With its varied complexities and styles, board gaming can resemble a ladder. You can go up, reaching for more involved experiences, or head down to the simpler, but no less entertaining, rungs bustling with party games. Today, we’re tying this concept to a theme, and that theme is Light Science Fiction.
In these articles, we’ll touch on great games across genres and weights that are all centered around our favorite black void. The goal here is that you’ll be able to 
start with games here, in this article, to get newer players to your table. Maybe you’re a diehard euro fan that wants more folks for your Voidfall epics, or you’re keen to build the best Spacecorp, but complex titles leave your friends befuddled and reaching for the remote instead. This here’s a solution, a way to get folks into the hobby that’s fun for them and you.
We’ll be exploring four categories in a light, medium, and complex weight: euros, war games (broadly classed here as conflict-oriented titles), miniatures, and campaign/narrative games. We’ll throw in roughly three apiece in each section, giving you some variety to select for taste (not everyone loves a deck builder). So there you have it.
Presenting, with no further ado, the Sci-Fi Board Game Ladder. Climb it to reach sci-fi complexity, or find your comfortable spot and play the days away. There’s no wrong rung, friends, so read on and find some space-based fun.
Light Science Fiction Euro Games
Short of party games like, say, Star Trek Fluxx, we’re diving in at the ladder’s bottom with some excellent lighter fare. First off, Space Base makes for an enduring start to anyone’s collection (or a great gift meant to entice a space-curious pal into tabletop gaming). Play flies around with little down time, as, like Catan, one player rolls dice and everyone benefits. You’ll buy cards with the resources from those rolls, building up an engine with easy to understand, but juicy strategic choices. After an hour of wild combos, you’ll count up the points and look at your sci-fi menagerie, then pour another round and play again.
Star Realms and Race for the Galaxy, the other two games in this section, are similarly easy to get into (Star Realms even offers a beginner edition for younger gamers). The former pits you and another player in a deck-building duel, where you’ll acquire cards from a center market row, set up combos, and attempt to reduce your opponent’s Authority (read: life) to zero. At first, you’ll swing at each other with starship hammers like a couple of clumsy toddlers, but by the end of
your first game, you’ll see opportunities for synergy and strategy, and that’s when Star Realms gets you. With expansions aplenty (or alternate versions, like the Star Wars Deck-building Game), Star Realms is an easy-to-pick-up, tough-to-put-down card battler that’s perfect for siblings, warring couples, or a shadowy figure in the bar waiting to challenge passers-by to a duel.
Race for the Galaxy is a smidge heavier than its pals, if only because your action choices are broader. See, your goal here is to build a galactic empire efficiently, while paying attention to your opponents. That latter bit is key, as Race for the Galaxy’s main feature is an action selection mechanic that sees your opponents getting a ‘lesser’ version of the action you take on your turn, and you on theirs. You’ll want to gain cards, produce resources, settle worlds, and score points by consuming those resources, and knowing when an opponent might let you do something on their turn lets you optimize your own. Learning to parse the iconography is the hardest barrier here, but once you’re set, Race for the Galaxy brings zero-to-Imperial in under an hour with up to four players, and is an easy pack for vacations, even to outer space.
Light Science Fiction War Games
If you like the concept of Star Wars: Armada but want more in a single box, then GMT’s TALON is your lighter, slicker sci-fi space battler. Showcasing a struggle between small fleets, TALON has you managing power, shields, weapons, and all the jazz you could want as you maneuver your ships to obliterate the enemy. Black holes, worm holes, and the holes your lasers punch in the enemy’s hull make appearances across twelve scenarios in the base game, and an optional campaign. Dice complement buttery smooth play spiced with critical hits and devious opportunities. No hidden information makes solitaire viable too. If you’re itching to dip your toe into sci-fi war games, TALON’s a great way to start.
But if you’re a boots on the ground sort of player, then Night of Man, by Flying Pig Games, is a simpler Combat Commander but with… aliens! We’re talking vehicles and troopers in tactical-level engagements played without dice, where cards drive the action. You’ll have a hand to manage, a hover tank, and a chance to save the 
world across a whole bunch of scenarios. FPG’s quality production looks great on the table, and the lighter rules, while still a war game, offer an easier on-ramp. Also, did I mention hover tanks?
Speaking of big tanks, you’ll find a great one by reaching back a few decades. Released in 1977 and updated many times since, Steve Jackson’s O.G.R.E. remains a punchy classic. A giant, high-tech tank controlled by one player against a swarm of lesser humans and units controlled by the other. It’s asymmetric warfare done with gusto and a huge box. Yet the gameplay is easy to grok, with dice, terrain, and clean hexes giving opportunity for rampant destruction. The later editions offer miniature options, pocket travel versions, and thousands of counters to explore one scenario at a time. Want to get your kids into war gaming? This here’s an open door.
Light Sci-Fi Miniatures Games
Just because something has a bunch of neat figures to play with doesn’t make it complicated, and nowhere is that more evident than with Snap Ship Tactics, a game that brings your imagination to the tabletop in an awesomely tactile way. See, you’re literally building your fleet here, with every piece adding functionality to your ship via associated cards. Create a lumbering behemoth crawling with lasers, or a nimble fighter squadron to dance around your opponent. You’ll chuck dice, dodge asteroids, and line up kill shots . . . or just spend an hour building the ships themselves, because it’s that addicting. Begin with the starter box and go ad hoc after that.
Taking the thrilling Star Wars space battles to your tabletop, X-Wing has you building a starfighter squad and hunting down your opposition. A game where tight maneuvers and special abilities are king, X-Wing’s slim ruleset gives way to huge possibilities. While famous faces from books and movies help to draw in players, what’ll keep this game on your table is the strategy in building a team, and the tactics in deploying them. Fooling an opponent into a hard left turn that brings them into your wingman’s crosshairs never fails to delight. Various starter sets let you pick your era, classic, or current, and you can expand to your heart’s content from there, either bit by bit or with a big collection.
Diving into an established miniatures game can be intimidating. Not so with Halo: Flashpoint, a 2024 release that keeps itself fast and fun. Figures come assembled, and snappy cardboard terrain looks great on the included map. As a skirmish title, both sides keep their armies slim, putting more weight on tactical choice than purchased models. Nevertheless, unique abilities, equipment, custom dice, and easy to incorporate expansions make Halo a game that’ll grow with you as you play. That matches run less than 90 minutes make this an any-night-of-the-week event, crucial for games that get better as you play them more and more. Dive in, Master Chief.
Light Science Fiction Campaign Games
A recent tabletop trend is adding campaign modes to every game, or at least some way for past plays to affect future ones. The Crew and its less space-based sequel, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea offer one of the simplest, but by no means easiest, campaign options you’ll find. A deck of cards, communication limits, and a trick-taking core make The Crew easy to play anywhere, giving you a chance to work through its specific missions (this player gets these cards, that player only takes yellow, and so on with increasing challenge) no matter where you happen to be. Fast, easy to teach, and addictive, The Crew is worth keeping in your bag no matter where you go.
The Mandalorian: Adventures uses its campaign as a slow burn, engaging tutorial, taking you through a series of cooperative missions (some spiced with hidden agenda cards) that end with a bevy of compelling, card-driven tactical skirmish missions on multiple maps. Once you’ve wrapped the campaign, you end up with
four maps and a slew of characters to take into battle, more with the new expansion. It’s a nifty hero-driven clash perfect for fans of the show and their families, or anyone that’d like a lighter weight skirmish Star Wars title. Ramping up from here to something like Imperial Assault would be a breeze.
Lastly, Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz concludes our lighter set by offering a branching narrative campaign, wide variances in characters, and enough challenge to keep players engaged. We wrote about it more here, as an entry-level sci-fi ‘dungeon crawler’-style game, this is a solid choice to bring new players on board. Then, once they’re hooked on squashing aliens and buying better gear, you’ll have your crew for the bigger games to come.
That wraps our look at light science fiction games that ought to be on your shelf. The next piece in this series will dig into medium-weight fare, before we get to the chunky ones at the top. As ever with tabletop gaming, the most complex doesn’t mean best: every group’s going to be different. With these titles, you’ll definitely be having fun.
Read our previous article here!
