Beyond Humanity: Astrominers (2022)

“Beyond Humanity: Astrominers” is a board game for 2 to 4 players (up to 6 with an expansion) in which players manage competing groups of space miners extracting minerals from the asteroid belt. The challenge comes in planning how to manage your personnel and resources through a variety of missions to extract minerals and outmaneuver the competition. Build the wealth of your Corporation, and fuel financial and material success. Be careful to not be left behind, for to the victor go the spoils. According to the current scientific knowledge of potential space mining missions, players extract seven resources: Water, Xenon, Plasteel, Tungsten, Nickel, Palladium, and Gold, on three different types of asteroids: S-Type, C-Type, and M-Type. The game uses a collection of custom six-sided dice (7 for each player) with icons representing four types of workers: miners, automatons, geologists and inspectors. Workers availability is determined by the dice rolls each round, and a skillful management of those worker dice is necessary for effective resource extraction. Players draw Mission cards to their hand and then perform the Missions by placing the Mission card on the Mining Barge in the Dock and gradually filling its fields with worker dice. Order cards are first drawn to the player hand by placing a die with a geologist icon on the Refinery field, and then redeemed at the end of the round by paying the cost indicated on it to receive the victory points marked on the card. In addition, the game features a resource exchange, an Achievement set collection and a set of Executive Cards, providing more possible actions and ways to victory. Orders, Missions, Achievements, and gathered resources are the means to collect Victory Points.