Shackleton Base is a heavy eurogame about developing and operating a moon base. This is a worker placement game in which you build domes, attract employees, mine resources and make money. Every game there will be three corporations out of seven in play, and they determine the human enterprises happening on the moon. Working on projects for these corporations is how you score points.

 

Every round you draft cards which will decide the types of workers and resources you get, and also your turn order for the round. Workers come in three colours, red, yellow, and blue. If you place them on the main map to collect resources, the colours are important. Red workers collect money, yellow workers collect natural resources, and blue workers collect corporate specific resources. When you place workers to do construction, buy cards or perform corporate specific actions, their colours matter less, but you will get a bonus if you use the preferred colours. 

 

Only those three on the left are workers. The astronaut in white is in use when the space tourism company is in play. These are tourists and not workers. And they look impatient. You can almost see their frown. 

 

 

This is your player board. These tiles are domes, i.e. habitats you can build on the moon. You need to spend resources to build them, and once built, every round you need to pay for maintenance. When you build a dome, you place it on the main board. The spaces opened up on your player board become available accommodation for workers. Workers which are placed on the main board to collect resources will be attracted to domes, with priority given to players with the most domes where they work. When you attract these workers to your domes, they generate resources for you or give you discounts. Placing the right kind of workers in the right spots gives you various benefits, including end game points. 

 

This is the main game board. Every hex can fit six domes. Whoever is first to build in a hex must also build a solar panel. You want to build domes because they allow you to collect resources from the hexes. When you place a worker on the main board, he is placed facing a row of hexes. He collects resources from every hex in that row which has a dome. If you have a dome in a hex, you get the resource for free. If you don’t and you are making use of others’ domes, you have to pay them. Due to this mechanism, there is a tendency to want to build domes in straight lines. 

 

I placed a red worker here, and he is facing two occupied hexes, both with my (green) domes. 

 

Other than placing workers on the main map to gain resources, you can also place them here to perform three types of actions. Although the three action types are colour coded, you can use off-colour workers, just that you won’t get a bonus. Generally you try to use workers of the matching colours. The yellow action is for construction. The red action is for buying tech cards from one of the three corporations. These cards give you all sorts of benefits and actions. The blue action is called the corporate action. You get to perform actions associated with the corporations and with the reputation track. 

 

 

For work on the Shackleton Base to be viable, the three corporations must be able to run profitable businesses. You build the basic infrastructure on the moon base, and this infrastructure needs to serve a purpose. For new players, a specific combination of three companies is recommended – a mining company, a space tourism company, and a research company. Corporations all have these round blue tokens which can be placed onto the main board. They represent resources which are related to the corporations. When you use workers to collect resources from the main board, these are the corporation-specific resources you can collect. The mining company introduces Helium-3 to the game. The space tourism company introduces tourists to the game. 

 

All corporations come with a set of project cards, and at any time three are available for purchase. These cards are worth points, but more importantly they also offer actions and abilities which directly or indirectly score points for you. 

 

 

This is a mining corporation. When in play, Helium-3 will be mined on the moon. This corporation offers opportunities for players to trade resources for points. 

 

Shackleton Base is a development game. You need to build domes so that you can collect more resources every time you deploy a worker to the main board. You also want to attract these workers (whether placed by yourself or others) to come live in your domes. They give you benefits when they are placed in the right domes. You need to decide how many of the three companies you want to work with. It’s probably difficult to work with all three because you will be unfocused. Working with only one might not give you enough opportunities to score points. I think two is a good number, and you have to decide how much to get involved in each company. There is some cooperation among the players. When you are first to build in a hex, you know that solar panel you build can be used by others. Your opponents will be using your domes to collect resources, but you do get paid for this. When you place a worker on the main board, you have to consider whether this worker will later decide to live in your opponent’s dome. There are several interlocking aspects you have to think about. 

 

One thing I learned the hard way was I should have deliberately planned to attract yellow workers to my domes to give me maintenance fee discounts. I noticed that everyone did that. I spent a lot of money on maintenance because I did not have yellow workers on my board. I fell behind in developing basic infrastructure. You want to get many domes out there, because domes on the moon mean better efficiency in collecting resources, and also more space on your player board for workers. 

 

I decided to focus on space tourism. It was fun. I bought several project cards which made a good combo. Space tourism helped me score many points during the game. Unfortunately my weak infrastructure meant fewer points scored at the end of the game. I did not do well at the end.