdeveloped core mechanics of the base game. They are simply more. So, if you love the game, then these give you more to love.
Even with the clunky mechanics, the game can (and does) shine with higher player counts. If you can brave the logistics of bringing a group of six or eight together around a table of Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare, it’ll absolutely be worth it. In the case of eight players, each side of the table will have three players playing as commodores and one player as a fleet admiral who issues orders to be carried out.
A Team Green dreadnaught with two of its CAP fighters flying alongside to provide the behemoth with near impenetrable defense.
So, even with the sins and lack of possibilities the game fails to deliver on, I am recommending it for people who can swing the MSRP of $130.00 and love to play with toys. The scope of this game, as well as the number and size of toys, make this game worthy of distinction, thus we are awarding this game the Seal of Distinction. However, it certainly can’t be played in any cafe I’ve ventured into. I also like imagining ways to improve upon this game with House Rules, although I realize that is not everybody’s cup of tea. Try adding rules and stories as you like, and see what you and your friends come up with.
I would also say that Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare (and most commands and colors games) really come alive when you have teams that are constrained by giving their teammates only partial information. And don’t forget, the components are fantastic. So, even with the most generic spaceship theme imaginable, for fans of spaceships in science fiction, it’s still pretty great.
Reference sheets with unit stats and abilities.
Since we have been hot and cold (or cold and then hot) on Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare, we feel it is important to mention a few alternatives. If you absolutely love the mechanics and philosophy behind commands and color games, but would like a greater range of expansions, rules, and support options, look no further than Richard Borg’s Memoir '44, which was first published in 2004 by Days of Wonder, but is still in print and almost certainly available at a game store or online retailer near you. While the miniatures are smaller, they are still, indeed, great fun to play with. If the miniatures themselves are less important to you than the immersive story and theme, combined with the commands and colors system, then we would recommend Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles (2021), published by GMT Games.
However, if you love spaceships, can’t get enough spaceships, and must have spaceships, but are looking for something with a greater depth of story and granular decision-making, while still having a reasonable number of ships at your command, then we highly recommend Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy (2020), designed by Touko Tahkokallio and published by Lautapelit.fi. Please keep in mind, however, that each of our recommendations has a growing price tag: the base game of Memoir '44 retails for around $50.00 while Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy will easily cost you three times that.
KeeganKing: Would you rather be a game reviewer or a starship captain at this point?
PeteSteele: They are basically the same thing.
KeeganKing: Come again?
PeteSteele: Wargaming is war planning.
KeeganKing: I am almost entirely positive you just made that up.
PeteSteele: I got it from my guy at the Pentagon. They swear by it.
KeeganKing: Your “guy at the Pentagon.” Interesting. The claim is almost certainly false, but almost impossible to falsify.
PeteSteele: The art of deception and misdirection.
KeeganKing: Are you aware that you would be less boring if you were less ridiculous?
PeteSteele: I can’t talk right now. I am planning the invasion of the Moonrakers bases on the Mars moon Deimos.
KeeganKing: Those game systems are completely incompatible.
PeteSteele: Bathtub campaign?
KeeganKing: No captain's chair for you!
PeteSteele: I shall be avenged.
Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare (2019) earns our Seal of Distinction!