Description

From the PDF

Welcome to The Belt!

In the 23rd century humanity has been cast to the stars. Hardy spaceship pilots mine the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars for raw materials. It's a dangerous job, but the rewards are generous as the Colonial Administration needs as much of the precious minerals as they can get to ensure the survival of humanity.

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The Belt is a game for two to four players where the objective is to mine as many asteroids as you can and get the rocks back to base before the end of the game. Each player takes it in turns to move their ship towards an asteroid in order to mine it (see Mining). Once the asteroid has been mined the player must move their ship to their base and deposit the asteroid chunks there before moving off to get more asteroids. Beware, though, because pirates roam the Belt and will attack any ship trying to move rocks out of the belt.

The win conditions can be set by the players. You could create a time-limit with the winner being the player who collected the most asteroids; or the first to get # asteroids wins.

Players take turns putting all the asteroid counters within the designated 'field', then the three pirate counters are placed in the centre of the board next to each other.

1D6 die is rolled on each players turn, which provides a random maximum move distance for them that turn. If ships come within 6 hexes of each other or the pirates they may get shot at. Once a player is on the same hex as an asteroid they roll a 1D3 and it takes that many turns to mine it successfully. A maximum of two asteroids can be held by a ship, it must then return to its base to unload.

Rules for targeting and firing on the other ships creates added tension, and repairs can also be affected but leave the ship vulnerable.