Starbase Jeff is an unusual game of starbase building and enterprise. It was originally released by Cheapass Games, #017.
Release Year: 1998
Game Type: Tile-Building Card Game
Designers: James Ernest, Jim Geldmacher
Artist: Jim Geldmacher
Players: 2 to 4
Playing Time: 20 Minutes
Components to Print: Cards, Rules
You Also Need: Money, around 50 credits per player
Starbase Jeff was the first collaboration between Cheapass Games and an outside designer. Jim Gelmacher brought the tile-building game to James Ernest, who promptly added the “for money” element.
Players each have their own deck of cards, and each chooses a card simultaneously on each round. The cards are added to the station in numeric order, with duplicated cards being deferred until later rounds. Deferred cards can all be played together, so players can sometimes try to defer several cards in a row.
It costs money (which is paid into the pot) to build most of the pieces, but you can collect money by building endcaps, or by forcing other players to connect through your parts of the station. The bigger the connection, the bigger the penalty.
Whoever closes off the station collects the pot, but the real goal is to end up with more money than you started with.
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Note that the cards in Starbase Jeff are square, so we can’t put this game on DriveThruCards. We recommend that you make these into tile cards, explained above, for the best playing experience.
If you are printing with the original grayscale files, these are meant to be printed on different colors of cardstock (like the original). If you’re printing on white paper, you can use the newer color-tinted files.
Thanks for supporting Crab Fragment Labs, and enjoy Starbase Jeff!