Traveller Customizable Card Game: Two Player Starter Set

Even before it reached the table, while I was reading through the cards, Traveller looked like a compact LCG wearing the wrong CCG label, with a clear family resemblance to Decypher’s old Star Trek CCG. There is plenty to pull you in: ships, crews, upgrades, and enough choices to make you wonder what happens once your vessel heads out into the galaxy.

Your deck is your ship. You assemble a crew and fit upgrades, travel about, take on missions, or decide piracy is the order of the day; your opponent is doing the same, so it feels less like two people laying cards and more like two ships trying to find room in the same stretch of space.

A great deal happens at nearly the same time, and that is where the game demands your attention. It works perfectly well as a two-player head-to-head game, while multiplayer feels like its natural habitat; the core set, however, does not contain enough duplicate basics to build three credible decks. Teaching it is hard work too: the icon reference earns a quiet grade of “keep this open at all times”, and you need one or two games before you properly know what is going on. You may even run out of deck before victory points settle the matter. A charming introduction, obviously.

Once you get past that first tangle, Traveller sells its space-exploration theme beautifully. It is not Netrunner, and is not trying to be, but it makes a capable roughly hour-long group game and gives you a proper choice between chasing work and ruining somebody else’s day. That is exactly the sort of space trouble I want.

Updated session

Later play confirmed the first impression rather than overturning it: the game moved from card-reading promise to proper two-player sessions and held together. The same thorns remained — icons, a steep teach, and starter decks vulnerable to deck-out — but so did the central strength: exploration genuinely earns its place on the table.