Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert

Game Board

The play area is a shared star map in the middle, with sections of the board representing key locations on the U.S.S. Discovery and I.S.S. Charon in the middle. Zones bordering the edge of the game board mark convenient places to keep the various decks of cards.

The star map is filled with hexagonal map tiles. Each tile is connected by a line representing the “spore network” – the means that the titular U.S.S. Discovery uses to jump instantaneously from place to place. In game terms, that means traveling an unbroken line across one (or many!) tiles to the next circular node. Each node also shows a resource token that can be collected there.

Standee & Card Designs

There are six different kinds of cards in the game, and keeping them visually distinct while maintaining an overall look and feel for the game was a challenge.

These ship damage cards allow players to randomly determine which location becomes damaged. They were designed to overlay onto locations on the game board, changing the effects of those spaces while they are damaged.

Team Reference Sheets

The game board has the complete text for each location printed along the edges for each team. However, in playtesting we found that players needed a way to plans their turns without giving away exactly what they were doing, so I designed a double-sided reference sheet of the game board that lists all the location actions available to a specific team and where they are found. The top edge of each sheet also lists the steps of each player’s turn.