STAR TREK: GALACTIC ENTERPRISES
Always inspect the merchandise before making a deal.
This is a small box game with an uncharismatic cover and a terrible name. Its theme is based around supporting characters from Star Trek Deep Space 9, which ended 19 years before the game's 2018 release. The components are cheap. The colors are dull. The graphic design is uninspired.
It's also a pretty fun little game.
#9 Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
This is an auction & negotiation game for 3-8 players over a 10 rounds (8 rounds with 7-8 players) and the first half plays very fast before the market builds up, the negotiations take longer with higher stakes, and the scoring get more complicated. Basically you get to purchase ONE card at auction every round, usually a Product but there is also an (mostly likely powerful) Action card in the market as well. This card goes in front of you and you will have the opportunity to sell it to make money (gold pressed latinum in-universe) every round moving forward creating wealth. But only the player(s) who secretly set the lowest prices on this good will make a profit, and the highest priced goods make no money at all for the player(s) who set them. Everyone in the middle can gain the base value of each card. Prices are set secretly on your own pad of paper but negotiated openly, so cooperation is on the table but so is lying & backstabbing. This is a wonderfully mean game. I love that. You might hate that, but maybe you'd make a terrible Ferengi.
#76 Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
The rules are simple but robust enough to support variants & house rules. The negotiations are tense and the choices are tough. The pricing structure in the game is mostly rock solid (I think I like the player variant that I read in these forums where if the price is set to the base value to undercut the other players then there is no bonus on the sale). The action cards are rare but seem to shake things up effectively. I think 5 or 6 players would probably provide the best play experience, though 10 rounds might go to long (Tom Vasel recommends you consider playing 8 rounds at the lower player counts too). I'm unsure how this would play with 7 or 8, but I'd actually really like to try.
#48 The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
It's a fun game, a good game, but certainly not great one and maybe never had a chance with this theme and low effort production. I had low expectations going in but was so shocked by the quality of play that I had to jump into BGG and post the only review the game has had there since it came out. If you like economic/negotiation games then this is an easy recommendation to play, but maybe harder to recommend a purchase unless you really like backstabbing your friends and are a Trekkie to boot.
