ORBIT (“Orbital Race Between Interstellar Tourists”)

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Bitewing Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-60 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/46hj7Ou
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Come one, come all to the Silo System, the beating heart of our galaxy, for the race of the decade! We’ve recruited the best tourists in all the cosmos: travel-hardened explorers who will compete in the ultimate contest. These pilots must race to visit all the planets in the Silo System, surfing upon orbital paths, teleporting between hyper jump portals, and beaming through hyperspace. Enjoy your dream vacation on one of our luxurious planets or lavish space stations as you witness the ultimate interstellar marathon. All the eyes of the galaxy will be watching this decennial event celebrating the unification of our systems under Silo Supremacy.

ORBIT (Orbital Race Between Interstellar Tourists) is a 24th century tactical space race with simple turns, yet challenging possibilities. Players compete to visit all planets of the system, then return to their starting planet first.  On your turn, you play a card, activate its actions in any order, then draw back up to your hand size. Cards allow you to do a combination of things: move your ship, collect energy for bonus movement, advance planets along their orbit, or even reverse the orbital direction of a planet.

Players can enjoy a randomized set-up across two unique game boards. The game also includes a few variants: two-player dual ship mode, four-player partnership mode, and a stationary planet.  ORBIT is the third and concluding game in the Cosmic Silos Trilogy by Reiner Knizia.

(FWIW, I have been calling this the SOAK series – I had not heard the “ Cosmic Silos Trilogy” moniker to date, so I made up my own… SOAK: Series Of Acronymed Knizia’s…  Also  CST just doesn’t have a good ring to it.)

To start, choose which side of the gameboard to play on – each shows eight orbits in different colors.  The planets are placed on their corresponding paths randomly with their directional arrow pointing along the path.  The 30 space station tokens are mixed in a bag and then randomly placed on the marked spots on the board.  In reverse player order, players choose a color and take the player board of that color, place that color spaceship on the planet of the same color and then get a hand of 3 cards. The player board has areas to track which planets you have already visited, your hand size limit and your energy capacity.

The general form of a turn is simple.  Play a card from your hand, then resolve the actions on the card, discard the card when done and then draw up to your hand-size limit shown on your player board.  The cards often allow you to do a number of things:

• Move your ship – the number seen at the top of the card tells you how many little steps your ship moves; you can also spend energy cubes for extra spaces
• Move planets – if there are planet icon(s) on the card, each moves a number of steps equal to the number on the card.  If a ship is docked on a planet, it moves with that planet!
• Reverse planetary movement – change the arrow to point the other way
• Gain energy cubes 
• Finish a mission – if your ship ends its turn on a planet you haven’t been to before, remove the corresponding marker from your player board; if there is a special action icon on this marker, you may apply that action as well
• Activate a Space Station – if you land on a space station, you might get an upgrade to your hand size or energy cube limit OR get special actions as shown on the token.

When the turn is over, play passes clockwise. The game ends immediately when a player returns to their home planet after removing all the planet mission markers from their board.

There an extra module that can be added to the game as well:

• PRISM – a 9th planet, fixed in location, is added to the game – it must be visited in order to win

There are also apparently other expansion modules available, but I do not have those and thus have not tried them out.  Interestingly, the rules for the expansion are included in the base rulebook but the bits are not.  

My thoughts on the game

ORBIT is apparently the conclusion of the SOAK series, the third game in the trilogy.  My reviews of the series start here though – in part because this was the first game to arrive here and the first to hit the table.  The first two games are re-vamps of earlier Knizia titles, and this one appears to be brand new.  

In this race game, it’s all about being efficient with your cards and planning out a nice route to follow.  Sure, it helps to be prepared for surprising movements as the other players will have their own plans in place, and things will often happen that you are not expecting.  

The board at first looks confusing as the planet orbits do not circle around a central sun but rather each meanders its own path in the cosmos.  Also, while we’re on thematic suspension of disbelief – don’t let your brain get too hung up on the concept that these planets can put themselves in reverse and start moving the other direction.  Just roll with it.

Having a larger hand size will help as it’ll give you more options to have “just the right” card in your hand when you need it.  Having an increase in energy cubes is also good because sometimes you just need that extra move or two to let you jump onto a planet.

Of course, if you finish a mission, I might counsel you to take a break from planning.  As you have to be docked there until your next turn, it is quite likely that you will be zoomed across the universe by other players who are more than happy to move you to the most-remote part of the board that they can find.

When the end of the game draws near, the table will likely conspire against anyone who only has one planet left to visit – moving that planet away from the potential winner whenever possible.

Regardless of where you are in the game arc, this is the sort of game where your brain might drift off or you’ll check some emails on your phone.  The reason for this is that it’s nearly impossible to do any planning until your turn begins due to the fact that the planets can and will move all over the place in between your turns.  Until you can see the configuration of planets when your turn starts, there’s not a lot to do.    However, as most turns only take a short amount of time, your turn comes back around to you fairly quickly – so players stay mostly engaged in the game, albeit in spurts.  The game length feels a smidge too long for the game, and it can get frustrating near the end when you are chasing down your seventh alien planet or trying to get back to your home planet.  This doesn’t happen earlier in the game as you have multiple targets and it’s likely that one of those is close by.

The game works well, and it is a nice fit for the casual game night – though it risks outstaying its time on the table.  The rules included for the Nebula expansion (again, kinda weird to have rules in the box for components not included) do promise increased interaction and options – but again, I don’t have those pieces, so those are only theoretical thoughts at the moment.   (Though, you can at least substitute extra bits for the nebula markers and play that…)

Frustratingly, it feels like those expansions were meant to be part of the “full” game as the Nebula icon even shows up on cards in the base deck – and well, again, that’s weird for an expansion to be sold separately but have rules in the main box.  (Research has shown me that the expansion was included for initial KS backers – and that makes some sense – but still, it’s a bit frustrating to be teased with this in the rules…. As well as making me panic for a bit that my base game had somehow been shipped to me with missing punchboards!)

The box art is great, and the bits are generally good – though I wish that the planets were somehow different. First off, they are quite large based on the spaces on the board, and they don’t actually fit when right next to other planets.  Second, it can be hard to see the arrow at times as ships often obscure the teeny white arrow – and this leads to a bunch of peering at the pieces, moving ships around, etc.  

As it stands, while a fine game experience, there maybe isn’t quite enough there for the regular game group to come back to this – with the base rules, it’s a bit too long for what you get, and the only included module (the 8th planet) would only make the game take longer.  If it were up to me, I’d actually want the game to go the other direction; maybe needing only 6 of the 7 planets before needing to head back home.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mitchell T: I have played Orbit around 10 times, almost exclusively at the 2 player count, and one time with 3. I very much enjoyed Orbit as a 2 player game,. It’s fun to scope out the networks, the movement, the junctions, and some of the combination moves that allow you to sync up with the planets. It doesn’t last long and it’s a rewarding experience when you accomplish your objectives.  Orbit is a nice blend of light play and tactical consideration. The only expansion I tried was the nebula module and it is fine, but unessential.   

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  
• I like it. Dale Y, Mitchell T (almost love it)
• Neutral. John P, Steph
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/46hj7Ou