The Mothership Board Game : Abduct Humans, Recruit Aliens, Outsmart Your Rival

The Mothership Board Game,Brad and Jacklin Kasper’s two-player strategy game, is the first release from Snow Day Games. We listed it in one of ourweekly Crowdfund Quest roundups when the game first launched in October. Now, in the closing days of the campaign we’ve taken a look at the rulebook which gives us a closer look at what the two scouts are actually competing over.

In The Mothership Board Game, your flying saucer is the piece you use to rearrange Earth. Every time you move, you swap places with a human or an artefact. The trick is to leave three matching chips in a row before you stop. Then you hand the board you’ve just rearranged to the other flying saucer.

Your flight path is the puzzle

You can make up to eight moves in a turn, swapping with an adjacent chip each time. Diagonal moves are out. Matches resolve when you finish moving, and each set you collect must include at least one chip you moved that turn. That makes the whole route matter. You might line up three humans halfway through your turn, then have to work out how to reach a second match without undoing the first.

Once you’ve collected your sets, the empty spaces refill with random chips from a bag. Your rival inherits the results of your swaps and gets first crack at whatever turns up in the gaps. A good turn can pull off several matches at once, but the same sequence of moves could leave a pair of matching artefacts within easy reach of the other scout. So players need to balance their own gains with the opportunities they might be leaving in place for their opponent to capitalize on in their own turn.

What goes aboard the mothership matters

Humans give you something to do after the matches are cleared. You can make up to two deliveries a turn, and different berths ask for different combinations. One takes three humans of the same type and boosts your reputation in that speciality. Another takes one of each type and gives you a smaller boost across all four. Reputation is a tug-of-war. Deliveries can move shared tokens towards your side of the track, earning artefacts and eventually opening up higher-level recruits.

Those recruits can change what you see when you look at Earth. Some engineers let your saucer teleport by swapping with a distant chip, without spending a move. Military recruits can add new formations you can collect alongside the usual three-in-a-row. Politicians can change which deliveries are legal, while researchers offer bonuses tied to Earth’s biomes. A cluster your opponent flies past might be exactly what your crew needs. You can also skip recruitment and take two artefacts instead.

Artefacts are victory points, whether you match them on Earth or earn them through reputation. The mission ends when all the mothership’s transport spaces are filled or the draw bag can’t refill any empty spaces on Earth. The scout with the most artefacts wins.

Kickstarter details

The Mothership Board Game has passed its US$20,000 funding goal but is due to finish soon - 3am UK time on Friday 13th November 2026 - so if you like the idea of it you’d better jump in quick! One copy is US$39, or US$109 for three copies at the Friends & Family tier. The game has an estimated delivery date down as August 2027.

The Mothership Board Game is currently on Kickstarter until Friday 13th November 2026.