Quantum

Quantum is a game of interstellar colonisation and warfare. The spaceships in the game are dice. Different die values represent spaceships of different classes. They have different speeds, strengths and special abilities. You goal is to be able to deploy all your influence cubes. You do this by establishing colonies on planets and by accumulating battle victories. 

The play area is set up based on the number of players. The planets have different numbers of spaces for colonies. Each planet has a colonisation value. To be able to establish a colony, your spaceships orthogonally adjacent to the planet must have a total value equal to this colonisation value. This is sometimes challenging to orchestrate. Pips on a spaceship represent speed, i.e. movement range. Each spaceship may move only once per turn. The pips also represent strength - the lower the value, the stronger the spaceship. 

During battle, both attacker and defender roll a die and add that value to their spaceship value. The player with the lower total wins the battle. If the attacker wins, the defender's spaceship is destroyed, and it is returned to the defender's hand. If the defender wins, no damage is done. The attacker's spaceship is unharmed. 

On your turn you can spend your action points on levelling up your tech die. Your tech die starts as a 1. When it reaches 6, you get to claim a new tech, and you reset your tech die. Techs can be ongoing or single-use. This one above, Intelligence, lets you colonise when your adjacent spaceship total is off by 1. 

One thing you can do is to reroll a die. This is effectively transforming a spaceship to a different class. Well, it is possible that you roll the same number. Then you have just wasted one action point. All six spaceship classes have their own unique abilities. For example the number 2's are transport ships. They can load one whole spaceship, move, then unload it. This effectively helps that other spaceship move further than it normally can. The number 3's are able to instantly switch places with another spaceship. 

This tech Ingenious lets you count diagonally adjacent spaceships for colonisation purposes

For our second game we used an alternative map with fewer planets, which meant more battles

This is a mid-weight strategy game. I must say how the dice are used is clever. The pips represent speed, strength and special ability at the same time. There is a natural trade-off between manoeuvrability and power. There are clever things you can do with the abilities of your spaceships. The game has interesting ideas. The rest of the game did not leave much of an impression on me. I feel I'm busy coordinating colonisation in the first half, and I know I need to fight more in the second half. Maybe I can win the game by accumulating enough battle victories. Maybe I can somehow reach yet another planet and colonise it without losing my spaceships in battle. Although there are interesting ideas in the tactical aspect of the game, I don't find the strategic layer engaging. Maybe my problem is I cannot imagine dice as spaceships. I cannot overcome my feeling of visual dissonance.