Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon

Setting up Shackleton Base involves placing the main moon board in the center of the table and adjusting the command action area according to the player count. Solar panel tokens are placed around the central crater, while shuttle tiles are separated into face-down stacks by round number and shuffled. Three corporate boards—such as Artemis Tours, Moon Mining, and Selenium Research—are chosen and set up alongside their respective project cards, tokens, and experiment tiles. General supplies including titanium, rare earth, and credit tokens are kept nearby as unlimited pools. Finally, each player selects a color, takes their personal player board representing their base, populates it with structures like domes, workshops, laboratories, and headquarters, places their markers on the reputation and victory point tracks, and determines player order randomly using the agency leader tiles.

Players act as rival agencies competing to expand their presence and infrastructure on the moon's surface over three intense rounds. The ultimate goal is to accumulate the most victory points by constructing base modules, exploiting crater resources, funding corporate projects, and fulfilling specific neutral corporation goals. Success requires carefully managing the crater's common power supply, optimizing astronaut worker placements, and advancing on reputation and energy tracks to reduce building and maintenance costs.

The game is played across three rounds, each divided into three distinct phases: the shuttle phase, the action phase, and the maintenance phase. During the shuttle phase, players reveal shuttle tiles and select them in reverse turn order to acquire astronauts, resources, and determine the new turn order. In the action phase, players alternate turns using their available astronauts on their shuttle tiles to perform command actions—such as building structures, funding projects, or executing corporation actions—or by visiting the lunar gateway and exploiting the crater. Finally, the maintenance phase handles returning visitors, collecting income from corporation bonuses and dome astronauts, paying maintenance costs based on reputation and buildings, and preparing the board for the next round.

Final scoring occurs after the third round and consists of four main steps. First, players score victory points from their acquired project cards and apply any end-game card effects. Second, points are awarded based on the number of same-color workers placed in laboratory slots on player boards. Third, players add victory points equal to their final standing on the reputation track. Fourth, if applicable, special end-game corporate scoring is applied. The player with the highest total victory points wins the game, with ties broken by highest reputation.

The game ends automatically after the completion of the maintenance phase of the third round. Once all round upkeep procedures, worker returns, and component resets are finished, players immediately transition into the final scoring phase to tally points from projects, laboratories, and reputation tracks to declare the winner.