REVIEW — Looney Labs’ STAR TREK: VOYAGER Fluxx Game

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REVIEW — Looney Labs’ STAR TREK: VOYAGER Fluxx Game

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After four previous releases have well-honed Looney Labs’ take on Star Trek card games, the final entry in their Star Trek Fluxx series made it home from the Delta Quadrant late last year — the fourth and concluding release, Star Trek: Voyager Fluxx.

Following their classic Star Trek and Next Generation versions from 2018 and their Deep Space Nine edition from 2019, this fourth Star Trek Fluxx card game doesn’t change the play format of their long-running Fluxx games, but it does add a wonderful infusion of Voyager flair to their Trek collection.

The Fluxx game, which is touted as one “with ever-changing rules,” relies heavily on each player’s actions to guide where the gameplay will go — with the goal to find and collect “Keeper” cards as you go, aiming to complete goals established by previous rounds of play.

Along the way, these “Keeper” cards might be traded with or stolen by other players, while “Creeper” cards can either get in your way — or help you win the game, if you’re lucky. As you play, the game will be impacted by “New Rule” cards (which, as the name implies, changes how things proceed forward), and “Action” cards, which dictate a required task the player at hand must complete.

The joy of Star Trek: Voyager Fluxx is in the depth of Voyager knowledge that the Looney Labs team clearly utilized in the design of this version of the game, with cards referencing fan-favorite character traits, episodes from all across the show’s seven seasons, and even a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor about some of Voyager’s lesser-loved elements.

Here are some of our favorite cards from each section of the game, clearly illustrating this team’s love of Voyager.

  • B’Elanna Torres: The skilled engineer saves the day if you’re stuck with a Malfunction card.
     
  • Phaser: Stun away any Creeper in your way.
     
  • Timeship Aeon: The time-traveling starship from “Future’s End” will give you an extra turn.
     
  • Holographic Doctor: Players must announce the card with the EMH’s catchphrase.
     
  • Holodeck: Duplicate another player’s Keeper using holographic trickery to win the game.

     

  • Transporter: Beam up any other player’s Keeper to your own collection during a turn.

  • There’s Coffee In That Nebula: Get Captain Janeway a refill of her trusty beverage.
     
  • Nurses in Training: Pair up The Doctor with his sickbay sidekicks, either Kes or Tom Paris.
     
  • Even the Borg Fear Them: Recreate the Collective’s war with Species 8472.
     
  • Human Error: A joking dig at the late-series romance between Chakotay and Seven.
     
  • Tuvix: Recreate that infamous incident by pairing up Tuvok and Neelix with the Transporter.
     
  • Breaking the Threshold: Match up the parents of those long-lost lizard babies.

  • Ancestor’s Eve: Mention the name of one of your own ancestors (or older family members) and pick up an extra card.
     
  • Vent the Warp Core: Get a free pass to dump as many cards from your hand as you like, and replace them with new ones.
     
  • The Kazon: You can’t win with this Creeper card in your possession, so you can curse it to whoever has USS Voyager in their hand.
     
  • Krenim Timeship: Discard a Keeper card and change another player’s history by adding this to their impediments.
     
  • The Caretaker: Fire out a coherent tetryon beam and collect the USS Voyager, along with cards bearing the faces of all original Alpha Quadrant senior staff.
  • Belay That Order!: Cancel out another player’s commands and shut down an Action card.

All in all, it’s not a revolutionary update to the Star Trek Fluxx series, but certainly it’s a well-crafted homage to the adventures of Captain Janeway’s crew, and one which will make a great expansion to the existing three Star Trek Fluxx games — if you’re brave enough to combine them all into one massive deck.

Unfortunately, this is the last Trek Fluxx game expected from the Looney Labs team, who told us last spring that Enterprise wasn’t getting its own variant — though that series was well-represented in 2019’s Chrono-Trek game — and because the ongoing new shows aren’t finished airing yet, no entries for Discovery, Picard, etc., will be pursued at this time.

That said, the company’s five Star Trek card games have been welcome releases to the analog gameplay scene, after years of less-than-stellar video and mobile games, and we hope other board and card game designers will follosw suit in the future.

JUNE 3 UPDATE: We may have spoken too soon, as the Looney Labs team shared on TrekCore’s Facebook page that “pending CBS approval,” they’re pursuing “two final expansion packs that will have a heavy dose of Enterprise cards in them and will allow you to shuffle all the decks together.”

You can pick up your copy of Star Trek: Voyager Fluxx — and all of Looney Labs’ other Star Trek games — at your local game store now, or at the links below.

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