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Starbase Jeff
Designers: Jim Geldmacher and James Ernest
Price: $6.00
Publisher: Cheapass Games www.cheapass.com
Code: CAG017
 This gets my vote for one of the best Cheapass games that I've hardly seen anyone play. Perhaps it's because it isn't as whacky-sounding as other games: Everyone is a corrupt construction contractor on a space station.
However, Starbase Jeff is a surprising deep and gripping game. It's a puzzle game with a gambling element. You read that correctly: Players make money by building living quarters, finishing the space station, or forcing other players to build next to one's own contruction.
What makes the game interesting, particularly from a gambling standpoint, is that while strategy is important and has a definite effect on the game, it's not easy to predict what's really going to happen. Everyone chooses what they want to build during a turn, and then reveal simultanously -- pieces are built in a certain order according the number on the card, and if two people have pieces of the same priority, they're postponed for a time. It's possible to create a whole queue of unbuilt pieces and then build them all at the same time if you play your cards right -- or wrong, as the case may be. Add into this the fact that one of the cards allows you to plant a bomb in an already-built piece, and you have a wild and unpredictable game.
And for a Cheapass game, it requires very little additional equipment (play money is all you need), and surprisingly little room to play, despite its domino-like spread of connected pieces. The only disadvantage, in my opinion, is there is a maximum of four players. More players would make the game even more unpredictable. Perhaps if more people buy the game they'll make an expansion...
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