Space Chase (1967)

Here's a game I got a few months ago but have not had a chance to look at until now.  Space Chase by National Geographic, from 1967, almost as old as I am.  The first thing that stood out is that I was missing some pieces.  There were 3 astronauts but 8 ships.  The game didn't come with a parts list, but some of the cards had only two where others had up to 8.  Looking at BoardGameGeek, it came with 4 astronauts and 8 ships, but also had a printed rulebook.  That would have been nice to have ...
Link to BGG


The first annoyance is that, while the parts were cute, they were vertical and were always falling over.  We would prefer small plastic disks -- we might just used colored dice for the pieces next time.  The second annoyance was having the rules printed all over the game board, on different sides facing different directions, but that's not unusual for games of this era, so okay.  But then the overview printed inside the box said different things.

A quick read of the rules showed the interesting game mechanic of rolling a white die and a red die, move your astronaut (a.k.a. your crew) around the outer track using the white die, then your spaceships in the middle with the red die.  Early on, we didn't bother rolling the red die if we had no ships on the map, and the rules say you don't roll the red die until you have a rocket, so we got that right.  It felt like you could move the crew, place a ship and move it right away but when it says to launch a rocket, it means put it on the Launch Pad space.  You would move it next turn.

Since you need one of each of the six cards to launch a rocket, the early part of the game is a lot of moving around the board and not getting what you need.  The rules were not clear on whether you could gain a card if you already had one of that card.  Our copy didn't have nearly enough cards for everyone to have two of three of a matching card.  

Some of the spaces said to "go to X" but it was not at all clear where the space named "X" was, so it would have been nice if the destination squares were highlighted or a different color.  Speaking of different colors, the darker squares on the main track were for rocket actions.  We did eventually find all those named spaces.

It wasn't clear if you can only launch a rocket (by trading in those six cards) at the start of your turn or after your crew has moved.

Once you launch a rocket, the duality of the dice becomes pretty interesting, although most rockets are short-lived with cards and spaces that can blow them up or move other player's rockets to spaces where they are doomed.

The goals of the game are written in three different places and don't seem at all consistent.  First it sounds like you need "1500 points plus getting all your ships home except that some ships can be crashed as desired."  Huh.  Another section said you win if you complete any of the Missions, but we didn't see where these missions were described until half a game later.  There it says "1. get 1500 points; 2. get one ship to Splashdown, AND 3. retrieve all rockets from space (whatever that means).  Not any one mission, but ALL of them.

There were issues about whether or not you could pass another rocket.  One rule says if there's a rocket blocking your way your rocket cannot move at all, unless your crew is on a space (or you have a card) that says you may pass other rockets.  This seemed like an unneccessary speed bump, but okay.

Some cards or spaces said that the "last rocket" had to do something, and since the rockets can't pass each other, that would that be the one that was behind all the others on the map, or the last one launched?  Considering the looping pathways, I don't think you can always find an exact ordering.

Can a player have multiple rockets in flight at the same time?  Yes, "if a player has more than one rocket in orbit he may move any one he chooses."  But how would we remember which rockets each of us were controlling?  I would expect a way to mark the colored spots with some token saying who owned which colors, but that wasn't a thing.  So we tried multiple rockets, and I ended up writing those colors on the scorepad when we launched one, and crossing them off when they inevitably got destroyed or lost.  When we did reach Splashdown or Target Site, those were successful missions and I put stars next to those rocket colors on the score sheet.

We didn't even get into the big block of rules about what the different colored triangles mean.  It was in a far corner and was hard to read with our focal lengths the way they are.  It sounded like a rocket on a red triangle can be knocked off the map by landing on it, or you can pass by.  And orange squares are "danger" spaces where you have to roll an even number on the red die next turn to continue, or an odd number to crash.

There are two decks of cards that make various things happen: Tracking Station and Mission Control.  Some of these cards were pretty funny. 

When you are told to move an opponent's rocket to any space on the board, that -400 next to the sun is the perfect penalty box, since that ship can only leave the solar system on that track.

It was a fun double chase around the board, even though we were sure were missing something.  Or first game had a huge turnaround, when Anne started off just failing to get cards and going negative (the rules do say you don't go below zero points but we did anyway), but halfway through she got all the luck and I kept blowing it, and she ended up winning.  At one point it was -25 to 695 but ended up at 1085 to 25 ... we only played that first game to 1000.

Having to make up our own score pads was old school.  But we liked this one.  I will study the rules (such as they are) for a bit before we try another session.