I made a mistake In not giving Luna 2 coins every time she moved up on her maxed track and I forgot to give myself 4 points at the end for my end game research track tile.

Just cracked this open earlier this week and played my first game. GREAT GAME! Right up my alley. I actually won the first game on Standard, crushing the A.I. 222 to 133, and I'm pretty sure I played all the rules correctly. I used the normal Moon side of the board and set up the company tracks as told in the rules (not randomly). The easiest way for me to win was to keep advancing on the T company track, getting carbon cards to activate the money bonus on the track, and really get that research track going. It's also important to nab those +1 resource and energy tiles almost every round. Next time, I'm going to try Standard again on the Moon side, but with the company tracks randomized to see how the difficulty changes. Just a fantastic game. Permanent keeper for me. (And I didn't even try the asteroid belt side and the modules yet!) P.S. I can't believe how drastically different this game is from Pfister's Great Western Trail, which I definitely didn't like. So far, I played GWT, Maracaibo, and now Skymines. Love Maracaibo and Skymines. Boonlake is still unopened. Hope I'll like that one too!

Thanks for the video, John!

Thanks John, you've saved me from myself. As I have got older I have realised what works for me and what doesn't. The fiddliness of the setup and the general gameplay turned me off. Great vid by the way.

Excellent playthrough! Do you find there is enough board tension with just one AI ? Or is that even a factor with the four corporations ?

Sadly, many playing mistakes here: all sectors must be adjacent to either the expanding company’s station OR to any sector that contains an outpost of the expanding company -> you skipped sectors (e.g. 14:40 or 19:10) Removing 1 outpost means you remove it from the station of a company of your choice (and not from the board like in 21:06) and return it to the game box. When you have multiple field scientists you use them one at a time and not simultaneously. (12:20) I stopped watching at the 22 minute mark for above reasons so can't comment further.

The theme doesn't appeal to me. Should have kept it Mombasa. Space theme is so very worn out. Even Generic Fantasy is much more interesting to me.