Mag-Blast is a FUN game, each player has a command ship and a series of fleet ship's surrounding it. The idea is that you are trying to shoot down your opposing fleets and destroy the command ship. The last ship standing is the winner.
Whilst the game should normally be played fairly fast our first game did not flow well as people were getting to grips with the rules and what the various cards did. That said it was still good fun and I can see the potential of it once players are familiar with what they can do.
You place your fleet cards around your Command ship card and each fleet ship can fire once at an enemy ship. You can only target a ship on the same zone as the one firing which is where the ability to move you ships around can come in handy. You also need to make sure you have no gaps in your fleet where other players can then target your command ship directly.
To fire a ships turret you need to have a blast card with the appropriate coloured turret matching that of your ship. If you successfully hit the target ship the blast card is placed under that ship to show its accumulated damage. Once you have as much damage under your ship as it's hull strength is destroyed and placed in the discard pile.
You can reinforce your fleet by discard cards with resource markers either 3 with the same type of resource icon or 1 of each type. You can then draw a new fleet ship to be placed in a zone of your choice. You can have a Max of 3 fleet ships per zone.
You can have carriers that can launch squadrons these are very powerful as once used the squadron returns to your hand unlike blast cards. However, the damage they deal is temporary so if you do not destroy a ship with that damage it will be wasted. Squadrons can also be used to defend against other players squadrons and sometimes this results in both squadrons being discarded.
Overall this is a fun game and once familiar will be fast paced, the unique targeting system for blasts is that you have to make a suitable noise when attacking if you fail to make one the shot misses (as we were learning we skipped this.. we may have missed out on a vitally fun part of the game though)
The artwork on the cards is good and fits the theme perfectly. The quality of the card stock and manual are also very good.
This will be a worthwhile addition to my collection.
