ISS Vanguard

Few board games try to do as much as ISS Vanguard. Awaken Realms built an entire campaign around the premise of crewing a starship, exploring alien worlds, and uncovering a galaxy-spanning mystery, all while managing crew, resources, and the ship itself between missions. The ambition is enormous, and when the game delivers on that ambition, it creates moments that stick with you long after the session ends.

Community reception tells the story of a game that inspires strong feelings in both directions. Players who love narrative campaign games often rank this among the best they’ve experienced. Those who prioritize tight mechanical systems over storytelling tend to find ISS Vanguard frustrating. The split is real, and it runs through nearly every discussion about the game.

Alien Worlds That Demand to Be Explored

The planetary exploration phase is where ISS Vanguard earns its reputation. Each mission drops your crew onto a new alien world with its own visual identity, environmental hazards, and branching narrative paths. The scenarios feel distinct from one another in ways that most campaign games struggle to achieve. One mission might have your team navigating a toxic atmosphere while another sends you into ancient ruins with their own logic puzzles. That variety sustains interest across a campaign that can stretch to 25+ sessions.

Branching storylines give your decisions real consequences that carry forward through the campaign. The choices you make on one planet affect what’s available on the next, and the overarching mystery unfolds differently depending on the path your group takes. The writing is engaging enough to make these choices feel meaningful rather than arbitrary.

Crew management adds a layer of strategic depth that rewards long-term planning. With 90 recruitable crew members across four sections (Security, Recon, Science, and Engineering), building your team for specific missions becomes a game within the game. Each section leader brings different dice and abilities to the planet surface, and choosing the right crew composition for a given mission can mean the difference between a clean success and a catastrophic failure.

The production quality supports the experience well. The Ship Book, a large binder that tracks your ship’s state across the campaign, is a clever design that keeps the game’s persistent elements organized. Card trays with labeled compartments manage the massive volume of content without requiring players to sort through hundreds of cards every session.

The Dice Problem and the Ship Phase Wall

Dice rolling drives the core challenge resolution on planets, and this is where opinions fracture. Early in the campaign, the dice system works as a puzzle. You choose which dice to commit to checks, weigh the odds of different symbol combinations, and make calculated risks. But as the campaign progresses and the stakes increase, the randomness can overwhelm the strategy. A string of bad rolls doesn’t just slow you down. It can cascade into injuries, lost supplies, and failed objectives that compound across multiple sessions.

That snowball effect is the most consistent criticism of the game. Positive momentum compounds too, which means groups that get lucky early build advantages that make later missions easier, while groups that struggle early fall further behind. The campaign has some catch-up mechanisms, but they don’t fully address the gap that accumulates over dozens of sessions.

The ship management phase between planetary missions is the game’s weakest link. You work through the Ship Book to upgrade facilities, recruit crew, produce equipment, and make strategic decisions about your next destination. The concept is sound, but the execution feels like administrative overhead rather than engaging gameplay. The steps are numerous and the decision space within each step is narrow, which creates a phase that takes time without delivering proportional satisfaction. Awaken Realms streamlined this phase during development based on playtest feedback, but it still feels like the part of the game you endure to get back to the parts you enjoy.

Player scaling is another sore spot. The game works best at three or four players because more section leaders mean more dice, more abilities, and more flexibility during planetary checks. Solo play and two-player sessions can feel punishing by comparison, with fewer resources to absorb the inevitable bad rolls.

An Ambition That Outreaches Its Systems

The central tension of ISS Vanguard is the gap between its narrative ambition and its mechanical execution. The story, world-building, and exploration are top-tier for the medium. The core gameplay loop of rolling dice and resolving checks is functional but shallow compared to the depth of the narrative wrapped around it. If the game weren’t set in space with such compelling storytelling, the underlying mechanical framework would struggle to hold attention on its own.

Is ISS Vanguard Right for Your Table?

This is a game for groups that prioritize narrative and exploration above all else. If your table gravitates toward campaign games with rich stories and you can tolerate dice-driven randomness, ISS Vanguard will give you dozens of hours of memorable content. It works best with three or four committed players who can meet regularly enough to maintain campaign momentum.

Skip it if mechanical depth is what you value most in a game, if your group has low tolerance for randomness that compounds across sessions, or if you typically play solo or at two players. The ship management phase and setup time also make this a poor fit for groups with limited table time.

The Verdict on ISS Vanguard

ISS Vanguard delivers one of the most ambitious campaign narratives in board gaming, with colorful alien worlds and branching storylines that keep you invested across dozens of sessions. The planetary exploration phase is thrilling when the dice cooperate, but the ship management phase drags, the randomness can snowball in frustrating directions, and the mechanical depth doesn’t always match the narrative ambition. It’s a game that will thrill you one session and test your patience the next, and whether that tradeoff works depends entirely on how much you value story over systems.